2008 Mac Pro 2.8ghz 8-core...how does it stand up today?

[spiritlevel]

Another 2.8 fan here - been a totally reliable workhorse. Best Mac I've ever owned.

Added 120GB Vertex 2 SSD earlier this year.
About to take RAM from 12 to 16GB
About to upgrade GPU from 8800GT to either 5878 or 6870.

Think I'll be trading in my late 2008 MBP long before the early 2008 MP.

 

[cpnotebook80]

I need to clean mine inside out
i have the air spray can
any advice

 

[aramosc]

Awesome dude - I went from a 2008 iMac also (now in my office)

I actually whacked in a 8GB RAM upgrade today to put mine to 10GB also

Highly recommend splashing out on a SSD for booting the OS and apps, it is awesome snappy and I cant see myself needing to upgrade for years to come

I'm really close on getting the SSD upgrade but I want to get a second ACD first which SSD did you go with? and which adapter for mounting did you use?

 

[rdsii64]

I love mine

Even though mine is 5 years old, its the best 750 dollars I ever spent. I chews through encodes like greased lighting. I can't install final cut pro until I upgrade the graphics card. My 24 inch iMac struggled with final cut because it had weak sauce graphics. I can't wait to see what this beast will do with decent graphics power.

 

[brand]

Even though mine is 5 years old, its the best 750 dollars I ever spent. I chews through encodes like greased lighting. I can't install final cut pro until I upgrade the graphics card. My 24 inch iMac struggled with final cut because it had weak sauce graphics. I can't wait to see what this beast will do with decent graphics power.

When this thread was originally created, before you drug it up, your Mac Pro wasn't 5 years old.

 

[rdsii64]

When this thread was originally created, before you drug it up, your Mac Pro wasn't 5 years old.

OK so I'm guilty of Necroposting but this is still a beastly machine.

 

[Macsonic]

Even though mine is 5 years old, its the best 750 dollars I ever spent. I chews through encodes like greased lighting. I can't install final cut pro until I upgrade the graphics card. My 24 inch iMac struggled with final cut because it had weak sauce graphics. I can't wait to see what this beast will do with decent graphics power.

I am also enjoying my 2008 Mac Pro. Still running smoothly and quietly with no hiccups. You may want to try adding Nvidia 570 or 580 videocard.

 

[seveej]

Even two years after the OP, the 2008 octo delivers a hellish bang/buck ratio. I paid 800 € for mine, and I'm very impressed.

The silent power this machine has is amazing, and you can throw anything at it (I found it silent even with the 8800gt, after updating to a 5770 even more so).

Sure, the newest 12-cores run loops around this old box, but those cycles do not come cheap.

RGDS,

 

[OS6-OSX]

(disclaimer-did not do the graphics)

But does this answer your question!

 

[aggri1]

When this thread was originally created, before you drug it up, your Mac Pro wasn't 5 years old.

I don't understand "you drug it up". "you drugged it" doesn't make sense, so I presume you mean "you dug it"...

Just read a thread about the use of "dongle" when in fact the correct word was "adapter". Don't ever use the wrong one.

 

[brand]

I don't understand "you drug it up". "you drugged it" doesn't make sense, so I presume you mean "you dug it"...

Just read a thread about the use of "dongle" when in fact the correct word was "adapter". Don't ever use the wrong one.

I definitely wasn't thinking on that one.

 

[cosmos]

Mine still does everything that I ask of it after 5 years of constant use. Assuming no hardware failures, I expect to get another two or three years out of her.

 

[S Derwisinski]

Mac Pro 2008, 8 core - what are possible upgrades to speed up editing work?

Mine still does everything that I ask of it after 5 years of constant use. Assuming no hardware failures, I expect to get another two or three years out of her.

My 2008 Mac Pro looks very old to me and I am trying to do some upgrades.

Im just adding eSata ports for faster transfers, Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB SSD drive to speed up launching apps and Im thinking what is the option to make rendering / exporting faster.

I have 16GB RAM & 2.8; 8 cores as standard Mac 3.1 has. I have Mac Mountain Lion installed.

I have GTX 285 graphic card and I tried to use GTX 680 and Im not impressed with the results, however I had to spend 500 pounds for this card, which is nearly half of the price of some decent PC workstation. I guess this card is optimised for gaming, but not for apps like FCP X or Premiere Pro CC.

Lux Mark result for GTX 285 is 2443 and 4631 for GTX 680, but to my taste I can't see how it affects rendering / exporting speeds.

If you heard about any magic device for my Mac Pro that will come in handy I will appreciate your advice a lot. For now on when some exporting and rendering is done on my gear Im spending time scrolling some Facebook news, but I believe if I had faster configuration I will not be forced to work so long hours in front of the screen.

Im looking forward for your creative ideas. My favourite computer in the past was called Amiga CDTV, now I think my next computer will be Hackintosh, however I used to like Apple stuff I don't also want to spend fortune on new Mac Pro 2013, which is coming soon as I don't like to put stuff into the bin, so upgrade is what Im looking for.

Do you think that my graphic card GTX 285 is worth an upgrade and what can be the fastest card for my Mac?

 

[kudukudu]

love mine as well. Best computer I have every had. It was starting to feel a little sluggish, but the SSD upgrade gave it a nice adrenalin shot. I can't believe how fast it still seems for a 5 year old computer.

 

[rontheancient]

I'm totally happy with my 2008 2.8 Octo-core and the fact that it has lasted this long...

To quote Jeremy Clarkson, there never was a point where I thought "you know...I wish it had more power". Running FSX doesnt count, even unicorn tears wont be enough to run that game at 30 FPS.

That said, I did perform some upgrades to extend the life of the machine:

• Added 6 GB of OWC memory (8GB total)
• Replaced 8800GT with a PC EVGA GTX 660Ti
• Upgraded to 256GB Kingston Hyper-X SSD for OS drive

There's not much left on the upgrade list:

• Move SSD to a Velocity Solo card
• Maybe: Upgrade processors to X5482s
• Probably not: water cool the whole thing

I agree with kudukudu, the best boost is switching to SSD for your system drive. When I did this upgrade, the difference was night and day. Obviously, any R/W to a HDD will be just the same, but system operations and overall feel of the OS will skyrocket.

I need to clean mine inside out
i have the air spray can
any advice

Grab the Apple Service Source guide, buy a good screwdriver kit, and learn to take apart your machine. I pulled out every single part except for the logic board and cleaned them all with canned air and alcohol. Regreased the CPUs and northbridge while I was at it. The PSU has a lot of open space inside of it, so dust is easily extracted out.

 

[ggoerl]

what gpu is everyone running in their 2008's? I'm still running my 8800 gt. Anyone running the 5770? what card would you recommend upgrading to coming from the 8800?

 

[Macsonic]

what gpu is everyone running in their 2008's? I'm still running my 8800 gt. Anyone running the 5770? what card would you recommend upgrading to coming from the 8800?

I am using a Nvidia GTX285 Mac edition and sometimes switches to the Radeon 5770HD Mac version. Both cards works fine though my favorite is the Nvidia 285. The Radeon 5870HD is also a good card.

 

[stjames70]

Loved it so much, I bought a second 4 years later....

I bought the original MacPro 3,1 2.8 Octocore. The machine has been rock steady since inception. Loved it so much in fact, we bought a clone of that machine in 2012. It is amazingly quiet, stable, and due to the ability to connect certain 3rd party cards to the backplane directly, we upgraded ours to a full 32Gb, squeezed in eight M500 960gb and put it in at a RAID 1+0 configuration (Areca 1882ix), added two M500 960gb SSDs on the ODD1 and ODD2 SATA ports, stuck a NVIDIA Titan card (yes, it is fed with an additional internal power supply).

It is fast enough, the Xeon server chips inside have been on for almost 5 years straight (don't forget to blow out the dust -- the GTX 285 card we had fried because of dust), and except for one graphic card which burnt out, it has never really gone down. As everyone before me has mentioned, there have been very few compelling reasons as to why we would 'upgrade' to a new MacPro or an iMac (BTW you can't really upgrade to an iMac -- those CPUs inside are not server grade and I don't think you really want to keep that iMac on for five years without turning them off -- I know this, because the iMacs we own get freaking hot -- not very reassuring to say the least).

Considering that this thread has been going since April 2011 and people are still reading this, I think the 2008 MacPro is an unquestionable Apple success story (not sure how Apple is taking this in -- I am keeping it around until the OS finally learns how to use all the cores efficiently instead of using one or two cores at most).

Oh wait, yes, I love this MacPro, and used ones are probably the best bargains in the market.

 

[Korican100]

another macpro 3,1 owner here, been one since 2009.

Its come a long way, and has had some beefy upgrades. I do a lot of heavy video editing also, but it never lets me down. Although, my ssd setup, and GPU doesn't hurt either. Also my 2x3.2 cpu's grinding it out!

 

[rockinrocker]

Yeah, I'm still using mine a lot for my studio and it works great- though I've hard several pieces of hardware that have needed to be replaced:

-graphics card (I forget the model- whatever the entry level one was)

-one of the RAM daughter boards

-wireless card (replaced with an ethernet cable)

-possibly the firewire card (though I'm not totally sure if that's the problem or not- see my other thread about it- luckily I just slapped another PCIe/FW card in there that seems to be working fine)

Still plenty o' power though, even 5 years later.

Replacing that boot drive with a solid state would be pretty sweet though...

 

[Velin]

Mac Pro 3,1 Early 2008 owner, Quad-Core Intel Xeon 2.8 Ghz. In fact I bought two of them at the time, one for home, one for the office. Then my partner bought one for the office as well.

Put 4 SSDs in the home 2008 Mac Pro, and a few SSDs at the office 2008 Mac Pro using aftermarket sleds.

Only problem we've had with the machines, the stock Nvidia graphics cards that came with them. Both of my stock Nvidia cards fried. They sucked. Upgraded to the ATI Radeon HD 5770s a while back, it was a bit pricey, but no problems since then.

So we have a lot of experience with these machines. Without question, the single best computer purchases we made, ever, and we are thankful for that because buying a few of them, plus SSD storage, plus aftermarket cards, isn't cheap.

But it's going on 2014, these computers still are lightning quick and do everything we ask of them. Latest OSX versions? Not a problem, still run flawlessly, so happy about that fact. Zero software problems. They crunch through data really quick, the multiple storage bays are the bomb. We don't even really maintain these 2008 Mac Pros that well, haven't cleaned or vacuumed the cases in a long time. But they fire right up without problem.

I've thought about moving to the latest iMacs, but can't think of a strong reason to. We run dual Apple LED Cinema Displays off these Mac Pros, and thus the display is as good as the iMac screens.

So I've been using this same Mac Pro for five years straight, hoping to use it several more years.

(This would have been simply impossible with a 2008 PC. I was lucky if I didn't smoke a processor and multiple cards after two years with a PC. They all sucked, badly. I moved to Apple after the Vista fiasco, along with a Dell PC smoking two video cards in six months, as well as an Intel processor frying after a year; I was so damn annoyed and sick of all the problems. After Apple and OSX, have never looked back and never, ever want to be in a Windows software or PC hardware environment again.)

 

[rdsii64]

running like a champ

Since my last post in this thread, I have upgraded to 32 gigs of ram and replaced the graphics card with a non hacked PC HD5770. Its running smooth and fast. Final cut Pro X doesn't struggle at all now. Next comes an SSD. After than some 4T spinning drives for cheap storage.

 

[ggoerl]

My 2008 Mac Pro looks very old to me and I am trying to do some upgrades.

Im just adding eSata ports for faster transfers, Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB SSD drive to speed up launching apps and Im thinking what is the option to make rendering / exporting faster.

I have 16GB RAM & 2.8; 8 cores as standard Mac 3.1 has. I have Mac Mountain Lion installed.

I have GTX 285 graphic card and I tried to use GTX 680 and Im not impressed with the results, however I had to spend 500 pounds for this card, which is nearly half of the price of some decent PC workstation. I guess this card is optimised for gaming, but not for apps like FCP X or Premiere Pro CC.

Lux Mark result for GTX 285 is 2443 and 4631 for GTX 680, but to my taste I can't see how it affects rendering / exporting speeds.

If you heard about any magic device for my Mac Pro that will come in handy I will appreciate your advice a lot. For now on when some exporting and rendering is done on my gear Im spending time scrolling some Facebook news, but I believe if I had faster configuration I will not be forced to work so long hours in front of the screen.

Im looking forward for your creative ideas. My favourite computer in the past was called Amiga CDTV, now I think my next computer will be Hackintosh, however I used to like Apple stuff I don't also want to spend fortune on new Mac Pro 2013, which is coming soon as I don't like to put stuff into the bin, so upgrade is what Im looking for.

Do you think that my graphic card GTX 285 is worth an upgrade and what can be the fastest card for my Mac?

Why didn't you like the 680? I just saw a thread on here regarding that card and was considering an upgrade to that.

 

[S Derwisinski]

Mac Pro 2008 Upgrade

Why didn't you like the 680? I just saw a thread on here regarding that card and was considering an upgrade to that.

Im going to do some more tests on the card and I will inform you about the results.

So far I got this comparison between GTX 285 1GB; GT120 and GTX 680 4GB:

Open CL - CPU + GPU for GTX 285 = 571

Open CL - CPU + GPU for GTX 680 = 1062

Open CL - CPU + GPU for GT 120 = 735

Open CL - GPU for GTX 285 = 268

Open CL - GPU for GTX 680 = 756

Open CL - GPU for GT 120 = 318

I have the feeling these numbers do not mean so much as I believe that the performance

of GTX 285 was way better than of GT120, however according to LuxMark score it looks different.

I added SSD disc to my setup and that's really amazing how you can make the things fly. Now my apps load three times faster than before.

I had GTX 285 1GB and now I have GTX 680 4 GB in my machine.

The benchmarks in Lux Mark are three times higher for GTX 680 as you can see above, but I cant tell you now what will be performance. Its just very recent upgrade.

The card supports both: OpenCL and CUDA, so from the sound of it may be good choice for people who use FCPX and latest Premiere Pro CC or After Effects.

Now Im adding USB 3.0 ports to my Mac Pro, but my external drives support USB 2.0 / eSata and firewire 800. Do you know if I can use any usb 3.0 to esata adapters or I need specific ones?

I bought this cable

http://www.newertech.com/products/esata_cable.php

to add eSata ports to my Mac, but it doesn't work at all, however Im using cables, which are 0,5 metres (recommended).

__________________
Mac Pro 3.1, 8 core 2.8 Xeon, 16 GB RAM, GTX 680 4GB, Samsung Pro SSD 256 GB (boot drive); SSD 64GB (media storage), WD Studio Edition 2TB (FireWire 800 /eSata drive) + WD Studio Edition 1TB (FireWire 800 /eSata drive); USB 3.0 docking station; 23" Apple Cinema Display, Mac OS X 10.8.3.

 

[ggoerl]

Basically if I don't want to upgrade to the 680 I would like to upgrade to something or anything from my 8800gt. The minimum being 2-3gb the 680 might be overkill for me right now and a bit too much. I would like the card to be efi capable so I still have my boot screen. I'm on snow leopard still and I guess doing this gpu upgrade I'm going to lose that along with rosetta as I will have to unfortunately update to mountain lion. So what are my options? I read that anything along the GTX5xx series would work?