PowerMac Says Goodbye

Greg Boston · August 8th, 2006, 11:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evan Digby

I'm a (former? we'll see) windows loyalist... but I may buy one of these things and never let XP touch it. =P

My question is, why are the ram upgrades so expensive? They seem to be about double the price of what I can find for 'standard' price on the same type of ram everywhere else.

Ram upgrades are almost the only thing this box needs to be a solid HD editing computer, and that's where apple seems to padding for extra profit.

Typically, Apple does charge more for ram upgrades but there are other vendors for ram. Mine came from the local big box electronics store and it's their store brand. Same with hard drives. They are asking $400 for a 500gb drive with the same specs as the one I just bought for my Imac at a local big box store and I got it for $249.

Unlike the old days, you can upgrade your Apple system with non-Apple supplied parts that are less expensive.

-gb-

Heath McKnight · August 8th, 2006, 01:09 PM

I don't know how much of a speed increase it is vs. the Quad PPC. And like the G5 Quad, it is indeed dual dual-cores (two dual cores), making it four.

Quad-core (1 chip, 4 processors) is something AMD is working on and, if I understand correctly, Intel will be putting something out soon after.

heath

Joe Carney · August 8th, 2006, 01:47 PM

I know it's not actually quad, but 2 dual. Just got in a hurry.
Not going to consider one until they have proper support for my camera. But when they do...tempting.

Evan Digby · August 8th, 2006, 04:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greg Boston

Typically, Apple does charge more for ram upgrades but there are other vendors for ram. Mine came from the local big box electronics store and it's their store brand. Same with hard drives. They are asking $400 for a 500gb drive with the same specs as the one I just bought for my Imac at a local big box store and I got it for $249.

Unlike the old days, you can upgrade your Apple system with non-Apple supplied parts that are less expensive.

-gb-

Great info. I've just talked to some local resellers and, and the ones that deal specifically with camera / digital video equipment say they usually quote based on the lowest prices they can get for parts direct from the factories, rather than direct from apple. The specific shop I'm looking at deals primarily with the same manufactures as apple, but direct. Ram specifically, they say for the G5 PPCs they were getting almost half the price for ram and hard disk -- he didn't have any specifics for the Mac Pro yet.

Apple is charging roughly 3000 (Canadian) for 7gb (more) ram, and that seems a bit much. One of my local stores sells exactly the same type / quantity of ram (fully buffered, ECC, 667 etc) for about 1600-1800 Canadian. However, they are PC retailers.

Is there any difference between PC RAM and Mac RAM in this case? It doesn't look like it, but I'm a Mac Newb.

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...cture=Kingston

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...cture=Kingston

Would that type of RAM be compatible with the Mac Pro?

Thank you,

Evan

Jeff Kilgroe · August 8th, 2006, 10:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evan Digby

My question is, why are the ram upgrades so expensive? They seem to be about double the price of what I can find for 'standard' price on the same type of ram everywhere else.

It's always this way with Apple (and many other big-name system vendors like IBM and HP). Plan to buy your RAM from a third-party vendor, but don't go too cheap. Be sure to buy quality stuff like Crucial, Corsair, etc.. From a good vendor, you'll still pay less than half of what Apple charges for good quality RAM. Hard drives are also a good thing to buy from an aftermarket source. Apple is placing a $95 premium on those 500GB drives right now.

Other than that, the pricing on these new systems is very reasonable... I'd order one in an eye-blink if I needed another system right now. Actually, I need a new notebook, but I'm trying to hold off for the 64bit Merom Core 2 Duo CPU to be integrated into the MacBook Pro before I buy... ...Hopefully in the next few weeks. :)

Julian Banos · August 9th, 2006, 03:50 AM

Does the ProMac have enough hard drive bandwidth to edit Uncompressed HD? Can it compete against some of the Medea and Huge Systems products?

It would be amazing if they could get a sustained speed of 250Mb/s.

Nate Weaver · August 9th, 2006, 04:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Julian Banos

Does the ProMac have enough hard drive bandwidth to edit Uncompressed HD?

It would be amazing if they could get a sustained speed of 250Mb/s.

It's looking very likely, providing you put fast drives in all 4 bays (and of course RAID them)

Levan Bakhia · August 9th, 2006, 04:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nate Weaver

It's looking very likely, providing you put fast drives in all 4 bays (and of course RAID them)

How can you raid them? Do you need a raid controller for that or software raid will work as well?

Joe Carney · August 9th, 2006, 06:58 AM

Is the graphics PCIe or PCIx? Does the new Mac support PCI express at all?

Thomas Smet · August 9th, 2006, 07:48 AM

The only problem with the 4 drive raid-0 is the fact that this same raid-0 will also contain the OS, program files and any other garbage you put on there. It is never a good idea to share a media drive with the OS. I really wish Apple would have put in 5 bays. 1 for the OS and garbage and 4 for the raid-0.

With that said I'm sure 8bit HD would work fine but I don't know about 10bit HD. It might work for awhile but you will find on a 4 drive raid-0 that you can only get to about 50% full when the drives slow down past the point where they drop frames. If you add fragmented OS and projects files this may be even worse.

I do know that with the Mac you can set the raid-0 where you partition it off based on the faster part of the disk. What you might be able to do is keep the fastest section as one partion just for HD video and use the slowest part for the OS. With that said you will never get 2TB of uncompressed HD storage with the four 500 GB drives. You may only get 1 TB or maybe a little bit more depending on the form of HD you will work with. 8bit YUV 1080i HD actually only uses 120MB/s Which is much lower than the max for 10bit RGB.

Thomas Smet · August 9th, 2006, 07:56 AM

One thing I noticed is that a lot of people think this new Mac Pro is going to be 2x faster than the fastest quad G5. For FCP this isn't really true. If you notice on the Apple website FCP HDV rendering is only 1.4x faster and that is for the 3.0 ghz chips which cost $800.00 more.

The normal $2,500.00 system with the mid level chips is about 1.3 faster in FCP.

I really don't see a lot of people rushing out to buy one of these if they already have a quad G5.

The other interesting thing is that even the lowest Mac pro should be just as fast if not slightly faster than the quad G5. With that system you can add 2GB of ram and still have a system great for uncompressed HD editing for $2,500.00. You can always capture as photojpeg or DVCPROHD and use just a single drive for now.

Kevin Shaw · August 9th, 2006, 08:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Heath McKnight

Quad-core (1 chip, 4 processors) is something AMD is working on and, if I understand correctly, Intel will be putting something out soon after.

Intel is hinting they plan to start shipping quad-core processors by the end of this year, so look for eight-core computers within the next 12 months or less. As usual, today's hottest computers will seem dated soon enough...

Barry Gribble · August 9th, 2006, 08:27 AM

I have always been a PC guy, but decided recently to make the jump to Mac for my next purchase... and I have been waiting and waiting for this box to come out. I'm excited about it.

Good info on the after-market stuff. That will help.

Thomas Smet · August 9th, 2006, 09:21 AM

Can the OS be run off of a firewire 800 drive? If it could then you could leave the full 4 drives for uncompressed HD.

Jeff Kilgroe · August 9th, 2006, 09:29 AM

I would assume the new Macs can boot and operate off of a USB or Firewire drive. ...The G5 models can.

Although, I would question the logic of doing so... IMO, if you're that serious about HDD bandwidth, install a fiber channel card and buy an external fiber-connected RAID. Hopefully Apple will update their XServe RAID products soon. It's been a whole year since they last updated the product line and its pricing. And sadly, the pricing is very out-of date, costing more than double the competition these days. However, I picked up a refurb Xserve RAID on eBay with full AppleCare support for a song. I still don't know how I pulled it off but I paid less than 1/4 Apples MSRP.

August 8th, 2006, 01:09 PM	#32
Heath McKnight MPS Digital Studios Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Palm Beach County, Florida Posts: 8,531	I don't know how much of a speed increase it is vs. the Quad PPC. And like the G5 Quad, it is indeed dual dual-cores (two dual cores), making it four. Quad-core (1 chip, 4 processors) is something AMD is working on and, if I understand correctly, Intel will be putting something out soon after. heath __________________ My Final Cut Pro X blog

August 8th, 2006, 01:47 PM	#33
Joe Carney Inner Circle Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Centreville Va Posts: 1,828	I know it's not actually quad, but 2 dual. Just got in a hurry. Not going to consider one until they have proper support for my camera. But when they do...tempting. __________________ Boycott Guinness, bring back the pint!!!

August 9th, 2006, 03:50 AM	#36
Julian Banos New Boot Join Date: May 2006 Location: SF, Ca Posts: 6	Hard Drive Bandwidth??? Does the ProMac have enough hard drive bandwidth to edit Uncompressed HD? Can it compete against some of the Medea and Huge Systems products? It would be amazing if they could get a sustained speed of 250Mb/s.

August 9th, 2006, 06:58 AM	#39
Joe Carney Inner Circle Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Centreville Va Posts: 1,828	Is the graphics PCIe or PCIx? Does the new Mac support PCI express at all? __________________ Boycott Guinness, bring back the pint!!!

August 9th, 2006, 07:48 AM	#40
Thomas Smet Trustee Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Milwaukee, WI Posts: 1,719	The only problem with the 4 drive raid-0 is the fact that this same raid-0 will also contain the OS, program files and any other garbage you put on there. It is never a good idea to share a media drive with the OS. I really wish Apple would have put in 5 bays. 1 for the OS and garbage and 4 for the raid-0. With that said I'm sure 8bit HD would work fine but I don't know about 10bit HD. It might work for awhile but you will find on a 4 drive raid-0 that you can only get to about 50% full when the drives slow down past the point where they drop frames. If you add fragmented OS and projects files this may be even worse. I do know that with the Mac you can set the raid-0 where you partition it off based on the faster part of the disk. What you might be able to do is keep the fastest section as one partion just for HD video and use the slowest part for the OS. With that said you will never get 2TB of uncompressed HD storage with the four 500 GB drives. You may only get 1 TB or maybe a little bit more depending on the form of HD you will work with. 8bit YUV 1080i HD actually only uses 120MB/s Which is much lower than the max for 10bit RGB. Last edited by Thomas Smet; August 9th, 2006 at 09:15 AM.

August 9th, 2006, 07:56 AM	#41
Thomas Smet Trustee Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Milwaukee, WI Posts: 1,719	One thing I noticed is that a lot of people think this new Mac Pro is going to be 2x faster than the fastest quad G5. For FCP this isn't really true. If you notice on the Apple website FCP HDV rendering is only 1.4x faster and that is for the 3.0 ghz chips which cost $800.00 more. The normal $2,500.00 system with the mid level chips is about 1.3 faster in FCP. I really don't see a lot of people rushing out to buy one of these if they already have a quad G5. The other interesting thing is that even the lowest Mac pro should be just as fast if not slightly faster than the quad G5. With that system you can add 2GB of ram and still have a system great for uncompressed HD editing for $2,500.00. You can always capture as photojpeg or DVCPROHD and use just a single drive for now.

August 9th, 2006, 08:27 AM	#43
Barry Gribble Major Player Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Los Angeles, CA Posts: 817	I have always been a PC guy, but decided recently to make the jump to Mac for my next purchase... and I have been waiting and waiting for this box to come out. I'm excited about it. Good info on the after-market stuff. That will help. __________________ Barry Gribble Integral Arts, IMDB

August 9th, 2006, 09:21 AM	#44
Thomas Smet Trustee Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Milwaukee, WI Posts: 1,719	Can the OS be run off of a firewire 800 drive? If it could then you could leave the full 4 drives for uncompressed HD.

August 9th, 2006, 09:29 AM	#45
Jeff Kilgroe Major Player Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Golden, CO Posts: 681	I would assume the new Macs can boot and operate off of a USB or Firewire drive. ...The G5 models can. Although, I would question the logic of doing so... IMO, if you're that serious about HDD bandwidth, install a fiber channel card and buy an external fiber-connected RAID. Hopefully Apple will update their XServe RAID products soon. It's been a whole year since they last updated the product line and its pricing. And sadly, the pricing is very out-of date, costing more than double the competition these days. However, I picked up a refurb Xserve RAID on eBay with full AppleCare support for a song. I still don't know how I pulled it off but I paid less than 1/4 Apples MSRP. __________________ - Jeff Kilgroe - Applied Visual Technologies \| DarkScience - www.darkscience.com