Hi all,

I'm looking into getting a Mac Pro before the beginning of term. I want some grunt for various projects and a stand alone tower running Mac OS.
This is part of my research into if I should get it now, or wait a month. I know the default answer from you all is "If it does what you want, get it now" but if Apple are likely to stick some better chips in the machine in the next month or two I'd rather hold off for slightly better technology.

Does the Mac Pro get updated around this time of year usually?
I know there are new Intel chips out, how long do Apple usually take to put new chips into their machines?

Thanks for any advice

Ben

I'm waiting to see if they release a new Mac Mini, so I recommend waiting a bit personally.

The new Intel chips are more likely to find their way into the lower end of the market I'd imagine - the i5 is aimed squarely at the consumer desktop and the new i7 is on the 1156 socket and has a dual-channel RAM controller instead of triple channel. The new chips are better overclockers but that is irrelevant on the mac.

My only reservation with the current mac pro is the number of RAM slots on the single CPU model - it is two short with only 4 slots, but if you can afford the dual-CPU model, that's the one I'd go for.

The new CPU's may be cheaper, bringing the price down, but this is Apple we are talking about so probably not.

You can play the waiting for the next bet kit game for ever. You know it will happen. If you need a machine now, just buy one.

Take a look HERE!

Absolutely.

There isn't really anything coming down the line,now, for the workstation market from Intel at the moment, so I wouldn't expect any big changes before the end of the year.

Unless you are setting up a render farm, buying the Mac Pro now will give you a machine that will be more than capable of what you are likely to throw at it for a good few years - considering most people are buying MBPs and iMacs, only "professional" software, like Final Cut, is likely to push it in the near future.

Without knowing what your project is, I can't really say whether you would benefit or not.

The other thing to consider, Apple usually offer a no-questions-asked refund if they release a new model within a month of purchase.

As Gav says, the only real problems with the current generation Mac Pro is the stupidity of the motherboard - matching a triple channel memory manager with dual-channel memory slots.. The dual processor version alleviates the problem a little, unless you want to kit it out with the full complement of memory, where, again, you will lose out on the processors' memory controllers' advantages of using triple channel RAM, because it will have to drop back to dual channel mode! That said, it will still be fast as stink.

That said, imagine my anger when I bought a 15" angle poise iMac, only for Apple to put out a 17" model a week after it was delivered.

It is. I’ve got a 2008 model, and I don’t think I’ll be changing it any time soon.

Word from the wise:
1 - buy the minimal RAM and HD spec you need from apple.
2 - Skip gaily over to crucial.co.uk and buy as much RAM as you can afford
3 - Spend any change on a second HD and use it for backups.

You will probably get a 2GB model. It runs really, fast, but I found that my slower MBP was more responsive and it has 3GB RAM. I put an extra 4GB in the MacPro, and it really screams along.

Fitting RAM and internal HDs is really, rally easy on those machines.

Thanks for everything guys, especially that link Oli.

Projects range from some pretty intense virtualisation for my dissertation which I'd rather not do on my server really. I want future proofing, I don't use many apps, but the extra grunt will be nice for years to come. I'm looking at the 8-core model, it's just over £2K on the HE store and will come with an ideal amount of RAM for HDD space for the time being, though Paul, your idea of slamming in another drive for Time Machine is genius!

I'm looking at getting the basic GFX card and hanging a couple of 22" Samsung monitors off it, I'm hoping that should be OK. It's not going to be doing anything majority graphics intensive.
I'm also hoping to install Windows 7 on it (bootcamp) for compatibility reasons, though I get two keys from the uni MSDN account so may install it properly and virtualise it.

I knew Intel had released some new chips, but I wasn't sure if they would find themselves into the Mac Pro shortly or if a graphics update might be along soon...

Exciting times, I've been wanting one of these beasts for the last four years, I now have the money to get one

Thanks one and all once again, your input is very much appreciated

Ben

My Time Machine drive is an external one. I was advocating buying a MacPro from Apple with the smallest HD you feel you could get away with, and then buying a much larger capacity one from a third party and slam it in yourself, thus saving a lot of money on Apple’s BTO charges.

An external drive for Time MAchine is better - you never know if you will need to connect it to another machine to rescue data. I had to do this once when the power where I lived went down foe a few days. I took my T< drive to a friend’s house elsewhere and got the data off it an onto my MBP very easily.

Time machine makes dual booting easy, but it still is a complete pain. I wouldn't bother. I deleted my Boot Camp partition, which I had been using with VMWare Fusion as well (although Fusion caused Vista to get confused with graphic drivers and kept disabling 3D and Aero when using Boot Camp).

The constant having to reboot meant I hardly used the Boot Camp partition at all, if I wanted anything, I just booted it in VMWare.

I really wouldn't bother with dual booting on any machine these days, because I always find I am in the wrong OS and need to constantly reboot, it becomes a pain after a while and I just end up using one OS and the other gathers virtual dust, until I re-utilise the space.

They seem to have settled in to a quarterly update cycle.

Q1 Desktops
Q2 iPhones
Q3 iPods
Q4 Laptops

You can get a Widget from these guys.

http://mactactic.com/

I see CC beat me to it. I was going to suggest http://www.mactactic.com/ they have details on all the current versions of macs and you can even set it up to update iCal.