1,1 Upgrade

[jakesaunders27]

Hi,
Before i start i want to make it clear that I have no plans on selling this machine so don't tell me to!!

Right, so i have about £250 to spend on an upgrade, you can see the current specs in my sig, should it be

32GB RAM?
480GB SSD?
2 Quad Core Xeons?
ATI 5770 from Apple?

I work with large track counts and plugins in Logic & Pro Tools, and do some work in Photoshop and Aperture from time to time.

What do you guys think?

Jake

 

[NOTNlCE]

Hi,
Before i start i want to make it clear that I have no plans on selling this machine so don't tell me to!!

Right, so i have about £250 to spend on an upgrade, you can see the current specs in my sig, should it be

32GB RAM?
480GB SSD?
2 Quad Core Xeons?
ATI 5770 from Apple?

I work with large track counts and plugins in Logic & Pro Tools, and do some work in Photoshop and Aperture from time to time.

What do you guys think?

Jake

If your current specs are in your signature, I would go with the 2 Quad Core Xeons first, that's going to set you back about $65-80. I assume you know you'll need to EFI flash to a Mac Pro 2,1 for the socket compatibility. Then do the RAM (if you can afford it, FB-DIMMs are hellish expensive.) If you're coming from 4 gigs of RAM, 32 is quite a lot. I have 14 right now and it's actually way more than I use day to day. I've maxed it only twice. But for sure, go with a bit more RAM if you can find it cheap. Also, don't pay for Apple graphics cards. Look into a PC NVIDIA card. Keep your existing GPU in case you ever need a boot screen, but 500 series NVIDIA card will work in the 1,1 and offer way more performance than the "Apple" Radeon 5770 ever will. A used or refurbed NVIDIA GPU will probably run you 100-200 depending on where you get it, and how nice it is. I wouldn't get anything lower than a GTX 560. Don't blow your money on that big of an SSD. 120GB Samsung EVOs run for under $100. Again, the RAM is what's gonna suck. Even today, FB-DIMMs go for absurd prices, even on eBay. But if you're set on not selling, that's my two cents on what you should do.

 

[jakesaunders27]

If your current specs are in your signature, I would go with the 2 Quad Core Xeons first, that's going to set you back about $65-80. I assume you know you'll need to EFI flash to a Mac Pro 2,1 for the socket compatibility. Then do the RAM (if you can afford it, FB-DIMMs are hellish expensive.) If you're coming from 4 gigs of RAM, 32 is quite a lot. I have 14 right now and it's actually way more than I use day to day. I've maxed it only twice. But for sure, go with a bit more RAM if you can find it cheap. Also, don't pay for Apple graphics cards. Look into a PC NVIDIA card. Keep your existing GPU in case you ever need a boot screen, but 500 series NVIDIA card will work in the 1,1 and offer way more performance than the "Apple" Radeon 5770 ever will. A used or refurbed NVIDIA GPU will probably run you 100-200 depending on where you get it, and how nice it is. I wouldn't get anything lower than a GTX 560. Don't blow your money on that big of an SSD. 120GB Samsung EVOs run for under $100. Again, the RAM is what's gonna suck. Even today, FB-DIMMs go for absurd prices, even on eBay. But if you're set on not selling, that's my two cents on what you should do.

thanks thats perfect, regarding the cpus i have found some intel x5365s on ebay would these work? and would i need to upgrade the firmware?

thanks

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also i could do with a boot screen really as i have a few different installs, however i haven't got room to keep the old card in also?

 

[NOTNlCE]

thanks thats perfect, regarding the cpus i have found some intel x5365s on ebay would these work? and would i need to upgrade the firmware?

thanks

----------

also i could do with a boot screen really as i have a few different installs, however i haven't got room to keep the old card in also?

For sure you would need to flash the firmware in order for your machine to take the X5365s, but with the flash those will work. As far as a boot screen goes, check out MacVidCards as an option. You're going to end up paying more than you would for a PC card, but he EFI flashes all his cards for full PCIe speed and EFI boot, and they're far more cost effective for performance than anything Apple is going to sell you.

 

[jakesaunders27]

For sure you would need to flash the firmware in order for your machine to take the X5365s, but with the flash those will work. As far as a boot screen goes, check out MacVidCards as an option. You're going to end up paying more than you would for a PC card, but he EFI flashes all his cards for full PCIe speed and EFI boot, and they're far more cost effective for performance than anything Apple is going to sell you.

Brilliant thanks for the link looks a bit more cost effective thanks for your help with all this!

 

[lurkingbf]

I did this very update, and I did NOT need to flash my firmware. It's an extra step (likely with some extra risk) that you probably won't need. So just install them, reboot, and see how it goes.

If you're overly concerned about the "unknown" CPU identifier in system info, then you can simply edit your plist as I did to resolve that issue. There's a utility out there that will accomplish this.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1293124/

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By the way, over the last few years, I have done all of the updates to my Mac Pro 1,1 that you mentioned. I installed a 3-drive SSD RAID0 array (lots of backups!), a pair of X5355 processors, and the GTX-570 GPU.

I don't do the kind of work with Logic that you do, but I do some photography with use of Lightroom and, previously, Aperture, along with other general use personal and work stuff. In my experience, the upgrades went in this order with respect to noticed performance improvement:

1) SSD's
2) Processors
3) GPU

I've had 9 GB's of RAM from day one, so can't comment on that, but that has been a sufficient amount for my needs.

Might be different priorities for you, of course, but that was my experience.

 

[jakesaunders27]

I did this very update, and I did NOT need to flash my firmware. It's an extra step (likely with some extra risk) that you probably won't need. So just install them, reboot, and see how it goes.

If you're overly concerned about the "unknown" CPU identifier in system info, then you can simply edit your plist as I did to resolve that issue. There's a utility out there that will accomplish this.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1293124/

----------

By the way, over the last few years, I have done all of the updates to my Mac Pro 1,1 that you mentioned. I installed a 3-drive SSD RAID0 array (lots of backups!), a pair of X5355 processors, and the GTX-570 GPU.

I don't do the kind of work with Logic that you do, but I do some photography with use of Lightroom and, previously, Aperture, along with other general use personal and work stuff. In my experience, the upgrades went in this order with respect to noticed performance improvement:

1) SSD's
2) Processors
3) GPU

I've had 9 GB's of RAM from day one, so can't comment on that, but that has been a sufficient amount for my needs.

Might be different priorities for you, of course, but that was my experience.

That's great to know thanks a lot

 

[donw35]

I updated my 1,1 from 5130 to 5160's, added another 4gb Ram, 120SSD GB for boot and apps. I also did the Boot.EFI trick so I could use a newer Nvidia graphics card and run Mavericks. I don't have boot screen but I don't need it.

I use this machine for track editing and some mixing. if your apps uses all 8 cores then the cpu upgrade would make a difference.

 

[RVijay007]

I recently bought:

-- a 256GB Samsung SSD ($200) and set up a Fusion Drive with a 2TB hard drive (works beautifully, boot times are extremely fast)

-- bought an additional 16GB RAM for it for $150

I had an old Mac Pro 1,1 that I was able to install Mavericks on, and took it's video card out to put into my main Mac Pro 3,1. Now I run the MP1,1 headless and screen share into it.

So all in all, I have a Mac Pro 3,1 system that boots extremely fast, hasn't even used paging / swap for memory, and I can use four monitors instead of 2. Breathed new life into this system and I love it, and don't see any reason personally for my productivity to get the new MP.

So I recommend perhaps buying a smaller SSD and set up a fusion drive instead, and use the extra money for RAM.

If it helps, my use cases are heavy productivity (programming for iOS and Mac apps, always running Windows 7 in Parallels to do complex Excel / financial work / Windows programming). Running real-time trading systems also.