Mac Pro...

Thanks cowasaki :)
There's no huge rush. I have until August 2009 to get it :D
 
Marcel said:
Thanks cowasaki :)
There's no huge rush. I have until August 2009 to get it :D
Click to expand...

I've got till June to get the applecare for my macbook pro so I will have bought one before you need yours :)

I will do a post then although I will probably just get one when christmas is out of the way
 
I had a quick look on ebay last night and somebody in the UK was sell one for a Mac Pro for £80, this was for the sealed box and not just the code number.
 
Okey Kokey, ive got 2x Macpros, an old 4core (dual dual) and a newer 8core(dual quad)...

Some of the information in this thread is a little in-accurate.

To start with some Veloraptors are compatible with Macpros, the newer HLFS model have the correct layout backplane, whereas the earlier BLFS models wont fit.

Ive got 10gb Ram in each Macpro, in the old one its all Crucial, in the new one its not, its generic stuff from Thomann it was available before Crucial started selling 800mhz FBDimms, it works flawlessly, both machines on 24/7.

Upgrading the processors is possible, but not for the faint hearted, nowhere near as simple as a normal desktop upgrade, as Cowasaki says, its generally considered cheaper to sell up and buy a new model.
 
There in one great thing I have learnt in this thread, Darryn is in Colne and Darren is in Bamber Bridge. So with me near Chorley it won't be far for you two to come when I need help with a MAC :lol:
 
Darryn said:
Okey Kokey, ive got 2x Macpros, an old 4core (dual dual) and a newer 8core(dual quad)...

Some of the information in this thread is a little in-accurate.

To start with some Veloraptors are compatible with Macpros, the newer HLFS model have the correct layout backplane, whereas the earlier BLFS models wont fit.

Ive got 10gb Ram in each Macpro, in the old one its all Crucial, in the new one its not, its generic stuff from Thomann it was available before Crucial started selling 800mhz FBDimms, it works flawlessly, both machines on 24/7.

Upgrading the processors is possible, but not for the faint hearted, nowhere near as simple as a normal desktop upgrade, as Cowasaki says, its generally considered cheaper to sell up and buy a new model.
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I will hold up my hands I didn't know they had produced a new version of the veloraptor with the ports in the normal place but that makes sense. (it certainly is easier than fitting it in the 5.25" bay and routing a SATA cable as I have done previously with the earlier model!)

As for ram I think I would still be much happier with branded RAM but if you have generic ram that works thats great. There were lots of problems with generic Ram on the Pro especially during revision 1's lifetime. It was mainly with overheating.

I don't think anybody actually said you couldn't upgrade the processors although I did say it wasn't worth doing. It is not as easy as with most desktop machines but its not a difficult task. The cost of any 'better' processor is the problem as a pair of 3.0 or 3.2GHz processors would cost as much as a new machine. Anandtech did quite a famous EIGHT core upgrade to the original rev1 machine before Apple released theirs so its certainly possible! The original rev2 Quad core machines did have a missing processor socket and so were not upgradable to dual chip setups although this might change though the products life.

Here is how>>> http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2832&p=3
 
whiteflyer said:
There in one great thing I have learnt in this thread, Darryn is in Colne and Darren is in Bamber Bridge. So with me near Chorley it won't be far for you two to come when I need help with a MAC :lol:
Click to expand...

Just give me a shout, happy to help!
 
Darryn,

How do you find the difference between the Quad core and Eight core in normal use. Most tasks occur instantly with the Quad on my setup. Where is it most noticeable?
 
cowasaki said:
Darryn,

How do you find the difference between the Quad core and Eight core in normal use. Most tasks occur instantly with the Quad on my setup. Where is it most noticeable?
Click to expand...

My quad core is the 2.66, whereas my 8core is 2.8... so straight away its slightly quicker doing everything, but when encoding movies it really is almost twice as quick. I run a couple of VM clients, Parallels with win2kpro for Newsleecher, and CrossoverGames for Eve-Online, i can happily run both OS, and OSX is still snappy enough... On my 4core, running Eve and Newsleecher and it starts to slow down a little bit.
 
Another quick question................or two :suspect:

Been in to the local Apple shop this afternoon and there doing a deal of 'Applecare' for £52 (For three years?) when buying a Mac Pro (Sounds likle a great price) but would I just be doubling up on the 12 months warrenty in the first year?? Or could I buy it and then use it when my 12 months warrenty is about to finish.?

Thought I'd read somewhere that a Hard Drive that had been used on a PC (formatted NTFS?) needed to be re formatted to use with Mac?? Is this true, guy in the Apple shop says they'll work with no problem:shrug: I had a concern as ~I have two 1TB External drives used for dual back up which are quite full, don't really want to start formatting them etc.!!

On the current Mac Pro set up, if you add a second graphics card (2 X HD 2600 XT 256Mb) is it only going to be of use to run a second monitor or is it set up in some kind of SLI configuration giving me more graphics capability??

TIA

Chris
 
Mr THX said:
Another quick question................or two :suspect:

Been in to the local Apple shop this afternoon and there doing a deal of 'Applecare' for £52 (For three years?) when buying a Mac Pro (Sounds likle a great price) but would I just be doubling up on the 12 months warrenty in the first year?? Or could I buy it and then use it when my 12 months warrenty is about to finish.?

Thought I'd read somewhere that a Hard Drive that had been used on a PC (formatted NTFS?) needed to be re formatted to use with Mac?? Is this true, guy in the Apple shop says they'll work with no problem:shrug: I had a concern as ~I have two 1TB External drives used for dual back up which are quite full, don't really want to start formatting them etc.!!

On the current Mac Pro set up, if you add a second graphics card (2 X HD 2600 XT 256Mb) is it only going to be of use to run a second monitor or is it set up in some kind of SLI configuration giving me more graphics capability??

TIA

Chris
Click to expand...

Applecare extends the warranty to 3 years whenever it is bought so that is a superb price and go for it!

MacOS will read a NTFS drive so you can put the two drives into the Macpro and read the contents off but what I would do is try and get everything onto one then re-format the other to Mac format, transfer the NTFS one onto it then re-format the other one.

SLI is a PC thing one 8800 is considerably quicker than 2x 2600 anyway but that is not even an option on the Mac. Having 2 2600s just give you the ability to drive 4 monitors!
 
What Darren said, there are also software solutions out there to make OSX able to write to NTFS drives.

Myself when i still ran a Windows system i formatted my external drives to Mac format and then used a program called Macdrive 6 for Windows to be able to read and write to them.

Also, multiple graphics cards are only for additional screens on Mac, they arent really aimed at the gaming market, so SLI isnt a priority. Ive got an 7300gt and a 8800gt in my main system to run 3x24" screens.
 
So did I, macdrive is very good :)

There is another option too.. FAT32 is only limited to 32Gb by Windows (can't remember what the real limit is off the top of my head)! It is an artificial limit set by Microsoft in order to make people use NTFS !! You can format an external drive to FAT32 using many free programs and then share that drive freely between the Mac, PC and Linux. I do like the macdrive option though but this one is free.

EDIT- oh yes FAT32 has a single file size limit of 2Gb so you need to make sure this does not cause problems too

Correction: I'm being told the actual drive limit with FAT32 is 128Gb and the single file limit is 4Gb... I thought it was 2Gb so its one or the other.

Actually I have my external driveS attached to my server and all the other computers on the network so the file system is irrelevant now :)
 
Mr THX said:
Thought I'd read somewhere that a Hard Drive that had been used on a PC (formatted NTFS?) needed to be re formatted to use with Mac?? Is this true, guy in the Apple shop says they'll work with no problem:shrug: I had a concern as ~I have two 1TB External drives used for dual back up which are quite full, don't really want to start formatting them etc.!!
Click to expand...

Another option is to just buy another 1Tb drive. Aria at Manchester have the 1Tb F1 for £54.95 at the moment and it will nicely go into the pro as another drive. Personally I would stick two in there
 
Indeed, Sharing Networked drives is by far the easiest method for dealing with multiply drive formats. :)

Shocked how cheap the 1tb drives are now, ive got all my internal bays full, and use a Sharkoon Sata Dock to be able to quickly swap between backup drives, I might buy a few more 1tb drives at that price and one of the new dual Sharkoon docks. :) Cheers for the heads up, the price is +vat, but still cheap, not used Aria for a while, they used to be good on price, but poor on returns and CS.
 
I was hoping Scan would drop their price to the same level but even though they have them on special offer today they are still £59.95+vat each.

Darryn, you clearly must use a lot of video with your vast storage! I have a Tb of external storage and a couple of 2Tb on the Pro and one of the drives on the pro is empty!
 
Darryn said:
Indeed, Sharing Networked drives is by far the easiest method for dealing with multiply drive formats. :)

Shocked how cheap the 1tb drives are now, ive got all my internal bays full, and use a Sharkoon Sata Dock to be able to quickly swap between backup drives, I might buy a few more 1tb drives at that price and one of the new dual Sharkoon docks. :) Cheers for the heads up, the price is +vat, but still cheap, not used Aria for a while, they used to be good on price, but poor on returns and CS.
Click to expand...

Have you used the two spare SATA sockets on the Mac pros? You can buy a dual SATA backplane from CPC for about £12 which is basically a standard metal backplate as all PCI cards etc use. This card has two eSATA sockets on it and internally has two SATA leads which then plug into the two sockets on the motherboard. Using this you could get full SATA speed from two external drives. You can buy an external eSATA case with PSU for about £15 so for about £45 ish plus the price of two drives you could get another 2Tb of storage which would be as quick as the internal drives. I also thinking of flogging that setup with instructions on ebay :)

Also I was thinking of having some brackets made to hold two extra drives internally in the pro and flogging these with instructions on ebay too!
 
OK another question.

As I only need a quad core Pro, to run CS3/4 and Lightroom, is there anty reason to hang on for the new chip set next year ( or whenever.) I don't plan to upgrade the machine processor. It's probably cheaper to sell and buy a new machine
 
bloody hell chaps, I ask a simple question, run away for the w/e and come back to 4 pages of stuff!! now I need to read my way through it all! :D
thinking about it it does make sense to go 8 core since the harper towns are 1200 or more for two...no way you could spec out a machine for less than the 300-odd it costs over that to the standards of a macpro. so think I know the way I'm going to go now, sourced out some extra bits from places - ram/hdds etc, have a ready and waiting copy of cs4 and lightroom I won in a competition...just need a wireless router and i'm all set to go!!! :D woohoo!
 
oh can anyone explain the difference between drive formats on a Mac; there's 4 choices and I heard something about one type being 'better suited' to extrnal drives and another best for the system disk itself...?
and does anyone know the difference between WD caviar blue or greens?
 
Chappers said:
OK another question.

As I only need a quad core Pro, to run CS3/4 and Lightroom, is there anty reason to hang on for the new chip set next year ( or whenever.) I don't plan to upgrade the machine processor. It's probably cheaper to sell and buy a new machine
Click to expand...

Any of the Mac Pros would be up to what you want to do. I would go for the 2.8 EIGHT core as the save for the QUAD is quite small and you cannot really upgrade but if you did get the QUAD you would not be disappointed.
 
shiato storm said:
oh can anyone explain the difference between drive formats on a Mac; there's 4 choices and I heard something about one type being 'better suited' to extrnal drives and another best for the system disk itself...?
and does anyone know the difference between WD caviar blue or greens?
Click to expand...

The standard format that Disc utility default to is fine ie Mac OS Extended (journaled).

The formats we were discussing were to make it easier to transfer stuff to and from a Windows PC. A Mac can read most Windows formats but a PC cannot read standard Mac formats without extra software. So in order to share the contents of a drive you can format it using a format that both computers understand. FAT32 is read/write by both Windows and MacOS but is not the most resiliant or secure format for either machine! If you have an old PC and wish to share information you would be better formatting the drive for the Mac and then sharing it over the network. Over the network the PC does not actually have to read the drive because the Mac is doing the actual reading so this would be fine.

Oh yes the Caviar drives... The green ones are greener !
 
So on a mac, you'd recommend Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for all drives (including externals...all drives to be used by the mac only)
 
cowasaki said:
Memory

What are you doing about RAM ?? - Are you buying 2 x 1Gb for a total of 4Gb and costing £70 OR 4 x 2Gb for a total of 8Gb (taking the current 2Gb out) at £230 or 2 x 1Gb + 4 x 2Gb for a cost of £300 and ending up with 12Gb ?? - I would not use the installed 2 x 1Gb with 4 x 2Gb

EDIT... Unless of course you can get a really good deal on the 3007/3008, seriously a wonderful monitor !!
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Where are you getting these prices?? My Mac Pro has 2gig and id like to upgrade.. Im not sure if its 2x1gig or 1x2gig sticks..
 
fraggle101 said:
Where are you getting these prices?? My Mac Pro has 2gig and id like to upgrade.. Im not sure if its 2x1gig or 1x2gig sticks..
Click to expand...

Scan.co.uk // Dabs // Crucial // Kingston

All cheaper than Apple plus Darryn bought some from somewhere too and posted the link earlier. Thomann I think it was. He is happy with it even using it 24/7 so should be fine. Personally I do prefer Crucial or Kingston but if it works then I am sure it will be fine.

If you look in Apple>About this Mac>Memory this will tell you what Dimms you have and where!

If you have 2x1Gb then get another 2X1Gb as this will bring you up to 4 devices which gives you the maximum speed so you get a read/write speed boost as well as the boost associated with having more memory !

You cannot have 1x2Gb but you could have 4x512Mb !! If you do have 4x512Mb then I would say get 4x2Gb as you will not be able to upgrade again without removing some
 
Iv just installed 12gig in my mac pro, but its only showing 8gig!!!

Iv put the 4x2gig sticks in slots 1&2 of both cards.. the remaning 1 gig sticks have been put in the remaining slots.. iv put the new ram in the same number slot on each card and done the same with the Apple ram.. as far as i know iv done it correctly, but it only shows 8 gig still..
 
Ok, iv sorted it.. just jiggled around the sticks and its fine now..
 
So, iv got 12gig in Mac mode, but in windows it only shows 1.99gig.. i know that wiwndows will only recognise 3 gig without the patch you have to pay for but why so low??
 
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