Mac Pro

Sam Or I · Post by **Sam Or I** » 2006-08-07 10:20pm

Mac Pro Announced on the apple website. Dual Xeon Duos @ 3 GHz, not bad.

www.apple.com

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-08-07 10:41pm

$1100 for 4 GB of RAM? (Okay, okay, it's ECC RAM, therefore $$$, but still...)

Also, why the 7300 GT?

And, $100 for a Superdrive?! lol whatever

$400 for a 500GB hard drive?! Ridiculous.

A fully loaded tower - not including software or monitors - will run a bit under $13,000. Good lord.

Ypoknons · Post by **Ypoknons** » 2006-08-07 10:41pm

Not the radical case redesign I was hoping for, but at least it's got two optical drives. That always struck me as a pain on the original - you've got this quad core, 64-bit machine with gigs of RAM and yet you're stuck with one internal optical drive?

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2006-08-08 02:31am

Uraniun235 wrote:$1100 for 4 GB of RAM? (Okay, okay, it's ECC RAM, therefore $$$, but still...)

Also, why the 7300 GT?

And, $100 for a Superdrive?! lol whatever

$400 for a 500GB hard drive?! Ridiculous.

A fully loaded tower - not including software or monitors - will run a bit under $13,000. Good lord.

Superdrive is dual layer dual format 16x. Apple still marks it up a little of course but those drives ARE quite expensive.

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid ... DT&cat=DVD

Also, the new Xeons uses a special type of RAM that is more expensive. And it's the ECC RAM. AND Apple is famous for overcharging RAM and hard drives. Buy the RAM elsewhere, it's user upgradeable.

If I were a buyer, I'd get the base system with quad processors and GPU, and the smallest hard drive and superdrives, but the least RAM and hard drive possible, then upgrade those myself for 1/2 the price.

Glocksman · Post by **Glocksman** » 2006-08-08 02:55am

Superdrive is dual layer dual format 16x. Apple still marks it up a little of course but those drives ARE quite expensive.

No,they're not.

And Geeks wants way too much for that Sony drive anyway, as Newegg has it for $53.99.
And it's not even worth that, as the Sony drives are just rebranded Liteons.

Though in Apple's defense, other PC makers (I'm looking at you, Dell) often mark their DVD-+R drives up just as much.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2006-08-08 09:46am

Getting a quad-core Xeon for $2,599 is a fucking good deal no matter which way you slice it. The machine it plenty upgradable, so it's not like you can't just buy cheaper components yourself.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-08-08 10:09am

At least you can buy aftermarket RAM for it. We ran into a problem with some old Dell desktops when we went to upgrade them - Dell shit up their systems somehow such that even when we bought the right kind of RAM, the system still wouldn't boot with anything but Dell RAM.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2006-08-08 10:31am

Those DIMMs are still fucking expensive. They're each the size of a small PCI card, if the pictures are any indication.

In any case, Apple's offerings are competitive with other manufacturers'. And you get better hardware engineering to boot.

Post by **Beowulf** » 2006-08-08 10:50am

Durandal wrote:Those DIMMs are still fucking expensive. They're each the size of a small PCI card, if the pictures are any indication.

In any case, Apple's offerings are competitive with other manufacturers'. And you get better hardware engineering to boot.

They stuck the RAM on daughter cards. Due to how the FB-DIMM spec is made, they can do that.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2006-08-08 12:48pm

Durandal wrote:Getting a quad-core Xeon for $2,599 is a fucking good deal no matter which way you slice it. The machine it plenty upgradable, so it's not like you can't just buy cheaper components yourself.

You can actually get a quad-core Xeon for $2,124 if you drop the hard drive to 160 GB and take the quad 2 GHz version. Then upgrade all you want.

His Divine Shadow · Post by **His Divine Shadow** » 2006-08-08 05:54pm

Durandal wrote:Getting a quad-core Xeon for $2,599 is a fucking good deal no matter which way you slice it. The machine it plenty upgradable, so it's not like you can't just buy cheaper components yourself.

How good a deal is it considering Conroe and it's ilk that are about to be released?

Ofcourse they might not even play in the same kind of fields so it might be an irrelevant question. Xeons, weren't they for highend server duties?

EDIT: Or are these part of the new processors coming out? I realize I may be just be very confused due to archaic naming conventions.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2006-08-08 07:39pm

His Divine Shadow wrote:
Durandal wrote:Getting a quad-core Xeon for $2,599 is a fucking good deal no matter which way you slice it. The machine it plenty upgradable, so it's not like you can't just buy cheaper components yourself.
How good a deal is it considering Conroe and it's ilk that are about to be released?

Ofcourse they might not even play in the same kind of fields so it might be an irrelevant question. Xeons, weren't they for highend server duties?

EDIT: Or are these part of the new processors coming out? I realize I may be just be very confused due to archaic naming conventions.

The new Xeons, aka Woodcrest, are built on the same architecture as Conroe, just faster (more cache, faster bus, etc). A 3 GHz Xeon Woodcrest outperforms a 3 GHz Core 2 Duo Conroe.

Also, Conroe does not work in dual processor configurations, so it is impossible to have two Core 2 Duo's. So no quads unless you go Xeon.

I wish they had gone with a new name. Xeon makes me think of the Pentium 4's architecture.

Ypoknons · Post by **Ypoknons** » 2006-08-08 08:57pm

Praxis wrote:I wish they had gone with a new name. Xeon makes me think of the Pentium 4's architecture.

There were Pentium III Xeons as well. I think they just wanted to keep the name because marketing works differently in the server sectors, where you don't have to drum up big advertising campaigns to show "OMG TEH NEW CPU IS HERE!!"

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-08-08 09:05pm

Xeon actually dates back to the Pentium 2; I have a couple of boxed Pentium 2 Xeons (one of which had never been opened) in my closet.

His Divine Shadow · Post by **His Divine Shadow** » 2006-08-10 08:33am

Yes and thats what I was thinking of when I heard the word Xeon. Wasn't there something like this the Pentium Pro brand too? Wasn't it the Pentium model before Pentium II?

And speaking of new macs. Should I get?

-A 17" Macbook Pro?
-A 15" Macbook Pro + 23" display?
-A 13" Macbook + 23" display?

I am leaning towards the middle option myself, maybe go easy on the HD and RAM and add on myself later with cheaper non-apple hardware. It depends on how the future looks for Macbooks.

The Macbooks small size is not a worry since I'd get a 23" screen with the ability to be wallmounted, it might be considered a plus infact(mobility). But the graphics card is lacking compared to the MBP's and the 17" has the 800 firewire port but I think thats all the diff from the 15" version and thats not enough to turn me.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-08-10 10:27am

Pentium Pro was not just a brand, but a new design, which came after the original Pentium chip, starting at speeds of 150 MHz. The Pentium 2 and Pentium 3 were derivatives of the Pentium Pro design.