[Rolando_jose]

I want to buy a new Mac Pro but I dont know if to buy the 2.8 (8 core) or the 3.0 (8 core) and wanted to know if there is a test made of these two machines.

thanks


Rolando Jose

[mduell]

The only meaningful test is the test of your workflow. So what do you do and how do you do it?

The difference is going to be pretty small, not more than about 5% and nearly nothing for a lot of work.

[Rolando_jose]

Basically I do 3D and video editing, so I need it for rendering, so is it worth it the 800 US$ difference between the 2.8 and the 3.0?

thanks,

Rolando

[mduell]

Depends where you are in the market... if you're buying 16+GB RAM and a bunch of SAS disks, then 3.0 or even 3.2 is a no brainer. But if you're buying 4GB (or even 2GB ) and one or two SATA drives, then the money can be better spent elsewhere.

[Tesselator]

Mduell has a point. I'm a CG artist as well. I've worked on lots of high-profile gigs and lots of high-spec
gigs. So to take mdeull"s logic and apply it from a different angle: If you have to ask then you should
probably go for the 2.8.

That's not meant as any kind of put-down either... If you have so much money that an extra grand is worth
saving you one or two hours of rendering per week then you should go for the 3.0 (but then I assume if
that were the case you also wouldn't need to ask).

For rendering we can look at it like: $900 = 1.6Ghz added power.
For everyday tasks we can look at it like: $900 = 200Mhz ~ 500Mhz added power.

That's a pretty expensive per-clock if you ask me! I wouldn't go for it unless I was so rich I didn't care
about the money.

Spend the money on an internal boot RAID0 which will make a huge difference in general proformance
and maybe a Time Machine drive (or raid) as well! That would be my advice.

[Rolando_jose]

Thanks Guys, I think its a good call to get the 2.8 and invest the 800 on more RAM or a RAID as you said.


Thanks again,

Rolando José