Help Me Spend $3000

[brooklynbound]

I need to buy a new Mac. We do a lot of editing along with Motion, LiveType, After Effects, and Photoshop.

We are desperate to cut down our render times. Because we hire freelancers, we're paying them lots of money to just sit and wait for projects to render.

I have $3000 (not including taxes or Apple Care) to spend on a MacPro. Right now, we're thinking of the MacPro 2.66 ghz, 2 gb ram, and a 500 gb hard drive. That would take it to $3000. Any suggestions as to changing these specs?

Another question..how much more effective is the new MacPro than the older G5 model. I could cut my spending in half by buying a nicely equipped used G5. Thanks.

 

[iGary]

I need to buy a new Mac. We do a lot of editing along with Motion, LiveType, After Effects, and Photoshop.

We are desperate to cut down our render times. Because we hire freelancers, we're paying them lots of money to just sit and wait for projects to render.

I have $3000 (not including taxes or Apple Care) to spend on a MacPro. Right now, we're thinking of the MacPro 2.66 ghz, 2 gb ram, and a 500 gb hard drive. That would take it to $3000. Any suggestions as to changing these specs?

Another question..how much more effective is the new MacPro than the older G5 model. I could cut my spending in half by buying a nicely equipped used G5. Thanks.

Up the stock video card to the X1900XT and buy your RAM and HDD third party.

Two 2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
1GB (2 x 512MB)
250GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB (2 x dual-link DVI)
One 16x SuperDrive
Apple Keyboard and Mighty Mouse - U.S. English

$2,749.00

Edit:

Actually go ahead with the RAM but get the HDD elsewhere (you can get a 500GB Seagate for $200 +/-).

Definitely upgrade the card, though.

 

[Transeau]

make the check payable to...

no really..

Get the 3.0's and drop the HDD and memory.
You can get the HDD and Memory cheaper online. (Newegg.com for HDD's and Tiger Direct for the memory)

 

[brooklynbound]

Will the 3.0 really render that much faster than the 2.66? It's an additional $800.

 

[iGary]

Will the 3.0 really render that much faster than the 2.66? It's an additional $800.

And it blows your budget. You are gonna want the better video card, trust me, especially for what you do and the direction Apple is leaning with Core Image.

You can buy extra goodies later when you have more moolah.

Seriously, I'd go with this:

Two 2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
2GB (4 x 512MB)
250GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB (2 x dual-link DVI)
One 16x SuperDrive
Apple Keyboard and Mighty Mouse - U.S. English
Mac OS X - U.S. English

$3,049.00

 

[brooklynbound]

Is there any reason to hold out much longer? Don't suggest to wait because prices will drop because prices are always dropping. But if there is a new feature coming around the bend then we could make another 3-4 weeks at most.

 

[Ezekiel]

And it blows your budget. You are gonna want the better video card, trust me, especially for what you do and the direction Apple is leaning with Core Image.

You can buy extra goodies later when you have more moolah.

Seriously, I'd go with this:

Two 2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
2GB (4 x 512MB)
250GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB (2 x dual-link DVI)
One 16x SuperDrive
Apple Keyboard and Mighty Mouse - U.S. English
Mac OS X - U.S. English

$3,049.00

I agree with iGary about the 3.0 Ghz, from the tests I've seen in the applications you have mentioned, a 2.66 isn't "much" slower than the 3.0ghz. I would say that if you added as much ram as you can, and a 10k raptor as your boot disk for OS and Apps, then you will make up that speed.

 

[Ezekiel]

Ok, I did a little shopping

1) Mac Pro = $2,888

2.66 Quad Xeon
1GB RAM
250gb HD
X1900
BT + Airport
BT KB + Mouse

2) 1GB Crucial Ram = $290

3) Amazon 74GB 10k Raptor = $189

Total = $3,367

If you can stretch to that you will have one amazing machine.

 

[ljones]

I have the 2.66, fast as hell. BUT. If you don;t have the memory you'll need, you will soon find out. Sucks when the system pages out. i'm still researching where to get my memory, likely place my order when i get home from work.

Definitely buy your hard drives elsewhere, save that money. There are a ton of sales going on, you can get a great deal on one. Personally i want a 40 to 60 gig SATA for my system to rest on only. Move my 250 to bay 2, and buy another for bay 3.

I just always try to keep my system isolated from my work. So i'll likely grab a good SATA drive this weekend for this purpose. Only thing i request from it... no damn noise. The one in there is too loud to be a system drive, since it needs to be accessed often.

 

[Jimmah71]

Not to impressed....

I needed some extra rendering power on a project this week and loaded after effects 7 on our brand new MacPro 3.0ghz/3GB Ram Final Cut Pro machine. I wasn't impressed with the rendering speed unfortunately. A little slower than our G5 quad but faster than the dual 1.8ghz.

The renders were little 5 sec cutaway graphics for a presentation. Lots of shine and particular filters.

I can definitely identify with the frustration of having to pay high rates when people are just sitting around waiting for a render. Maybe try setting up a render farm with whatever other machines you have.

 

[ljones]

Well the software isn't native yet. So it will be slower, I'm sure you read about this somewhere before you purchased. The system is only as fast at the software designed to take advantage of it. We all will have to wait till next year for the big apps to roll out.

 

[FF_productions]

I'm going to use Motion as an example for what your system should be like

You need a FAST processor, X1900 Graphics Card because Motion is ALL about the graphics card, and as much ram as you can possibly afford, 4 gigs would be just perfect.

I'd tell you to get the 3 ghz processor but it is way too expensive and does destroy whatever is left of your budget.

You need an additional hard drive to store all your media so you need to put that into consideration.

Memory could be purchased 3rd party but not sure if there is that big of difference in prices with the Mac Pro's new memory.

 

[zero2dash]

I'd get the 2.66, get another gig of memory to get up to the 2g mark, upgrade the video card, and forget about the hard drives because they're ridiculously overpriced. I think they charge around $250 or $300 for a 500g HD? Retarded.

I recently bought a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS 320g 16mb cache SATA2 perpendicular recording drive from NewEgg for $94.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148140
I highly recommend this drive, it's an excellent drive.

(The 250g drive that Apple puts in the MacPros is the 250g 7200.9 Barracuda drive.)