I just got a Mac Pro 3G!!!!!!

[James Steele]

Even more I like the idea that when I go in my studio, all I do is MUSIC!

I know what you mean, I tried to do the same thing when I bought my G5 dual 2.3Ghz.... the one I'm answering this post on right now. You'll want your internet and at the least Safari and an FTP program (I recommend Transmit) in order to download software updates or send files to a collaborator. You can maybe live without Mail on the machine, but the other two you'll want.

[Shooshie]

I hear you guys about the "overkill" issue. I'm sure you guys are right on that. But since I have another computer to do all the non-DP stuff on, I figure why not? My last machine became so filled with junk, it became difficult to troubleshoot.

I like the idea of my reinstalls being so easy.

Even more I like the idea that when I go in my studio, all I do is MUSIC!

Very good points! Especially the part about reinstalls. It's sure hard to do a full system reinstall when you know you've got to replace every app you use. Takes weeks!

Shooshie

[martian]

SO true! so easy to waste time these days! I have to leave MSN off these days if I wanna get anything done! And there is a list of things I should be doing now other than mucking around surfing! So Less temptation is good!

I guess the re-install point might be a good un 2 - should you run into quirkyness -

unfortuantely I just have too many varied tasks to do aside from DP'ing and to be honest this dual g5 has been the best computer I have ever owned in terms of reliabiliy and stability - and I was shocked at how much better DP is on here than on OS9.

I hope your mac pro 3G is even betterer!

[Timeline]

So, C-Fish man,
Is DP loaded on that pup and workin?

Give us some impressions please.

[catfishmusic]

DP is in and working fine...played back some old projects at random, and everything is rockin, and running very smooth so far...It will be a few days until I can really give it a workout. I unfortunately have some other responsibilities to tend to......bummer eh? I'm going to give it a good whirl Wed or Thurs...Hopefully by then, those 2G sets will be available!

I'll keep you guys posted...................so far............so VERY good!

ps- James...amen to what you said...Safari and Transmit is a good call.

[monkey man]

...Any answer will be appreciated. Smartassed ones will be less appreciated than informative ones.
Thanks
thehypercube

Hi there, thehypercube.
I feel bad that you feel you need to make that specification for fear of our wasting your (no doubt precious) time.
When you say, "smart-assed", are you referring to this type of thing from the thread?

Monkey Man
catfishmusic wrote:
...wipe off huge grin..
What'd you do that for?
I mean, I'm grinnin' and I wasn't even there!
-------------------
Fwwooaa.... that stuff's X-rated, dude.
Darn, my jaw's locked open, the floor and my pants are a mess, and my little monkey-mind is pea soup.
-------------------
I hung and swung on every word...
Can't wait for the next chapter...
-------------------
Our collective Unicorn breaths remain, er, baited (yeah; stand back) for the Fish-man's return.
Thank you, Fish-man.
Crikey; so much bio-diversity!
-------------------
The fruit, vegetables, reptiles, fish, apes, hobbits, superheroes, cavemen, bushmen, great cats, wolves and humans (probably in the minority), will wait...patiently...

giles117
WHY Apple Oh WHY Must you stay in my pocket.
G5 Dual 2.0 For sale anyone???? LOL

Shooshie
Installation suggestions? Yes. Absolutely. You should definitely install it over here under my desk. I've got a place for it, and that's the ONLY way we can be sure it's properly installed. I'll send you my shipping address.
Oh, you got one of those MOTU 424 PCI express cards to go with that? I'll be needing that, too.

Frodo
...somehow, I think Shooshie has the right idea-- wrong studio , but the right idea!!
-------------------
catfishmusic wrote:
.What do you guys think..is that over kill?
Good question-- bring it by in the morning and I'll tell you!!

davedempsey
Then the next thing is similar to what Shooshie and Frodo suggest except I'll pay the freight over to Sydney.. this MacPro should get out and see the world first before settling down to work.
-------------------
OK, seeing as Frodo is pulling geographical rank and offering breakfast I guess I'll have to resign myself to not meeting your Intelbox at this time. I'm sorry if that made me cry... I'm just a jealous guy.

catfishmusic
I guess I better pack up my Mac back in the box, as it has to make several world wide stops to all you guys!
But with all these Damn "Cats" coming out every 6 months (...Leopard...Cougar XI...Bobcat XII and on), a reinstall will be a cinch....

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

'Cause if you are, may I remind you that the champas has been broken out, and a generally positive mood has been prevailing.
When you say, "..less appreciated than informative ones", you haven't forgotten that we're all waiting on information here, have you?

Far as I can tell, we're just keeping ourselves entertained between tasty morsels.
If the posts had been clearly impolite and useless, James would've said something.
He's posted in this thread, after all the "nonsense", so if it had been a problem, well....

Anyway, so cheer up, fella!
No one's trying to annoy you.
I recommend MOTU chanting, or a little light-hearted humour.

PS: This could concievably be construed as a smart-alec post.
Again; it's not. Just trying to protect and justify our "vibe".

[Timeline]

A world truce would be nice about now.

[thehypercube]

...Any answer will be appreciated. Smartassed ones will be less appreciated than informative ones.
Thanks
thehypercube

Hi there, thehypercube.
I feel bad that you feel you need to make that specification for fear of our wasting your (no doubt precious) time.
When you say, "smart-assed", are you referring to this type of thing from the thread?

Nah I'm not bothered by that stuff at all nor putting a value on my time. It was actually written tongue in cheek, so sorry you took it that way.

Just wanted a straight answer to my question rather than a "OMG RTFM" or something. I've searched all over and can't find the answer to what I'm looking for. Sometimes the boards can tend to be a bit stuck up to true info-seekers (more so at big blue lounge I'd say).

In any case, I'd still like to know before plunking down $3k whether the software is written in a way to take full advantage of the hardware in regards to the processor cores. If somebody can help me figure that out then thanks to them.

[Frodo]

Yeah, Cube.

Ya know-- so much of this is SO new-- new Intel, UB, etc., that very little would even be found in a manual.

Not to say at all that you're on your own, because most everyone here will post whatever they find for your sake and ours-- but you *are* quite a pioneer, especially where DP is concerned.

There is, however, some comfort in all this: a new machine means a pristine hard drive, free of incompatibilities. Given that the software you need is Intel-ready, the problems should be few. What goes wrong tends to happen after installation with file corruption. Any problems will be much easier to track down on a new machine because there will be so much less in the way of installed apps to sort through.

Speaking of apps being Intel-ready, be aware that not all of our favorite disc repair utilities are there yet. There could be a short period of time in which using a new Intel will be akin to driving without auto insurance, but it wouldn't (couldn't) be for very long.

A lot of music stores will have one of these new Macs up and running pretty soon. If they are indeed an authorized Mac store, you might benefit from sorting out when various software/hardware reps visit those stores, which they do from time to time. I know that I'll be paying many visits to at least one such store not too far from where I live to get my tentacles on and Intel running DP and a few of my coveted apps. I'll post whatever useful info I find.

Like I said, if the apps you need are Intel-ready then you may have a little less to worry about than you think. The main thing is to stay on top of your software tech support people should anything troublesome occur. It is likely that you will be *their* pioneer as well.

[HCMarkus]

Congrats on the new baby, Cat.

If you or anybody ever has any interest in using your machine for anything other than DP, you could take the route I have, which is to partition the main system drive in to two or more partitions and install various tuned systems on each. I have three partitions on my main internal drive:

1. DP Slim: Just what I need to run DP and no mas! I have included Safari here to allow software downloading/upgrading.

2. Mac Media Sys: Word, Adobe, Filemaker and the i apps. I also have DP here, so I can experiment with system upgrades before making the jump on my DP partition.

3. Backup space for DP projects in progress. I never run the project from this drive, just park it here for safekeeping. The work copy resides on a Raptor, and a second backup resides on external firewire.

I keep a cloned copy of my OS partitions, made with Carbon Copy Cloner, on a separate drive.

The nice thing about the multi-partition approach is your Mac becomes a completely new machine depending on which partition you boot into.

[grimepoch]

Interesting observation:

I've been reading a lot of benchmarking between QuadG5 and MacPro machines. What I've noticed is that for Integer based math, the MacPro blows the G5 out of the water. However, for floating point and vector based math, the G5 is still a bit faster (probably a lot of the altivec code). This is why the benchmarks are going to be interesting to me.

Given the WIDER memory bandwidth, it will be interesting to see where the inflection points are in performance.

Also note, you will not gain the full benefit of the MEMORY BUS until you add 4 memory modules, not just the 2 it comes with. The bus is really wide, so you get a lot of parrallel writes (like the sun architecture).

[Phil O]

re: MacPro memory...

found this:
http://www.macsolutions.com/newmacprome.html

They claim to meet Apple's thermal specs. They are cheaper than Other World Computing.

Don't know anything about the quality.

Phil

[monkey man]

A world truce would be nice about now.

I hear ya. Perhaps my expectations are high, but this is the Nation!
Oh, and I'm just a pussy... monkey.

...Any answer will be appreciated. Smartassed ones will be less appreciated than informative ones.
Thanks
thehypercube

Hi there, thehypercube.
I feel bad that you feel you need to make that specification for fear of our wasting your (no doubt precious) time.
When you say, "smart-assed", are you referring to this type of thing from the thread?

Nah I'm not bothered by that stuff at all nor putting a value on my time. It was actually written tongue in cheek...

Ha! Stuff just keeps going over this naive monkey's head!
Oh, well; if I hang at the Nation for long enough, anything's possible...

...so sorry you took it that way.

I really appreciate that, mate; I'm sorry I made that post.
Also, I'm truly sorry if it caused you or anyone else distress.
It's tempting to delete it, but I want to remain accountable.
I will beat myself up some more later until I draw blood, I promise!

I've jumped onto the Nation 10 hours early 'cause it was "eating away" at me that I'd possibly been a bit rude.
You're right; I did "take it the wrong way" and felt our Uniquecornness was under threat! (I know; I can't believe it either!).
I've been a staunch MOTU-defender at all levels, often to my detriment!
As I've said before, I'm just a pussy, but expose me to unUnicornness, however, and I morph into a vicious, fanged creature that defies description.
Seems there's a sensitive spot there... could be a symptom of that disease Shooshie spoke about; the one you get from too much exposure to, fun with, and enthusiasm for DP!

I'm here to provide light and silver linings.
Intentionally hurting another is something I simply can't do, so thanks for your understanding, thehypercube!

Just wanted a straight answer to my question rather than a "OMG RTFM" or something. I've searched all over and can't find the answer to what I'm looking for. Sometimes the boards can tend to be a bit stuck up to true info-seekers (more so at big blue lounge I'd say).

I can relate. Just give me the facts.
The Nation may not be perfect, but it can't be beat.
Hang on; it is perfect, isn't it?

[WSVP]

thehypercube wrote:
In any case, I'd still like to know before plunking down $3k whether the software is written in a way to take full advantage of the hardware in regards to the processor cores. If somebody can help me figure that out then thanks to them.

This is a tough one... I have a G5 Dual Quad and I am happy with the performance, but still not really sure if DP is firing on all cylinders. The best source for this info would be Motu software engineers. Motu has to be aware of the amount of speculation surrounding this issue, unfortunately Motu is pretty silent on this issue, despite this being a very frequent topic.

I personally think this is not a smart move on Motu's part, as most people tend to assume the answer is a negative or unfavorable when someone remains silent. Often these types of threads spiral into a barrage of criticisms. Motu should jump in and put out these brush fires before they become uncontrolled forest fires.

[HCMarkus]

If you use the Apple-supplied Activity Monitor (in Utilities folder), you can see how your machine is using the four processors. Get the floating window going, have it stay on top, and monitor the CPU hit while you work with ANY software. Activity Monitor takes a very small share of CPU for its own operation, but if you need that last smidge of performance for a mix, turn it off.

I see fairly balanced processor loads on my Quad PPC as I use DP, with usage going up to about 80% for each CPU when bouncing.

I have been told by MOTU tech support, and my usage confirms, MOTU is fully multi-processor aware.