High Sierra Performance on Mac Pro 3,1 (2008)

[AphoticD]

Can anybody provide feedback on performance of High Sierra (Beta) on the cMP 3,1? Better or worse than Sierra?

I initially installed Sierra 10.12.2 on this Mac Pro early in the year with the specs;

• 2x 3.2Ghz Quad Core Xeon
  
• 16GB DDR2 800Mhz FB-DIMM RAM (8x 2GB)
  
• GT 120 Graphics Card (from a 4,1)
  
• OWC Mercury Electra 3G 480GB SSD

I decided to return to El Capitan 10.11.6 due to various glitches, lack of wifi support with the stock Airport/BT card and general slower/laggy performance.

I have since upgraded the tower with:

• Gigabyte Windforce GTX 680 OC (2GB) - Successfully flashed.
  
• 256GB KingSpec mSATA SSD (6G)
• nanoTECH SATA III (6G) 2-port (jumper select) int/ext PCIe card
  
• Generic USB3.1 A+C PCIe card (separately powered) - Using a custom El Capitan driver.
  
• External 2.4Ghz 10dBi Wifi RP-SMA antenna/booster to alleviate Bluetooth issues from the USB3 card's signal interference.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Draeconis]

Well, give it 24 hours, and try for yourself

If your USB PCIe card requires a custom driver to work, odds are that may not work in High Sierra.

 

[AphoticD]

Fair enough. Just looking for a little feedback before investing the time into it (and the cost of the WiFi/BT upgrade).

 

[Ben888]

I run High Sierra on my (significantly less modified) 3,1 and it runs well. Mine has a SanDisk 240 GB SSD as the boot drive and 32 GB of RAM and I replaced the 2600 XT when it died with a flashed 8800 GT. Mine doesn't have an Airport WiFi card so I just use a compatible 3rd party USB dongle. The Apple Bluetooth module in mine seems to work fine. I can't speak to whether some of your advanced modifications will cause trouble in High Sierra, but my configuration has been relatively trouble free.

Fair enough. Just looking for a little feedback before investing the time into it (and the cost of the WiFi/BT upgrade).

[doublepost=1514161728][/doublepost]

I run High Sierra on my (significantly less modified) 3,1 and it runs well. Mine has a SanDisk 240 GB SSD as the boot drive and 32 GB of RAM and I replaced the 2600 XT when it died with a flashed 8800 GT. Mine doesn't have an Airport WiFi card so I just use a compatible 3rd party USB dongle. The Apple Bluetooth module in mine seems to work fine. I can't speak to whether some of your advanced modifications will cause trouble in High Sierra, but my configuration has been relatively trouble free.

If you are interested, the wireless dongle that I use is an Edimax that I bought on Amazon for around $8.

 

[fpdesign]

I run High Sierra on my (significantly less modified) 3,1 and it runs well. Mine has a SanDisk 240 GB SSD as the boot drive and 32 GB of RAM and I replaced the 2600 XT when it died with a flashed 8800 GT. Mine doesn't have an Airport WiFi card so I just use a compatible 3rd party USB dongle. The Apple Bluetooth module in mine seems to work fine. I can't speak to whether some of your advanced modifications will cause trouble in High Sierra, but my configuration has been relatively trouble free.


[doublepost=1514161728][/doublepost]

If you are interested, the wireless dongle that I use is an Edimax that I bought on Amazon for around $8.

What model?
Work with some applications?
Or out of the box?

Thanx

 

[Ben888]

What model?
Work with some applications?
Or out of the box?

Thanx

Model is EW-7811Un. Install the included drivers and go.

 

[aa_online]

resurrecting this thread..

Had a mac pro 3,1 Nvidia 680 with a Softraid using the 4 internal drives.. had hit set up with the latest el capitan to run the now minimum setup for Adobe and other apps. Debating if doing the high sierra hack to get the latest FCP with it or swap it out with a 5,1 so that I can be mojave ready with just a GFX card swap.. Hopefully the bitcoin bubble would have popped by then and card prices will normalize.

Feedback on the 3,1 high sierra upgrade would be appreciated. I don't; use wifi so that issue is irrelevant. thanks!

 

[tsialex]

resurrecting this thread..

Had a mac pro 3,1 Nvidia 680 with a Softraid using the 4 internal drives.. had hit set up with the latest el capitan to run the now minimum setup for Adobe and other apps. Debating if doing the high sierra hack to get the latest FCP with it or swap it out with a 5,1 so that I can be mojave ready with just a GFX card swap.. Hopefully the bitcoin bubble would have popped by then and card prices will normalize.

Feedback on the 3,1 high sierra upgrade would be appreciated. I don't; use wifi so that issue is irrelevant. thanks!

I don't know about the RAID issue, but with a Nvidia supported GPU like GTX680 you can install High Sierra on a 2008, it's easy and you will have a 99% standard system.

It's a lot easier if you have a supported Mac to install with target disk mode or on a USB dock. Basically you just have to disable SIP, copy the El Capitan PlatformSupport.plist and add "-no_compat_check" to the boot args.

 

[aa_online]

I don't know about the RAID issue, but with a Nvidia supported GPU like GTX680 you can install High Sierra on a 2008, it's easy and you will have a 99% standard system.

It's a lot easier if you have a supported Mac to install with target disk mode or on a USB dock. Basically you just have to disable SIP, copy the El Capitan PlatformSupport.plist and add "-no_compat_check" to the boot args.

Did one better! Used DosDude1's patch utility to get High Sierra to run on a spare partition. Ling adobe PS and LR, as well as Apple FCP, Motion, Compressor to give it the workout. Already confirmed with Softraid, their software raid works up to High Sierra.

Will report back!

 

[DearthnVader]

One thing to add on the 2008 MP with Sierra/HS, with the ATI 2600 and ATI 4780 it isn't necessary to use the older AMD drivers, these cards work just fine with the stock Sierra/HS drivers.

 

[Augustots]

So if I understand correctly on mac pro 3.1 2008 Sierra works better than high sierra, am I right?

 

[Augustots]

Help my please.