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MacPro 2.8 Octo vs. 3.0 Octo
I’m looking to upgrade my home Final Cut setup and I’m looking for opinions in whether to go with a 2.8 Octo or a 3.0 Octo. I don’t do a lot of heavy lifting on my home machine-no HD at the moment. I usually edit at DV50 on this machine. Is there enough of a difference in performance between these two machines to justify the $800 diference or would I be better off going with the 2.8 and taking the $800 difference and putting it into more RAM for the same price.
Opinions and debate welcome!
Tom -
12 Replies
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I would take the extra RAM any day of the week
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No point at all in the 3.0 over the 2.8 get the NVidia Graphics card and more RAM instead
Steve Connor
Adrenalin TelevisionHave you tried “Search Posts”? Enlightenment may be there.
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Get the extra RAM and you’re good to go. I would even stick with the base ATI 2600 card.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR
The new Color Training DVD now available from the Creative Cow! -
I concur with everyone…2.8 with more RAM. And as Walter said, stick with the Stock card…it is better than you’d expect.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD now for sale!
http://www.LFHD.net
Read my blog! -
I just want to bring it to the attention of the Creative Cow community that people have been experiencing problems with the new Mac Pros and the ATI 2600 card. I myself have had 2 such crashes in the last 5 weeks, and I’m not sure if I should pursue a replacement before the problem gets worse. See:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1365277&tstart=15
https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=419100
Opinions? I’m curious what Walter thinks …
Thanks,
Sean
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I was planning on ordering the system, either way, with the Nvidia 8800 card.I will be using Motion and of course Color on this system and I figured that this card would make things run a bit smoother and faster. It seems that more and more processing is being off loaded to the video card these days so I figured that the bigger, the better.
What card are most of you running in new systems these days?
Tom -
[Tom Matthies] “I was planning on ordering the system, either way, with the Nvidia 8800 card.I will be using Motion and of course Color on this system and I figured that this card would make things run a bit smoother and faster.”
For Motion, maybe. For Color, the ATI is the way to go right now. ATI cards have always worked better with Color since the Final Touch days. I don’t know why, but they do.
Steve Jobs prefers nVidia so that’s why they are the “card of choice.” Personally, when we order our new machines, they will have the ATI 2600’s in them unless ATI has come out with a newer and faster card.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR
The new Color Training DVD now available from the Creative Cow! -
[Sean Jason] ”
Opinions? I’m curious what Walter thinks …”The folks I know running the systems are not experiencing any issues with the ATI card. That’s all I can comment on. I’ll still be ordering our systems with the ATI 2600.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR
The new Color Training DVD now available from the Creative Cow! -
Barefeats Motion and Barefeats Games did tests on the graphic cards.
The ATI Radeon cards handle Core Image better which is important for video work.
The nVidia cards do better with games due to the use OpenGL. Of course if you’ve got apps using OpenGL it might tilt things. I hear Maya artists might have reason fo -
[Tom Matthies] “What card are most of you running in new systems these days?”
I am running the ATI x1900 XT card in my new MacPro. I had to buy it as an upgrade kit at a local Mac dealer…which is fine as I like having a backup graphics card in case one dies (it has happened)…and I had to have a buddy install it on his OLDER MacPro and install the firmware update. Because when I first installed it…it didn’t work.
That is a FAST card.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD now for sale!
http://www.LFHD.net
Read my blog!
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