Which Mac Pro should I get?

Wait for fall and buy it through your school.

I'd get the single processor 2.66 or whatever it is at that time.
The stock 2.66 4-core isn't there at this moment but changes during the day.

Your school has education pricing.

Apple Store Specials
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/mac/mac_pro
$2149 - $2999 / sometimes 8-core 2.93 $5k


It is 16 months since the last Mac Pro model came out and due for update in graphic card options at the least.

I think you should get the MacBook 13" you already have. But add a larger external Display. You may need to add more RAM and an external drive for experimenting. You also need a Backup plan.

My story:
At almost the same time, I bought a Mac Pro (late 2009) 2.93 and a MacBook 13". I made them both available to my son, who is studying Computers. He has ignored the Mac Pro, but takes the MacBook everywhere, and has loaded it up with all kinds of different developer tools.

He dis-assembled the Mac Pro and stole its display as a second display for his MacBook. It is on about a four inch pedestal above table height, and he can open the MacBook screen in front of it without obscuring the large display above. He set it for Extended Desktop and he can have lots of windows open at once, Unplug that stuff and his MacBook can go off to class or to the Lab. No need to copy files around. He has them all right there.

Yesterday he asked for an external drive to experiment with booting XUbuntu Unix on his MacBook. He does not care about the Mac Pro. It will already do everything he wants, and more.

Well as much fun as your son has, the two aren't in the same league. Even loaded with tools, it will never be 64-bit kernal mode or 16GB or SSD + 3 x 2TB drives, and you know that. He doesn't.

Hatter, you are right, of course.

But I posted my story because it was so counter-intuitive. I thought he HAD to have a big Mac Pro. I got that one first. When his MacBook arrived, I saw him hunched over that little display, and hated his posture. I suggested he hook up the bigger display with the MacBook. He has never even used the Mac Pro since.

If he decides he wants to make a movie, or create a huge database, or do some enormous computation, I am sure he will come after the Big Mac. But so far, the MacBook (with a second display at home) does everything he wants to do.

That has been a huge surprise to me.

Mac Pro is not designed for gaming.. never was and never will.. Do not count on SLI or crossfire to work, at least under OS X.. SLI won't work at all since that chipset isn't on the motherboard, as for crossfire.. this will only work in Windows and even then you need to get matching cards and from what I gather, the mac pros only have room for one ati radeon 4870 hd or any flashed card. What I mean by room is that you only have one set of two auxilarry plugs on the motherboard.

As I said.. do yourself a favor.. use your home built pc for gaming - it will be much better as there are more options for gaming on a pc, or get an xbox.

You being a college kid, you prob already have an xbox.

Romko23,

The only problem with what you just said is that I have two nVidia Geforce cards in my Mac Pro and they both have the matching SLI connector pins... Now, I don't know if nVidia did this to save money or if they are functional for SLI... Do you know for a FACT that SLI or crossfire don't work?

SLI depends on the logicboard and Apple doesn't have such support, so only works on PC and running Windows.

CF works but only in Windows. Say with a pair of 5770s. Apple tried to disable CF with their 4870 last year.

One or two people have managed to stuff a PSU 450W into an optical drive bay just to have extra power connectors w/ 6 and 8 pins for more graphic cards so they could use GTX 285 (rendering) along with the ATI card to drive a monitor (and still be able to work and use during rendering). Very messy and hard to do with the case closed.

Ahhhhh...... that *****.

Unfortionately, it does blow.. Even with two 5770's, you can crossfire them in windows 7 only... the MAC OS X does not and probably never will support crossfire as they don't see this as an important feature to have. Besides, its always better for gaming on the windows side rather than the Mac Side, though with recent titles already being released through STEAM for the Mac side.

When buying the MacPro you should probably go for the smallest Dual Core model. The reason for that is pretty simple. You get more possible memory, since the duals do have double the memory slots. And you do get faster and more processors even than a six core Westmere. There are a couple other advantages, but that's what I would recommend, and what I did myself, as a matter of fact.
The 6GB should be sufficient initially, and you could go for the 5870 instead of the 5770, since upgrading later will either be pretty troublesome (meaning flashing a non Mac card to work in a Mac) or expensive (buying an original card). Just spend the bucks now, and get the upgrade.

But there is one slight problem - no 5870's!

Ah forget it, just got the message 🙂 Mine is in my CTO MacPro, and that's supposed to arrive Tuesday. But not available in the shop as a single card...

Sorry 🙂

i.

Message was edited by: Ingo F., because he forgot to read everything there is to read 😉