I was talking more in terms of rendering times. But I guess it won't make that big of a difference. Anyway, I can live with waiting ten more minutes.
I tried testing the mac today with a bit of action by playing tomb raider (the one that came out a few years ago, don't even know how it's called, I got it four years ago and played it once or twice on my MacBook Pro because it was the only computer powerful enough to get it to run, and the fans were going crazy so I ended up not playing anymore by fear of damaging the computer). Graphics were nice and smooth (I put the quality to "high", I figured, with that graphic card and 32gb ram, I can afford that), and no delay in play or anything, but I thought the computer's fan and graphic card area were quite hot, so I was wondering if that's normal behavior. I was on Windows, so I didn't think to check temperatures (I have temperature monitoring on the mac session, but the Windows part is fresh and there about nothing on it except for tomb raider right now, but I told the guy I bought the graphic card from that I would push it a bit this weekend and give him eBay feedback, hence installing tomb raider first thing).
I guess that's ok, but that's my first Mac Pro, everytime it makes a noise, I'm wondering if it's going to end up frying (especially since I found it in the trash, I can never be sure there wasn't anything wrong with it. The PC I found in the trash had a faulty graphic card, and it wasn't after one hour or so that the problem occurred. Of course, I've spent already days on the Mac Pro so I guess I would have noticed a problem, but that's the first time I was really pushing it).
And thanks for the advice on the processors. It matches what I've read on the forum before (yes, I do read the forum before asking my questions, but sometimes threads aren't recent and of course if the money gap between two processors is $300 to go from 3.33 to 3.46, it's understandable that people wouldn't want to pay that much. But prices have dropped a lot). Thanks a lot for the comparison chart, this helped a lot. Indeed, difference isn't huge, and mostly noticeable with benchmarks. I guess it would be more noticeable in a double CPU situation. But right now, I'm not even there. I could start with the x5680. Who knows what I'll want to do in a year or two or what I'll find in the magic trash bin in the next few months ^^ lol. I was still unsure, that's why I waited so long to order it, even knowing I'll have to wait three more weeks for it to arrive.
And also, I was really surprised that this 2009 desktop computer already had wifi. Way to go, Apple! Totally unexpected. And Bluetooth too.
The desktop PC I assembled yesterday from parts of dead PCs had neither, and it was quite recent (maybe 2013? Yeah, that's recent for me ^^ previous PC was from 2008 and that's the machine I'm working with everyday. Ok, I'm a copy editor and a writer, I'm working mainly with Word, and for everything InDesign related, I switch to the MacBook Pro, but still ^^). Just imagine how frustrating it is for me when I have to go and do computer repair and support on friends and neighbors' computers and their brand new iMacs when I know all they'll be doing with them will be going on the internet and reading their emails. And they bought the latest 27" iMac for that... Sucks to be poor ^^
I tried testing the mac today with a bit of action by playing tomb raider (the one that came out a few years ago, don't even know how it's called, I got it four years ago and played it once or twice on my MacBook Pro because it was the only computer powerful enough to get it to run, and the fans were going crazy so I ended up not playing anymore by fear of damaging the computer). Graphics were nice and smooth (I put the quality to "high", I figured, with that graphic card and 32gb ram, I can afford that), and no delay in play or anything, but I thought the computer's fan and graphic card area were quite hot, so I was wondering if that's normal behavior. I was on Windows, so I didn't think to check temperatures (I have temperature monitoring on the mac session, but the Windows part is fresh and there about nothing on it except for tomb raider right now, but I told the guy I bought the graphic card from that I would push it a bit this weekend and give him eBay feedback, hence installing tomb raider first thing).
I guess that's ok, but that's my first Mac Pro, everytime it makes a noise, I'm wondering if it's going to end up frying (especially since I found it in the trash, I can never be sure there wasn't anything wrong with it. The PC I found in the trash had a faulty graphic card, and it wasn't after one hour or so that the problem occurred. Of course, I've spent already days on the Mac Pro so I guess I would have noticed a problem, but that's the first time I was really pushing it).
And thanks for the advice on the processors. It matches what I've read on the forum before (yes, I do read the forum before asking my questions, but sometimes threads aren't recent and of course if the money gap between two processors is $300 to go from 3.33 to 3.46, it's understandable that people wouldn't want to pay that much. But prices have dropped a lot). Thanks a lot for the comparison chart, this helped a lot. Indeed, difference isn't huge, and mostly noticeable with benchmarks. I guess it would be more noticeable in a double CPU situation. But right now, I'm not even there. I could start with the x5680. Who knows what I'll want to do in a year or two or what I'll find in the magic trash bin in the next few months ^^ lol. I was still unsure, that's why I waited so long to order it, even knowing I'll have to wait three more weeks for it to arrive.
And also, I was really surprised that this 2009 desktop computer already had wifi. Way to go, Apple! Totally unexpected. And Bluetooth too.
The desktop PC I assembled yesterday from parts of dead PCs had neither, and it was quite recent (maybe 2013? Yeah, that's recent for me ^^ previous PC was from 2008 and that's the machine I'm working with everyday. Ok, I'm a copy editor and a writer, I'm working mainly with Word, and for everything InDesign related, I switch to the MacBook Pro, but still ^^). Just imagine how frustrating it is for me when I have to go and do computer repair and support on friends and neighbors' computers and their brand new iMacs when I know all they'll be doing with them will be going on the internet and reading their emails. And they bought the latest 27" iMac for that... Sucks to be poor ^^
