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2008 Mac Pro worth it?

jsmith823 said:
Sorry for the bump, but I'm looking at doing this pretty soon.
I can get either the 3,1 or the 4,1 (the 4,1 would take a little longer but it's doable). I've been seeing that the 3,8 8 core performs better for editing applications and the 4,1 is better if I wish to upgrade in the future? Is that correct? .
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Yes, that is correct. Note that I have both a 3,1 dual quad core 2.28GHz and a 5,1 single 6 core 3.33GHz. I remember when I bought my 2008 3,1, the new 2009 4,1 faster single cores were just out and many people were scrambling to buy the older dual core Macs, especially anyone doing video. The dual cores were the secret. It is, as many video users here have said, a workhorse for video processing. It that is your main purpose for buying the MP, then the 3,1 will be just fine for what you are planning on doing NOW, it is the most bang for the buck for sure. Yes a 4,1 or 5,1 is better for future proofing, but does that matter, as You already have a newer MPB for other items.

My 5,1 is my daily Mac, great for photo processing, cad work and games, but if I do any video processing, I still use my 3,1.

Edit: As far as upgrades, a SSD startup drive is a must in my opinion, get a adapter cage to fit in one of the 4 HD slots or put in the lower CD bay. Huge improvement in startup and app speeds. And your 7970 card, is it dual 6 pins? If not you need a 8 to 6 pin adapter. My MSI 7950 worked fine in the 3,1 but there is no startup screen.
 
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This morning I got my flashed 4,1 w3680 3.33 hex core going with the transplanted upgrades (X2/twin 840 evo/usb3.0/gtx680) out of my maxed out dual socket 3,1 8 core 3.2 32gb 800fsb ram and into the newer Mac Pro. I have kept the ram triple channel for FSB 1333 speed so I'm down to 24gb from 32. Windows shockingly went pretty easy redetecting all the hardware though I couldn't get the inateck kt4004 usb to work properly before I left for jobs. But the main reason of the 4,1 - the Intel RST SATA ahci driver in Windows is now 11.7 instead of 10.1 which means I can do >3Tb data recovery in Windows in the sleds without the 746gb drive bug cropping up.

So far it seems obviously a lot quicker on single core but I have to test out just how it compares with the power apps, multitasking with a few apps with the half hour I had it feels pretty even in terms of performance. I get the feeling though that my old 3,1 will still have the edge with the dual sockets and that extra 8gb doing the video work..

Which may mean a dual 4,1 tray will arrive sooner than I thought!

And the 3,1 is up for sale for London/South East buyers for collection only because I'm keeping my box, I use it for other Mac Pro boxes to ship!

EDIT - Some quick transcoding using Xmedia is about 20% faster on a short file. Heavier work to follow after I've rang Adobe :D
 
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SpecFoto said:
Edit: As far as upgrades, a SSD startup drive is a must in my opinion, get a adapter cage to fit in one of the 4 HD slots or put in the lower CD bay. Huge improvement in startup and app speeds. And your 7970 card, is it dual 6 pins? If not you need a 8 to 6 pin adapter. My MSI 7950 worked fine in the 3,1 but there is no startup screen.
Click to expand...

Even better stick the SSD in an Apricom Velocity Solo PCIe card as the SATA2 bus gets saturated by an SSD in the drive sled & you get double the performance using the Apricom card.

If you are going to be using Premiere Pro you would be better off buying a used GTX570 for the CUDA acceleration it provides.

I have been editing native 5DII/5DIII footage for the lest several years on my dual CPU 3,1. Make sure that you have enough RAM. The 800MHz FB-DIMMs are expensive but the cheaper 667MHz DIMMs as fitted to the 1,1 & 2,1 are only slightly slower when benchmarked but indistinguishable in real life usage.
 
nigelbb said:
Even better stick the SSD in an Apricom Velocity Solo PCIe card as the SATA2 bus gets saturated by an SSD in the drive sled & you get double the performance using the Apricom card.
Click to expand...

True, but a couple of times the OP said "budget" and "college student". Putting a SSD in the 2nd CD drive bay costs less than $10, maybe $15 for a HDD sled. The PCI card you mention is $90 at Amazon. Plus the SSD of course.
 
Mine rocks

I have an 8 core 3.1 with a single PC 5770 (I don't dual boot so I can live without a boot screen) and this thing just flies when encoding, transcoding or editing HD video. I'm on the lookout for a 5.1 I can afford one day down the road. In the here and now, I don't feel under gunned with this machine.
 
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Check the specs. :)

X1 is limited to 400MB/sec as one would be hindered if one purchased an 840 EVO/Pro or 850 Pro where you need 500MB/sec.
 

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nigelbb said:
Either I believe. I have a Mac Pro with an X2 card but I think that the only difference is that the X1 can hook up once SSD while the X2 can have two SSDs/
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That is incorrect information. The Solo x2 does have the ability to run two drives, but the the x2 also has a faster transfer rate when used in a PCIe revision 2 slots. In a 3,1 Mac Pro only slots 1 & 2 are revision 2.0 slots, the others are revision 1.0. So, if you are using the the SSD in slots 3 & 4 of a 3,1 Mac Pro you are limited by the band width of the slots, and the x1 will be fine, but if you are using slot 2, the x2 will provide superior performance.

Lou
 
I'm so surprised the 2008 doesn't have Sata3. Considering how far back PC motherboards had them.
 
Badagri said:
I'm so surprised the 2008 doesn't have Sata3. Considering how far back PC motherboards had them.
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I'm not - Intel never had SATA 3 baked into their silicon till the Cougar Point chipset for the Sandy Bridge CPU architecture - in 2011 when they also brought forth Thunderbolt.

Earlier PC mobos with Intel chipsets had third party SATA 3 controllers on the boards.
 
Badagri said:
So it was now that the memories are coming back. Intel even had a recall for early SandyBridge boards.
Click to expand...

I have been shadowing Intel boards, chipsets and future products since the 486/Pentium days as the only tech I knew who loved, worked and integrated on both platforms. Only saw more techs like me post Intel Mac for over a decade!

Apple never bothered with a recall with the bug in the secondary SATA port on the Cougar Point Chipset - they just downgraded the SATA controller to SATA2 for the early 2011 MBP.

Fixed Intel silicon became the late 2011 MBP!
 
It's nice having 480MB/s read speeds now vs 230MB/s on Sata2. I'm only limited now by the speed of the vanilla Samsung 120GB 840. Will upgrade to a bigger one soon. Or a Pro.

Though, boot up seems a little bit slower. Which I thought was odd. On Sata2 it was chime, screen appears then Apple logo and cog with a few spins and desktop.

Now it's chime, white screen for 4 seconds, Apple logo and cog with few spins then desktop. Overall apps are faster etc…

Shame the drive shows up as external. I don't have drives on the desktop anyway.

Is it normal for the graphics slot to remain at X16 even though the Sata card is in slot2?

Code: 
[SIZE="2"]Generic AHCI Controller:

  Vendor:	Generic
  Product:	AHCI Controller
  Link Speed:	6 Gigabit
  Negotiated Link Speed:	6 Gigabit
  Physical Interconnect:	SATA
  Description:	AHCI Version 1.19 Supported

Samsung SSD 840 Series:

  Capacity:	120.03 GB (120,034,123,776 bytes)
  Model:	Samsung SSD 840 Series                  
  Revision:	DXT07B0Q
  Serial Number:     
  Native Command Queuing:	Yes
  Queue Depth:	32
  Removable Media:	Yes
  Detachable Drive:	No
  BSD Name:	disk4
  Medium Type:	Solid State
  TRIM Support:	Yes
  Partition Map Type:	GPT (GUID Partition Table)
  S.M.A.R.T. status:	Verified
  Volumes:
disk4s1:
  Capacity:	209.7 MB (209,715,200 bytes)
  BSD Name:	disk4s1
  Content:	EFI
Macintosh HD:
  Capacity:	119.69 GB (119,690,149,888 bytes)
  Available:	48.08 GB (48,082,386,944 bytes)
  Writable:	Yes
  File System:	Journaled HFS+
  BSD Name:	disk4s2
  Mount Point:	/
  Content:	Apple_HFS
  Volume UUID:	60F9BCDD-0ADB-3320-8EA8-22AF6FD933EC[/SIZE]
 
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