Great time now to buy a Mac Pro

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HCMarkus
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Re: Great time now to buy a Mac Pro

Post by HCMarkus »

What James said. ^^^

Quick note on a great thread about GPUs for Mac Pros
Before you buy an overpriced Mac ATI5770, consider this:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1440150

First post has most of the important stuff. After that, it's details, and keep in mind many of the "issues" noted date waaay back to 2012 and have since been resolved. Note that the so-called "low-end card" GTX 650 blows the 5770 out of the water, and can be had for about $150.

You will not get a boot screen on your Mac with these "PC" cards, but they appear to be otherwise fully-functional.
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Re: Great time now to buy a Mac Pro

Post by toodamnhip »

Gravity Jim wrote:USB 2.0 already outruns many, many channels of MIDI. USB 3.0 is something like 100 times faster than that, and so represents massive overkill. What would be the point of Thunderbolt MIDI?

More buss speed will not improve MIDI latency, most of which occurs in host software. There are some clear advantages to Thunderbolt audio interfaces if one is running many channels of 96K or higher audio, but I push 32 channels of 96K/24 bit audio thru a FireWire cable without a hiccup.

So all this drooling and imagineering over what TBolt could do for MIDI doesn't mean a thing. In short, it won't do anything.
No Thanks necessary, it was my pleasure helping you out with your understandings of things. I see you over there drooling over thunderbolt...exciting times when your uber slow usb can finally be fast. :dance:
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James Steele
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Re: Great time now to buy a Mac Pro

Post by James Steele »

BKK-OZ wrote:Sometimes I wish there was more latency between my thoughts and my mouth.
Hahaha! :)

Image

My apologies to the ladies. Just thought it was humorous. :)
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Re: Great time now to buy a Mac Pro

Post by James Steele »

HCMarkus wrote:First post has most of the important stuff. After that, it's details, and keep in mind many of the "issues" noted date waaay back to 2012 and have since been resolved. Note that the so-called "low-end card" GTX 650 blows the 5770 out of the water, and can be had for about $150.

You will not get a boot screen on your Mac with these "PC" cards, but they appear to be otherwise fully-functional.
Luckily my 5770 card was a gift from a friend.

Only concern I have is if you don't get a boot screen, what about holding down Option on boot if you're having a problem and need to select a different drive/partition as the startup disk during boot? If you can't do that, I'd be wary as I've used that to get myself out of jams before.
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HCMarkus
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Re: Great time now to buy a Mac Pro

Post by HCMarkus »

James Steele wrote:Only concern I have is if you don't get a boot screen, what about holding down Option on boot if you're having a problem and need to select a different drive/partition as the startup disk during boot? If you can't do that, I'd be wary as I've used that to get myself out of jams before.
You got that right... good reason to keep the old card around if you go the PC GPU route! I have a 5770, too, but if I had a GT120 or other older card, I'd be thinking alng the lines of the referenced thread.
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Re: Great time now to buy a Mac Pro

Post by James Steele »

HCMarkus wrote:
James Steele wrote:Only concern I have is if you don't get a boot screen, what about holding down Option on boot if you're having a problem and need to select a different drive/partition as the startup disk during boot? If you can't do that, I'd be wary as I've used that to get myself out of jams before.
You got that right... good reason to keep the old card around if you go the PC GPU route! I have a 5770, too, but if I had a GT120 or other older card, I'd be thinking alng the lines of the referenced thread.
I wouldn't want to be having to keep a card on hand and have to pull my machine, disconnect various cables/cords and swap graphics card so I could select the partition on boot. Saving money is nice, but that limitation would make *me* inclined to spend a bit more and not have to deal with that.
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Dan Worley
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Re: Great time now to buy a Mac Pro

Post by Dan Worley »

James Steele wrote:
HCMarkus wrote:
James Steele wrote:Only concern I have is if you don't get a boot screen, what about holding down Option on boot if you're having a problem and need to select a different drive/partition as the startup disk during boot? If you can't do that, I'd be wary as I've used that to get myself out of jams before.
You got that right... good reason to keep the old card around if you go the PC GPU route! I have a 5770, too, but if I had a GT120 or other older card, I'd be thinking alng the lines of the referenced thread.
I wouldn't want to be having to keep a card on hand and have to pull my machine, disconnect various cables/cords and swap graphics card so I could select the partition on boot. Saving money is nice, but that limitation would make *me* inclined to spend a bit more and not have to deal with that.
Yeah, I just bought a 5770 ($249) so I wouldn't have to worry about it. I don't even have the MP yet, but I'm nervous those cards are going to disappear. I'll just use it in my 1,1 until I find a good used MP.
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HCMarkus
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Re: Great time now to buy a Mac Pro

Post by HCMarkus »

http://www.macrumors.com/2013/12/15/new ... enchmarks/

33k+ 64 bit geekbench for 12 core nMP. :D
Estimated cost: $10k. :shock:
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