2006 Mac Pro upgrades

[spoonie1972]

So, I just grabbed an '06 for $80 CDN. Pretty stoked!

It came with no BT and no WiFi option, a 250meg HD with 10.7.5 on it, and 4gb ram. Also, a GT7300.

I've ordered 32gigs ram, which is due in next week. $100, hard to complain about that. When I can find a pair of x5365 or x5355 cheap enough, I'll swap those in. [Edit - just ordered a pair of the higher idle-wattage SL9YM x5355's for under $12 CDN]

I've got the Pikified El Cap thing ready to go as soon as I have the ram in there, which will go on a new SSD - and here's where things get a bit confusing for me.

1. Will El Cap run on the 5150 chips? Or do I have to get the x53xx chips in there first?
2. Which PCIe card do I want (that allows a bootable volume) to get those newer Sata speeds
3. Which videocard will do a decent job of accelerating AE/Premiere Jobs and still work in a 1,1, or "1,2" since i've done that firmware update - I don't care about boot screen. I already have a GTX570, looking for something that will work faster for AE 3d things.
3. If the card is also supported by Blender, that'd be a plus.

Thanks all - you were of immeasurable help when i was upgrading my 4,1 to a 12-core monster.

 

[CapnDavey]

the apricorn card works well never used it in a 06 ATI HD7950's can be had for about 100 dollars and you can flash it yourself and yes it works with the 06 mac pro. whatever you do good luck

 

[F1Mac]

1. Will El Cap run on the 5150 chips? Or do I have to get the x53xx chips in there first?

Yes El Capitan works just fine with the stock chips.

 

[spoonie1972]

I haven't got enough ram to Pikify yet, but I tossed the GTX570 in, and while it works, I'm not getting QE/CI etc. No CUDA accel. Installed appropriate webdriver, and cuda v5.x.x etc.

What am I missing?

 

[spoonie1972]

Ok, running 10.11.6, 32GB ram, on a slow 250gb HD... but it works!

One thing I find strange, with the 570GTX, the fans are running quite loud (all of them) - is it normal for the FBdimm riser slot "2" to be 80°C or more?

 

[FireArse]

I think my Mac Pro 2006 is the best technology purchase I've ever made (got it together with the Apple 23 Cinema Display) the week it came out.

I still use it now almost daily. It too, is running 10.11.6 and has benefitted from the Sapphire 7950 Mac Edition. Runs amazing - particularly with a few SSDs and a good dose of RAM.

I have just installed iStat and my memory sits at about half that, though I must say we've been demoted to the garage where its 14C (blame the babies)