New Mac Pro

gimme.


http://www.apple.com/macpro/

Just remember to go ATI for the video card, as Nvidia can't write OS X drivers worth a crap.

There's rumours the ATI Radeon HD 3870 will be available as an additional option too, soon.

Okay all of you MAC Wizards. I'm a potential PC to MAC convert! (Love the Mac OS).

I'll be waiting for some one who has purchased one of these new Mac Pro's with one of the Nvidia options and see what their experience is regardind SL.

Well damn... And I just bought the previous version last month! I'd hoped that if they were going to release a new one, they would do it in time for Christmas deliveries.

The new one has a larger HD and better CPU for $500 USD less than what I paid just a few weeks back.

Oh well...

I'd like to take your word on that, Zorin. But the Linden frame rate comprisons give ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT around 27 frames per sec while the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT is given 33 frames per sec and is recommended by Apple as faster.

I suppose we'll have to wait and see how they perform when SL is downloaded and run!

I just checked the Apple support forums. The 8800 GT for the new Mac Pro's won't even be available for 5 to 6 weeks. People trying to place orders for a new Mac Pro with that card are beign told it won't ship until at least Feb 14th.

Apparently, the new 8800 card is now available for order as an upgrade from Apple, again with the same 5 to 6 week backlog. Apple support claims it 'should' work in older Mac Pros, and that you can return it if it doesn't. But it seems the new Mac Pro has a PCIe 2.0 slot, while the previous Mac Pro slot was PCIe 1.1? The card itself is backwards compatable, but the older spec PCIe slot may well prove to be a bandwidth bottleneck, preventing older Mac Pro systems from getting full performance from the 8800 card.

My concern is the crappy drivers for the Nvidia 8600 on the Macbook Pros that have been causing ungodly amounts of grief.

The 8800 is surely based on the same code so I don't have much confidence.

Just ordered a 3.0GHz 8-cylinder tower. should be here in a couple weeks.

I couldn't help it. I have been kept awake by visions of multitasking.

I'll build it up after it arrives and I know what it (and I) needs. Apples RAM and drives are overpriced anyways. I did upgrade to the 8800 video tho. Not expecting much out of Second Life as i have it maxed on a PC already. But the true power requirement of SL is the multitasking needed. Graphics apps + 3D Apps + Music Apps -- it's going to be about an app per core!

Other news from the Bay Area: Mavericks surf competition announced. http://www.examiner.com/a-1151152~Surf_contest_rides_storm_s_wave.html

what a week!

Court. Keep us posted on how your new Mac Pro performs with SL and of course all others tasks. I'm still on the fence regarding a Pro purchase.

definately. I'll be testing SL on 3 OSs on this thing (OSX, XP, Ubuntu)

What other apps will you be using on this computer you have been thinking of buying?

I had the card on order and delivery is estimated for 22 Jan, so not 5 weeks away. Anyhow, I canceled the order today as I got an ATI 1900 XT (?) instead.

[quote apple store Germany]

Voraussichtliche Versandzeit: 21 Jan, 2008
Voraussichtliche Lieferzeit: 22 Jan, 2008 - 23 Jan, 2008

NVIDIA GEFORCE 8800 GT GRAPHICS CARD-INT MB137Z/A

[/quote]

Hi Court. As far as games go, I only subscribe to SL and EVE. My other uses are the standard word processing, excel, internet access and I might get into some form of photoshop. Thats it.

EVE, damn. i lasted about 14 seconds in that MMO before i realized that this is not a place for hippies. lol.

Photoshop has only performed poorly on my mac(s) during the transition to Universal Binary on the intel machines--I have been a professional photoshop user since version 2. I personally never liked it on a windows machine, but i havent used it on a windows machine since CS1-- the workflow didnt quite match. the OSX finder just blends so well with the app itself, its almost transparent.

The current version of MS Office is horrible on the mac. also due to it running thru rosetta. (i use a web browser as my exchange client). I have been hearing promising things about Office 2008, but im starting to wean towards the OpenOffice camp due to this proprietary XML format i keep reading about in MSOffice.

I purchased one of these new machines - the 2.8 model with the 2600 card. (I have an 8800 on order).

SL, in any incarnation - release, RC, Windlight, simply does not work. It crashes every time, immediately after it finishes precaching.

It does work under Vista using Boot Camp, however. There's definitely a driver issue.

**EDIT: To get the game to run on the Mac Pro under the 2600 card, I have found a Workaround. You must make sure a) Ripple Water is off, and b) OpenGL vertex objects are off.
(These must be connected).

Then it works. Note that I don't have to disable anything under Windows Vista on the same machine when in Boot Camp. It just works.

I'm using the December 2007 release of the Mac Pro (Quad core 2.66 GHz, 2 GB RAM, with the ATI X1900 512 MB VRAM card), and it runs great under Leopard (OS X 10.5.1) with the current client, the release candidate, or Windlight First Look. I initially told SL to only use 256 MB VRAM on the card, and it was rock solid stable. ( Well... as stable as SL ever is! *laughs* ) I can run all available options fully maxxed out.

Just recently I tried it at the full 512, and it did crash on occasion, but worked well most of the time.

I am using the October 2007 drivers for the ATI X1900 card, downloaded from Apple's support website.

I see various OpenGL issues with the newer mac's, luckily I haven't run into any yet. The geek in me has SL installed on 4 different systems in my house so no worries til its fixed.

btw none of the 4 installations are immune from bugs any less than the others.

Very interesting. I camehere because my four-banger Mac pro runs SL like a limping dog, on a 7300 NVidia card. I thought it might be leopard and the 3D dock, or the fact that my second screen was landscape; if I run a streaming video window on monitor 2 then SL's frame rate is in the tank, and don't ask about what happens with VMWare Fusion running at the same time.

...so from what I read here, I should Ebay for an ATi card? Or tell SL to get off the VRAM a tad? The whole problem LOOKS like a monster memory leak, and it's cheesing me off: I could stay on SL all night on the Dell 470. I'm lucky if I get 20 minutes out of the Mac Pro.

I think we're in a transitional period. Nvidia is new architecture for apple, but its here to stay IMO, and will get fixed eventually. ATI is in a mess since AMD's acquisition. Nvidia has been more hip to the Linux users, and linden labs is a pretty Mac-heavy development house.

Sometimes when multiple companies have to work together on a bug however, it can take some time to slap all the Project Managers in the face. This one is a joint effort of Apple, Linden Labs & Nvidia. http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1749

from BigPapi Linden's comment from jan 8:


-----

""With Apple's help, I've made *very* good progress on this issue. Our internal WindLight code base now contains a substantial fix that appears to solve this issue. I can only ask that you to be patient with us a just *little* bit longer, as I believe (cross your fingers) that this may finally be solved.

I know it's hard to tell without actually knowing everything that has been going on internally, but this has been a very difficult issue to find the *exact* cause of and likewise to fix once we knew the cause. Apple deserves a LOT of credit for how extremely, extremely helpful they've been to us in tracking this issue down and helping us solve it and I personally can't thank their devs enough.""

-----


When I purchased a Intel-based MacBook 2 days after they were released, NOTHING worked. Everything was ported thru Rosetta, and that 20-minute crash was for just about all apps. The speed of universal updates was rapid, and before i knew it everything ran just fine.

Let's not go near the MacBook. My MacBook pro went for repair, came back worse, went back again... and they said "might be the hard disk, come back when it gets worse": Not even a sustainable business platform. I'm not anti-mac by any means, but every so often, any supplier can choose to shoot themselves in the foot.

In the end my irritation got the better of me and and I spunked a pile of cash on an official Radeon upgrade card, which should be here tomorrow.

I just got a new Mac Pro 8-core/3GHz. Came with ATI Radeon HD 2600 card. Unfortunately, Windlight crashes on launch, and the regular RC viewer crashes if "Ripple Water" is enabled.

Other than that, it's amazingly fast.

Anyone else gotten SL to run on one of these new Mac Pros?

And to follow up faithfully like a good little Nerd... the Ati card arrived today and it's like a completely different machine. SL and Fusion sit side by side perfectly happily, video streams off the server without a tick or glitch... whatever Nvidia and Apple did to that 7300 driver, it's a hound!

I am thinking of getting one of the new mac pros...which card is the best by consensus? I've read below about the ati (no number) and some promising news about the nividia 8800...help please...

thanks

bryan mnemonic

The range of choice for the Mac Pros is still pretty disappointing, you basically have one okay 256mb ATI card, a completely over-the-top and ridiculously expensive 1.5gb card and the 512mb NVidia 8800 GT. IMO the 8800 is the only real choice, they don't even offer the previous ATI 512mb graphics card if you want it (or want your computer sooner).

As PCIe 2.0, I'm happy that it's in this one, as iirc graphics cards have only really begun to outlive AGP 8x fairly recently, meaning it's going to be a while yet before graphics cards can even take advantage of PCIe 2.0, which hopefully means a bit more graphical performance life for the Mac =)
With my G5 I got it just before the update to PCIe, and my graphics card is about as high-end as you get for AGP, the upgrade to a 7800 (I think) would have made no difference for me.

has anyone worked with or used the 1.5 gig card? how expensive is it? and why do you say it's over the top? Sorry for all the graphic card questions, i know next to nothing about them...

bryan mnemonic

Any video card that adds $2,850 to the cost of the computer is a bit of insane overkill, in my book. Possibly a wonderful card, but it's priced WAY too high.