The MacPro Alternative -- Twice As Powerful

**AllanNielson** · 26-11-09, 10:16 PM

With an estimated price tag of nearly 4 lakh, this will remain a dream for me, but...

What hardware Model / Hardware Changes would you recommend for the following Workstation?

Processor: Twin AMD Opteron "Istanbul" Six-Core 2435 2.60Ghz

Motherboard: Could Not Find One With Proper DDR2-800 Support, Forget DDR3

RAM: 16GB DDR2-800

Graphics: 2x ATI Radeon HD5890 2GB (4 GPUs)

Storage: 4X 2 Terabyte SATA2 10,000RPM Disks, prefer Western Digital

Optical 1: Blu-Ray Writer

Optical 2: DVD Writer

Extras: All-In-One Card And Floppy Reader

Monitor (Working): LCD, 50,000:1 DCR, Full HD 1920x1080p

Monitor (Secondary): LCD, 50,000:1 DCR, 2560x1600

Input: Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop Combo 2000

SMPSes and a Tower Case will be required as well.

Any takers?

**madnav** · 26-11-09, 10:59 PM

what to do with this thread ?!?!

hi everybody !!

**6pack** · 26-11-09, 11:17 PM

age 15. must be having some problems in life...

**damn** · 26-11-09, 11:55 PM

2TB drives at 10,000 RPM exist? o;!

**-Anish-** · 27-11-09, 12:28 AM

@ OP : Please check the Zebronics/IBall/Intex websites, i am sure you will find something as per your dreams..err.. needs.

**zhopudey** · 27-11-09, 10:43 AM

What?......

**pretttt** · 27-11-09, 11:09 AM

even my reaction is what??

are u asking for suggestions for a workstation?

**Zero Cool** · 27-11-09, 12:08 PM

Hmm , you wanna replicate a MAC Pro in its purest form . Then be prepared to shell out money like water dude.

A Mac Pro Has 2 x Quad Core Xeons ,In Future expect it to be 2x Quad Core i7 Processors ( Which means 16 cores working for you ) ....WHEW !!!

Anyways for the Processor i Place my bet on a Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition Bloomfield 3.33GHz Quad-Core Processor.

As far as motherboard is concerned , nothing can replicate as a MAC pro has 2 Physical Multi Core Processors .

32 GB Ram spread over 8 memory slots containing 4GB DIMMS is what is available in a Mac pro , so you decide for yourself the max memory you can afford on a motherboard

**Lord Nemesis** · 27-11-09, 12:50 PM

Originally Posted by Zero Cool

As far as motherboard is concerned , nothing can replicate as a MAC pro has 2 Physical Multi Core Processors .

32 GB Ram spread over 8 memory slots containing 4GB DIMMS is what is available in a Mac pro , so you decide for yourself the max memory you can afford on a motherboard

LOL... What are you talking about? Apple does not make its own hardware. Mac Pro uses a regular Sever class Dual Xeon main board which can take 8 DIMM's of memory. There are many similar boards available in the market. In fact you can even get boards with 16 DIMM slot's for a theoretical max of 128GB of RAM. How much amount of RAM goes in, you can decide. Mac Pro's we have at office came with 8GB RAM.

As for Dual i7 too, its not unique to Mac Pro in anyway. Dual Socket 1366 boards are available on the market and you can go up to 144GB RAM on some of those. About having 16 cores in Dual i7 setup, I didn't get why you said that. i7 is a quad core, so that makes it 8 cores. Although HT shows up twice the cores, it does not equate to having twice the cores.

Regardless of the case, Mac Pro or not, such capabilies does cost money and as Zero Cool said, the Thread starter does have to shell out a considerable amount of money for a similar setup. (although not as much as a Mac Pro)

**Gannu** · 27-11-09, 01:09 PM

Originally Posted by pretttt

are u asking for suggestions for a workstation?

Don't seem like it since he's mentioned this:

Originally Posted by AllanNielson

With an estimated price tag of nearly 4 lakh, this will remain a dream for me, but...

ATM I'm using a Dell workstation which has dual Xeon 5520 processors, 12GB RAM and a Quadro FX3800. There're about 6 of these here.

The OP's requirements seems weird - 2TB 10000 rpm drives (do we even have these?), LCD with requirement of a specific DCR (?) and of all the things - twin 5890 cards (what're the workstation gfx cards for?).

Zero Cool hasn't seen a workstation rig by far - that's my take on his post!