Any Mac Pro experts?

[Sgt Raven]

My main box now is a Power Mac G5 and I have an old Windows box for when I need it. I'm thinking about trading for an older Mac Pro and wondering if I can run OSX on one drive and Win XP Pro or Win 7 on another separate drive and be able to dual boot that way. Can a 2x Dual core Xeon 2.66 run 64 bit Win 7, well? Will a BlueRay drive work as one of the optical drives?

[Nose Nuggets]

You can run windows on any Intel based mac.

What mac has Xeon chips? those are typically server class processors not consumer workstation processors. but yeah, they should run Windows 7 x64 just fine.

Duel booting with 2 separate hard drives is also supported.

I'm not sure what kind of support OSX has for bluray optical drives, but provided you have available sata ports and power, it should work under windows just fine.

[Sgt Raven]

You can run windows on any Intel based mac.

What mac has Xeon chips? those are typically server class processors not consumer workstation processors. but yeah, they should run Windows 7 x64 just fine.

Duel booting with 2 separate hard drives is also supported.

I'm not sure what kind of support OSX has for bluray optical drives, but provided you have available sata ports and power, it should work under windows just fine.

The big aluminum tower Mac Pro's have Xeon chips, the 1st ones had 2 dual cores. The newest ones have Quad core or more I know some have 12 cores total maybe more.

[Rivers]

Look up info on Apple Bootcamp. You'll need to install certain drivers on the Win side to support some Apple hardware. Otherwise, just like a PC. Excuse me now, the thought of that makes me feel like washing my hands.

[desertdweller]

Yes, Yes and Yes.

Xeon chips are in all tower Intel Mac Pro's. Blu-Ray will work as well, but you may need Toast or similar to burn Blu-Ray content. If you have a REAL OSX disc, after Windows is loaded, insert your OSX disc and all the Windows drivers will load. If you have an older OSX disc and running Win7, you may need the latest bootcamp drivers which are available from Apple's site. There are various rippers available too for Mac so you don't need to use Windows to do it. Also, Parallels or Fusion is something to look at to run Windows as a virtual box and eliminate the need to boot into Windows to do Windows stuff. Personally I use Fusion because I've been a VMWare user for a long time but I've used both and both are good. This can turn into a Ford vs Chevy debate so try them both.

[Dutch3]

I have a couple of older Mac Pro towers in use, not Intel but dual G5 processors. The platform is way beyond typical Wintel offerings in respect to durability.

Literally years between reboots and zero hardware or OS issues.

[10-22]

I have a couple of older Mac Pro towers in use, not Intel but dual G5 processors. The platform is way beyond typical Wintel offerings in respect to durability.

Literally years between reboots and zero hardware or OS issues.

G5 towers are NOT Mac Pros. The designation came with the switch to Intel processors. Just so ya know.

[Rivers]

If you need the Windows install for running games, then use Apple Bootcamp to either partition one drive into a Mac/Win setup or use another drive to specifically run the Windows OS and games. This setup gives you 100% of the hardware resources. You need Bootcamp for the Windows drivers (running the Apple hardware) and for managing multiple OS.

If you need Windows for running basic apps like QuickBooks, SolidWorks, etc., I'd install Parallels v6 and install Win7. You can then boot into OS X, click on the Win app and immediately run your program. Parallels will also support Linux and other installs. It requires you to designate how much of your hardware resources get allocated to the virtual OS but that's usually not a big deal. When you run backups in OS X, the virtual drive is also backed up since it is a file and not separate hardware. Parallels v6 is much faster than ever before, and will run Win7 in 64-bit mode like OS X.