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Is this fair?

visim91 said:
Check out this listing:

http://newyork.ebayclassifieds.com/...8ghz-10gb-ram-2tb-pro-studio-mac/?ad=14753126


Is this a fair price?
Is this computer still a viable workstation for intensive photo/video editing & occasional gaming?
If not, can it be upgraded and made capable of such tasks (CS5, Aperture, Windows BootCamp partition for Modern Warfare 3 etc.)?

Much appreciated.
Click to expand...
Seems like a good price.

One thing about 2008 (3,1) Mac Pro is that the PCI slots are 2.0 x16 on slots 1&2, and 1.0 x4 on slots 3&4. If you got an Areca 1880 RAID card, for example, which is an x8 PCI 2.0 card, and stuck it in slot 3 or 4, you'd only be using 25% of the capability of the card. 2009 and newer Mac Pros don't have that limitation, as all PCI slots are 2.0. Just something to consider if you're going really intensive on the video editing. I personally don't use the full capability of my Areca card.
 
wonderspark said:
Seems like a good price.

One thing about 2008 (3,1) Mac Pro is that the PCI slots are 2.0 x16 on slots 1&2, and 1.0 x4 on slots 3&4. If you got an Areca 1880 RAID card, for example, which is an x8 PCI 2.0 card, and stuck it in slot 3 or 4, you'd only be using 25% of the capability of the card. 2009 and newer Mac Pros don't have that limitation, as all PCI slots are 2.0. Just something to consider if you're going really intensive on the video editing. I personally don't use the full capability of my Areca card.
Click to expand...

This is good to know. Time to mull over incessantly as to whether this would be considered a deal-breaker.
 
visim91 said:
This is good to know. Time to mull over incessantly as to whether this would be considered a deal-breaker.
Click to expand...

The 2008 Mac pro PCI 1.0 slots 3&4 get 250MB/sec per lane. Since those two slots are x4, they are going to see 1000MB/sec speeds tops. You can stick a RAID card in slot #2 which is PCI 2.0 x16, and your GPU in slot 1. Since PCI 2.0 gets 500MB/sec per lane, and slot #2 is x16, an x8 Areca card will see up to 4000MB/second if you load it up with a whole lot of drives.

On a 4,1 (2009+) Mac Pro, your slots 3&4 can see up to 2000MB/sec instead of 1000MB. There are CPU upgrade path options you gain on a 4,1 as well, like the ability to move to 5,1 firmware and drop in a 6-core processor. I did that, and I'm happy.
 
visim91 said:
This is good to know. Time to mull over incessantly as to whether this would be considered a deal-breaker.
Click to expand...

The performance boost from the '08 to the '09 seems worth the hunt to me. Just my two cents... but even at this decent price, you might be cheating yourself a bit...
 
visim91 said:
Check out this listing:

http://newyork.ebayclassifieds.com/...8ghz-10gb-ram-2tb-pro-studio-mac/?ad=14753126


Is this a fair price?
Is this computer still a viable workstation for intensive photo/video editing & occasional gaming?
If not, can it be upgraded and made capable of such tasks (CS5, Aperture, Windows BootCamp partition for Modern Warfare 3 etc.)?

Much appreciated.
Click to expand...

Do you think you'll need to add RAM, or is the 10 GB it comes with going to be enough? Because DDR2-FB is pretty expensive. If you're going to have to upgrade that, you might want to get a 2009. I.e. adding 2x4GB would cost ~$200. Were as 2x8 GB DDR3 ECC is just under $200 (if you want to put use to the stock RAM), or 6x4 GB of DDR3 ECC is right about $200 as well. Just a thought.

But others are right, that's a pretty good price, so you might not over think it.
 
Fyi

That's almost exactly my main machine. I did replace the video card with the Apple version of the 5770 or 5780 (I don't remember which it was.) and it supports two 21" 16 x 9 displays (one Samsung, the other Dell).

I use the Adobe Master Suite 5.5 with PP, FCS 3 (with FCP 7), and FCP X, as well as Finale 2011 and Sibelius 7 (I have a MIDI keyboard connected via USB). I purchased it as a refurb from Apple a couple of years ago for somewhere around $2K. I've not used a newer machine, but I've been happy with this one.

If Apple releases a new MP next year I may look into it, but I have not felt a need for more than this box to date.
 
Cindori said:
all PCIe in 08 MP is 2.0 afaik
Click to expand...
I thought the same thing until I read this page on Apple's website.

"The Mac Pro (Early 2008) computers implement PCI Express revision 2.0 which support twice the data rate per lane as the PCI Express revision 1. Slots 1 and 2 are both x16 revision 2.0 slots. Slots 3 and 4 are both x4 revision 1 slots. Placing a revision 1 card in a revision 2.0 slot, or visa-versa, is supported and results in a revision 1 link.

The number of lanes for each of these slots is permanently set for the Mac Pro (Early 2008). The Expansion Slot Utility doesn't apply."
 
Thanks for the input fellas, I'm going to head over to the guy's place Saturday to test the rig out. I'll let you all know if this is the one for me.
 
That's actually an insanely good price. Those machines still fetch between $1500 and $2000. And that thing is pretty well upgraded.

That machine is still faster than a lot of the 2009 Mac Pros. It was a good year.
 
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