My new Pro Tools setup

mutelight

Two 2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon "Woodcrest" processors
4MB shared L2 cache per processor
1.33GHz dual independent frontside buses
2GB memory (667MHz DDR2 fully-buffered DIMM ECC)
ATi Radeon X1900XT 512MB
250GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7200-rpm hard drive (OS X)
200GB Serial ATA 300Mbps 7200-rpm hard drive (Windows XP)
16x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
30" Apple Cinema Display
Digidesign 002 Rack w/ Pro Tools LE
Klipch Promedia 5.1 Ultras (2.1 setup now)



Unfortunately within the first day of having the machine the display started to act up. I came in my room and woke it up and there was green artifacts all over the place. So I unplugged it then reconnected the cable and it was all gone. Later on that night I came back into my room to use it and noticed that there was green line running vertical on the far left side of the screen. :mad:

Here is a picture of the green line: (Left hand side)


Other than that I truly love the machine, everything runs very smooth and it is super quick and responsive. I installed XP yesterday without a hitch and it runs flawlessly so far, which is good because Pro Tools doesn't run on Intel-based Macs yet so I am running it under Windows XP.

*UPDATE*
Got my replacement display and Apple apologized for the inconvenience and cut me a deal on a discounted upgrade from my Nvidia 7300GT to an ATi Radeon X1900XT. Also Pro Tools 7.1.1cs1 was released so I can run it under OS X marvelously.







Runs all my games in Windows silky smooth even at 2560x1600 resolution and with Pro Tools in OS X I am one happy camper.

Mazeroth

Unbelievable system! Those Woodcrest Apples are absolutely killer, and you can't build one for cheaper, I've tried.

I'm very, very envious

mutelight

Thank you sir I appreciate it. My whole life I have been a PC user and have convinced people to go the PC route. My friend brought over his MacBook Pro and I instantly fell in love. The ability to run both platforms on one machine natively as well as how quick it was had me sold. Even being a hardcore PC user my entire life I must admit that I am really liking Mac OS X.

BIZILL

although i've never contemplated going the 'fruity' route, i'll give you just one shot to try to convert me. send me a duplicate/clone of your setup and i'll let you know the outcome. actually, my name alone will not allow me to stray from PC usage, exclusively.:rolleyes:

Shizelbs

Very nice. I love the display.

Mazeroth

Zero wrote:

Never found a Mac OS that I couldn't crash in a matter of 10 minutes or less.

As much of a PC advocate as I am I must say Mac OS X is 1000x more stable than any version of Windows to date. My brother is a die-hard Apple fan (he does graphics for a living) and in the last four years he said he's only ever crashed one computer one time in Mac OS X. He has two systems running 24x7 (one is a file server with a RAID-5) and only last week, no joke, when we were mixing music did his computer crash. It was a blue screen of death equivalent and he actually took the time to read it because he never saw that before in his life. Turns out it was a faulty stick of RAM and not the OS.

mutelight

Mazeroth wrote:

As much of a PC advocate as I am I must say Mac OS X is 1000x more stable than any version of Windows to date. My brother is a die-hard Apple fan (he does graphics for a living) and in the last four years he said he's only ever crashed one computer one time in Mac OS X. He has two systems running 24x7 (one is a file server with a RAID-5) and only last week, no joke, when we were mixing music did his computer crash. It was a blue screen of death equivalent and he actually took the time to read it because he never saw that before in his life. Turns out it was a faulty stick of RAM and not the OS.

I was going to say something along the same lines. All of our studios here are G5s and are used by tons of different users and only once have I had it crash on me. I still love my PC but its so nice to have a rock solid OS with little to no viruses and spyware.

Mazeroth

mutelight wrote:

I was going to say something along the same lines. All of our studios here are G5s and are used by tons of different users and only once have I had it crash on me. I still love my PC but its so nice to have a rock solid OS with little to no viruses and spyware.

Yep. The only reason I use PCs is that I play a lot of video games and I can build a gaming rig for much less than an Apple. Now, the new dual Woodcrests are an absolute steal for their price because each processor is almost $1000. For a PC gaming rig I only need to buy a $150 AMD X2 3800+ dual core and be fine. Heck, my gaming PC is almost top of the line and I spent less than a grand on it, with $250 going to just the case and power supply. If I wasn't a gamer and wanted reliability and a fine OS I'd be Mac all day.

xsmi

I just spent a week and a half troubleshooting my mac it would have a kernal panic (BSD) evertime at launch or shortly thereafter. turned out to be a loose wireless card. In 3 yrs of owning this machine, this is the first time I have ever had a problem and that's why it took me so long to track down the problem.

mutelight

Apple comes through in the clutch with the highly discounted upgrade!

Fireman32

I think for my next computer im going to go apple. I have a few friends that swear by them. I guess being a PC user my whole life im resistant to the change and having to learn a whole new OS but i think im ready to take the plunge.

mutelight

Fireman32 wrote:

I think for my next computer im going to go apple. I have a few friends that swear by them. I guess being a PC user my whole life im resistant to the change and having to learn a whole new OS but i think im ready to take the plunge.

That's the beauty of the Intel-based ones. I have been a PC user my entire life and just a year ago I swore I would never switch but now that they can run both operating systems natively you can have the best of both worlds. I do all my work in OS X which is rock solid, fast as all hell, and very clean. Not to mention very intuitive and easy to use. It wasn't until I really started to use the Quad G5s in the studios (which have the TDM setups) here that I began to really like OS X but being stuck to only that OS bothered me.

Fireman32

How is the OS to learn being so used to windows and all? I did hear that you can now right click in OS X which you weren't able to do before. I just dont want to have to spend alot of time learning a new os before i get to enjoy it.

mutelight

I have been using Macs here and there for a while now and within the past few years being a sound major and all the lab machines and studio machines are Macs however I caught on extremely fast since a lot of things translate over. The OS is very straight forward, almost to the point that you feel like you aren't doing something correctly. Some applications, to install them, you simply drag the file into the applications folder and bam, its installed. You would be surprised how intuitive it really is. If you know anyone with a Mac see if you can play around with theirs so you can see for yourself.

Fireman32

I think i will have to do that. mabye ill get one for myself as a christmas gift. i think ill get a laptop vs desktop. thanks for the help

Mazeroth

mutelight wrote:

Apple comes through in the clutch with the highly discounted upgrade!

What do you mean by this?

mutelight

Mazeroth wrote:

What do you mean by this?

Sorry I should have specified that I explained it in my edited origional post. Basically since I received my computer with the display DOA they gave me a hefty discount on a graphics card upgrade.

Mazeroth

How much did you get the X1900XT for?

mutelight

$200

Mazeroth

Now that, is a good deal!

I had the X1900XT when it was $440 (Powercolor) but heard of price drops coming so I sold it for $390 and picked up an X1800XL 512mb for $199, which is a rebadged X1800XT. A quick BIOS flash and I had a $300 X1800XT for $200, which is 90% as fast as the X1900XT in all the game benchmarks I did. Both are sickening cards. The X1900XT let me play Oblivion at 2048x1536 no problemo, which is something that must be seen to believe.

mutelight

No kidding man, Half-Life 2, Oblivion, Black and White 2, Call of Duty 2, Battlefield 2, pretty much any game I play I run at 2560x1600 full detail nice and smooth. They are excellent cards.