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Computers and The Internet This is the place to ask questions and discuss the complex world of computer and internet issues.

Seriously considering an Apple Mac Pro

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  #11  
Old 28-05-07, 14:42
Chris
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Your nearest re-seller appears to be KRCS in Nottingham and they will undoubtedly have the beast to see. I fell out with KRCS when they bought our previously reliable shop in Kidderminster. The price is much the same from the applestore direct.

You are right to go for the twin processor beast. The cost may seem high to begin with, but I have been buying macs for nearly 20 years and never regretted paying out for one when it was newish.

I have had good value out of the 3 year extended warranty on my powerbook. There is a wealth of on-line info on problems and have never been failed by it.

If you want an actual shop the one here in Tewkesbury is good and service dept always helpful.
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  #12  
Old 28-05-07, 16:25
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I have now used NX on a Mac Pro. I judged its suitability on running NX alone and I have to say I am very disappointed. My machine (Exactly as Duncan describes) seems as fast. The seems to be no benefit running NX on a high end Mac. The machine in question also had Photoshop CS2 installed which also ran slower than I expected, it even loaded slower than my 2003 spec PC!

Multicore machines don't perform any better than unicore when running NX, application and operating system need both to be wrtten for such machines.
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  #13  
Old 28-05-07, 16:27
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Quote:
Originally Posted by yelvertoft View Post
I too have an aging PC, the motherboard/CPU is the same as yours IIRC (MSI K7N2 Delta-L, Athlon XP 3200?).
Exactly right - (insert gobsmacked smiley)
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  #14  
Old 28-05-07, 17:27
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STOP PRESS

Just tried the same edit workflow on my PC at home and things were real S L O W. This puts the Mac pro back into serious consideration, CS2 was still slower on the Mac!
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  #15  
Old 28-05-07, 18:32
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Stephen; You are showing the typical swinging mood buyer behavior that is quite natural and expected, before seeing that one aggressive sale pressor (Person) that can sell you what ever he has in the store.
So as long as you have the decisive power (Money in you wallet), make sure to do your home work fine.
If you finally decide on Mac, you may still think over as if you have noticed hopefully, the Tiger is getting absolute or at least old as Leopard is on the way. On Christmas Apple store told me for spring/summer.

LINK

You don't want to buy something that you need to upgrade in a month or two. So if settling for mac remember to delay your purchase a bit as you will get the newer OS at no extra price (Unlike PC mac won't upgrade you free for soon to appear OS).

Sorry if I was more of decision-obstacle maker than helper, but just wanted to make sure you know all your options.
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Last edited by sassan; 28-05-07 at 18:35.
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  #16  
Old 28-05-07, 18:45
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Thanks for the information Sassan, I am aware that Leopard is about to the released. You are right a few months postponing the decision may the a good thing.

However I tend not to get very excited about new releases especially if the current version does all I ask.
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  #17  
Old 28-05-07, 19:11
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Like nirofo, I've also compiled a parts list but this time from aria (my main supplier) and is Vista ready.

PSU: JeanTech Storm 700W SLi/CrossFire £80 from PC World
One of the components you don't want to skimp on as a decent one really does make a difference. I've got one of these in my machine now and there's a little digital readout on the back telling you what your machine is using power wise. Doesn't always use 700W - mine rests at about 140W when sat doing nothing.

CPU: Intel Coer 2 Duo E6600 2x2.4GHz 1066MHz LGA775
If going dual core go for Intel as they're ahead of AMD. If going for quad core then go for AMD and not Intel - you can see where each company invested their money.

MOBO: Abit Fatal1ty FP-IN9 SLi £140.94
Very nice motherboard overall, enables you to go to 32GB of RAM although Windows XP Pro is stable at a maximum of 4GB.

CASE: Akasa Zen Silent £30.47
Comes without a PSU. I rarely buy cases with their own.

HD: 2x400GB Western Digital Caviar SATAII £135.72
Stripe these for extra data security. If one fails the data is backed up on the other.

RAM: 2xKingston 1GB DDR2 800 (total 2GB RAM) £93.94
Paired RAM for better performance. Kingson and Corsair are the only two brans I personally use.

GFX: nVidia GeForce 8600GT 512MB DDR3 £93.94
You can install another of these at a later date to run side by side for twice the graphics power. Runs in SLi mode.

Total: £654.40 (exl. p&p)

Chances are you might even be able to save some money by using certain parts from your existing machine like DVD drives, mouse, keyboard, card reader etc.

If your current machine came with XP pre-installed or you only have XP Home then I'd add about an extra £120 on top as you'll need Pro to handle the dual core CPU. I'd stay away from Vista for a while as not all drivers for all hardware are available yet and I know a few people who've gone back to XP because of it.

Attached is a screengrab of my task manager showing two processors in XP.
Attached Images
File Type: jpg taskmgr.jpg (21.5 KB, 5 views)
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  #18  
Old 28-05-07, 19:28
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Another thing to ask yourself is the native NX written for Windows or Unix and then what flavour of unix OS. I would think they are using a cross-compiler for other platforms. Very rare and high maintance costs for software houses to have 2 versions of native code dispite being written in a so called common code such as C++.
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  #19  
Old 28-05-07, 19:44
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There is no problem running dual core processors in Windows XP providing your running SP2, it's by a mile faster and easier to work with than that latest load of bloatware from Microsoft. I still wouldn't touch Vista with a barge pole, at least until SP1 is released, even then I would need to do a lot of work removing the unecessary software bits I didn't need and do serious tweaking to get it to run the way it should straight out of the box. Nearly everything on your computer runs slower, that's if you can get it to run at all, even with the latest all singing and dancing hardware! It needs and demands masses of memory, (1GB at least) to get anything decent out of it and as you have already found out, Capture NX and Photoshop doesn't run well on Vista. For peace of mind and large cash savings stick with a PC loaded with Windows XP Pro SP2 and at least 2GB of memory. AMD AM2 Dual Core or Intel Dual Core processors, it doesn't matter which, either is more than capable of handling anything you can throw at it, (AMD's cheaper). I'm still using an AMD Barton Core 2.8Ghz and 2GB of DDR1 memory with more than adequate results on NX and Photoshop. Oh yes, and I can still download e-mails.

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Last edited by nirofo; 28-05-07 at 20:14.
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  #20  
Old 28-05-07, 19:59
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Forgot to mention that loading Photoshop CS2 on my machine takes about 2 seconds. If too much is already open it takes up to about 5 seconds.
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