TECH Mac Pro, dual CPU or just one.

[dmora]

These fuckers are absurd. My old Mac Pro is showing its age but its a dual proccessor. I can see where its faster than my newer MBP for things like video transcoding, but the MBP has it in other areas such as video and other things less CPU demanding.

Ive been trying to rationalize getting a new tower but im not fully grasping how much computational difference i'd have between the single/dual cpu in a real world environment...
...The other issue for contention is that i'd like a new monitor as well as my 20" is sooo tiny these days. Adding all these issues together brings in a bill of near 5k$.... or i could just get a 27" imac.

I use my mac for photoshop, illustrator, InDesign, Lightroom and Aperture, and some light video editing work.

I was hoping to sell my old tower for ~$1200 MacPro 1,1 model, 2x2.66ghz, 5gb ram, 2x250gb HDDs + a 750gb hdd.

 

[xenon supra]

Mac Pro = long term investment

iMac = short term fix


I bought a mac pro 3 years ago with the apple student developer discount (in the stickies above), I saved like $1100 on the price of the tower. Three years ago I paid about $3300, and have slowly upgraded it over time.

It currently has
8x3ghz
9gb ram
120gb ssd

If this is a business you plan to be in for more than a few more years, I'd invest in the Mac Pro.

I chose to get an extra fast processor at the time I bought it, and skimped on HD space/ RAM until prices dropped on newegg. I'm definitely glad I didn't get the quad core computer. This thing will still be smoking fast 2 years from now.

 

[Raider007]

Here are my work computers...

The 2.66 Dual-Core is my "old" system, the 2.4 Quad-Core is my new system.
I ran a speed test on video encoding work using the same exact software and the new system (running with 6 gigs of ram, I upgraded to 14 gigs recently) was OVER twice as fast... probably closer to 60% faster. And I'm using older software that doesn't take advantage of the extra cores, so in theory, it could be even faster once I upgrade.

 

[dmora]

Mac Pro = long term investment

iMac = short term fix


I bought a mac pro 3 years ago with the apple student developer discount (in the stickies above), I saved like $1100 on the price of the tower. Three years ago I paid about $3300, and have slowly upgraded it over time.

It currently has
8x3ghz
9gb ram
120gb ssd

If this is a business you plan to be in for more than a few more years, I'd invest in the Mac Pro.

I chose to get an extra fast processor at the time I bought it, and skimped on HD space/ RAM until prices dropped on newegg. I'm definitely glad I didn't get the quad core computer. This thing will still be smoking fast 2 years from now.

You have 8 3ghz CPUs?

And yea this thing has lasted me a LONG time.

 

[xenon supra]

You have 8 3ghz CPUs?

And yea this thing has lasted me a LONG time.

it's an 8-core machine, but technically it is:

2 x 3ghz quad-core