Buying an older Mac Pro for VW - false economy?

[line-weight]

(I should say a further option on the rebuilt pro is to go for a £1340 option that gives me a Radeon HD 5770 GPU, which I could start off with and se how it goes, and replace myself with an R9 at a later date for about £250.

Then the savings, initially, are approaching £1000.)

[EAlexander]

I would avoid the 5770 - while a good card in it's day, it's a bit long in the tooth and I think a more modern GPU is worth the money. I don't know how large the files you work with are, but I work with large data sets and complicated 3D models (lots of individual objects) and the FPS rates on my old 5780 weren't cutting it, so I upgraded to a nVidia card and have never looked back - I just find they work better, but I also do a lot of Cinema 4D and some work with CUDA based render engines, so it's necessary.

All that said - I would make a case for the R9 as it will be a solid GPU for a few years.

[line-weight]

The files I work with at the moment aren't huge (I'm making do with VW2011 on a modestly specced 2011 mac mini!) but I think that's going to start changing. I'd rather have a bit of spare headroom, so I don't have to worry about hardware too much for the next few years.

Thanks for the pointer to Create Pro, has been very helpful having a look at their setup, as has been the guy from the company who's been answering my various questions.