task for a pro

[eldar222]

well guys heres the deal, i bought my computer like 4.5-5 years ago and when i bought it, it was the best of the best. spent like 3000dollars on it, now i can

sell it for not more than 300-400.

 

this is what i had in it

 

proc

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Processor ADA5000CSBOX - 2.60GHz, 1MB Cache, 1000MHz

 

video card

EVGA GeForce 7900 GTX / 512MB GDDR3 (two of them, had an sli going)

 

hard drive

Maxtor / Ultra 16 / 500GB / 7200 / 16MB / SATA-300 (two of these, still haven filled up my 1tb)

 

memmory

OCZ Dual Channel Gold 2048MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz Memory (2 x 1024MB)

(i bought two of these packs, 4gb memmory in totall)

 

wifi

d-link, dont remember the name. can find out if needed

 

motherboard

asus, dont remember which one, broke a litlle while ago, but doesnt matter.

 

 

well now i want to spend some money and make a new computer. i was thinking about buying the mac pro, but the stuff i want in it comes to the total of 10-11 thousand dollars. so i think im better of making it on my own.

 

well this is the question. what should i buy?

i dont want to buy new hard drives, because i still havent filled these up, and dont see the point(unless im completely wrong)

graphics cards (well they are pretty good working on an sli, so i was thinking about keeping them and adding another 1 or two cards)

 

so i was thinking about a motherboard, that can hold 2 proccessors, ddr3 memmory (i was thinking about around 8+ slots), and 3 or more graphics cards. and i would like to know, would i be able to put hackintosh OS on this computer.

by the way, how do 4 graphics cards work together on the mac pro?? is it some sort of 4 way sli? if this is possible to get working on a plain motherboard i would by two more graphics cards and hook them up all together.

in conclusion i want, a good motherboard, 2 proccesors, a lot of memmory, graphics upgrade, wifi to work, and all to be competable with hackintosh or mac os.

i checked the compatibility of the efi-x chip that goes on the motherboard, and none of the motherboards they work with have what i need.

[Mackilroy]

Don't even go near EFI-x. It sucks.

 

The Mac Pro does not do four-way SLI or Crossfire X or anything like that. It does not support either under OS X. If you had four GPUs in a Mac Pro, they would be four independent GPUs that do not work together (except perhaps under Windows – but never OS X).

 

If you're going to go for two processors that's not going to be cheap. Do you absolutely need eight cores, or could you go for four physical (plus four logical) cores? I just built myself a quad-core hackintosh to replace my Mac Pro and I love it.

 

(Also, I don't recall if there are any publicly available motherboards that support two processors that you can buy for a hackintosh. There very well may be, but I think the only time I saw someone build a machine with one, they had tons of issues)

[eldar222]

i was on the apple site and im pretty sure they give you the option to put 4 graphics cards in the 8core mac.

how will hackintosh work with 2 cpu's?

and maybe its worth buying a mac motherboard and building my new computer on it

[OSXtotheZ]

real mac motherboard in my experience at least are not easily found. many times you may have to by an entiire non working mac just to get the good board out and even then you are probably getting something last generation and not i5 or i7 so if that was the case I would just get an gigabyte i7 supported hackintosh and live with any deficiencies which will most likely be very minimal. I always throw out the caveat that if you want a real mac experience and want it FUTURE proof then your better off with a 27inch i7 imac at $1900us. But if you like to experiment and accept the learning curve however slight nowdays since hackintosh has come a long way indeed, there are still going to be quirks -- then go for it. save yourself some headache tho and build on a proven platform one where many before you have already ventured.

[eldar222]

dont really like imacs, cause its not that easy to upgrade it later on.

 

so now i need ur help with putting this all together in a compatable system

 

i need the best video card,

the best cpu, (prob i7)

and a good mother board

and around 32gb of ram

 

and all of this to be compatable with mac

[eldar222]

ok i picked out everything, and this is what i got

 

motherboard

gigabyte ga-ex58-extreme

 

proc

Intel CORE i7 980 extreme

 

 

ram

Corsair CMG6GX3M3A2000C8

 

 

 

cooler

Thermalright IFX-14

 

 

video card

nvidia gtx 480

 

 

 

ok so the only problem is that i heard, that you should check the ramm compatability with my motherboard on the gigabyte website, but they havent updated it for a long time. so how should i find out if the ram will work? and one more question, how big of a computer case and powerblock should i get? i have a 750w and on

http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

it seems to be enough. but should i get a bigger one with more W to spare?

[Mackilroy]

You won't be able to use the Core i7-980 or the GTX 480.

 

I'd swap them out for a Core i7-930 and GTX 260 or HD 4890.

 

A 750 watt PSU will be fine.

 

If you're getting the motherboard I think you are, it supports a maximum of 24 GB of RAM. I'd go with Corsair's Dominator memory or Patriot's Viper series. I've seen a lot of people with the former, and I have the latter in my machine.

[eldar222]

yea it supports 24gb. patriot viper is a 1333 ram, my corsair is a 2000 i think mine is a bit better.

btw has the i7 980 and gtx 480 not been tested yet, or do they definately not work?

[Mackilroy]

They definitely don't work.

[eldar222]

but like in a couple of months im pretty sure mac pro's will have i7 980 procc, and a better video card (read that on the internet somewhere) so even if i do get all this, sooner or later it will work right?

[Mackilroy]

It might, but I doubt it. The i7 980 is a desktop chip, and the Mac Pro uses server chips. They're similar, but not the same. Yeah, it'll have a better GPU, but nobody outside of Apple knows if it'll be an ATI or NVIDIA GPU. Do you absolutely need a hackintosh right now? If you can wait until Apple releases new ones I'd do that.

[eldar222]

will the i7 975 extreme work? its a quad core, but it costs the same as a 980 (1000$) so im not sure if its worth spending the same amount but getting a quad instead of a 6-core. maybe get 980 and work with windows for a while on it?

 

 

and i decided to get a gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7 motherboard instead of the extreme

[Hangten]

will the i7 975 extreme work? its a quad core, but it costs the same as a 980 (1000$) so im not sure if its worth spending the same amount but getting a quad instead of a 6-core. maybe get 980 and work with windows for a while on it?

 

 

and i decided to get a gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7 motherboard instead of the extreme

 

 

Yes, the i7 975 will work. Its multi is unlocked and its purpose is to overclock. Ram speed will make almost no difference in your overclock. With an unlocked multi you don't need to touch the ram to get the i7 975 to a respectable clock speed. This should in term give you a more stable system. However a i7 930 could clock just as high but you will stress the system more and that leads to less of an overclock and your ram has to be atleast 1600mhz to hit a sweet spot 3.8ghz to 4.0ghz. Most systems run into a wall about 210 BLCK and thats only really possible to break with an Extreme Edition. And no the X980 is not the same as the Xeon 5000 series in the Mac Pro that have 2 QPI links instead of the single the X980 has but theres a very huge reason for this. The multi is unlocked on the X980 and thats not true for Xeon counterpart. Be aware that even a i7 930 overclocked will be a challenge if not kill the mid grade 8 core Mac Pro for one reason: Almost all the apps you will run do not use more that a few threads and the clock speed difference is so great between an overclocked 930 that its actually faster than the Mac. Video rendering might be a rare exception. I use sorenson squeeze and it does use all the cores when converting video. And the other thing is a Mac Pro has:

 

PCI Express expansion

 

Three open full-length PCI Express expansion slots

One PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot

Two PCI Express 2.0 x4 slots

All slots provide mechanical support for 16-lane cards

300W combined maximum for all PCI Express slots

 

You should get the i7 930 or even the i7 860 (tonymac is all about p55) and clock them up with good sticks of ram.

Buy Fermi (480) and another card that is known to work well on hackintosh with dual monitor support. You could run with both cards even if one is not supported in OSX.

Get some very nice monitors if you don't already have them, H-IPS is the best for a graphics workstation.

Get some very decent SSD's (intel or OCZ) that work with HFS+. Don't buy ones that are for NTSF (sandforce SSD's run differently) and use it for the Mac OS but for Windows 7 (Crucial C-300 SATA3) it's the biggest thing you will notice as far as performance. (not sure if Chameleon sees the SATA3)

 

 

Meh my 2 cents

[Mackilroy]

The i7-930 will easily overclock past 4 GHz, especially with a good cooler.

 

And Fermi doesn't work with OS X…