New Mac Pro

[drh64]

I have an early 2008 Mac Pro and want to update. Was disappointed about yesterday's release from Apple. Should I wait for the next round which is supposed to be next year but who really knows for sure....

[Eduardo Rolon]

Waiting for next year.

[PB]

Opting for a Retina MacBook Pro.....very, very nice piece of kit.

I held out for a decent refresh of the Mac Pro, but was disappointed.

[drh64]

I'm going to wait until Apple releases the next generation of MacPros next year but I still want to bump up my speed on this 2008 Mac Pro. Today, I ordered more ram to increase it up to 16GB. I currently have a Geforce GTX285 graphics card but am considering upgrading to the Quadro 4000. This card has good reviews but for $800 I want to make sure I will notice a difference in speed. I want to increase the responsiveness of modeling in the AC. Does anyone have an opinion on if this is worth the cost to upgrade to this card?

[PB]

Consider also fitting an SSD for your system software, archiCAD & the project file you are working on: I believe this will also provide an impressive boost to performance. If you can, do both - memory is amazingly cheap at the moment (http://www.ramjet.com amongst others).

[drh64]

Excellent idea. I did not think of that.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Daniel,

I'd second PB's suggestion for an SSD. That, and the $250 Radeon HD 5770 card with 1 GB bumped my system performance nicely. I think the Quadro is overkill and I'd save your $$ for down the road when you upgrade the whole machine.

I got a small SSD that only has OS X on it ... with my Users folder on a 7200 RPM hard drive. Makes the SSD option reasonably inexpensive since we have lots of drive bays on the Mac Pro. (I put the SSD in a regular drive bay using an icy dock converter for $20.)

Karl

[drh64]

Thank you Karl that is very helpful.

What about the ram? I've been using 10g for the past few years but am considering go to 16. I like to open multiple ACs to cut and paste. Do you think spending another $300 would be noticeable in speed here???

[Karl Ottenstein]

If you already have 10 GB, I think I'd try the other options first. Our machines have pretty slow memory by today's standards, but benchmarks do show slightly better performance if all slots are occupied. I just upped my system from 10 GB (4 x 2 GB in one bay and 2 x 1 GB (original memory) and 2 blank slots in other bay) to 12 GB by adding two more 1 GB sticks. Didn't run any benchmarks to see if it helped, but it was reasonably cheap.

You'll see the most speed improvement with the SSD and the 5770. (The 5870, by the way, doesn't speed things up enough more to justify the higher cost and higher power consumption.)

Much of my guidance is obtained from:
http://www.barefeats.com

Cheers,
Karl

[drh64]

Regarding the card, I currently have a GTX285 that appears to be very similar to the 5770.

See: graphics-cards.findthebest.com/compare/69-74/ATI-Radeon-HD-5770-vs-Nvidia-GeForce-GTX-285

So I don't really see a benefit in changing cards with such a minor improvement. And, I have had bad luck with ATI cards in the past.

Thanks for your help!