Which refurbed Mac would be a smarter buy...

[lexw]

I've decided to go with the newer model. The price is lower, and I feel it will do a great job of replacing my 1.8 dual G5 (which has been a work horse). I just needed to finally get an Intel based Mac—I'm getting left behind. Oh, and I believe it ships with 10.6.

Speaking of work horses, my 828 (2001ish) is still rockin' for me.

Thanks everyone!
Lex

[kgdrum]

As Mike mentioned if it's a 2012 MacPro it will not be able to boot in 10.6 or use any OS that predates the original firmware that the Mac was designed to use.
Of course it's cheaper the 2012 is a Quad vs the 2010 which is a 8 core(Quad x 2)
Either MacPro will be a major improvement over your G5 but if it was me I'd go with the 2010 2.8 dual core for the $300 difference.
In either case good luck.

[HCMarkus]

http://www.macofalltrades.com/Apple_Mac ... c-e09a.htm

$999 for a 2009 that will rock as a six-core with an investment of $600. I wish I saw this deal before I paid $1,175 for mine. Geekbench for the six-core mod is 13,800, much faster than the 4-core 2102 3.2, which Geekbenches under 10k.

For less money, an investment of an hour, you get significantly more computer. But not much of a warranty.

I couldn't find reference to a 2010 2.8 dual.

[kgdrum]

Hey HC,that is a nice buy,they also have a dual Quad(8 core) for$1699.
If I had more funds I'd grab!
I'm not as confident with the upgrade procedure you completed,lol!
Have you ever bought from this vendor or know anyone that has bought from them?
They seem pretty reasonable,trying to avoid buying from a bad vendor if I decide to jump back in and update.

There was a site we discussed last year that had many unhappy customers,not this vendor & I can't remember their name(Las Vegas phone #,I think)

Nice find.

[HCMarkus]

Hey HC,that is a nice buy,they also have a dual Quad(8 core) for$1699.
If I had more funds I'd grab!
I'm not as confident with the upgrade procedure you completed,lol!
Have you ever bought from this vendor or know anyone that has bought from them?
They seem pretty reasonable,trying to avoid buying from a bad vendor if I decide to jump back in and update.

There was a site we discussed last year that had many unhappy customers,not this vendor & I can't remember their name(Las Vegas phone #,I think)

Nice find.

That was somebody else... can't remember the name right now.

PS: The upgrade was cake KG.

[kgdrum]

I know,my question is do you know anyone who's bought from this vendor?

Yeah it's a piece of cake for someone who has the ability to also do the construction related work in building a studio!

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Was it these guys?

[kgdrum]

No but I'd venture to guess these guys make killer sump water based martinis that are quite tasty and Mac compatible.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I still say there's sumpt'tin very wrong there....

[HCMarkus]

Was it these guys?

Ha ha!

I remembered: Gainsaver was called into question by a few 'round here. I know no one who has purchased from Macofalltrades.

[kgdrum]

You are correct HC,Gainsaver were the shady sleazoids.
I think I've saw a thread recently on GS that have used Macofalltrades & if I remember correctly they have a decent rep.

heres some reviews:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1362090


Here's a recent thread on Gearslutz where people are slamming Gainsavers (myself included, lol)and saying good things about Macofalltrades.

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-co ... -macs.html

[JMVideo]

As far as I know, having multiple cores is only advantageous if running apps that take advantage of multiple cores... like video rendering or encoding for example. I don't think DAWs utilize the multiple cores. It seems a fast processor and tons of RAM is what matters most in the DAW world.

I recently read a benchmark saying that the 2012 6-core 3.3GHZ (single processor) was the fastest possible Mac for a DAW.

[HCMarkus]

DP uses all available cores.

[JMVideo]

Sorry, I meant to say multiple processors, not cores. There's a lot people out there saying that, for example, their 2009 2.2ghz dual processor 8 core machine is better than a 2012 single processor 3.3ghz 6 core machine.

Benchmarks have shown that this is not the case.

[HCMarkus]

Yes, although DP will use all cores, across multiple processors, additional cores do not translate into equivalent gains in processing power... there is overhead associated with allocating tasks to multiple processors.

Based on Activity Monitor, it does appears that DP uses all available cores (physical and virtual) in a quite evenly balanced manner. When one thinks about it, with all the parallel processing we do when working with multitrack audio, multiple processors and DAWs are a natural.