advice in purchasing a new MAC pro

[Victor Perez]

when I purchased my last MacPro about 2 years ago I almost purchased one from Apple Certified. A friend mentioned calling a local pro reseller. After just a few calls I was able to negotiate a great deal on a New MacPro for the price of a Referb one on the Apple website. They even tossed in Bluetooth and upgraded my keyboard to a wireless with FCP keys and a wireless mighty mouse. I was also offered Apple Care for my tower at a discounted price.

I have nothing against Referb, but if you are thinking about purchasing two towers it might be a good investment of time to seek out some of your local Pro Resellers. They have good advise and hopefully a great savings for you.

hope that helps

Victor

[Nelson May]

I wished I had the money, but I can use the apple 12 months no financing. I am only looking at buying one tower and I wanted to see which of the first tow would get me by for about 3 years or so. The third was a just in case…..I wanted to pop the wad and go for it, but there wouldn’t be too much of a difference in the chip speed 3.0 to 3.0 in the grand scheme of things.

G5, 1.7, 4MB RAM, 30″cine, G4, 1.6 2MB RAM, Mbox, Neumann TLM-103, FCP HD 5. Pro Tools, Adobe Creative Suite, Reason 3.0, Macromedia Studio, ProAnimator, HVX200 with Firestore v4.0

[Russell Lasson]

If you do refurbished, I’d go with the 2.8Ghz 8-core with Applecare. There is some debate over whether it would be better to go with the new Quad 2.6 4-core with hyper-threading. Either way, they’re both great.

I don’t think the other refurbished computers offer that much improvement. I’d rather spend the extra money somewhere else, like an SSD for a start up disk:)

-Russ

Russell Lasson
Colorist/Digital Cinema Specialist
Color Mill
Salt Lake City, UT
http://www.colormill.net

[Larry Applegate]

It’s interesting to compare the new 4-core to the refurbished 8-core at $100 difference. The new one has more memory, bigger drive, and newer model video card, which might take better advantage of Snow Leopard’s coming GPU advancements. (I bought my new 24″ iMac with that card for that reason). It also has SATA optical drive connectors (no more master/slave IDE jumpers!), in case you ever want to add a Blu-ray burner.

If I were in your shoes, I would go with the newer 4-core just because its the newer technology and they are probably a “push” today and might even be faster tomorrow.

I buy my new Macs from Oregon (PowerMax) because they have no tax and inexpensive shipping. And never buy more drives or memory from Apple, Other World Computing has great products and support at far less money.

Regards,

Larry Applegate
https://blustreak.dvdafteredit.com

[Nelson May]

that is good advice and I appreciate it. I have a 4 core at work, but we do little HD and are using Premier CS3, so I have never run FCP on it. I may wait and pop for the 8 core. My concern is three years down the road. If the scarlet makes it to market, I will probably get it and use it as my primary and my HVX as secondary. I want to know that I can work with those 2K files with a good raid array if needed.

If I was to get the baseline 8 core new, how much of a difference would I see in 2.26 as apposed to 2.8? I know it is apples and oranges. But in the grand scheme of things, would I still be able to edit 2K and XD can on an 8 core 2.26 pretty well?

Also, do you think they will revamp the new mac pro soon and come out with a cheaper version like the MBP?

I have been scanning the blogs, but don’t see anything. If a better MAC is out there in 3 months that is cheaper, I may wait.

Cheers.

G5, 1.7, 4MB RAM, 30″cine, G4, 1.6 2MB RAM, Mbox, Neumann TLM-103, FCP HD 5. Pro Tools, Adobe Creative Suite, Reason 3.0, Macromedia Studio, ProAnimator, HVX200 with Firestore v4.0

[Russell Lasson]

[Nelson May] “But in the grand scheme of things, would I still be able to edit 2K and XD can on an 8 core 2.26 pretty well? “

Either computer will be fine. It’s generally accepted that the new 8-core 2.26 (2009) is faster than the 2008 8-core 3.2 Mac Pro. And the 2009 Mac Pros might have more advantage with Snow Leopard.

[Nelson May] “Also, do you think they will revamp the new mac pro soon and come out with a cheaper version like the MBP? “

No. I don’t think so.

[Nelson May] “If a better MAC is out there in 3 months that is cheaper, I may wait. “

It’s really not likely coming.

-Russ

Russell Lasson
Colorist/Digital Cinema Specialist
Color Mill
Salt Lake City, UT
http://www.colormill.net

[Nelson May]

Thank you, that really helps.

G5, 1.7, 4MB RAM, 30″cine, G4, 1.6 2MB RAM, Mbox, Neumann TLM-103, FCP HD 5. Pro Tools, Adobe Creative Suite, Reason 3.0, Macromedia Studio, ProAnimator, HVX200 with Firestore v4.0

[Monica Nolan]

I’d do some research into video cards. I am searching posts because my ATI Radeon 2600 HD XT seems to have died today. The computer (Mac Pro Quad core) was purchased from a reseller in February of 2007, so I’m out of warranty. I use final cut and after effects, and it’s not like I’ve been editing anywhere close to 24/7, since I mix off-site and home office work.

Any recommendations for replacement cards??

[Larry Applegate]

I have the Radeon 2600 in my Mac Pro. Before you give up, I would try cleaning the contacts and reseating it.

Looking in the Apple store, they have the GT120, which I have in my iMac. It is inexpensive, and will be able to take some advantage of the new Snow Leopard GPU stuff. (That’s why I bought it). The Radeon 4870 has drawn raves for its Apple Color performance, but costs a lot more.

Don’t buy even the same card somewhere else, I made that mistake once and it wouldn’t work in the Mac at all.

Regards,

Larry Applegate
https://blustreak.dvdafteredit.com