Mac Pro real world differences

dipper17

dipper17

dipper17

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Joined
20 Oct 2002
Posts
329
Location
Orkney
Apple Mac Pro (Early 2008)
2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (8 Cores)

I am looking to buy a Mac Pro, but after reading Concorde's thread about his problems am thinking it may not be such a good idea to buy the latest version.

That being the case what do you Mac Pro users think are the real world differences between the spec above and the dual Nahelem i7 - both with 8gb of ram.

I will be using the machine for:

1...Autocad in Parallels
2...MS Office in Parallels
3...Photoshop CS4 in OSX
4...Lightroom 2 in OSX
5...Flight Simulator with lots of addons in Parallels
6...Normal surfing, watching DVD's etc and viewing PDF (techincal)
7...Listening to music whilst working

I am not interested in benchmarks, just what you experienced users think the realworld differnece might be.

I am doing all of the above on a MBP latest unibody 13.3" version with 2mb of memory and have no problems providing I don't have too many pplications open at the same time.

What do you think?

Dipper
 
Isn't the price difference four figures? I don't have any experience with 1, 2 or 5, but I can tell you there is no appreciable real world difference in Photoshop or Lightroom, and the last 2 you shouldn't have problems running on a toaster, let alone a dual core Mac Pro system!

Basically, the bottleneck in Photoshop and Lightroom is RAM and hardrive speed. Even a modest Quad core will be no noticably slower than an 8-core, simply because they aren't put to good use. Also with the GPU accelerated way everything in that area is now going, there is a good chance they won't stand to make a massive difference in the future either.

You need lots of RAM (depending on what you're doing) and SSD's. That's where the performance lies.

The old 2 x 2.8ghz Quad still has more CPU horsepower than can be properly harnessed by too many programs IMO.
 
While I'm a big mac fan, given you're doing so much in parallels and aren't using any mac specific software have you considered a windows workstation (Dell precision/HP z series) instead. I really can't see flight sim working very well in parallels as well - boot camp yes but parallels no.

Personally for all my love of OSX I couldn't justify buying a mac pro for that workload.
 
Thanks for the replies. The Version of Photoshop and Lightroom I've got are for the MAC as I use them on my MacBook Pro. That was the reason I was looking at a MacPro.

I guessed that there would not be a great difference. I did think about an iMac as well but I come from a PC background so don't like to lose the ability to put new bits into the machine if I want to.

So I could use a Dell workstation and use vmWare to run OSX in - that is flip the whole idea the other way round! Nice thought and cheaper no doubt;)

Thanks for the replies

Cheers

Dipper
 
dipper17 said:
Thanks for the replies. The Version of Photoshop and Lightroom I've got are for the MAC as I use them on my MacBook Pro. That was the reason I was looking at a MacPro.

I guessed that there would not be a great difference. I did think about an iMac as well but I come from a PC background so don't like to lose the ability to put new bits into the machine if I want to.

So I could use a Dell workstation and use vmWare to run OSX in - that is flip the whole idea the other way round! Nice thought and cheaper no doubt;)

Thanks for the replies

Cheers

Dipper
Click to expand...

I'm not sure how easy OSX on VMware is really, I believe it's possible but how easily I'm not sure. No major price difference though if you're looking at actual workstations, both Dell and HP come in at a very similar price to the mac pro.
 
dipper17 said:
Thanks for the replies. The Version of Photoshop and Lightroom I've got are for the MAC as I use them on my MacBook Pro. That was the reason I was looking at a MacPro.

I guessed that there would not be a great difference. I did think about an iMac as well but I come from a PC background so don't like to lose the ability to put new bits into the machine if I want to.

So I could use a Dell workstation and use vmWare to run OSX in - that is flip the whole idea the other way round! Nice thought and cheaper no doubt;)

Thanks for the replies

Cheers

Dipper
Click to expand...

Can't run OS X in VMware.

You wouldn't run flight sim in virtulisation anyway. Bootcamp all the way.

Other than that the 2.8ghz is faster than the quad 2009 in multithreaded apps, roughly equal to the 2.66Ghz in single thread and slower than the 2.93Ghz Quad...

For that workload a 2x2.8ghz 2008 Mac Pro is fine, I use my Mac Pro 2009 for the same things really! Just make sure you have 6Gb ram+
 
Hi all

Yes, I agree. To get the same spec Dell or HP I am talking about the same price effectively as a MacPro.

I think you can run OSX in vmWare but I think it is difficult and does take a lot of messing around with to get working - so I would rather not have to do that.

So I'm back to my first issues which seems to me that I can probably get a well speced MacPro 2008 edition with plenty of ram - run PS and LR in OSX, Office and Autocad in Parallels and Flight sim in boot camp. The rest on the toaster!:D

This seems like a plan as I much prefer my MBP than any PC I've ever used.

Any more thought from anyone would be much appreciated.

Cheers

Dipper
 
dipper17 said:
Hi all

Yes, I agree. To get the same spec Dell or HP I am talking about the same price effectively as a MacPro.

I think you can run OSX in vmWare but I think it is difficult and does take a lot of messing around with to get working - so I would rather not have to do that.

So I'm back to my first issues which seems to me that I can probably get a well speced MacPro 2008 edition with plenty of ram - run PS and LR in OSX, Office and Autocad in Parallels and Flight sim in boot camp. The rest on the toaster!:D

This seems like a plan as I much prefer my MBP than any PC I've ever used.

Any more thought from anyone would be much appreciated.

Cheers

Dipper
Click to expand...

You can only run OS X server in VMWare, plain OS X is against the EULA. And apparently OS X runs like a sack of **** in virtulisation.

So no you can't, really...
 
dipper17 said:
So I'm back to my first issues which seems to me that I can probably get a well speced MacPro 2008 edition with plenty of ram - run PS and LR in OSX, Office and Autocad in Parallels and Flight sim in boot camp. The rest on the toaster!:D
Click to expand...

This sounds like the best option. You would be foolish to go for one of the new Mac Pro's. They were poor value when they were released, and time rarely helps when computers are concerned. Mac Pro VFM peaked with the dual 2.8ghz quad IMO, even though at the time there were still only a handful of programs that could use that much CPU power.

Just stack the thing up on as much RAM as you can afford and chuck in an SSD for the OS drive. You'll be flying :)
 
Concorde Rules said:
You can only run OS X server in VMWare, plain OS X is against the EULA. And apparently OS X runs like a sack of **** in virtulisation.

So no you can't, really...
Click to expand...

I run it in virtualisation (I'm testing waiting on this possible MacBook Pro refresh to go by) and although it's not fantastic it's nippy enough. Not good for anything graphics entensive.
 
Hi all

Well I took the plunge and have got a 2008 model with dual 2.8 Xeons, 10gb of RAM and Applecare, so should be flying in a few days time. Thanks for you advice.

Cheers

Dipper17
 
Slogan's? :)

It's a blinding machine, that's exactly the same spec as mine - You won't be disappointed.
 
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