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Changing Macpro to MBP

^squirrel^

^squirrel^

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 4, 2006
651
1
England
Hi,

I purchased my macpro in Oct 06 and it's a great machine. But i'm finding my latest game (Flight Sim X) does struggle a bit due to the GPU. The reason why i purchased the MP was because i play the odd game but mainly wanted to ditch Windows.

Over the past year i've only really found myself doing basic tasks such as, iTunes, E-Mail, web surfing, Web site design and creating our Football clubs tour Dvd. All tasks which could easily be run on any mac.

Because i'm not really pushing my Macpro i have the opportunity to sell my machine for almost what i paid for it to work and replace it with a MBP 15" 2.6 or 2.4 with 250gb hard drive. Then build a gaming PC for that purpose.

My only worry is, i use Handbrake a lot to get all my DVD's into iTunes so i'll need external hard drive space. But it's cheap these days.

So am i making the right decision or should i stick with the MP and wait for them to release a new GPU and buy a MBP later next year?
 
Buy the new MBP after MWSF08 - you don't need a MacPro for what you're doing methinks... although if you're never portable, I would keep the MacPro. I wonder why it struggles... RAM?
 
koobcamuk said:
Buy the new MBP after MWSF08 - you don't need a MacPro for what you're doing methinks... although if you're never portable, I would keep the MacPro. I wonder why it struggles... RAM?
Click to expand...

No it's the GPU..... and it's only an issue with Flight Sim X. I just think it would be better to build a pc for this as i can keep it up to date. To be honest i miss tinkering around with a pc.

But yes, i think for what i do a MBP would be fine. It's a bonus to be portable as well.
 
What are the specs on your Mac Pro? Do you want a portable machine? You could just upgrade the GPU and get better performance, probably better than a MBP.
 
dynamic said:
What are the specs on your Mac Pro? Do you want a portable machine? You could just upgrade the GPU and get better performance, probably better than a MBP.
Click to expand...

It's 2.66, 2gb Ram, X1900XT.

Trouble is Apple don't keep up to date with their GPU's.
 
^squirrel^ said:
It's 2.66, 2gb Ram, X1900XT.

Trouble is Apple don't keep up to date with their GPU's.
Click to expand...

This is true... Apple made a terrible decision when it came to supporting GPUs. Hopefully they will change this soon, as it's probably one of the big reasons people stay away from them. It is possible though, with a non mac video card (and a power cable compatible with the mac pro) using non apple drivers, which are what some of the hackintosh users use. I actually have a friend who has a Mac Pro and we're gonna try to get a 8600GT or 8800GTX to work this weekend. I'll let you know if we have any success.
 
I have a 2.4 SR MBP and run Flight Simulator X in XP. I am very happy with the performance. My only complaint is that the computer gets very hot (80C) after 20 minutes of flying. I was under the impression that flight simulator was more CPU intensive than GPU. I have a older PC overclocked to 3.3Ghz and a 3 year old ATI card. It is 75% as fast as the MBP. I was planing to upgrade my G5 to a Mac Pro when the next models come out.
Are you running XP or Vista and how much ram is in your Mac Pro? Also did you apply the FSX service pack.
 
dimme said:
I have a 2.4 SR MBP and run Flight Simulator X in XP. I am very happy with the performance. My only complaint is that the computer gets very hot (80C) after 20 minutes of flying. I was under the impression that flight simulator was more CPU intensive than GPU. I have a older PC overclocked to 3.3Ghz and a 3 year old ATI card. It is 75% as fast as the MBP. I was planing to upgrade my G5 to a Mac Pro when the next models come out.
Are you running XP or Vista and how much ram is in your Mac Pro? Also did you apply the FSX service pack.
Click to expand...

Hi,

I have 2gb Ram and i was thinking of moving to 6gb ram. To be fair i've not played flight sim since the Service Pack was released. But i've heard it's much better now.

maybe i should keep the Macpro then and buy the laptop in Jan after the keynote?
 
^squirrel^ said:
Hi,


maybe i should keep the Macpro then and buy the laptop in Jan after the keynote?
Click to expand...

I would apply the service pack for sure. Also I have read where people have put in second video cards just for Windows and keep the existing cards for OS X.
However I do not think we will see a updated MacBook Pro at macworld, But only Steve knows for sure.
 
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