Coda Posted December 31, 2007 Share Posted December 31, 2007 Hello fellow hackers. I'm considering the following to build a hackintosh: (I'm not a serious gamer anymore, but I want something quick for my photography - (Lightroom/Photoshop)). I will run Leopard 99% of the time, and probably a small XP partition for the odd game. Motherboard: Gigabyte P35-DS3R or DS4 (doesn't seem to be much in it, but I think theres no FW on the 3R). CPU: Intel Q6600 quad core. RAM: 2x Geil 1Gb ddr2 pc6400 800mhz GFX: Nvidia 7300GT or ATI 2600 HD PRO or ? Wifi: I need to do some searching to see which cards work Other: Case, PSU, Coolers. I have already: 2x 320Gb PATA hard drives and a 20X DVD Burner also PATA. So is there anything more I need to think about? After searching the forums for what seems like days, it seems to me that this hardware should work from the get-go (apart from patching the audio, and I don't know about the PATA disks). Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gamergh0st Posted January 1, 2008 Share Posted January 1, 2008 Looks good. The quad core looks like over kill though (could reinvest difference in speakers, wireless accessories, etc.) and go with a fast core 2 duo very few applications support dual cores, even fewer support quad core. Though Mac OS X with its unix roots may be able to differ some load on the separate core. Just My 2 cents. The setup looks good overall. I'd go with the Nvidia 7300GT because of mac os x compatibility out of the box. The 7300GT variants are running cheap the 7300GT at tiger direct with 256mb was running at $29 bucks believe it or not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coda Posted January 2, 2008 Author Share Posted January 2, 2008 The quad core looks like over kill though (could reinvest difference in speakers, wireless accessories, etc.) and go with a fast core 2 duo... very few applications support dual cores, even fewer support quad core. Though Mac OS X with its unix roots may be able to differ some load on the separate core. Well, from what I understand (and I would appreciate being corrected if I'm wrong) is that when you run an app, the task controller can run that app on another core, depending on how loaded the system is. If you have a process which is able to multi thread on two or more cores, you're good; but if not, it shouldn't stop the app being run on another core. If you are running a game and nothing else (and seldom does this happen) then I guess it's really important for the game to multi-thread to make use of the extra processing units. I run quite a few apps at once on my present G4, and it struggles badly (more so now with leopard installed and my measly 1Gb ram) and would like to think that on the quad core they would be somewhat 'load balanced' for want of a better expression. I basically want to run Lightroom and Photoshop together, and be able to leave Safari, Azureus, Toast (and burning), and also convert movies. Too much to ask? Maybe. I think I should get 4Gb instead of 2Gb though. BTW - I just thought - the current Mac Pro can run dual quad core's, so Leopard must be able to support it natively. The setup looks good overall. I'd go with the Nvidia 7300GT because of mac os x compatibility out of the box. The 7300GT variants are running cheap the 7300GT at tiger direct with 256mb was running at $29 bucks believe it or not. Yeah, though they are not THAT cheap on this side of the world. As it's the card that ships with the basic Mac Pro, I can't really go wrong. Thanks for your comments. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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