Multiple monitors is an area I also have experience with on the mac pros, and is the primary reason I would buy one over any other mac or PC :-) having built a 6 monitor display to be used as a background in a TV studio.
The current mac pros video card has one DVI and one display port adapter, so you will need to factor DVI adaptors into the mix. Also, I would highly recommend you buy your extra video card(s) at the time you purchase the mac! It is possible to mix and match the cards that go in later on, but the difficult part is availability. It would be nice to just be able to buy a cheap PC video card and use it, but that wont work. Buying an extra card to go in later on (say in 3 years time from now) would mean that your only options would be a) the top end card that apple has at the time, for a very high price. b) a closer match to your existing card available from a repair shop through GSX - usually these have to be for replacing broken parts and can be tricky unless you have a mate who can order you one on the side, or c) buying a second hand or broken mac pro on ebay and robbing the cards from it. Having been in that position with the above mentioned studio mac, we went with stealing cards from other machines. These machines being the netboot server which didn't need that card, and thankfully worked without it, and from an unused one that was in stock. Most home users wont have the luxury of a pile of mac-pros at their disposal to raid for parts... It sure was fun though, and of course speed wise the mac pros blow the imacs and macbook pros out of the water. They really are incredibly well built lovely computers and well worth the money. On Aug 29, 11:47 am, Jason Davies <[email protected]> wrote: > Tobio wrote: > > The thing is, for your situation I do think they are overkill. If its > > just your storage you would like to clear up and you don't need the > > macpro power or multiple graphics cards + monitors capabilies, then > > I'd suggest trying a mac mini, and attaching a device such as a drobo, > > or some other similar firewire disk enclosure. It will work out far > > cheaper, consume less power, and probably be quieter depending on the > > noise of the drobo or attached raid. > > > You could even get started with a usb hub and attach all of your > > various drives through that, then move it to a safer array later on. > > Well, I maxed out the ability of a Macbook Pro with 4 gigs of RAM such > that it ran like treacle and only an SSD could help (that's with routine > working, not an unusual load). I've got three monitors (counting the > laptop screen) which I use fully (so mac mini won't do; would need a > second USB monitor adaptor and it won't run better than the Macbook pro) > and often hand stuff off to my old G5 via Screen Sharing to do if it's > not urgent (eg OCRing a document of several hundred pages through > Acrobat). I work on the machine up to 12 hours a day virtually every day. > > In a way the question is: if I am still using a machine in 5-7 years, do > I want it to be an iMac like the one in the other room that seems really > slow, or do I want it to be a Mac Pro;-) > > thanks for the input. It's little things like this that only someone > with experience can answer. Tidying up the external disks is a bonus > (they're already on a USB hub), it's the processor engine and monitors I > really need. > > It's all academic until I can put the money together so expect some more > questions sometime around...May, probably... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sussex Mac User Group" group. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/smug?hl=en-GB.
