time for a MACPRO?

Been running a two and a half year old 15" MBP with a 23" ACD and between LR, PS, and other stuff starting to take me forever to edit pics!!! Looking at this setup...what is your feedback. Right at $4000.
MAC PRO (TWO 2.8GHZ QUAD-CORE
INTEL XEON/8GB 800MHZ DDR2 FB-DIMM 3,648.00 3,648.00T
NVIDIA GEFORCE 8800GT 512MB/320GB
SERIAL ATA/16X SUPERDRIVE)

Hi.

I have basically the same thing. I bought the base model for about $2500.00 with the $200 dollar student discount. ( My son is a student ) Then I purchased 4 gigs of memory from a third party for about $200.00 and added 3 320 gig hard drives each purchased at Best Buy for about $100 a piece. So I now have 8 gigs memory, dual quads 2.8 ghz, 1.2 TBs of hard drive space all for about $3000.00 and I love it.

Here is my recommendation:

Buy a refurbished MacPro, now available for $2,400 vs. $2,800 new. I have bought 3 refurbished Macs over the years without a problem.

Do not get the NVIDEA graphics card. Per Barefeats.com, the ATI Radeon is faster for applications such as Aperture. The NVIDEA card is only better for games. Alternatively, order the new ATI Radeon card next month when it will be available. (Save $150)

Order your memory from a third party such as macsales.com. Apple memory is way overpriced. ($329 vs. $1,500)

The 320gb hard drive that comes with the MacPro is slow. Replace it with a 750gb Samsung Spinpoint or the WD equivalent and get one more 750bg drive and one 1TB drive. All from Macsales or Newegg. Use the 750bg for your base drive, the other 750gb for cloning every night with SuperDuper and the 1TB drive for Time Machine. ($125 for 750gb, $165 for 1TB)

Total cost about $3,200. including the drives. You now have a better system that costs $800 less.

Go to MacRumors and read the forum threads for how to set it up.

Send me ten percent of the savings. Enjoy.

If you have the cash and the space, by all means. The nice thing about almost every Mac tower going right back to about the Sawtooth G4 is the ease of maintaining it and repairing it and the durability ("almost" gets me off the hook for liquid-cooled G5 towers and one or two other G5 lemons). I have a seven-year-old 1.2GHz-upgraded PowerMac G4 that is still going strong, and what the MacPro effectively adds to that is substantially higher grade componentry, further improvements to the case design, 64-bit expandability, and what amounts to built-in processor upgrades due to about six unused cores that will only really get a regular workout with OS 10.6. Take care of it (keep it dust-free, use a UPS power box, etc.) and you'll get a decade of power use out of it, and at that rate $4,000 is cheap. It's not a throwaway machine like the iMac.

Get the stock configuration. Get a refurbished. Add the ram from a third party seller. There are plenty of them and they sell good products and back them up. Buy 6 more 1 gig chips. Fill those slots, you get faster through put. Get how ever many drives you need.

Do all this and you will spend about $3000 instead of $4000 and you will use the machine for years. You will not know what to do with the time you save.

prevacidman said:

Been running a two and a half year old 15" MBP with a 23" ACD and
between LR, PS, and other stuff starting to take me forever to edit
pics!!! Looking at this setup...what is your feedback. Right at
$4000.
MAC PRO (TWO 2.8GHZ QUAD-CORE
INTEL XEON/8GB 800MHZ DDR2 FB-DIMM 3,648.00 3,648.00T
NVIDIA GEFORCE 8800GT 512MB/320GB
SERIAL ATA/16X SUPERDRIVE)
--

Click to expand...

Are you saying your machine is slower now than when you first got it?

I wonder if you just need a reformat. I've heard OS X bogs down after awhile.

the most important consideration is getting plenty of RAM. In my opinion 4 gigs is minimum for any MacPro. If you need less RAM you don't need a macpro (with rare exceptions). If you do heavy PS work or video editing get 8. If you need more than 8 you probably know it. A base configuration is all most people need unless they are doing heavy video or similar editing, or unless its a professional box that will pay for itself with a small savings in time here and there. Get a single or dual setup with minimal RAM then set that RAM aside and get 8 x 1gb from Crucial. If you think you might need 16gb at some point, get 4 x 2gb. That way all your ram is properly matched. If apple configures with 2x1gb then you could get that and order the rest from crucial. you just want matched pairs.

op here...my workflow is uploading RAW canon 5d images to LR...and then major PS adjustment and actions...all while listening to itunes, updating to flickr, talking on facebook, updating my blog, and answering and sending emails.