I'm considering picking up an older Mac Pro. I've seen a few 2007 models pop up with a 2.66 quad in it. What should I know about the 2007 that I might not know? And what doesn't the 2007 have the more recent ones do? And finally does a hair over a grand sound like a good price?
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2007 Mac Pro - buying advice needed
- Thread starter skiltrip
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The new ones have EFI64, Better CPUs, Better Processors and Faster Linking (and in many cases more cores). It should also be said newer ones are based on newer CPU architectures.
Can anyone explain what it means in real life to have an EFI32 Mac Pro? I cha still run 64 bit OS and Apps right?
I worked out if I sell up my 1.1MP for £900 and purchase a 2008 8 Core for £1600 - the difference is £700 to upgrade...
Where are a X5355 upgrade would prob be around £300 - and pull it up to equivalent power. RAM speed and small changes but lets be honest - the geekbench results are pretty similar to the 2008 once upgraded to x5355...?
2 randomly pulled results:
2008 2.8ghz Mac Pro Geekbench score = 9143
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/661173/
2006 2.66 x5355 upgrade Mac Pro Geekbench = 9436
http://www.waitingoutside.com/2010/02/mac-pro-upgraded-with-2-intel-xeon-x5355-processors/
I worked out if I sell up my 1.1MP for £900 and purchase a 2008 8 Core for £1600 - the difference is £700 to upgrade...
Where are a X5355 upgrade would prob be around £300 - and pull it up to equivalent power. RAM speed and small changes but lets be honest - the geekbench results are pretty similar to the 2008 once upgraded to x5355...?
2 randomly pulled results:
2008 2.8ghz Mac Pro Geekbench score = 9143
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/661173/
2006 2.66 x5355 upgrade Mac Pro Geekbench = 9436
http://www.waitingoutside.com/2010/02/mac-pro-upgraded-with-2-intel-xeon-x5355-processors/
32-bit EFI cannot run 64-bit kernel but 32-bit kernel can run 64-bit apps. The biggest concern is that future OS Xs like Lion might have only 64-bit kernel which would mean that it would not work in Macs with 32-bit EFI.
thanks for this...so as I understand it - not real world implications YET-I can use applications when they go 64bit?...but the threat of redundancy on an OS level...surely they wouldnt do that so soon?
The is true for Mac OS X but note that 64 bit Windows and Linux work fine on it however.
Others have mentioned that some Nvidia cards are only supported on 64-bit EFI Macs. There is also concern that ATI will do that with future cards, but who knows. At the very least you can get a 5870, which is a pretty fast card.
ok thanks. forgive my ignorance as Im trying to get to the bottom of how much of a problem this is...but if you can run 64 bit apps - how much of a problem is it going to be in reality not having the OS at 64 bit? Or is it more the redundancy issue to be concerned about?
thanks thats great. In which case I think its worth doing a £300 upgrade on the CPU...should add value and keep me going...
an other difference is also the 2007 does not have a PCI-e 2.0 bus it only has the older 1.0 bus. Not a drama atm, unless you have the 5870 as all the other cards do not saturate the 1.0 bus anyways..