Mac Pro questions

[biggestmuff]

I'm currently researching Macs as I'm going to be upgrading from my current DAW to something faster that is capable of accessing greater amounts of RAM (64 bit).

My current DAW is a single core Athlon XP 3000+ with 3GB RAM running Sonar 4 Producer Edition. I use 3 HDDs; one for OS/Apps, a Samples drive and one to store the recorded Audio files.

With the advent of 64 bit OSes, greater amounts of RAM can be accessed and utilized. This will be great as I work with huge sample files at high sampling and bit rates (96kHz/24 bit). I mainly use EastWest's virtual instrument such as Symphonic Orchestra, Stormdrum, RA and Drumkit from Hell Superior.

In the past, I've built my DAWs, but would like to go with a pre-built system this time around. Because of this, I'm open to purchasing a Mac.

This will be unfamiliar territory and I'm a little worried about the learning curve it'll take to get up and running. Not only will I have to learn a the ins and outs of a new OS, but also a new sequencer. I'm probably going to purchase Logic 8 Pro as Sonar isn't Mac compatible. Even though Logic 8 is still only a 32 bit App, the RAM-hungry virtual instruments I use will be able to take advantage of the larger 64 bit system's RAM with EastWest's PLAY technology.

Just a little background to preface my questions!

• Purchasing RAM from Apple is incredibly expensive. I'm deciding between 8GB and 16GB of RAM. Is Crucial the best place to purchase official, pre-tested Apple-compatible RAM?

• Can one purchase additional HDDs from vendors other than Apple? Will the be less expensive than buying them from Apple?

• I'm looking at a base Mac Pro with the 2 2.8GHz quad-core chips. Would it be worth it to upgrade to the dual, quad-core 3.0GHz (additional $800) or the dual, quad-core 3.2 GHz (additional $1600)?

• Can the processors be upgraded at a later date, like a PC? Would that have to be done through Apple or could you purchase them from an Apple vendor? Are the processors a user replaceable item...like a PC?

• Are there any concerns with going with the wireless Mighty Mouse and keyboard?

That's about all I can think about for now. I've been visiting several Apple-newbie sites as well as lurking in some Logic forums.

Anything additional info would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT: Ordered the rig on June 20th. Dual 2.8GHz quad-core, 2GB RAM and 320GB/500GB/500GB HDDs. Also ordered Logic Studio.

EDIT 2: Ordered a Apogee Ensemble and Kontakt 3 on June 23.

EDIT 3: I received my Logic Studio package 2 days ago and my Kontakt 3 crossgrade yesterday. My Mac should arrive on Monday with the Apogee Ensemble on Tues or Weds. Still need to order the extra RAM.

 

[Tyranicus]

1. Intel Macs are much less finicky about RAM than their PowerPC predecessors. As long as it's the right speed, RAM from just about any company should work fine.

2. Yes. Any 3.5" SATA drive will work.

3. Not in my opinion. While there will technically be an increase in power, I highly doubt you'll see much of a difference in any real world scenario. Besides, you can always upgrade down the road.

4. With the exception of the logic board itself, every component in the Mac Pro is user replaceable. It uses a standard, socketed processor.

5. As far as connectivity goes, they seem to be very solid. I personally don't care for the Mighty Mouse, but that's just a matter of taste. The aluminum keyboard, however, is awesome. I love mine.

 

[KeithP]

I purchased 8GB of RAM for my MacPro at transintl and it has worked perfectly. I would definitely recommend them. Macsales.com is also a good place for RAM.

Any SATA should work but the power and SATA connectors on the drive need to be in the standard place so they slide into the MacPro drive bays and connect OK. The new WD VelociRaptor drives will not work because of this.

-Keith

 

[biggestmuff]

Originally posted by: Tyranicus
1. Intel Macs are much less finicky about RAM than their PowerPC predecessors. As long as it's the right speed, RAM from just about any company should work fine.

2. Yes. Any 3.5" SATA drive will work.

3. Not in my opinion. While there will technically be an increase in power, I highly doubt you'll see much of a difference in any real world scenario. Besides, you can always upgrade down the road.

4. With the exception of the logic board itself, every component in the Mac Pro is user replaceable. It uses a standard, socketed processor.

5. As far as connectivity goes, they seem to be very solid. I personally don't care for the Mighty Mouse, but that's just a matter of taste. The aluminum keyboard, however, is awesome. I love mine.

What's the stock drive make/model? Do you know?

Thanks for the info. What's the reason for disliking the Mighty Mouse?

Originally posted by: KeithP
I purchased 8GB of RAM for my MacPro at transintl and it has worked perfectly. I would definitely recommend them. Macsales.com is also a good place for RAM.

Any SATA should work but the power and SATA connectors on the drive need to be in the standard place so they slide into the MacPro drive bays and connect OK. The new WD VelociRaptor drives will not work because of this.

-Keith

Keith, what type of work do you perform on the Mac with that 3rd party RAM? How intense? No issues with it?

I found this article. I know it's old, but any concern?

 

[randomlinh]

that ram was more likely a fluke.

as for the mighty mouse, I'll put my 2 cents in... the "second button" detection is terrible. It misdetected for me so much. The ball scroll is cool, but it gets dirty fast (I sold mine before then, but the ones at work went downhill fast). They ball also failed in some directions now. Maybe it's our users.. but I've had maybe two in a lifetime that the scroll wheel has completely failed on me.

 

[KeithP]

Originally posted by: biggestmuff
Keith, what type of work do you perform on the Mac with that 3rd party RAM?

I work for a small printing company. Most of the work I do is with Adobe's Creative Suite products (PhotoShop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat Professional, Dreamweaver).

I also run VMWare (2.5GB RAM assigned to the VM) and XP Pro to run design apps under Windows. Again, things like the Creative Suite, Quark Xpress, Corel Draw, Publisher. Even though I could convert some of these files over to the Mac platform, I find it is better to keep files in the OS they were created to minimize type wrap problems.

The Mac Pro I am using is a dual quad 2.8 purchased in January. It has been very reliable although some of Adobe's products aren't perfectly happy with Leopard.

If I needed more RAM I would buy from Transintl without hesitation. OtherWorldComputing (macsales.com) also makes good stuff. I have 4GB of their RAM in my MacBook and have had no problems either. Crucial is good as well.

-KeithP

 

[TheStu]

I personally don't like the feel of the Mighty Mouse, i greatly prefer my wireless VX Revolution from Logitech.

I don't know if Apple uses a standard brand all the time with their Mac Pros. It isn't uncommon for a manufacturer to use multiple vendors so it could be seagate, samsung, western digital, hitachi, any of them. That being said, you can get any old SATA drive and put it into the Mac Pro.

RAM is a little different, you have to have DDR2-800 FB-DIMMs, standard DDR2 won't do it.

I would actually recommend that you get the fastest system you can afford. Although the processors are user replaceable, Xeons are not cheap. The Mac Pro is the closest to being what you would pay if you built it yourself out of all the Apple systems.... so that $1600 processor cost for the upgrade.... not too far off.

 

[biggestmuff]

Originally posted by: randomlinh
that ram was more likely a fluke.

as for the mighty mouse, I'll put my 2 cents in... the "second button" detection is terrible. It misdetected for me so much. The ball scroll is cool, but it gets dirty fast (I sold mine before then, but the ones at work went downhill fast). They ball also failed in some directions now. Maybe it's our users.. but I've had maybe two in a lifetime that the scroll wheel has completely failed on me.

So, a no-go on the Mighty Mouse. Not really an issue, though, because any USB or BT mouse will work, right?

 

[manly]

Originally posted by: Tyranicus
1. Intel Macs are much less finicky about RAM than their PowerPC predecessors. As long as it's the right speed, RAM from just about any company should work fine.

Mac Pro RAM has large heat sinks on it. So you shouldn't just pick any FB-DIMMs of the right speed; to meet Apple's thermal specs, they should have Mac Pro style heat sinks on them. This is implied for any reputable company that sells "Mac Pro RAM".

Originally posted by: biggestmuff
So, a no-go on the Mighty Mouse. Not really an issue, though, because any USB or BT mouse will work, right?

Pretty much, although Bluetooth input devices aren't 100% platform-agnostic. Some vendors do not support their BT keyboard/mouse on a Mac.

 

[Tyranicus]

As far as mice go, I'm a big fan of Logitech's wireless mice. My MX620 is the most comfortable mouse I've ever used.

 

[mshan]

As long as you won't be using the Mac pro for mission critical work, perhaps you should look into the Hackintosh threads in this sub-forum?

You can buy a disk cloning program like Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner to create an image of a stable Leopard install before you make any attempts at software update.

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: mshan
As long as you won't be using the Mac pro for mission critical work, perhaps you should look into the Hackintosh threads in this sub-forum?

You can buy a disk cloning program like Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner to create an image of a stable Leopard install before you make any attempts at software update.

The OP specifically mentioned that he needed gads and gads of RAM, and that means Mac Pro or similar, and since the Mac Pro (motherboard and CPU wise especially) is actually pretty well priced...

 

[biggestmuff]

Thanks for the help, people. I'm getting closer and closer to pulling the trigger on a Mac Pro.

About the hard drives; it looks like I could save between $50 and $100 by purchasing the two extra 500GB drives from a 3rd party vendor and installing them myself. I'm just a little leery about doing that as I'm trying to make the most stable and error free computing platform possible. I'm still upset about my last PC DAW build. It intermittently crashes and I've never been able to track down the cause. That's what started this idea of buying a prebuilt PC or going with a Mac Pro.

One more question about the RAM. It looks like you have to install RAM in pairs. The base system that I'd buy will arrive with 2GB of RAM. I'm considering purchasing 8GB or 16GB of additional RAM. Will I be able to use that original 2GB of RAM in the system?

 

[randomlinh]

installing a hdd is pretty damn straight forward. it's not going to cause your system to be any less stable than if apple did it. your chances of hdd failure are the same either way.

as for the ram, you can use it as long as there's room for it. optimally, you'd want whatever you buy to match in speed.

 

[biggestmuff]

I see conflicting info about OSX 10.5; is the OS 64-bit or not? Someone in a Logic forum was posting that it can only utilize 4GB of RAM and mentioned something about 'keeping your eyes open for the new 64 bit OS'. I assume he's talking about 10.6. The post is from July 11.

 

[TheStu]

What system does this person on the forum have? Leopard is fully 64bit, but it also supports 32 bit... the same goes for 10.6. Every system that Apple sells, with the exception of the Mac Pro basically has the same chipset, and that chipset has a 4GB RAM limit.... it isn't the OS, hell I used a Power Mac G5 with 8GB of RAM on Tiger.

 

[biggestmuff]

Originally posted by: TheStu
What system does this person on the forum have? Leopard is fully 64bit, but it also supports 32 bit... the same goes for 10.6. Every system that Apple sells, with the exception of the Mac Pro basically has the same chipset, and that chipset has a 4GB RAM limit.... it isn't the OS, hell I used a Power Mac G5 with 8GB of RAM on Tiger.

It's the next to the last post by cmcken1 in the following thread:

Text

Maybe a pro as yourself can help me to decipher and understand what he means.

I know that Logic 8 is a 32-bit app, but to me that's not an issue as the sampling software I'll be using with Logic 8 (EastWest's PLAY technology) can access the full amount of system RAM outside of Logic 8.

 

[manly]

Originally posted by: biggestmuff

Originally posted by: TheStu
What system does this person on the forum have? Leopard is fully 64bit, but it also supports 32 bit... the same goes for 10.6. Every system that Apple sells, with the exception of the Mac Pro basically has the same chipset, and that chipset has a 4GB RAM limit.... it isn't the OS, hell I used a Power Mac G5 with 8GB of RAM on Tiger.

It's the next to the last post by cmcken1 in the following thread:

Text

Maybe a pro as yourself can help me to decipher and understand what he means.

I know that Logic 8 is a 32-bit app, but to me that's not an issue as the sampling software I'll be using with Logic 8 (EastWest's PLAY technology) can access the full amount of system RAM outside of Logic 8.

Obviously he's a stranger to me, but he's talking out of his ass.

He's probably mixing up some concepts from Windows XP Pro, and throwing in a lot of technical jargon that I don't believe he really understands.

Lastly, don't buy Apple OEM RAM and SATA drives. They rip you off.

 

[biggestmuff]

Thanks, manly.

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: manly

Originally posted by: biggestmuff

Originally posted by: TheStu
What system does this person on the forum have? Leopard is fully 64bit, but it also supports 32 bit... the same goes for 10.6. Every system that Apple sells, with the exception of the Mac Pro basically has the same chipset, and that chipset has a 4GB RAM limit.... it isn't the OS, hell I used a Power Mac G5 with 8GB of RAM on Tiger.

It's the next to the last post by cmcken1 in the following thread:

Text

Maybe a pro as yourself can help me to decipher and understand what he means.

I know that Logic 8 is a 32-bit app, but to me that's not an issue as the sampling software I'll be using with Logic 8 (EastWest's PLAY technology) can access the full amount of system RAM outside of Logic 8.

Obviously he's a stranger to me, but he's talking out of his ass.

He's probably mixing up some concepts from Windows XP Pro, and throwing in a lot of technical jargon that I don't believe he really understands.

Lastly, don't buy Apple OEM RAM and SATA drives. They rip you off.

I love the part where he says that a 64bit OS can only handle 8GB of RAM... Ha! 32bit can handle 4GB at best, and that is, to my understanding, total RAM, and in Windows, that means the VRAM on your Graphics card as well. Not too sure about OS X, but let us assume for sake of argument that it is similar.

Now, here is where a lot of people get things wrong. 64bit is not double 32bit, at least not in any useful sense. Things will not be twice as fast (though some will), you do not get twice as much of a RAM cap, and the OS isn't twice as big. Leopard (10.5) is roughly the same size, maybe a little larger than Tiger (10.4). And Leopard is a true 64bit OS, but it has 32bit code as well. That is what allows my measly 32bit Core Duo to run the same OS as your Mac Pro with a 64bit Xeon. 64bit OSes have a hypothetical RAM cap of 16 exobytes if memory serves me correctly, however good luck actually getting that much RAM. Snow Leopard (10.6) is supposed to have an effective RAM cap of 16 Terabytes, which is possibly due to limitations within the processor or the memory controller since most are not (to the best of my knowledge) actually 64bit. Though the memory controller in the Mac Pro may be. Server hardware being a different beast than what I am used to makes it hard for me to be on that solid of footing.

However, one thing that the guy said has merit. Snow Leopard is going to change the game completely. I just love the arrogance of Apple on this one. They are basically saying that this "We are so sure that Leopard or even Tiger is sufficiently more advanced than anything that Microsoft has out right now, that we are going to take a year or so to work on a new OS that from the exterior will have almost no new shinies. Instead we are going to concentrate on making the OS significantly faster, smaller and more efficient. Every other OS will be so far behind they will be lucky to see our dust, let alone taste it." This is just a conjecture upon what they are saying, and given as how my MacBook runs faster with Leopard than it did with Tiger I am pretty sure that Snow Leopard will rock my socks off.

 

[biggestmuff]

Thanks for everyone's help. I'm going to place an order tonight or tomorrow.

I'm still deciding between the wired or wireless keyboard and mouse. It'd be nice to have the wireless for the clean desk look, but wires have never bothered me. The size of the wireless keyboard looks smaller.

I see the wireless keyboard has a power switch on the side. That's a nice feature. I have my current PC DAW setup to power on with the spacebar.

Can the Mac Pro be powered on with the regular, wired keyboard?

 

[biggestmuff]

Well, that was easy!

Just placed an order for this bad boy:

* Processor 065-7536 Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeo
* Memory 065-7175 2GB (2x1GB)
* Graphics Card 065-7182 ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB
* Hard Drive Bay1 065-7189 320GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb
* Hard Drive Bay2 065-7195 500GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb
* Hard Drive Bay3 065-7198 500GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb
* Hard Drive Bay4 065-7200 None
* Optical Drive 065-7203 One 16x SuperDrive
* Wireless Option 065-7205 None
* Modem 065-7209 None
* Fibre Chl Card 065-7211 None
* RAID 065-7213 None
* Apple Software App- iWorks '08 065-7672 None
* Apple Software App-Logic Exp 065-7675 None
* Apple Software App-Fnl Cut Exp 065-7674 None
* Apple Software App-Aperture 065-7673 None
* Mouse from AOS 065-7693 APPLE MIGHTY MOUSE
* KEYBD + USER'S GUIDE FOR AOS 065-7707 WIRED KEYBD/USERS GUIDE
* MAC OS X SERVER 065-7539 None
* Country Kit 065-7220 Country Kit

Also went ahead and bought Logic Studio through Apple as well. I could've saved around $20 or so by buying elsewhere, but I just dropped 3K on a Mac. What $20?! :laugh:

Next will be some 3rd party RAM as well as an audio interface. I'm leaning towards the Apogee Ensemble, but a decent MAudio firewire interface would work, too.

 

[randomlinh]

why'd you put the money in for the extra HDD's? You could have saved a nice chunk of change just picking stuff off the shelf.

 

[keeleysam]

If you don't buy the drives from Apple, the computer won't come with the extra sleds needed for more drives.

For RAM, I'd personally go with 16GB:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item...omputing/64FB2MPK16GB/

If you want to save a bit of money and keep what's already in there for a total of 14GB, you could go with this:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item...omputing/64FB2MPK12GB/

If I had money to burn, I'd go with 4GB modules, but they are double the cost per GB of 2GB modules, so I say they aren't worth it.

 

[slugg]

Well, I know quite a bit about DAW gear and software. If you have any questions about anything, feel free to PM me

Also, where are you located? If you need a drummer to lay down some sick tracks to break in your DAW, let me know, heheh

Now about your RAM... I really can't see you ever using 16 gb of ram. 8 should be more than fine, really. If the money isn't a problem, more RAM will never HURT, haha! But, the more dense the ram, the better quality you should buy. The reason for this is because DRAM has to refresh in perfect sync, so if you have 1 stick of RAM with slightly different latency than another, the entire DRAM channel will report erroneous data, more than likely crashing your computer. I'd recommend sticking with something "tried and true," like Crucial. Spend more money now on RAM, spend less money later on headache medicine

^^ To put things in perspective, I run Sibelius 5, Logic Express, Reason (re-wired), and Kontakt (with 2 libraries loaded, 32 channels) all at the same time on 7200 RPM, 16 mb cache hard drives + 2 gb RAM. Crappy dual-core E2160 processor. It runs just fine. My application is more for music composition; you'd definitely need a beefier computer than mine for a true DAW, but your Mac Pro is gonna pwn

A sweet thing about EastWest PLAY is that it supports Apple AU (Audio Unit) technology. This is definitely the way to go, and something you just can't get on Windows. An AU can dynamically control CPU priority on its own threads, has direct hardware access, and is very efficient with memory. Overall, you get smoother performance with lower latency than VST. Go ahead and crank up the resolution to 96khz/24bit on EVERYTHING and enjoy yourself

As for an audio interface, just what exactly are you doing with your DAW? If you can describe your goals, I could recommend to you some sweet options. There are some reasons why you'd want FireWire over USB, or vice versa, plus we'd want to pick something that'll truly serve your needs. Money is also a pretty good parameter to go by...

So yea, just let me know if you have any questions...