64 Bit much of an upgrade?

[Ky Lane]

Hey guys. I have a dual quadcore Mac Pro, but for whatever reason, the dealer only supplied me with XP32, and hence can only use/see 2GB of the 4GB in the box.

 

Im looking to buy Vista Ultimate 64 for a bit of an upgrade - anyone have any real experience as to wether its particularly worth it? Is the extra RAM handy? Faster?

 

Im also looking to upgrade the Vid card in it, the 7300GT just isnt cutting it lately. I have a 8800GT at home which is devine, but Im limited to what I can put into an intel based Mac Pro. Any suggestions?

 

Cheers!

[lambros]

Vista will prove to be a bit slower than XP, something around 5% but that's in games and office suites. More RAM means that max and vray and whatever else won't crash as often as they would due to memory reasons, so if your scenes are large you can benefit from it. In XP32 with 3,2 GB I had to reside to tricks to render a 2 million poly scene with tree vray proxies at anything more than 1600x1200 and when I upgraded I rendered easily at 10K resolution! If I had upgraded a year earlier at XP64 it would save me some gray hair...

[johnvid]

Yes, but some would say no, the difference between 0 & 1 is greater than the difference between 1 & 100, meaning before X64 I had projects that just could not be rendered and with x64 I can now render pretty much what I want(as long as I am not stupid with the settings), though I wish I had 8GB of ram instead of 4GB, but the price couldnt be justified, but maybe as prices fall I will get a second quad core with 8GB. I AM NOT SURE THAT I WOULD TOUCH VISTA THOUGH.

 

And X64, only offers a 10% or so increase in speed, (thats what I read anyway)

[AJLynn]

You can actually buy the 8800GT for Mac card: http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/wa/RSLID?mco=MTM5NDY&nplm=MB560Z/A

 

It's more expensive than an 8800GT for PC bought at a decent store but I think it's actually less expensive than an 8800GT for PC bought at Best Buy (Seriously - I was there yesterday and IIRC they were selling an 8600GTS for $280.) MacMall.com sells several 8800GT cards that they say are for PC & Mac but I'd recommend doing research on that first because I don't quite believe them.

 

Also, if you do this, I want you to try the Quadro hack on this page before you install Vista and tell me if it works on an 8800GT (Your new PCI ID will be 061A)

[Ky Lane]

Thanks for the advice guys. Ordered Vista64 last night, so will see how it goes. DOnt need all the prettiness, just the DX10 and 64bit/memory advantage. ALot of my scenes are getting increasingly complex and clients are asking for increasingly larger renders so, its a good upgrade for now.

[SandmanNinja]

You can actually buy the 8800GT for Mac card: http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/wa/RSLID?mco=MTM5NDY&nplm=MB560Z/A

 

It's more expensive than an 8800GT for PC bought at a decent store but I think it's actually less expensive than an 8800GT for PC bought at Best Buy (Seriously - I was there yesterday and IIRC they were selling an 8600GTS for $280.) MacMall.com sells several 8800GT cards that they say are for PC & Mac but I'd recommend doing research on that first because I don't quite believe them.

 

Also, if you do this, I want you to try the Quadro hack on this page before you install Vista and tell me if it works on an 8800GT (Your new PCI ID will be 061A)

 

I'm going to try it to mine after my lunch.

 

If you don't see me in a few hours, you know I have no video card...

[Ky Lane]

Well, I splurged. I got Vista Ultimate 64, an extra couple gigs of RAM, a 8800GT... and she seems pretty sweet now

[Antisthenes]

i'm waiting for 128 bit myself