Newest Mac Pro w/ PCI slots?

[DougoMan]

Hey guys,

As much as I love my Hackintosh, I think I am ready to save myself some headaches and get a real Mac.

The problem is that I need PCI slots for my favorite audio card.

Is there an Intel Mac with PCI slots or do I need to get a G5?


Ok, so I did some digging on my own and found out the following: (via wikipedia)

"The 2008 model had two PCI Express (PCIe) 2.0 expansion slots and two PCI Express 1.1 slots, providing them with up to 300 W of power in total."

So I guess 2008. Is that Intel?


EDIT:

Wow those used G5s are cheap. Any reason not to get one?

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

They're G5s.

 

[TheStu]

Hey guys,

As much as I love my Hackintosh, I think I am ready to save myself some headaches and get a real Mac.

The problem is that I need PCI slots for my favorite audio card.

Is there an Intel Mac with PCI slots or do I need to get a G5?


Ok, so I did some digging on my own and found out the following: (via wikipedia)

"The 2008 model had two PCI Express (PCIe) 2.0 expansion slots and two PCI Express 1.1 slots, providing them with up to 300 W of power in total."

So I guess 2008. Is that Intel?


EDIT:

Wow those used G5s are cheap. Any reason not to get one?

Bear in mind those are PCIe, not PCI. Completely different port.

Something to remember about the G5s, the dual dual 2.5 and 2.7GHz systems actually had self contained water cooling systems for each CPU, but they had really bad leaking problems, apparently the coolant would corrode the piping or something.

Plus there is the fact that in terms of pure benchmarks, my old 1.83GHz Core Duo ran circles around everything except the highest end G5 PowerMac.

 

[Kmax82]

Also.. Apple isn't supporting the G5s anymore. No Snow Leopard, or Lion.

 

[Emulex]

time to get a new card dude. people don't buy mac's to play games on windows 7 and most audio cards are professional grade (m-audio) on mac since the folks use them to do work.

driver support is kinda sparse - solid drivers that is. 64bit.

 

[DougoMan]

time to get a new card dude. people don't buy mac's to play games on windows 7 and most audio cards are professional grade (m-audio) on mac since the folks use them to do work.

driver support is kinda sparse - solid drivers that is. 64bit.

My cards are m audio. It is the M audio PCI audiophile w/ 192k support (awesome for soft synths)

 

[DougoMan]

time to get a new card dude. people don't buy mac's to play games on windows 7 and most audio cards are professional grade (m-audio) on mac since the folks use them to do work.

driver support is kinda sparse - solid drivers that is. 64bit.

What card are you recommending, dude?

Needs to support 192k and be PCI bus. I will not tolerate more than 1.3ms of lag. That means no firewire or USB.

 

[JSt0rm]

Hey I use this stuff professionally. Avid just released protools 9 and its unlocked from their interfaces.

Questions

1. Why do you need pci bus cards?

2. How many channels in and out do you need?

3. As for lag. You should be looking at samples not ms. So 128 samples of latency is really good (especially at 192khz) 64 samples is even better.

 

[dawks]

What card are you recommending, dude?

Needs to support 192k and be PCI bus. I will not tolerate more than 1.3ms of lag. That means no firewire or USB.

1.3ms lag? damn, wtf are you doing?

Anyway, unless I'm missing something PCIe slots are backwards compatible, for the most part. As long as you're not trying to plug a regular sized PCI card into a tiny PCIe slot.. it should work fine.

I'm typing this on a 2008 Mac Pro which has 4 standard PCIe slots. 2 are x16 and 2 are x4.

My bigger concern would be driver support. I've been looking for an alternative sound card for this system, but I've worried about adequate driver support. The on-board optical has been working decent enough for me thus far however.

 

[TheStu]

1.3ms lag? damn, wtf are you doing?

Anyway, unless I'm missing something PCIe slots are backwards compatible, for the most part. As long as you're not trying to plug a regular sized PCI card into a tiny PCIe slot.. it should work fine.

I'm typing this on a 2008 Mac Pro which has 4 standard PCIe slots. 2 are x16 and 2 are x4.

My bigger concern would be driver support. I've been looking for an alternative sound card for this system, but I've worried about adequate driver support. The on-board optical has been working decent enough for me thus far however.

Yea, you are missing something. PCIe slots will not accept PCI cards at all, no way no how. They are in a way 'backwards' compatible... for example;

a 1x card will work in a 4x slot
a 4x card will work in an 8x slot
and an 8x card will work in a 16x slot.

But no matter if it is a 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x or 16x slot, a PCI card will absolutely not work in it. It might fit, but it sure as hell ain't gonna work.

 

[JSt0rm]

do not try to put a pci card in a pci-e slot. It will not work. The reason for the low latency is I think he is playing a virtual instrument so timing needs to be as tight as possible.

 

[DougoMan]

do not try to put a pci card in a pci-e slot. It will not work. The reason for the low latency is I think he is playing a virtual instrument so timing needs to be as tight as possible.

Exactaly.

I use the Synthology Ivory Grand soft synthesizer to emulate a Yamaha C7 Rock Piano.

It sounds very similar to the piano that Elton John plays.

Since the sound has to go from the midi piano --> sound card ---> speakers, there can be a perceptible lag if cables are not as short as possible and lag kept to a minimum.

6ms of lag was very noticable on my old firewire setup. When I got it down to 1.3ms with PCI and 192k support I was much happier.

 

[Tyranicus]

Then what you want is a PCIe sound card.

 

[JSt0rm]

It's not just a pci-e sound card that he wants. He needs something with excellent drivers that can hit that latency.

I use protools HD myself and depending on your budget you could try to get something like this

http://www.virtuavia.eu/shop/pcie-4-x-pci-expansion-atx-kit.html

^^ I dont know how good this is. I just ordered one myself to find out.

http://www.magma.com/ <-- these work for sure but are $$$$

or a new card from these guys

http://www.rme-audio.de/en_index.php

 

[JSt0rm]

http://www.apogeedigital.com/ check them as well. They play very nice with mac osx

You may also want to see what the core audio drivers do on there own with the built in audio card. I haven't researched this but you may be surprised. In this case I would recommend picking up something like this.

http://www.benchmarkmedia.com/dac/dac1-usb connect it via spdif to the macpro

 

[dawks]

So what about a good normal OS/X compatible soundcard for regular music listening? Any suggestions? I don't see a PCIe option from M-Audio. Is their USB sound box (transit) any good?

 

[JSt0rm]

its ok. Look at the apogee duet from the above links. Really depends on how much you want to spend. i think the m-audio transit does ac-3 as well.