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Mac Pro, bootcamp and 64 bit question
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Forum Regular
Join Date: Mar 2006
Status:
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I am looking at the new Mac Pro Quad 3.0 Gig Xeon processor. I want to buy it with 4 gigs of ram and a least two 500 gig drives.
Since I am replacing a windows machine, I want to make sure I can run windows using bootcamp.
My questions are:
Which version of XP? The 64 bit one or 32 bit one? Are drivers available for Map Pro 64 and 32?
Will this machine be fast running windows? Is there a web site that compares it to a similar Dell or something like that? I do plan on playing games on this Mac that are not available in Mac OSx.
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Aug 2006
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I have a 2.6 setup and bought the mac pro for the very same reason. Bootcamp works with the new 1.1 update, but still has some issues with the sata setup...The drive runs a little slow, but bootcamp is still in beta and the speed should be alleviated by the final version.
You should also know that you can only buy video cards from apple for now. I purchased the x1900 with 512 megs, because I am a gamer myself. PC cards do not work on Mac Pro's, because they do not support EFI. The card will work in bootcamp, but OS X will not recognize it, so you are stuck buying from Apple.
If you can get by those 2 temp flaws, then you should be good to go. Oh, I am running windows xp professional and vista will be compatible as well once it's released.
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Los Angeles
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Bootcamp runs Windows directly without a speed penalty. PC benchmarking of MacBookPros have shown them to be among the fastest Windows machines in their class. I would assume that the 64-bit version of Windows is required on the Mac Pro.
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"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
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Senior User
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Sarasota, Florida
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I just got my Mac Pro today and I am fairly surprised. I was sleptical and sure that it would not run Photoshop all too well, but it works better than expected, even with 1GB ram. Definitely usable in the mean time. So for now I am ok with holding off on installing Windows XP, for the SATA hard drive issue has still not been worked out through bootcamp and thus the hard drive runs very slow under Windows XP.
From my understanding you can run Windows XP 32-bit just fine, I have not heard of anyone installing the 64-bit version yet.. I don't see the need to unless you have more than 3GB of memory. What's odd is that some people do have 3GB and Windows XP only reports 2GB of it while OS X shows all 3GBs.
The only problem with the 64 bit version would be finding the right drivers for it, while the ones for the 32 bit version are available. Unless Bootcamp has this taken care of?
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: NYC
Status:
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You have to run the 32-bit version of Windows. Bootcamp doesn't include any 64-bit compatible drivers. It will run very well, though. If you really don't want to wait for the X1900 to start shipping, you can buy a regular PCIe graphics card and install that, too, so you've got the 7300GT for OS X and the PC card for Windows. Both will work in Windows (though not with SLI), but only the 7300 will be recognized by OS X.
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