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ScifiterX wrote:

a certain twisted mix of sadism and masochism

You'd put a Xeon in your Mini if you could.

Not unlikely, Nehalem Xeons are in short supply. Apple is the first mainstream OEM to get/use them.

Aaron_R wrote:

mrreet2001 wrote:

because ones that aren't customized are all ready built and sitting in a warehouse or in an apple store.

But still, it shouldn't take 2-3 weeks to add ram, swap out the HD, or solder on the faster CPU. It's just outrageous, hasn't China learned of the assembly line yet?

If the prebuilt one wasn't sitting in a warehouse it would take the same amount of time

Yeah Best to not crush their hopes too badly.

Bat wrote:

ScifiterX wrote:

a certain twisted mix of sadism and masochism

You'd put a Xeon in your Mini if you could.

As fun as it sounds no. I touch as little of the main board and processor as possible.

Semi-related side note, There's a reason my old brother in law calls me Power Pete.

Enough

Oh you'd find the latter.

Do you remember the movie Down Periscope? Remember Nitro, the radio operator?

ScifiterX wrote:

Do you remember the movie Down Periscope? Remember Nitro, the radio operator?

yeah.

sturner wrote:

At least it didn't involve toasters.

And screwdrivers.


...now I'm all hungry.


::dreams of waffles and bacon::

thanks for the links.

It sucks that nvidia is entering disaster mode. I just prefer their vid cards. I think for me it has come down to this: Mac laptop for mobility with a windows partition to do work with apps that are not Mac OS available and a home-built tower at home for the heavy work. I'll just have to start looking into more hybrid crossfire/sli mobo's which are becoming more prevalent so as to not get cornered with one gpu manufacturer.

I'll have to look into building a dual quad core computer sometime. The mac pro may look more appealing then.

THe biggest complaint though is lack of a good GPU. I have said it constantly with every update. Apple did good with the last laptop update; however, there are already way better mobile chips available from Nvidia.

It's a constant struggle between performance and form factor and I think in the end this struggle is a handicap b/c apple will always choose design. They have to cram as much bits and pieces into as little space as possible. It's like they are some kind of obsessive compulsive neat-freak. God forbid it be 1/4 of an inch thicker to allow for more cooling due to having a faster gpu or even cpu.

I love you apple, but god do you frustrate me.

dv wrote:

personified8 wrote:

thanks for the links.

It sucks that nvidia is entering disaster mode. I just prefer their vid cards. I think for me it has come down to this: Mac laptop for mobility with a windows partition to do work with apps that are not Mac OS available and a home-built tower at home for the heavy work. I'll just have to start looking into more hybrid crossfire/sli mobo's which are becoming more prevalent so as to not get cornered with one gpu manufacturer.

Why worry about it? If you're spending $500-$1000 on video cards, another $100-$150 for a motherboard to match doesn't seem so bad... how often are you replacing your video?

i have one 8800gts (g92) now and was thinking of getting either a 2nd for 150 or waiting for the 300 series and hopefully a turn around from nvidia. I bought the card about this time last year.  Honestly though, the 8800gt and gts have stood up really well and price/performance are probably one of the best cards out there. BTW it was 300 bucks this time last year. What a difference once year makes, it's half the price. The gtx 280 while a significant improvement over the 8800gts is still just too much cash.  $304 after a 25 dollar rebate for the cheapest one. I had more cash last year at this time (plus I need a graphics card) over this year. I could just go with 1 ati card and not worry about sli/crossfire by using only one gpu. My current mobo is a sli one. How much more performance would I really gain with a 2nd 8800gts? I know messing around in viewports in 3ds Max would probably go a bit smoother.

I've read articles on SLI, but have never fully understood how it is a boon over a bane compared to just getting a single card with more ram on it, which I could do with the gtx285 or 295 (for a buttload more cash). Honestly for $54 more dollars the gtx 285 might be the better route since it comes with 1 GB of ram over 512 on the 280. This is if I could afford a new gpu right now.

I'm sure you say, why bitch if I can't even get one? Well it's because I want to see Nvidia keep advancing, and Apple keep up with the current tech in terms of power and speed for the price paid.

personified8 wrote:

I've read articles on SLI, but have never fully understood how it is a boon over a bane compared to just getting a single card with more ram on it,

Because RAM is just RAM, and SLI = More CPUs. Would you rather have an 8-core Mac Pro with 3GBs of ram or a Dual G5 tower with 4GBs?

Having more VRAM means loading more complex, high quality textures. Having more GPUs means rendering them faster, which translates into more FPS at higher resolutions and smoother gameplay.

which I could do with the gtx285 or 295

A 285 is an overclocked 280. An 295 is actually two 260s in SLI mode, but built together on a single card.

Have you considered a single 260? That's what I'd get if I had to buy today.

(for a buttload more cash). Honestly for $54 more dollars the gtx 285 might be the better route since it comes with 1 GB of ram over 512 on the 280. This is if I could afford a new gpu right now.

More VRAM is better, but if the games you're using don't need the extra memory, you won't see an improvement from that. The clockspeed difference is nice though.

I'm sure you say, why bitch if I can't even get one? Well it's because I want to see Nvidia keep advancing, and Apple keep up with the current tech in terms of power and speed for the price paid.

Nvidia is advancing just fine. Apple isn't interested in matching the rest of the industry in price/performance.

If you're hesitant to commit to as motherboard that might not be compatible with the SLI/Crossfire solution you want, don't commit - just buy an SLI- or Crossfire-on-a-card like the GTX 295 or the Radeon 4850/70 X2 (X2 = 2 GPUs.)

personified8 wrote:

In terms of 3d modeling though how does more gpus and more ram translate? I know gpu's are primarily for aiding in viewport manipulation (altering the objects on screen without slowdown) and so wouldn't more vram be just as beneficial as more gpu's? Or is it all the same difference?

Granted, more is better, but you might be interested in this article.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd … ,2154.html

Read the benchmarks carefully, and you'll notice that top honors get lobbed back and forth. The 3ds Max benchmarks don't vary too much and seem to correspond to how much VRAM is in the machine, but the Viewperf is dominated by the ATI cards, regardless of how much VRAM is there.

IMHO, GPU and drivers are king. I think it's safe to assume that given how cheap RAM is, selling a midrange to highend card that doesn't have enough VRAM for 95% of your customers is brand suicide, and selling it with too much is just good marketing. That isn't to say that getting more RAM can't be helpful, but I think it's better to determine what "enough" is and then go from there.

It also prompted me to do some googleing. What I found was that basically, SLI/Crossfire isn't all that prevalent in pro graphics; the support isn't there yet. But the drivers are apparently so heavily optimized that you get more of a speed boost from having a workstation class graphics card than you would expect to see from having two "civilian" cards working in conjuction. So if you're doing 3D design, maybe dual GPUs isn't for you.

also a 295 is two 280's smacked together. It has 240 cores per gpu like the 280 whereas the 265 has only 192 or 216 (apparently there are two kinds of 260's)

But at a 260s clockspeed; overall performance is in between a two 260/216 in SLI and two 280s in SLI, but closer to the paired 260s.