[ZachPruckowski]

So I've been thinking about getting a Powermac when they go Intel and become the Mac Pros. I was looking at the lowest end model, which if prices stay the same, costs US Education store customers only $1800. I'm trying to price it to see if it's reasonable to try to do for $2000-2200 for the whole deal. I priced the 1 gig RAM upgrade and 250 GB HDD upgrade, and I was wondering about the video card. I want a good video card, so I was wondering if the $45 upgrade to a GeForce 6600 256MB SDRAM is a good idea, or if there is a better (sub-$100) card I should get. Is the 6600 any good for games?

Yes, I realize that obviously anything is subject to change between now and August/September, but I'm trying to figure out costs so I can decide between iMac and Powermac (Mac Pro?)

Thanks for any help.

[Luca]

There are very, very few Mac-compatible PCIe video cards out there. Basically there's just what Apple sells. Also, you won't find anything better for $100. The GeForce 6600 itself costs about $100 if you want to buy one for a PC. Oh, and it's definitely worth the upgrade. Just from looking at the cards on NewEgg (unfortunately I don't know the exact specs on the cards that Apple ships), it looks like the 6600LE has just four pixel pipelines and a slow 400 MHz memory clock. The regular 6600, on the other hand, has eight pipelines (double the rendering power!) and a faster 500 MHz memory clock. Still not incredibly impressive, but it's worth the small price Apple charges to upgrade.

Have you considered not buying the upgrade RAM from Apple? They usually charge roughly 3x the market price for RAM. It's a huge rip off. Same with the hard drive. The entire point of the Power Mac is that it's really easy to upgrade the RAM, hard drives, and optical drive.

Apple charges $100 to upgrade to 1 GB of RAM. Why not buy a pair of 512 MB modules for under $100 and install them yourself? Then you'll have 1.5 GB of RAM total, for the same price. And you don't have to skimp - NewEgg sells Crucial at a great price. It's $96 (including shipping) for this pair of 512 MB modules.

The hard drive is even more of a rip off. Know what a 250 GB hard drive costs these days? $85. Apple charges $75 to REPLACE the 160 GB with a 250 GB. As in, they normally include the 160 GB, but they remove it and sell you the 250 GB instead. If you want lots of storage, the Power Mac does have two hard drive slots. Just buy a 250 GB SATA hard drive yourself and install it. It'll cost you basically the same as it costs to upgrade from Apple, and you'll have two hard drives (way more capacity, and the ability to back up your data in case one of the hard drives fails).