Need help buying a new Mac Pro 8 Core

[Ben Holmes]

Melinda

If you don’t use motion (and possibly if you do – haven’t tested mine yet), just go with the stock gfx card – it’s a lot better than the old stock one, and fine for the above mentioned apps. Also, if you go for the upgrade, it’ll slow up your shipping (last time I checked). If you do decide to upgrade it later, you can buy a fairly inexpensive upgrade and do it yourself (doesn’t even involve a screwdriver on the new Mac Pros!), so don’t fret if you find you need to move up.

I would put 8Gb of RAM in, OWC will sell you it for a few hundred dollars (shipped worldwide) so don’t get it from Apple. Installing RAM is now SO SIMPLE my mother could do it, as the risers just slot in and out. FCP prefers an equal amount of RAM on each riser in pairs, so it’s a good middle figure, whilst allowing for an upgrade later. You will be able to run all three apps you mention together with few problems – I know it sounds like a lot, but…

See:
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Mac-Pro-Memory

For the 800mhz memory – and go for the 4x2Gb option at $439.00

Why?
https://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304492

For what it’s worth, I went for the 3.0Ghz processors, as it’s still more powerful than the old most powerful machine, but you don’t pay a silly premium for the ‘fastest’ config at a large extra expense.

Wack in 3x750gb drives (good size/value balance) for a fast RAID 0 array that will cover your media needs, and avoid having to lug an external array around if you need to move about with the system. Again, OWC can sell you these, along with many many others.

Other than that, all I put in mine was the wireless upgrade, and Applecare.

Hope that helps!

Ben

PS – It’s a lovely machine inside, however I had to remove the fans on mine and reposition some cables to the front of them as they were rubbing on the fans – made a horrible noise! Bad Apple… On the plus side, putting RAM in is stupidly easy, as is fitting your own drives etc.

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd

EVS & FCP specialists for live broadcast.

OB Server 1 HD – Mobile FCP editing done right.
https://www.editecuk.com/OBServer2.html

[Alan Okey]

If you’re an After Effects user, you should strongly consider configuring your Mac Pro with the fastest CPUs you can afford – AE is limited by CPU speed, not graphics card performance.

Get the nVidia GeForce 8800 GT graphics card – you won’t regret it.

Order your Mac Pro with the stock amount of RAM and a single 500 or 750GB hard drive. Any additional RAM or hard drives can be found at much better prices from third party suppliers. Don’t buy additional hard drives or RAM from Apple – they charge a hefty premium for both. 4GB of RAM would be a good start, 8GB would be great. At least one separate hard drive for video/scratch would be a good idea.

If you’re doing much more than DV format video, consider adding 2 or 3 additional drives (you can have a total of four internal drives). Ideally, you could use Apple’s Disk Utility to stripe 3 of the 4 internal drives together in a RAID 0 configuration for faster storage throughput – just make sure you back up your data, because RAID 0 has no redundancy.

[Ben Holmes]

[Alan Okey] “If you’re an After Effects user, you should strongly consider configuring your Mac Pro with the fastest CPUs you can afford – AE is limited by CPU speed, not graphics card performance. “

I would strongly suggest you compare the performance of the Quad 3.0 and Quad 3.2 machines and see if think it’s worth the extra money. For some users, I’m sure it will be, don’t want to say for definite it isn’t – it’s a matter of priorities.

Apple have benchmarks up – I think barefeats have comparisons too.

Ben

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd

EVS & FCP specialists for live broadcast.

OB Server 1 HD – Mobile FCP editing done right.
https://www.editecuk.com/OBServer2.html

[Michael Sacci]

The graphic card upgrade is a must for graphic programs. More and more is being off loaded to the gpu, the next biggest thing is the amount of RAM and yes never buy your RAM from Apple, I have bought from Macsales for over 10 years now, they are the only place I purchase RAM from.

[Melinda Gilchrist]

thank you so much for the input. It’s a big help

[Debbi Mita]

For the memory, both smalldog and macsales are selling great memory.
As for the raid storage, take a look at internal or external hardware raid. If you shop around you may find somewhat lower prices but cover both internal and external drives, like caldigit’s raid card.

[Kevin Beeman]

Melinda,

Do you know the difference between software RAID, OWC & a hardware RAID solution like what CalDigit offers?

The difference between hardware & software RAID’s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSauSZ0GCZE

Initially I too was thinking about going the direction that you were headed, but I knew there had to be a better way to accomplish what I wanted to do rather than using the OS to stripe, which can be risky.

I saw this card at Macworld & they educated me on the very positive differences that you get with a hardware RAID card.

https://www.caldigit.com/RAIDCard/

I’ve got one of these cards on order.

Just trying to help.

Kevin

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