Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, David, Thresher
Traz wrote:It is a pretty good deal, especially by Mac standards. Though I'd say the Dell Studio Hybrid is in the same ballpark (setting aside OS preferences, obviously) -- at its cheapest (Yonah CPU) it's cheaper, and at a similar price-point it offers a bit more (7-in-1 media reader), especially when Dell has one of their (increasingly frequent) sales. And you can get it in a color other than white (even bamboo or leather) But obviously Intel X3100 IGP falls down in a big way compared to the 9400M, so if you're looking for a nettop with the guts to do a little gaming the Mini is a very nice package.It's kind of surprising to me that the mac mini is one of the cheapest sff computers you can buy out there, and its also one of the best.
henfactor wrote:Even though my estimates are rough, you can see that your not just getting a processor, RAM video card etc when you buy a Mac. Sure you can get a Dell for 30% less but after you factor in the features you get (both software and hardware) I think the price is quite justified.
derFunkenstein wrote:ATi has a Radeon 4870 upgrade for Mac Pros, but only those with 64-bit EFI (only for the 2008 and 2009 models). Do you already have a GeForce 8800GT? If so, you might be at the end of the line already for your Mac Pro.
derFunkenstein wrote:Are your Xeons on the 1333MHz bus or the 1600MHz one? Boot into Windows and take a look at CPU-Z. If you're riding a 1333MHz bus, you've got 32-bit EFI.
edit: I'm stupid. The System Profiler shows the bus speed on the Hardware Overview screen.
Exactly. I can upgrade RAM and HDD. I can't, in these sorts of things, upgrade the IGP.I think this is more a function of Intel's integrated solutions really being that bad
derFunkenstein wrote:Sorry for the double-post, but apparently Thresher is in luck.
Apparently the Radeon 4870 Mac version can run in any Mac Pro, and you can flash your own PC parts. The problem, as I see it, would be cabling - don't those things require two PCIe connectors, and therefore probably two Molex connectors. You'll either need the extracted 4870 drivers from the 10.5.7 leak or the special new build of 10.5.6 that comes with new Minis/iMacs/Nehalem Mac Pros. So much for having to spend a gazillion dollars.
crazybus wrote:The Mac Pro has never been a great value proposition
ssidbroadcast wrote:Uh hey guys, sorry to break up the argument but there's a small disappointment I wanted to express:
When the iMac refresh hit the rumor mill, I was really hoping for the iMac to get C2Quads. Sure, OS X probably doesn't need 2 more cores, but (supposedly) OS X 10.6 will have this "grand central" api/framework going for it. I was thinking that in order to get a larger base of users with more than 2 cores, Apple would give the iMac 4 cores so that developers can capitalize on that.
Oh well.
derFunkenstein wrote:crazybus wrote:The Mac Pro has never been a great value proposition
Uh, no. In the Core 2 based Xeon era, the Mac Pro was pretty competitively priced with stuff from Dell and HP.
Right now we have no idea if it's a good value proposition because Nehalem Xeons are not out on the open market yet.