I was sitting in my office the other day, working away on my MacBook Pro. Let it be known that I love my setup. 15″ MBP with a 23″ cinema display leaves me in dual monitor heaven… However, I got to thinking, man, I wish I had a pimped out Mac Pro to take things to the next level.
As you may or may not know, I do a lot of web and print design… and it is not uncommon for me to have Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, a few FTP programs, my handy newsreader, and about 24 Firefox tabs opened at the same time. While my MBP performs beautifully, the thought of a brand new Mac Pro makes my arms numb, and it’s not because of the fatty foods I’ve been eating recently.
‘Well, lets go check it out’ I thought… and off I went to price out an ideal Mac Pro for me. I didn’t want anything too crazy, just something that could perform to the level I needed. I would of course have to pick up another display to keep my ‘duelies’ going. Lets see what I chose and what the pricetag was!
Ok, lets head to Apple, click on Store, Mac Pro starting at $2799… Ok I’m there. Now lets configure this bad boy:
- Processor: I’ll be needing Two 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (8-core) ($800 upgrade)
- Memory: 4GB should do me nicely ($500 upgrade). Stock is 2GB, and you can upgrade all the way up to 32GB for another $8600!!! Why must memory be so darn expensive through Apple?
- RAID Card: Yep, I’ll take one of those. ($800 upgrade)
- Hard Drives: Well, lets get 2. One main drive and another used for storage and backup. Lets upgrade the first to 500GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s (a $50 upgrade) and ditto for the second drive as well. I should note, on a Mac Pro there are 4 hard drive bays.
- Graphics Card: Ok, things are starting to get a bit pricy, but I’ve got to go with the mid-road 3 x ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB ($260 upgrade).
- Displays: Yep, I’ll need an extra 23″ Apple Cinema Display ($899 upgrade). Already have another 23″ here in the office.
- Extra Optical Drive: Nah, I don’t do a lot of burning, think I’ll leave this one out.
- Airport Extreme Card: Yep ($50 upgrade).
- Software and Extras: Fibre Channel Card, modem, Mighty Mouse, Keyboard, OS X Server, plus all of the other software up for offer… I think I’ll pass.
- Apple Care Protection Plan: Lets leave this out for now. I can always purchase it at a later date ($249 upgrade).
So what’s the damage? $5,558 USD. Expensive!!! If you subtract the monitor ($899) and RAID card ($800), the system all of a sudden comes in at a more respectable $3,859. Much better. Still expensive, but I would think manageable for those out there that are considering a serious step up in performance.
Anyone I’ve talked to that owns a Mac Pro swears by it. The system is lightning quick, solid, and extremely expandable and upgradeable. They are expensive, but in my books you get what you pay for. For the design professional that needs a solid in-house system, you can’t argue with the Mac Pro. For a design geek like myself that is often on the go, and needs the extra portability, you’ll have no problem getting by on a MacBook Pro… as long as you have a nice big monitor to go with it when you’re at your home base 
I wish I could justify spending that amount at this time… While Apple does have business financing options, it’s not something I’d consider at this point, especially when you consider my system is running fine (knock on wood). Only bad thing is it does ‘chug’ from time to time when I get the spinning marble of doom.
So, are there any other Mac Pro users out there that have any advice for me? Keep what I’ve got going here? Or would you rather see me go ahead and drop the cash, take the leap, dive off the deep end?
Hugo // 06/05/2008 at 2:15 am
That’s…a bit more than the 17″ MBP I believe?
If you don’t want to spend that much, don’t forget that the iMac’s always there. I’ve done what you do on your MBP with my -white- Macbook, with no problems at all.
Unless you really need loads of storage (and you can always use external hard drives), the Mac Pro probably isn’t worth it.
Plus, the iMac is 32″, while the biggest cinema display is 30″ I think. 2″ more - many more lines of text.
moburkhardt // 06/05/2008 at 3:07 am
since when is the iMac 32″ ???
Mr. Mayor // 06/05/2008 at 7:46 am
Yeah, with the latest iMac upgrade the largest size is 24″ I believe. Apple did away with the smaller 17″ versions and went to 20″ and 24″ models.
Hugo, yeah, the 17″ MBP is stock at $2,799… with a few upgrades I’m sure I could get it in the high $3k range… but still not as expensive as my mid-range Mac Pro.
Steve W // 06/05/2008 at 8:00 am
My favorite chip merchant will sells 2GB modules: 8 GB of Mac Pro memory for $360.00 or a maximum of 16 GB for $720.00.
Some new guys sell 4GB modules: 16GB for $1250.00 or 32GB for $2500.00. I have never purchased from these eggheads.
High Roller // 06/05/2008 at 8:16 am
Yeah, I’ve always bought from 3rd party vendors for RAM. No need to pony up to Apple as their prices always seem unreasonable. Not sure if they provide some sort of ‘magical’ memory for the price. I’m pretty sure they don’t
I’ll by ‘un-magical’ memory for half the price any day.
Miigo // 06/05/2008 at 8:46 am
I wish I could afford one too.
Jacob // 06/05/2008 at 9:32 am
yh just get your memory from crucial they do mac specific memory and its really cheap i got another GB for my iMac for about £15 its way worth just installing it yourself
Brett // 06/05/2008 at 9:47 am
Definitely buy RAM and extra hard disks from a 3rd party supplier. Use the money you save (from not buying them from Apple) and get the 8800 GT video card. Obviously, the RAID card is not much use in your initial configuration. In the white-box PC world, I would say “buy the RAID card when you intend to set up a RAID system”. However, Apple’s history tends to show that if you don’t buy an option BTO, you might never be able to buy it at all when you finally need it. Judging from your software load, you might also go for 8GB of RAM.
Richard // 06/05/2008 at 9:56 am
You have not specified a use for the $800 RAID card and don’t have the drives included to take advantage of it. Speaking of the drives, you will not be backed up if you are using the second drive for backup AND storage. Where are you going to back up your storage. I would be more inclined to get the minimum drive that the vendor will ship the machine with and buy the drives I wanted from someone other than Apple. Ditto the RAM. I have not looked around recently, but some of the vendors used to have a package deal where they would put in a bunch of non-Apple RAM for a much better price.
An extra optical drive? Get one from Newegg for about $30.
A 23″ screen from Apple? I think not. It has not been refreshed in quite some time and there are some decent 28″ ones around for nearly the same price if you shop around. At least check out the 24″ alternatives. If you are doing serious PS work don’t even think about a 20″ iMac because of its screen.
I have lost track of an article that talked about which Mac Pro to get to either add a second processor in a bit as the prices come down or upgrade to the faster ones when those prices came down as they always do when the “newer, faster, better” ones come out. But that is probably not for the faint of heart.
OK, now the big question. Do you NEED the Mac Pro or do you just WANT IT?
If you are doing almost full time PS work with a lot of rendering of very large image files you can probably figure out the productivity gains and estimate how long it takes to pay for itself. If you simply want it, then the old racing adage applies. You want to go fast? How fast do you want to go? (Speed is measured in cubic dollars.)
On the other hand, if you are working with extremely large image files all the time you may even want to think about going to the dark side because (PS) CS 4 will be a 64 bit app for Windows and not for the Mac (if there even is a CS 4 for the Mac) and it is reported that there are enormous speed gains to be had with the 64 bit app. All of that is speculation at this point as it does not exist and so there has obviously been no independent testing…but, still….
If your answer falls somewhere in between the need vs. want category, perhaps something less than a fully tricked out Mac Pro would actually accomplish what you want done. You could use a KVM switch and be able to access either your MacBook Pro or the Mac Pro using the same monitor and so on which would save some $$$.
Oh, there is also the matter of the additional licenses for the software involved if you intend to install it on both machines.
Maybe what you have now is not such a bad deal after all, huh?
Mr. Mayor // 06/05/2008 at 10:32 am
Richard,
You’re right, what I’m running now is great. Nothing wrong with it at all… it’s the ‘want’ desire that keeps kicking in. I always find myself looking into Mac Pro prices from time to time. Can’t help myself.
I am working with some very large files from time to time, but the time wasted waiting vs. the purchase of a new system probably does not even out. It would be more of a ‘luxury’ to have a new Mac Pro than anything else. The work still gets done, I just have to wait a few moments from time to time. Actually, Photoshop generally isn’t as bad as Firefox if you can believe that. A lot of delays in FF.
Thanks for your comments here Richard, very solid.
Kal // 06/05/2008 at 11:32 am
Buy it.. it’s only money haha
Eytan // 06/05/2008 at 4:06 pm
Why do you need the 3.0? Get the 2.8 for 800 less, and lose MAYBE 10% of the processing power. The extra 800 is a waste. RAM and HDs 3rd party - and you can buy refurbished standard config of the 2.8 from apple for 400 less. All of a sudden you are down to the mid 2000s.
Apple loves consumers like you - no research, just impulse “I want it all”
Ru-Dee // 06/05/2008 at 4:11 pm
I think what he meant was if he had to buy everything from Apple. Of course it’s going to cost more.
Tektx // 06/05/2008 at 9:51 pm
OWC makes memory to Apples Spec - 4GB around $200 (2×2gb). I upgraded my 1st drive to 500, and purchased second (identical WD model at Fry’s for $99 + tax. I also upgraded to the 8800 with 512mb. That gives me 6GB total memory, 1 TB HDD. I use a couple of 22″ Monitors (viewsonic’s) from Costco for $250 each. I also used the 2.8’s. Probably already more CPU than I need (understatement!), so the 3.0’s were just price pushers with little value. (I also added airport). Bought my Applecare at the CompUsa fire sale for $125.
Overall, awesome computer (just wished it fit into my MBP case!!!). Not the most portable of machines, but I love it, and remote into it from my laptop.