HELP: Need Mac upgrade advice

murrayhillmac

murrayhillmac

New Member
Hello LUG!
Glad to see this venerable forum is still going strong...

I have a Dual 2 GHz PowerPc G5 (I know!) with 1.5 GB RAM
Using Logic 7 (I know, I know...)
using Apogee Ensemble.

I want to upgrade to a Macpro and upgrade to Logic 9...
SO
1) what should I get: Imac, or Macpro tower?
2) is this the right time to buy a used Mac?
3) where is the best place for used Macs?
4) my budget ceiling is $1,900 US.

thanks for reading this, and I appreciate any advice you can give me!
 
A couple of things worth bearing in mind:

With a Mac Pro, you have PCIe slots and internal space for up to 4 HDs. As well as that, upgrading RAM (or adding or swapping HDs) is very straightforward.
You need an external monitor with a Mac Pro, but presumably you could use the monitor from your G5.
At present the Mac Pros start new at 2,499 USD - so you would be looking at getting a used model anyway.

The current iMacs are very fast, have a very good screen and are recent models, whereas even the current Mac Pros are around 18 months old. If you don't need the Mac Pro only features I mentioned, the iMac looks to be comparatively good value.

kind regards

Mark
 
Markdvc said:
The current iMacs are very fast, have a very good screen and are recent models, whereas even the current Mac Pros are around 18 months old. If you don't need the Mac Pro only features I mentioned, the iMac looks to be comparatively good value.
Click to expand...

I was in the same boat, my old macro died and I had to get a new one, but after checking out the iMac I went for that.

The rumoured "new generation" of macros with Thunderbolt being just round the corner have been going on for months and months so I just got the iMac, bunged 16GB of ram and an SSD system drive plus 2GB drive as internal and I have a way better system than I had with the macpro, plus enough money saved for a holiday.
 
thank you Mark, for your reply!

The only thing keeping from getting a new Imac- it only has one Firewire (800) port. My Ensemble (400) would take that port, and I would have to chain them with my external hard drives. Just worried about bottleneck and/or interference with Logic performance...
I will have to study this further...
 
Pete Thomas said:
Markdvc said:
The current iMacs are very fast, have a very good screen and are recent models, whereas even the current Mac Pros are around 18 months old. If you don't need the Mac Pro only features I mentioned, the iMac looks to be comparatively good value.
Click to expand...
The rumoured "new generation" of macros with Thunderbolt being just round the corner have been going on for months and months so I just got the iMac, bunged 16GB of ram and an SSD system drive plus 2GB drive as internal and I have a way better system than I had with the macpro, plus enough money saved for a holiday.
Click to expand...

SSD system drive... so that's also what I should be looking out for?
Thank you Pete.
 
murrayhillmac said:
SSD system drive... so that's also what I should be looking out for?
Thank you Pete.
Click to expand...

Works very well here.

You bring up a good point about 1 FW port, but ideally you'd use the thunderbolt for externals. Yes, a bit pricy right now, but still worth it compared with what you'd be paying for a current Macpro without Thunderbolt.


With the internal SSD on the iMac you can still also have an internal 2GB sata anyway

I'm not actually using any external thunderbolts, but I got a thunderbolt adaptor and plugged in an old Hewlett Packard 19" monitor and it just worked straight away as a second screen, lovely!
 
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