MacPro upgrade

[nicholas di fonzo]

Hi all,
i'd like to upgrade 2 old catalyst system...
can i buy a new Mac Pro from apple,
new SSD new graphic card and move the dongle from the older to the newest??
there is some special necessity option about the numbers of core \ ram \ graphic card??
thank you for help
best regards
Nicholas

[Spam Butterfly]

You can run Snow Leopard on the new macs, so I'd do that rather than running Lion - which goes to show how long it was since Apple refreshed their Mac Pro hardware.

The 8 Core 2.4Ghz seems to be the best compromise between performance and price. RAM makes no odds for Catalyst, so the standard 6Gb is fine.

You can buy 3.5" SSD's - OCZ's Colossus range for instance, so you don't need to buy 2.5" to 3.5" adapters.

Avoid the standard issue ATI graphics cards. They give dire performance.
You have a few choices when it comes to graphics cards:
PNY's Quadro FX4800 for Mac
nVidia Quadro 4000 for Mac

I have had some success with re-flashed GTX285 graphics cards, as have others.
The EVGA GTX285 was the graphics card of choice (and still is) for Catalyst by it was discontinued a few years ago. However, it is possible to get re-flashed PC GTX285's on eBay. These have been re-flashed to work with Mac OpenFirmware. Having built, sold, installed these into several rental and installation Catalysts, I have yet to have one go wrong. They are certainly a cheaper option to the Quadro cards and have two DVI outputs.

Best wishes,

Hugh

[Mr_P]

Just to expand on a few points:


OCZ's Colossus range for instance

120G Vertex2 3.5in is good value
as are some of the intel range.



You have a few choices when it comes to graphics cards:
PNY's Quadro FX4800 for Mac
nVidia Quadro 4000 for Mac

I have had some success with re-flashed GTX285 graphics cards, as have others.


Have had issues with some GTX285 re-flashed (not all) - just beware...
There is a UK source of these...
Nvidia Quadro4000 prices have dropped recently too - I think they are worth the money

I wouldn't pay the price for a PNY's Quadro FX4800 for Mac though! especially if apple manage to fix the ATI problem ;)

You may also want to invest in a couple of DVI Parrots to manage the EDID/HDCP if running 10.6.x and above...

S

[Spam Butterfly]

I'd agree with Parrot sentiment. A very useful addition to any Catalyst system.

Hugh

[tylerr]

I'm about to buy some new Mac Pros myself. Looks like the graphics options are now: Dual AMD FirePro D300, Dual AMD FirePro D500, or the Dual AMD FirePro D700. Any suggestions?