[osij2is]

Hello all,

FYI: I'm not sure where this post belongs so please don't flame me if I snafu'd.

I'm a long time PC user (not a windows fan boy), and have built pretty much all my computers over the past 9+ years. My latest one (from 2004) is beginning to for lack of a better term: go blah. I'd rather not build another one or fix it back up, so the Mac Pro seemed like a dreamy choice. Now, bear in mind, back in the Mac OS 7-9 days, I was soooooo not a Mac lover. OS X completely got my attention, and my Powerbook G4 still works as awesome as it did when I first got it 2 years ago. I don't know how I became such a Mac-fan boy, but whatever. Go Unix. Go OSX. Fsck Microsoft. Anyway....

From dual-booting in either Windows(World of Warcraft and Visual Studio are my ONLY reasons) , OSX or Linux, the Mac Pro is by far the clearest choice to make (for me) today. Price isn't all that bad considering 2 dual core xeons, and the awesomeness of OS X.

But I've been hestatant to purchase because I *would* like to do at least 2 mod-ish type things to the machine so I'd like to get people's technical input (and hell, opinions if ya have 'em). So here it goes:

1. Video Card: GeForce 8800GTX. Being a quasi-gamer, the 7300 isn't up the task, and I'm not quite keen on the ATI 1900. I'll KEEP the default card as I have 2 monitors, but I'd like to add a pure gaming card in if possible. I've tried reading around and everyone seems to have a lot of mixed results. Thoughts? Comments?

2. Hard Drive: I WANT to put in my 2x Western Digital Raptors (150GB) in a RAID 0 stripe for pure speed for the SYSTEM disk. NOT an additional volume. Again, the gaming angle is one of the interests, but the other is for rendering video and perhaps animation. Speed rules above all. I have a NAS array that's large enough so I'm not worried per se about local storage. I just want to give any of my OSes on the Mac Pro the fastest possible disks to avoid some of the I/O bottleneck.

3. Animation/Modeling: I'm trying to get back into animation and modeling so, I realize the gaming card is a bit of a stretch. Most animation/modeling programs want render cards (Quadro/FireGL), not gamer cards (GeForce). I'm willing to live with slower render times in favor of the gaming card, but unless anyone else has a better suggestion or interesting idea, I think this setup thus far is perfect (or near perfect) for what I want.

I realize that RAM will always play an issue so upgrading it to whatever is necessary is not a problem. 2GB? 4GB? 8GB? Don't sweat it. The CPU speed *can* be an issue, but how much of a difference is still in question.

So please feel free to critize and if you have the time, lend a geek a hand.

[mduell]

1. Apple's video card options have historically been stagnant from launch to EOL, and the Intel Macs are no exception. Macs also still require proprietary video bioses, so you can't just pick up any card off the shelf. Wait for the next refresh (any day now?).

2. Sure, go ahead, nothing will stop you. You've got 3 empty bays inside the Mac Pro chassis. Either copy the OS X system files to your shiny new array, or install from scratch. Nothing special or unique here compared to any other PC.
OS X supports software RAID if you don't want to buy a hardware RAID card.

3. The difference between gamer cards and pro cards is mostly about features, not performance. You'll be fine for basic modeling with a gamer card. Also, since Macs haven't had many pro card options (none that I recall prior to the FX4500), I think the developers have kept that in mind and designed OSX apps for the gamer cards (Apple certainly has with their suite of pro apps).

I'd buy the stock memory from Apple, since their memory prices are still crazy high. I'd add 2x2G or 4x2G to that depending on what you can afford and how much multitasking you do.

[John Gault]

I dont know what Windows OS you are planning on using, but I hear that Vista does not yet support the proper drivers for the Geforce 8800 series card. I dont know if they have corrected this yet or not. I am running the Radeon 1900xt card and it handles with great result.

[osij2is]

Thanks for the replies guys.

Is there a native on-board RAID controller bundled with the 5000 chipset, or should I assume that to be an add-on SATA RAID PCI express card? 3Ware or whatever brand would support Mac + other OSes and so forth.

As for Vista, at this point, I will probably never buy it. There's really nothing that fantastic about it that I would use, or even shell out how ever much money for whatever crazy amount depending on the edition.

As for the video card... is there a brand that you would recommend that is simpatico with MacOSX or is it a hit or miss process?

[Xyrrus]

Originally Posted by osij2is 

As for the video card... is there a brand that you would recommend that is simpatico with MacOSX or is it a hit or miss process?

I would stear clear of "third party" cards. Take mduell's advice and wait for the refresh - they'll probably have 8800s in them as a BTO option. It'll be expensive. I justify it to myself by saying its cheaper than maintaining 2 PCs (my last PC build cost me $1500)

Also, you mention dual booting for visual studio and WoW. WoW runs really well on the X1900 and a mac pro. I'd virtualize XP for visual studio - parallels will do a superb job with this. My own experience is that its just a pain to be booting back and forth. I do it right now to play galciv2 and its more of a hassle than I'd like.

-Xy

[Xyrrus]

Originally Posted by osij2is 

2. Hard Drive: I WANT to put in my 2x Western Digital Raptors (150GB) in a RAID 0 stripe for pure speed for the SYSTEM disk. NOT an additional volume. Again, the gaming angle is one of the interests, but the other is for rendering video and perhaps animation. Speed rules above all. I have a NAS array that's large enough so I'm not worried per se about local storage. I just want to give any of my OSes on the Mac Pro the fastest possible disks to avoid some of the I/O bottleneck.

Two things - windows cannot see OS X software raids so you will be unable to boot XP off of it. If you want performance for games (ie, booted into XP) you'll need to find a raid card that supports both OSes. Lastly, OS X is a little weird about booting off a software (maybe also hardware) raid when it comes to firmware updates. And by weird I mean it won't perform firmware updates off of boot raids - you'll need to have a spare sata, firewire or USB drive kicking around (40G is plenty) with a basic OS X install on it for performing firmware upgrades.

Technically, there *is* a raid controller on the chipset, however OS X does not support it.

-Xy

[mduell]

Originally Posted by osij2is 

Is there a native on-board RAID controller bundled with the 5000 chipset, or should I assume that to be an add-on SATA RAID PCI express card? 3Ware or whatever brand would support Mac + other OSes and so forth.

As for the video card... is there a brand that you would recommend that is simpatico with MacOSX or is it a hit or miss process?

No, there is no hardware RAID controller built in. You'll have to buy a PCIe one if you need hardware RAID.

There's no "hit and miss", it's "Apple or nothing." The folks at strangedogs may be working on a hack to modify off-the-shelf cards, but I haven't seen anything for the 8800.

[osij2is]

I'm so glad I posted here.
This is really great feedback. I was unaware of the BIOS issues with the 3rd-party cards, and I didn't bother to think of running Windows virtually. I'm a 'little' hesitant to run WinXP virtually within OSX as for the small performance penalties, but it's not nearly as bad as switching architectures from RISC to CISC on my G4, so I guess it's AN option. I just don't know or rather, don't THINK running XP virtually to play WoW is exactly the BEST way to go about it.

I'd LIKE to run Linux native against the hard drive if possible, not virtually.

As for the RAID, obviously, if I'm going to do it, hardware is the only way especially for the performance gains. Anyone recommend a (SATA) RAID card for a Mac Pro? 3Ware and Adaptec are the only brands I've worked with, but it wouldn't be surprised if there were other better brands.

Again, thanks for all the comments.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by osij2is 

I'm so glad I posted here.
This is really great feedback. I was unaware of the BIOS issues with the 3rd-party cards, and I didn't bother to think of running Windows virtually. I'm a 'little' hesitant to run WinXP virtually within OSX as for the small performance penalties, but it's not nearly as bad as switching architectures from RISC to CISC on my G4, so I guess it's AN option. I just don't know or rather, don't THINK running XP virtually to play WoW is exactly the BEST way to go about it.

I'd LIKE to run Linux native against the hard drive if possible, not virtually.

As for the RAID, obviously, if I'm going to do it, hardware is the only way especially for the performance gains. Anyone recommend a (SATA) RAID card for a Mac Pro? 3Ware and Adaptec are the only brands I've worked with, but it wouldn't be surprised if there were other better brands.

Again, thanks for all the comments.

Unless you're working on a really big project, I think you'll be happy with virtualized Windows for Visual Studio. Run WoW natively in OS X.
You're welcome to install Linux natively on "bare metal" hardware. But unless you need graphics acceleration, I'd save the hassle and install it in virtualization too.

ATTO has a Mac-compatible SATA/SAS RAID PCIe card, but I'm not sure if it is bootable. Based on a quick Googling, it looks like you may run into trouble trying to find a Mac-comptable, bootable RAID card.

[kronos[pka]]

I got a quad xeon 3.0 ghz, with ATI x1900 XT. i get 120+ FPS In WoW. And in very very populated areas it goes to like 60 fps maximum. But mostly its sable at like 120 fps.

[osij2is]

60FPS - 120FPS on an ATI in WoW?
Please specify your screen resolution and graphics settings. Cuz' if that's true, I'd highly consider not bothering getting a new video card

Anyone know if the Mac Pro supports the X1950? Crossfire?

[mduell]

Originally Posted by osij2is 

Anyone know if the Mac Pro supports the X1950? Crossfire?

No. No. No SLI either.

Your choices are what Apple offers (7300GT, X1900XT, and FX4500) and that's it.

[Leonard]

Originally Posted by mduell 

No. No. No SLI either.

SLI using 8x PCIe is supported (via a hack to make the drivers think you have an Nvidia motherboard) in Windows ONLY on the Mac Pro. In MacOS X on a Mac Pro there is no support for SLI or Crossfire.

From what I hear SLI and Crossfire are over-rated anyways. You can get better price/performance from one card... that of course if you have access to the latest cards.

[rehoot]

Don't you need to have some type of adapter to put the old hard drives into a Mac Pro?

[rehoot]

Originally Posted by Xyrrus 

Lastly, OS X is a little weird about booting off a software (maybe also hardware) raid when it comes to firmware updates. And by weird I mean it won't perform firmware updates off of boot raids - you'll need to have a spare sata, firewire or USB drive kicking around (40G is plenty) with a basic OS X install on it for performing firmware upgrades.

So this is why my firmware updates haven't worked. I have 4 drives in two different RAIDs. I'll see if I can find a way to do this without having to reformat my hard drives.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by rehoot 

Don't you need to have some type of adapter to put the old hard drives into a Mac Pro?

Any SATA drive will fit in the hard drive bays in the Mac Pro just fine.

An older ATA (PATA) drive won't fit in the hard drive bays with a plug adapter; you could put one in the second optical bay, without a plug adapter (but with a screw-hole adapter).

[timewind]

I doubt you will really notice the "penalty" for virtualizing on a machine like a MacPro, at least not in using VisualStudio. Compiling may be a little slower, but I really don't know. It will esentially be running native on Intel processors, and since it isn't passing through the graphics bottleneck that seems to be the biggest problem when using Paralells. You will gain other advanages by using Paralells, including a virtual hard drive file that is much easier to backup and restore than a real partition. If you get, by any means, some bad Windows virus or spyware problems you can delete the file and restore from a good backup, and even the most severe problems should leave you with a working system (Mac OS X, that is) where you can easily restore your Windows HD image.

I think folks aren't being clear about one thing though, not only is there no reason to run WoW in Windows (and bunches of good reasons not to) you won't have to buy another copy. I buy most things Blizzard releases, even if I don't expect to play them much (which hasn't happened so far) to reward them for their simultaneous, same media, software releases. Your WoW and Burning Crusade install CDs/DVD will work fine to install the Mac OS X version of WoW on your new MacPro. The update process will take a bit, but is should run great. In fact WoW runs great on not only my 17" iMac (from just before the change to the Core2Duo) which has more than enough processor and graphics capabilities to run it at remarkably high res. The big, very pleasant, surprise I got was how well WoW runs on my MacBook, which does have a Core2Duo, but only the Intel built in graphics.You can't turn the settings up nearly as far, but at the default settings WoW runs great, not jumpy, copes fine with crowded spaces, etc. (The biggest reason I got the iMac when I did was that my G4/450DP had a very hard time with the areas like outside the Ironforge AH (which has gotten much better since the addition of mini-AH's to other cities) where there were lots of other characters to render and the system just couldn't keep up.
I've been playing WoW for quite a while now, and everyone tells me that the mods that will work on the PC will work on the Mac as well, but I haven't tried them as I have no patience with the process that I hear many of my friends complain about of having to wait for updates every time the latest update from Blizzard breaks all the mods. (I also feel bad for the people who I hear picked up viruses, trojans, etc. recently from a site pretending to be a server for the latest versions of WoW mods, but actually distributing other "payloads" Of coures, running WoW under OS X you should be able to doge that bullet as well.
Anyway, WoW on OS X is not a case of a "second best" version, the only potential hastle might be running the voice programs that many players use, although a Mac version for one is there and another is "on the way" which I believe covers the two big ones (Ventrillo and TeamSpeak?). Again I find I don't use these, as in my limited play time I am usually lisening to other things and don't want to be voice chatting.) I can say that iTunes does fine playing podcasts in the background on the iMac while I am playing.

[SierraDragon]

I strongly believe that Mac Pros will soon receive a significant graphics performance upgrade of some flavor that should be relevant to your described needs. IMO you may want to wait for the next MP upgrade. [Note, however, that I thought this upgrade would happen a month ago...]

-Allen Wicks

[timewind]

Looking at Apple's past upgrade patterns, I wouldn't hold off buying on this issue, reguardless of how much I might want better graphics. The MacPros have recently had a big, albeit subtle (announcement wise), upgrade to 8 cores at the top of the line. While it won't nesicarily be easy (or cheap) to find new and better graphics cards to upgrade your Mac Pro with later on, it should be possible. Waiting for Apple's "stealth updates" only causes headaches and lost productivity these days. (This isn't me saying that they WON'T announce better graphics options tommorow, just that your odds of ending up very blue, or evin a pallid gray, from holding your breath undil they do are extremely high.)

[mduell]

Originally Posted by timewind 

Looking at Apple's past upgrade patterns, I wouldn't hold off buying on this issue, reguardless of how much I might want better graphics. The MacPros have recently had a big, albeit subtle (announcement wise), upgrade to 8 cores at the top of the line. While it won't nesicarily be easy (or cheap) to find new and better graphics cards to upgrade your Mac Pro with later on, it should be possible. Waiting for Apple's "stealth updates" only causes headaches and lost productivity these days. (This isn't me saying that they WON'T announce better graphics options tommorow, just that your odds of ending up very blue, or evin a pallid gray, from holding your breath undil they do are extremely high.)

Adding one CPU option, with no change to the base CPU option, pricing of CPU upgrades, base system components, or pricing of system component updates, is not a big update.
ATi and nVidia both have next-generation cards on the market and memory/disk/CPU prices have all dropped considerably since the Mac Pro was released. It's overdue for a real update.