Wait for Penryn-based Mac Pros or not?

November 5, 2007 8:27 PM

Should I buy a new Mac Pro or wait for the Penryn version? Complications below the fold.

I really need to replace my dual 1G PowerMac G4.

I do a lot of powerhouse stuff... video editing and photo editing of huge (>1Gb) files so I think I have to go for a Mac Pro, rather than the top iMac which I think is going to be constricting in a couple of years' time. (I do a lot of time-consuming video conversion too... and like to multitask... so the more processors the better).

For technical reasons I need to upgrade to Final Cut Studio 2 fairly urgently, which won't run on my current machine.

The Mac Pro is now due for an update but the new Penryn-based version may not be out until Jan/Feb. It looks a lot faster.

So my options are:

1) Wait it out and don't upgrade. This could mean losing a big opportunity (I need FCS 2 to do something deeply cool which could net big rewards).

2) Buy an iMac and upgrade to the Penryn Mac Pro when it comes out

3) Buy the current Mac Pro

One final wrinkle: I'm in Canada and the Canadian pricing is all out of whack with the exchange rate. I suspect this will be rejigged on the next release of the Mac Pro.

Man, what a complicated, boring question. Any insights welcomed.

posted by unSane to computers & internet (21 answers total)

Can you rent access to a machine that can run FCS 2 for a short period of time so you can work on your deeply cool project and then buy a new Mac Pro later on?
posted by zachlipton at 8:30 PM on November 5, 2007

I don't know what used mac prices are like in Canada, but in the USA, they don't depreciate much. If you need a computer today, buy one today. If you need a different one in six months, sell today's computer and buy the other one.

Doesn't work quite as well with dells.
posted by b1tr0t at 8:40 PM on November 5, 2007

[sarcasm]Don't ever buy a computer now. Always keep waiting for the next model, cuz the ones that are available right now will be completely useless soon.[/sarcasm]

Desktop machines are generally more capable than laptops, cuz they aren't constrained by having to fit everything into a small package. I.e., $X will buy a lot more computer in the shape of an iMac than in the shape of a MacBook Pro.

If you're gonna be doing FCS, you're gonna need a gruntload of hard drive; look at how big the hard drives are in iMacs vs MBPs: 500 vs 160 in the top off-the-shelf models. (You can get a freakin terabyte drive in an iMac.)
posted by neuron at 8:47 PM on November 5, 2007

3) Buy the current Mac Pro
Or rather buy a refurbished Mac Pro. This way you get the benefits of a current Mac Pro and you can sell it in 6 months without losing very much. Right now they have Quad 2.66MHz Mac Pro in stock for $2199 ($2499 new).
posted by junesix at 8:48 PM on November 5, 2007

The Mini has a surprising amount of CPU power for such a cheap machine. If you put the max RAM in it, and ran a fast external Firewire drive, that might be enough to get by until the Penryn MPs come out.
posted by Malor at 9:02 PM on November 5, 2007

Buy the current Mac Pro, preferably as a refurb, do something deeply cool, if the rewards are genuinely big you can use them to upgrade next year if you find your current Mac Pro to be restricting.
posted by nowonmai at 9:05 PM on November 5, 2007

If you understand computer science at all, you know that it is generally a waste of money to buy the very latest processor because when it ships there is no operating system or software that takes advantage of any new instructions built into it for probably close to a year. Your most bang-for-the-buck almost always comes from buying one version back. Think back when the 64 bit processors came out, with no 64-bit capable operating system or software.
posted by spock at 9:32 PM on November 5, 2007

I'm in a similar situation. I'm waiting, but I have a new MacBook Pro to work on in the meantime. The Mac Pros haven't been updated in 15 months, which is insane for any computer. Several of the rumors site have been saying that the next Mac Pro is pretty much ready to go, they're just waiting on Intel to ramp up production of the Penryns. That part of me is telling you to wait.

On the other hand, as has been mentioned, the slow depreciation of Macs makes it not so bad to buy it now and then sell it whenever the Penryn's come out down the road.

The big question is, are you getting paid for what you do? If so, then I'd go ahead and buy what you need now. This becomes a no brainer if you charge per job rather than per hour, or if your slower hardware is preventing you from taking on certain jobs.

spock: While I agree that this is generally the case, I think the current moment in time is unique for Apple. The current Mac Pro is 15 months old, and was built for Tiger and before Leopard was stabilized. I'm betting that the new Mac Pro will be optimized for Leopard (and probably won't even run Tiger, similar to the new MacBooks). The fact that Apple's OS came out 10 days ago makes this a really unique situation though, and in 95% of the other cases I'd agree with you.
posted by AaRdVarK at 9:59 PM on November 5, 2007

Now that Macs have Intel cores, we're going to see updates much more often than Mac users are used to. So buy when you need to. If you can wait, hold out as long as you want, then buy. There's always going to be a new machine on the horizon.
posted by ISeemToBeAVerb at 10:07 PM on November 5, 2007

We're in a similar situation (need to make a purchase decision very soon) and will be buying a current model (dual Quad-core) rather than wait. I figure the extra cost of the new model probably won't help us much.

What we are doing, however, is buying it a bare as possible. We'll be buying non-Apple RAM and drives (RAM is about 1/6th of the price, drives are about 50% cheaper). We also won't be using Apple monitors.
posted by sycophant at 12:31 AM on November 6, 2007

@AaRdVarK:

...probably won't even run Tiger, similar to the new MacBooks

Really? Is that just because Tiger doesn't have drivers for the GMA X3100 chipset in the new MacBooks?
posted by cactus at 2:01 AM on November 6, 2007

Buy the iMac and then the Penryn one. iMacs are great machines for 12 month - 18 month use and remain competitive in that sort of timescale. They're cheap, the screens are great, and they're pretty fast, especially if you get a fast Firewire drive on there. Unless you have a 30" you want to use, need more than 4GB of memory, or have some other demands that the iMac spec restricts, it's a no brainer low budget purchase.. certainly worth it instead of the Mac Pro if you think you'll be kicking yourself in February.
posted by wackybrit at 4:55 AM on November 6, 2007

Really? Is that just because Tiger doesn't have drivers for the GMA X3100 chipset in the new MacBooks?

I believe that is exactly the reason. For the Mac Pro, I figure that the chipset is changing enough to have them not look back, but this is purely speculation on my part.
posted by AaRdVarK at 7:10 AM on November 6, 2007

If you buy a refurb mac pro ($2199 USD isn't bad) pickup ram from a third party (www.ramjet.com), and try to get the ATI x1900xl in it, instead of the geforce 7300.

Motion will fly in it, along with color, and other graphics intensive apps, as Final Cut Studio has started offloading that workload to the GPU's.

Are you planning to shoot your project in HD? What is the video format you are looking to edit in?

Refurb Mac Pro or not, I would look into a storage system for it. www.caldigit.com makes a great raid 5 box that will give you enough speed to edit and work with HD footage.
posted by mrzarquon at 9:02 AM on November 6, 2007 [1 favorite]

spock is only correct when there are dramatic architectural improvements tied to extensions of the instruction sets. The most dramatic improvements from Penryn for your needs will come if it's tied to the Bearlake chipset. This will enable 1033 MT/s DDR3 memory.

The operating system itself won't make use of the new SSE4, except maybe for the visual effects as part of Quartz Composer. PhotoShop could make use of them for filtering operations.

I don't know if Apple will be making use of the new chipset or if it's even ready yet.

In real world terms I doubt there will be astounding performance differences between buying a equivalent tier MacBook Pro now or with the next rev.
posted by substrate at 9:06 AM on November 6, 2007

Sorry, I read MacBook Pro, but you're talking Mac Pro. The chipset you're waiting for is Seaburg.
posted by substrate at 9:10 AM on November 6, 2007

The official Penryn release date is Nov. 12, i.e one week from now, so I'd wait at least till, say, a week after that, to see when Apple is going to have them available.

The rumours are that Apple's just waiting on chip supplies from Intel and that everything else is ready to go. If that's the case, the mid- and low-range Mac Pros may be available immediately and only the high-end one will be a wait. If that's the case, you'll probably be happier having waited the extra two weeks.
posted by boaz at 12:51 PM on November 6, 2007

Wait a week and see, if they're not coming out for a while just buy one now. Someone already said it, but the latest and greatest won't be taken advantage of in your software anyways. I got a Mac Pro a few weeks ago (for editing very large photographs) and it's so fast after adding a ton of RAM that I can't imagine a newer architecture making much of a difference.
posted by bradbane at 2:31 PM on November 6, 2007

If you understand computer science at all, you know that it is generally a waste of money to buy the very latest processor because when it ships there is no operating system or software that takes advantage of any new instructions built into it for probably close to a year.

Actually, in this case the new processor isn't changing the instruction set; it's just built on a smaller scale, the Penryn architecture being based on 45-nanometer (as opposed to 60-nanometer) scale. All else equal, smaller processors can run faster without generating more heat. However, it does look like the new chips (which aren't going to be the Penryns themselves - those are laptop chips - but rather Harpertown or Wolfdales) will require modifications to the bus.

The rumor sites suggest that Apple's engineering process is done and they're just waiting for Intel to start producing the processors in enough volume to support Apple's launch.

So, I think I'd look for a way to rent or borrow a machine for your current project and look forward to upgrading in January.
posted by ikkyu2 at 2:53 PM on November 6, 2007

There are some processor extensions ikkyu2, but they won't speed up most applications. The Xeon E5400 series will be Penryn based which is what Apple would use in the Mac Pros.
posted by substrate at 4:02 PM on November 6, 2007

Actually, the Mac Mini isn't a bad suggestion. If you check out these Geekbench results even the lowly 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo tests at 2302 compared to 862 for the 1GHz Dual PowerPC G4; obviously a huge difference in at least theoretical performance. Limited storage could be solved with an external drive, handy for your eventual Mac Pro as well. But I have no idea if the graphics are satisfactory for your tasks and I think the memory upgradability is limited as well with one expansion slot (2GB is listed as an upgrade but I don't know if you can go beyond that).
posted by 6550 at 10:56 PM on November 6, 2007