Buying a Mac Pro

Reports and reviews of the Mac Pro can be found at MacPerformanceGuide.com.

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Getting the best Mac Pro for your needs

While fastest is ideal, the best value is always the base model. With the base model, you get 80% or more of the performance for less than half the price of the top-end model. Very few users need 8 cores, so stick to the base model, or ensure that you make a wise choice with your money by first engaging us in consulting.

Remember, ample memory and fast drives matter a lot— so budget for a balanced system. But unless you like installing and configuring and testing on your own, have an MPG Pro Workstation show up ready to use.

The 2.8GHz and 3.2GHz models are “value” choices. For really demanding jobs (eg video and sound), the 12-core 2.93GHz model is a draft horse. Looking for the “sweet spot”? That’s the 3.33 GHz 6-core Mac Pro.

Upgrading drives and memory

When upgrading to an MPG Pro Workstation, you’ll want to buy the Mac Pro itself with no extra memory or drives, since the upgrades are part of the MPG Pro Workstation upgrade process.

OWC has a wide variety of upgrades including memory, internal hard drives, external storage, and much more.