I was a hardcore Mac zealot for quite a long time, but after OSX became available for Intel platforms i recovered. I realized that it was all about the MacOS... Today's Apple hardware isn't that special, and you can build yourself a much better workstation from a much higher quality components and for a much lower price. Purchasing an Apple Mac isn't worth it anymore, imho of course.

Too late lol, the can of worms has been opened.

Apple's are insanely priced. Not to mention having to learn a whole new OS from scratch, and having to replace my current software for Mac variants.

Just priced one up for a laugh.

2.8GHz quad, 4GB mem, 512MB nVidia 8800GT, 2 x 500GB HD, 1 x DVD-/+RW sets you back £2099 for a Mac Pro.

Same spec for PC has just set me back £850, and that includes the case, OS, CPU cooling, etc.

And if I ever want to upgrade a component, I can do, it's all modular.

2099 -
850
=

Go figure. ;)

More money for studio gear!

Some folks at the other forum bough Macs some time ago. Soem sort of a mass movement. Now they all have experienced the joy of broken HD and crashes. Hoho. I'll just stick with iRack and iRan.

looks good , keep us posted on how it measures up.

Im hoping to update my aging xp3200 in the next few months and I'll probably use this thread as a main source of what to look for.

what passive cooled graphics card can happily run 2x monitors @ 1920x1200 ?

also , I found this case.. I want it rackmount as I have a fair bit of unused rack space built into my desk.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/134806...oduct_overview

is there anything I should look out for when rackmounting a PC?

Most racks have ridiculously noisy fans, make sure your rack has fans of a standard size so you can replace them.

When comparing the prices, please remember that the 2008 mac pro's have 2 quad core xeons inside = 8 cores total, not just 1 quad core. The 2.8GHz quad Xeon processors cost almost 1000 euros alone! You can build a very good pc for less than 1000 euros if you choose intel core 2 quad processors and ddr2 memory etc. but if you build a pc using the same parts as the mac pro, the price will be about the same. If you buy a mac, it works when you turn it on. You can't really know whether a custom built 8 core pc will work without problems before you turn it on for the first time.

I just visited Dell's website and calculated a price for a Dell Precision T7400 workstation computer with similar specs as the mac pro, 2x quadcore intel xeon 2.83GHz, 4GB ram etc. The price was about 3700 euros! The mac pro is alot cheaper, even if you decide to order the extra memory from apple! ;)

Apple have always priced their extra memory and hard drives high. You should always order the base model of the mac and purchase the extra ram etc. from elsewhere. That way the prices will be reasonable. I paid 2250 euros for the base mac pro 8-core model, installed my 2x 500GB samsung hard disks from my earlier mac and ordered 8 gigs of memory from OWC US which cost only about 300 euros. The total price for the mac was 2650 euros. A similar spec Dell Precision would cost over 4000 euros according to the Dell website. The mac is very quiet and fast. I can't hear almost any noise from the computer when it is located under my studio desk, a huge improvement from the G5. And the stability of the OSX...

Anyway, apple should sell a cheaper mac which could be upgraded as well. The iMac and mini are not very good in this regard and in case of a failure, you have to bring the whole mac to service. Anyway, in the case of the mac pro, you can switch any parts except the motherboard. I haven't had any hard drive failures/crashes with my macs in 4 years. And hard drives can always break down, it doesn't matter whether you're running a pc or a mac, they use same parts. Always remember to make backups, no matter what machine!

edit. Corrected the Dell prices, the default video card was too expensive.

Nice comparison F5D, seriously. I've wanted to tinker with a Mac mini for a few years now just to get a feel for it. I had a dual core G4 for a bit but never really got into it, it was too expensive to upgrade it at the time, especially as it was the dawn of the Intel Macs.

The nice thing about hardware (synths, audio interfaces, etc.) is that they are platform independent. Much good music software is too, so if you do change platforms you just switch out your license and off you go.

The bottom line is I want one of everything goddamnit. He who dies with the mose gear wins.

;)

That is true. I'm taking a bit of a gamble with the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 mobo as I've recently heard it may suffer from unduly high DPC (Deferred Procedure Call) latencies, so I'm partly relying on the 7-day long distance selling laws to send it right back in case after testing it I experience the same.

However, I believe that Apple have shifted their focus away from Texas Instruments firewire chipsets on various product lines and use Agere now instead? Not sure how this'll stand to affect high-performance audio engineers as TI firewire has always been the benchmark to which all others were judged.

..Actually, doing a quick scan on sites/forums (GearSlutz, RME's site, Apple forums, amongst others) it seems people are having problems with the Agere chipsets and audio. Looks initially like it's mainly with the Santa Rosa macbooks/macbook-pros and iMacs, not sure about the others (desktops).
I guess in the current climate Apples don't necessarily work out of the box. FWIW, the price of the Apple Mac Pro I totted up was for a single 2.8GHz quad xeon, not dual-quad [oct].

Dell PCs only good for p0rno!:-

http://youtube.com/watch?v=mKIOsr9LioY

Timo wrote:
BWAHHH!!! ROFLMAO!

I agree, it is a shame that apple started using agere firewire chipsets in their laptops. However, the mac pro still have texas instrument chipsets. I checked this asap when I got my new mac. So, it is good news for audio people.

The single quadcore mac pro is pricey if you compare it to computers which you can build yourself. Anyway, it was easy for apple to offer such a computer because they already had the mac pro concept ready, just leave the other processor away. The core 2 quad processors offer a very good value for money. It is a shame that apple's cheapest "normal" computer costs about 1800 euros. They should absolutely sell a computer at the 1000 euro level offering a quad core processor and a case which would allow the user to add hard drives, memory etc. I even hope they would announce a new version of the mini that would be more like the old cube, not so small as mini, to enable using normal size hard drives, not laptop parts. Anyway, I am waiting that apple updates the mini to new specs because the pc of my parents is closing the end of its life and I want them to have a mac. That will make their (and my) lives easier.

Btw, lol to the Dell-video! :D