My Mac Pro Experience

Got my stock 2.66 MP about a week ago and wanted to use it for a bit before giving my impressions. I run a graphic design business and am trading up from a 3-year old G5 dual 2.0. My primary workflow is in Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, plus all the MS Office apps, so Rosetta performance is obviously a big deal for me.
I installed an additional 2GB of RAM that I ordered from memory2go.com (2x1g) -- so far it's working flawlessly, no errors from rember.
I added a 500gb perpendicular barracuda in the second drive bay, and pulled a 250 SATA-1 drive from my old G5 in the third, giving me a Terabyte of internal storage (plus a firewire 150 Gb).
Performance:
This thing is very, very fast. The slight, but noticeable lag in the finder that my G5 had is gone. Everything is instantaneous. All the iLife apps just smoke and the Rosetta based apps are as fast or faster than my G5. I honestly can't tell the difference in Photoshop or Illustrator. Disk access is much faster than my G5 and files open and save much quicker. The stock video card is fine for my uses (I'm not a PC gamer -- that's what my X360 is for) -- it drives my 21 inch CRT and 17 inch LCD without any trouble.
Issues:
I had a **** of a time migrating from my G5 using the migration assistant. Target disk mode just would never complete (gave up after 7 hours), so I pulled the drive from the G5 and dropped it in the 4th bay. It completed after 3 hours, but none of my documents made it across. My user account, login and most of my settings were fine, but random things didn't come across. I DON'T recommend using the migrator from a PPC based system.
I had the "volume keys don't work" problem that's been reported here -- a reboot fixed it. I got random crashes in Illustrator, which was fixed by trashing the preferences file.
I tried to put in a 3rd party DVD burner in the second drive bay, and it caused a kernel panic on startup. I'm going to play with the jumpers to see if I can get it to work, otherwise I'll just put it in a spare firewire enclosure.
I'm waiting for the Parallels update or the Boot Camp SATA fix before doing any Windows experimentation.
Other than that, it's been a fantastic machine and I'm very happy with the purchase. Hope you find this helpful.
Jeff

[iIt's good to finally read something positive in these MacPro discussions.
Bear in mind that this is a technical support forum where users get help for their technical issues rather than a "feel good about your purchase" forum.
As for the Mac Pro itself, from what I've seen it's a extremely stable system and relatively problem-free system. You might want to have a look in the MacBook forums for a comparison of the number of recurring issues. Only then will you appreciate how good the Mac Pro is.

Similar Messages

  • My Mac Pro Experience (coming from PowerBook)

    Hey All, I recently bought Apple's new power horse, and I thought I'd share my initial experience using it.
    A little background
    For the last few years I've been using a PowerBook G4 as my primary computer. I was about to buy a PowerMac when Apple made the announcement that they were going Intel, so I decided to put off a new computer purchase until they came out with the Intel-based PowerMac. When they finally came out with the machine a couple weeks ago, at first I was going to wait a month or two, giving time for any first-rev issues to surface. But turns out that's a lot easier said than done--on Saturday, after Flash froze up on me for the 3rd time that day, I ran to the Apple Store to get my Mac Pro.
    Usage
    I got the standard configuration and have since added a 160gb HDD for Windows from NewEgg and a another gb of memory from Crucial. Looking forward the plan is to go up to 4gb of memory, get ATI's Radeon X1900 XT when the Mac edition comes out, and grab a 500gb backup HDD.
    To migrate my data over, I decided not to use the Migration Assistant as I didn't want to move any preferences or system files for apps I've uninstalled, etc.. So instead I just hooked up an ethernet cable between the computers. First I moved my apps, then my email, then my iTunes libraray, then all other files in my Desktop, Documents, Music, Photos, and Sites. I was already using .Mac syncing for my Bookmarks, Calendars, Contacts and Keychains, so that part was easy-- just enabled syncing.
    Coming from a PowerBook, this thing is ridiculously fast. All these little things that took several seconds to load on my PowerBook are now instantaneous (loading Dashboard widgets for the first time after boot, for example). I have not noticed a performance hit running non-universal apps under Rosetta, however before I got more memory, the system's memory usage would almost max out when I was using Photoshop, so that extra 1GB definitely makes a difference there. One thing that's exciting about this computer is knowing it's only going to get faster as more applications become universal, Mac OS X Leopard comes out and has better 64-bit support, and as I add more RAM.
    It's also very quiet. The new Xeons don't run very hot, and with the aid of a heatsink that spans the entire width of the machine on top of it, the fans are barely audible. The loudest part about it is the hard drive.
    Boot Camp installation was just as easy as all the articles say. Windows runs pretty well on it– it lasted a full hour before crashing! I installed a program called MacDrive (www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive6) that enables Windows to access Mac-formatted hard drives. One thing that's worth a mention about MacDrive is that you have the option of making those drives read-only, so if I get some crazy worm or virus or whatever, it won't stand a chance corrupting any of my important data on the OS X drive.
    But the main reason I installed Windows was for the games. While I was sleeping I had Steam download and install Half-Life 2. This morning I opened it up to check the performance. It's not bad at all–-with a 1680x1050 resolution (native 20" Cinema Display res), the recommended video settings were as follows:
    - model detail: high
    - texture detail: high
    - shader detail: high
    - water detail: reflect world (of options: basic reflection, reflect world, reflect all)
    - shadow dtail: high
    - color correction - disabled
    - antialiasing mode: none (of options: none, 2x, 4x, 8x)
    - filtering mode: trilinear (of options: bilinear, trilinear, anisotropic 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x)
    - wait for vertical sync: disabled
    - high dynamic range - full
    The high dynamic range capability is particularly exciting to me because my gaming pc crashed every time I tried playing The Lost Coast, Valve's high dynamic range demo level. So, not bad at all.
    Annoyances
    Big thing here is the lack of the wireless module. Unless I want to span a cable across my room, I need wireless internet. A temporary solution to this is I have my PowerBook sharing its wireless connection with the Mac Pro over ethernet.
    Not all Mac applications work on it yet, due to the x86 64-bit architecture. So far the programs I have tried to run that won't include Parallels (basically a VirtualPC for Intel Macs), Cisco VPN Client, and MySQL Administrator. The iStat Pro widget is also acting up.
    On the Windows side, there are several things Apple could improve on. The biggest one here is the Eject key-- it will only open, but not close, the cd tray. If you have two optical drives installed, it will open both of them together (whereas on OS X it opens/closes the top one, and ALT+Eject opens/closes the bottom one).
    With the exception of these minor inconveniences (which probably won't even be around a month from now) my experience has been completely positive. The only time I've had any sort of trouble was when I tried accessing a mounted drive that was no longer physically connected, forcing me to relaunch Finder, but this is a well-known issue that has nothing to do with the specific machine.
    If you're thinking about getting a Mac Pro, my advice is to go for it.
    - Brandon
    Mac Pro   Mac OS X (10.4.7)  

    [iIt's good to finally read something positive in these MacPro discussions.
    Bear in mind that this is a technical support forum where users get help for their technical issues rather than a "feel good about your purchase" forum.
    As for the Mac Pro itself, from what I've seen it's a extremely stable system and relatively problem-free system. You might want to have a look in the MacBook forums for a comparison of the number of recurring issues. Only then will you appreciate how good the Mac Pro is.

  • Any Mac Pro experience with 26" Acer-al2616wd

    http://reviews.cnet.com/lcd-monitors/acer-al2616wd-flat-panel/4507-3174_7-322280 37.html?tag=nav
    Did a search here and couldn't find anything specific to this monitor. Have a chance to upgrade at work and the Apple display is not in the running. If you've had any experience with this monitor, I'd like to hear it. I will be doing high-end print production on it. I curently have a Lacie Electron Blue IV 22" which looks nice but is square which I hate when making tabloid layouts.
    The computer is a G5 1.8 GHz. It's a bit old but it chugs along quite well.
    MBP 17" / G4 iMac / G5 MPro (work)   Mac OS X (10.3.9)  

    I'm using a Mac Pro (Intel 2 x 2.66 GHz) with NVidia 7300 and this monitor. I love it. It's amazing. Connected via single link DVI. Beware though, Acer shipped several models with a crippled native resolution through DVI. Resolved by firmware update that service has to provide.
    the one big problem is Apple needs to update the video card drivers to solve a blinking display issue when coming out of sleep. For me this is a minor issue for a beautiful 26" display, but getting really annoying.
    http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1095405

  • New Mac Pro performance versus a Dual 1.8 ghz G5

    I just wanted to give some feedback of my new Mac Pro experience and hopefully get some feedback about it.
    I recently updated to from a 1.8 dual core G5 to a 3.0 dual quad core Intel machine. In "core" processing (burning from disk and encoding) is sustainably faster (from 30 mins to 10 mins when encoding). The biggest disappointment is just the day to day operation. It isn't faster. I wanted to see Photoshop, iTunes and other programs to just jump up when I launch them (they just take as long to load maybe a little faster) and other just basic mac processes to work really quickly but the speed of the interface is the same as it is on my powermac. It still is paging my hard drive and isn't loading all my data when I do searches (I probably need to leave it running over night to get the hard drive completely paged). I have had this weird fan issue that makes the fans ALOT louder than my powermac (have read many posts here about that issue). Also have been having weird midi issues where my fire wire speakers don't work when I put the computer to sleep and wake it and I have plug my headphones in multiple times before they will be recognized by the computer.
    My intial feeling is that the operating system hasn't been fully built up around the mac pro as it is for the powermac. I feel that the powermac was more "integrated" with the Os.
    I also have heard that the new version of the OS is supposed to make better use the core processers. Therefore making tasks like hard drive searches and program launching faster. My fear is that part of using the core processors is on software like Adobe to write code to use them.
    I have been on the phone with Apple about the speaker issue. I think I'm just going to bring my speakers into a Apple Store and repeat my issue. I also want to see if my headphone port is messed up (because it takes the headphones but seems "loose").
    Thanks for listening to my concerns.

    Migration Assistant, we began to see a year ago, was causing most systems to run like molasses and sluggish. So that is #1. There is no way to really see the potential at all with 1GB of RAM and 2GB gets it at least off the starvation diet.
    8GB (4 x 2? 8 x 1?) if you use large files (750MB and above) AND you then use the "enable VM Buffer plug-in" from Adobe.
    If you were use to using a 750GB drive, that would also help explain why. if you hate launching... don't - just leave them up.... or boot off a RAID.
    but be sure to set PS scratch to another drive than boot drive if possible.
    When you stop seeing swap files and pageouts, then you know that you are a step further. Tiger or Leopard can still use available memory for cache or for virtual scratch space to some extent that also can improve performance... once running.
    You'll want to reformat the 750GB drive to native GUID/GPL partition map from the PPC/APL it has.
    I don't even keep /users on boot drive (its there, just in case a program thinks it needs to be there) but ~/ home is on 2nd drive or RAID, just to insure that the boot drive can do its thing and not get slowed down by also having to serve for other tasks and programs.
    The new Seagate 7200.11 750/1000GB drive has better multi-user functionality, though the Hitachi seems to be faster overall, except... not all Hitachi models work well on Mac Pro (or didn't as I don't keep up). Which is why I have been using strictly WD Raptor and Caviar (RE/RE2 and SE16) for the last year, they seem to be okay (and some el cheapo MaxLine Pro based on price).
    Today, 2 x 1GB costs a mere $139, while a year ago it would have set someone back $700-800.

  • Has anyone experience Mac Pro Server RAID card failure?

    RAID card of our company's Mac Pro server broke twice in less than 12 months, resulting in our server being out of office for more than 11 weeks for repair. I really would like to know if we are just unlucky or if this kind of hardware failure happened also to other people?
    Thanks for your help.

    Hi
    I know it's no consolation to you but judging from my experience I think you've been unlucky.
    I've installed Apple RAID Cards in numerous XServes and MacPros at many sites and apart from the rare battery failure they've all gone OK and are still working as intended AFAIK.
    HTH?
    Tony

  • Experience Mac Pro with SSD regarding noise

    Does somebody has experience Mac Pro running with SSD Disks regarding noise ? Is there a huge impact on lower noise instead you have normal Harddisks ?
    any comments more than welcome !

    without hdd noice then when you have an SSD you notice other things that were masked
    SSD does not make noise

  • RAID card in 2009 Mac Pro & EMC Retrospect 8.x: Experience

    I spent the last few days in the often bizarre world of trying to figure the best way to utilize the 2009 RAID card with the newly released version 8 Retrospect from EMC (Iomega). Here's my warning: From my experience version 8 and the RAID card do not get along at all and often result in that dreaded black screen stating that you have to press the power button and restart in multiple languages, meaning the computer has crashed really badly.
    But let me start from the beginning:
    we recently got 2 new Western Dig RE4GP 2TB drives which were installed in slot 2 and 4 and then RAIDed together (RAID 0 I think). I then tried to backup 700GB from a Seagate ES2 drive to the new RAID volume using Retro8. After a few minutes I got the black multilanguage crash sign, forcing a manual power off. Not good. A few more similar bad experiences and I gave up on version 8 and went back to version 6.1x. This version seemed to work much better and I was able to backup the 700GB data to the RAID volume. The next test was restoring the 700GB data on the RAID volume. So I wanted to restore the data to the same RAID volume, so the computer would be reading the Retrospect dataset and then writing the data back to the same drive. Maybe not optimal in drive throughput performance but surely technical feasible (yes, ideally you would backup the data to one/another drive and then restore the data to a third target drive, in my case the RAID volume). Turns out this too is a no go. After restoring 300GB the dreaded multilanguage sign appears and again, after inspecting the error logs, it seems the RAID card has just freaked out. At this point I am getting very mad at Apple as I can hardly find any really usable information on the RAID card anywhere on the web plus making a $6k computer perform in a rather delicate way which is not the usual way I experience Macs. Questions in my mind: Do the drives need to be in adjacent slots, is there a problem with the 2 TB drives, why can't the card read and restore to the same RAID volume, why does the RAID card crash the system so badly, isthe computer being damaged by crashing like this etc. I am getting the impression that this expensive RAID card's performance is kind of flaky and there might be some software issues. Also I have a suspicion (I have no way of proving it) that the RAID card might be using more PCI bandwidth than it should thus causing other problems I won't get into here. So after this rant my questions would be:
    -anybody else had any success with Retrospect 8 and the RAID card?
    -might my crashes not really stem from the RAID card but from some other thing I am doing?
    -any pointers on things I might be missing?
    There just seems to be so little user feedback on the RAID card here or elsewhere which I think might be because relatively few people have the RAID card.
    Any advice would be great.

    You realize that not all disk drives are certified to work with Apple's
    RAID card?
    Is the ES2 also controlled by the RAID card?
    Those RE4s are very very new. Does Apple or WD list them as certified to work on that card? you know, the way they often use to in the case of SCSI controllers and disk drives.
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306231
    http://www.apple.com/macpro/technology/storage.html
    http://www.apple.com/support/macpro/ - links to articles pertinent to Mac Pro such as Pro RAID card.

  • Mac Pro Vista Install Experience Notes

    Well, I read many posts on this board and others before taking the plunge. Got my new Pro about two weeks ago; decided to do this cause the kids are buggin me about "games", whatever those are. Man, oh man, do you PC users ever have my undying sympathy and respect after going through this! Man, and, uh, WOman, you've certainly got a pair, <choose which pair here>. ; )
    Its hard to believe all the fun I've been missing by actually USING my computer all these years as a MAC user instead of working on it! YOWSER!
    Anyways, for all you masochists out there, here's some painful details:
    Still having a very clean HD, or so I thought! I installed bootcamp and followed the instructions to create a 32GB partition (and NO more than 32GB mind you, because, this is WINDOWS and that's what it said).
    Then, having created my trusty Vista install disk (oh, did I forget to mention, how could I, that it took me 2 HOURS to get a MICROSOFT PRODUCT KEY by following just these easy 79 steps? AND THEN I DIDN'T NEED IT! Funny, ha ha. Boy, they had me rolling after that one!)
    Then, following the bootcamp instructions carefully, I started windows, which then asked me for the second time to identify a partition for windows. Weird though, it listed FOUR partitions when I could swear I only had 2: one for OSX and the one I created in bootcamp for Vista! Four? Yep! Well, this one should be easy....just select the one that is 32GB cause that is the size I created in bootcamp....click ok....and YOUR DISK DRIVERS ARE SO SCREWED UP THAT WE ARE LAUGHING IN REDMOND! or some such error code!
    After reading enough notes on this board (thank you, all), I learned that there seemed to be a general problem with the partitioning recognition in windows, and that many, by the simple act of deleting a partition, got Windows to work correctly.
    NOW THE HARD PART: staring at the list of partitions, It said I had a 200GB, a 201GB, a 128MB and a 32GB partition. Huh? I only have a 250GB drive! How's that work? After thinking this through scientifically, I mentally flipped a coin and decided to delete the 201GB partition for the reasons that it was listed second in the list and 201GB sounded FUNNY. So.....click on 201GB....then delete....ZAP! GONE! with a friendly little reminder that all my data was being deleted! yikes!
    well, after a couple of crashes on startup, Vista now seems to be working somewhat as expected, and, JOY OF JOYS!, holding down the option key I could still boot into good old OS X and there was my data! whew!
    so, I don't know if this will help anybody or not, because its not very scientific and all, as I just seemed to have lucked into picking the right partition to delete! and still live to see another day.
    please, someone pat me on the back before I realize what I just did.
    Mac Pro   Mac OS X (10.4.8)   2GB RAM, nVidia graphics

    It was a "learning experience." There are always hidden partitions. That 128MB is probably the Mac EFI partition? There is always some hidden partition in-between each user partition too.
    I would install Vista but afraid I'm not ready to install all the security, AV and other tools to feel safe on the net.

  • Anyone experience flashing a NVIDIA GEFORCE 8800ULTRA (PC-version) for Mac Pro 3.1 ...?

    I have a NVIDIA GeForce 8800ULTRA (that I bought new, a few years ago, for my PC) that I would like to use (if possible) for my Mac Pro 3.1
    I know... There are 8800GT's for the Mac Pro 1.1 & 2.1 ...
    But the 8800ULTRA was the flagship, so I would like to use it for my Mac Pro, if possible.
    Anyone experience in flashing video cards...?

    As the User Tip indicates, there are tradeoffs. It will not work "just like a genuine Mac" card:
    If you are Meet ALL of these:
    • running 10.8.3 or later AND
    • don't care about "no boot screens" etc AND
    • can re-wire or otherwise "work out" the power cabling, THEN:
    You can use many more cards, even most "PC-only cards".

  • What USB 3.0 card should I get for early 2009 Mac Pro so I can connect the Drobo 5D? They say get CalDigit or Sonnet. Anyone have preference or experience with reliability. Trying to find which is better.

    What USB 3.0 card should I get for early 2009 Mac Pro so I can connect the Drobo 5D? They say get CalDigit or Sonnet. Anyone have preference or experience with reliability with this. I am running Lion and Trying to find which is better as I know from experience not all cards are created equal. Thanks in advance for your help!

    yakov536 wrote:
    High Point RocketU Quad USB 3.0 for Mac is working great for me. Had an issue with CD/DVD Drive which was resolved with most current driver downloaded from the support site.
    Running Moutain Lion on Early 2009, mirroring two Seagate Go Flex 2TB USB 3.0 Drives. Installed in Slot 4.
    Using it primarily with VMWare Fusion for Virtual Drives. Windows, Unbuntu and other OS running really well.
    HPT Support was responsive and very helpfull using the WEB Portal under the product page.
    I have some comments and a suggestion:
    Have you tried your setup with a SD/CF combo card reader (like the Lexar or Kingston FCR-H63)? Does the card appear on the desktop when first plugged in?
    Did you need to fool around with any kind of power issues in installing this card in the x4 PCIe slot of the MacPro?
    Suggestion. Have you tried one of the fixed in this article to cure the BT issues in MacPro 3,1?
    Good luck.
    Henry

  • Does anyone else experience jittery playback even with Mac Pro 2013?

    I completed installing all my software on a new Mac Pro late 2013 and eagerly began working in Final Cut Pro 10.1.1 to see how much more improved my editing experience would be versus my old 2010 27" iMac. I was already experiencing jittery playback that would occur usually right after clicking the play button, but I'm sad to say that I'm still having that issue with the new computer.
    My specs are:
    3ghz 8-core xeon, 32 GB RAM, dual Firepro D-500 graphics and my projects are not stored on a Pegasus R6 thunderbolt RAID 5.
    I really expected skimming and playing back smoother like a hot knife through butter, but I'm dissapointed. I don't know if this is just a FCPX issue that still needs fixing, or if it's something that everybody experiences.

    Thank you Russ. Here's more info and also when I said my projects were "not" stored on the RAID, that was a typo. They ARE stored in the same Library as the event on the RAID.
    Media originals: H.264 MOV files shot with Canon DSLR at 23.98 fps 1920x1080.
    Transcoded files: Optimized and Proxy
    Project settings: Manually set at 1920x1080, 23.98fps, Pro Res 422, 48kHz sound.
    Project playback: Proxy mode
    There are no multicam clips created. I've created a few compound clips, the majority of which are for the purpose of linking a video track to another audio track (syncing cleaner audio recording).
    The Library contains the one project I'm working on (the wedding video) and the one Event that contains the media. The footage in the event is of a wedding day with about 1,100 clips total, all of which are identical in format and settings so there's no mixing of frame rates, etc. The Library is stored where I store all my other libraries from other jobs: On the external thunderbolt Pegasus RAID.
    I don't have any other events in the Library. My workflow is to have a new Library created for each job and keep everything together in it.
    The current project I'm working on was created on 10.1.
    To be fair, I'd like to clarify that the jittery issue is not a constant and is not as bad as when I was working on my 2010 iMac using a single disc external firewire drive to store my libraries. On that machine, I accepted the playback issue considering my firewire wasn't fast enough. The jittery playback I experience now on the Mac Pro is very minimal (Like sometimes for about 2 seconds right as I click Play), but my concern is why do I have it at all considering my footage type isn't as demanding as say multicam clips or complex composites or 4K media, and that the Mac Pro combined with the RAID are so fast.
    I may perhaps have unreasonable expectations from this machine. The reason I decided to invest in it was to have a glitch free editing experience and not have to worry about slowing myself down to let the computer catch up. The thing is, If this is normal, then my frugal mind would tell me why not return this expensive Mac Pro and save thousands with a maxed-out new iMac combined with my thunderbolt RAID?

  • New hard drive in a Mac Pro - my experience.

    After taking delivery of my MacPro I was keen to add an extra hard drive to use in conjunction with amateur level video editing and photo imaging software.
    At first I bought a 3.0 Gb/s, 320 GB Seagate 7200.10. and it worked Ok but did not seem any faster than the OEM drive (250 GB Western Digital SE) . XBench confirmed that it was in fact 20% slower overall.
    I then consulted this forum and read the many posts re the Seagate firmware problem and other suggestions for suitable hard drives. To be honest it was all great stuff but, for me, a little overwhelming. So today, back went the Seagate in exchange for a 3.0 Gb/s, 250 GB, Maxtor Diamond Max 10 which was all I could afford. I installed the drive, what a dream the MacPro is, partioned it and ran XBench. The Maxtor is 2.5 to 3 times faster than the Seagate and is a quiet drive.
    So if you, like me, want a single, affordable fast and quiet drive, the Maxtor does the job. I am sure other drives are just as good if not better but if you find the research confusing, the Maxtor seems to be a safe choice.
    Also, congratulations for reading this forum before making a purchase - it saves you the 20% restocking fee for returns!

    I want to install another hard drive in my Mac Pro. Just looking for something in the 250GB or smaller range - Western Dig. Maxtor, etc.
    I see plenty of SATA 3Gbs drives - what do I look for in terms of specs. The dimensions are listed in the Mac Pro booklet, however, what type of connector is needed or not needed - seems no cables are needed... how many pins, etc.????
    Appreciate any help.

  • I am thinking of using a Mac pro for share trading. Can anyone share their experience and suggest specs for 30 -40 monitors etc

    Hi
    I am thinking of using a Mac Pro for share trading.
    I am proposing to start small but want to be able to expand up to 30+ monitors.
    It must be super quick.
    Any help with hardware would be appreciated.
    Software is secondary at this point , but open to advice.
    I have an iphone and ipad so feel it will better intergrate usung Apple
    regards
    David

    There is no desktop machine that I know of that will support 30+ monitors as is.
    Fill the 3 or 4 PCIe slots of any logic board with three port graphics cards and you have the physical cap without additional hardware.
    Software is secondary at this point
    No, without software, how can you control more than the monitor limit of the OS?
    How can you set up the monitors to display the various programs that you will wish to use simultaneously?
    Software is a major consideration.
    Matrox (and others) have solutions for additional monitors beyond the physical capabilities of generally offered graphics cards.
    The caveat here, however, is support software is typically reserved for Windows and Linux systems.
    Matrox has a single 8 display card:
    http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/graphics_cards/m_series/m9188pciex16/
    Matrox has solutions specifically targeting the finance market:
    http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/solutions/trading_analyst/
    Though the Mac Pro has more than adequate processing power, I think that you will find (through research) that building a solid machine capable of using several multi monitor cards is going to be what you will need to support more than 8-10 monitors with conventionally offered hardware.
    Fun stuff:
    http://www.digitaltigers.com/zenview.asp

  • Anyone have Mac Pro w/ 7300 GT, experience? Happy?

    Online for the X1900, the price is not that much more, so is the 7300GT good enough? Do others here have it in the MAC PRO and happy with it?
    I think the MBP uses a X1600, so am assuming the 7300GT may be a bit stronger?
    So I have a 7300 GT, just wondering if other users are happy and what sort of difference would I see in FCP or motion if upgraded, although to see a big jump, I think I would have to go Quadro or something like that!
    Please advise!
    Thanks!

    the 7300 is a very low end card
    get the x1900 it is WAY better
    DAVE

  • Mac Pro 2,8 QuadCore - MS Small Business Server 2008 Premium

    Hello,
    I want to do something little bit strange..
    Is it possible to install/run SBS 2008 Premium incl. SQL Server 2008 on a 2010 Mac Pro?
    I successfully installed this OS on a late 2009 Mac Mini (2,5 Ghz - 8 GB RAM - 200 GB SSD) and so far it works fine.. although I already installed it yesterday.
    But.. I want a little bit more performance, so I want to use the Mac Pro (16 GB RAM - SSD). The plan is to install the SBS 2008 on a Boot Camp Partition and use the Mac Pro only as a Windows Server.
    Does anybody have any experience with this?
    Thanks a lot and greetings from Hamburg, Germany
    Marco

    Hi,
    I just want to add what happened over the past few weeks.
    Everything is fine!
    Our SBS 2008 Server runs on a 2.8 Quad Core Mac Pro and everything seems to work correctly. What I didn't know before is that one can install an actual Windows-Version (not only Win7, but also SBS 2008) natively on a an 64-Bit Intel-Mac.
    I formatted the drive as MBR (MasterBoot Record) and then did the normal installation process. During the install process I had to install the Ethernet-Driver manually for finishing the overall installation. After that there's only the installation for the BootCamp drivers left, which is important to use the correct driver for the graphics card, Apple keyboard and mouse etc.
    Before that I've tested it with a 2009 MacMini and a Core i3 2010 iMac. And it worked, too. So, for the future I could only use Macs if I want to run Windows natively
    In addition to the MacPro SBS 2008, I installed Windows 7 (32-Bit) natively on a 20" white iMac 2006, another license on a 2008 MacMini and a third license on a 2010 Core i3 iMac.
    So far, everything is ok... love it
    Marco

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