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How Old is Your Mac Pro?

TallManNY

TallManNY

macrumors 601
Original poster
Nov 5, 2007
4,824
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Question for the Mac Pro users with elderly editions. How many years before you felt like your Mac Pro was starting to show its age? I'm not talking about for your power user uses. Just normal stuff, some gaming, and some light home movie video editing (like vacation videos with no time crunch to do any of the compiling). I've got a buddy who just does casual stuff on his computers but always buys Mac Pros and he tends to get well over 6 years of use out of them before he replaces them. He feels like that is the way to go over iMacs because he gets years of high end power and then years of sufficient power to run the latest OS and it gives him better value than buying an iMac every three years or so. Also he runs less risk of a fatal hardware error since parts are more easily replaceable.

I've never made the switch instead always dropping the $1800 or so for a decent iMac. But I wonder if retina level desktop screens will soon be available and if that will be compelling reason to switch to the big box. It might be worth it if I think I can get 6+ years out of the Mac Pro and then 10 years out of the external screen (maybe longer).
 
TallManNY said:
Question for the Mac Pro users with elderly editions. How many years before you felt like your Mac Pro was starting to show its age? I'm not talking about for your power user uses. Just normal stuff, some gaming, and some light home movie video editing (like vacation videos with no time crunch to do any of the compiling). I've got a buddy who just does casual stuff on his computers but always buys Mac Pros and he tends to get well over 6 years of use out of them before he replaces them. He feels like that is the way to go over iMacs because he gets years of high end power and then years of sufficient power to run the latest OS and it gives him better value than buying an iMac every three years or so. Also he runs less risk of a fatal hardware error since parts are more easily replaceable.

I've never made the switch instead always dropping the $1800 or so for a decent iMac. But I wonder if retina level desktop screens will soon be available and if that will be compelling reason to switch to the big box. It might be worth it if I think I can get 6+ years out of the Mac Pro and then 10 years out of the external screen (maybe longer).
Click to expand...


MacPro 2008 3.1 | 14GB Ram | Sapphire ATI Radeon 6870 | OS 10.8.2 | Internal Crucial m4 256 SSD |Internal 1TB 7200 SATA | LG IDE Superdrive (HL-DT-STDVD)

2008, i put in some upgrades but she is still kicking hard. From what i hear i just got in before certain changes started happening, the 1.1 and 2.1 models don't have it quite as good. 2009-2011 models are still "modern".. 2008 is almost there lol. Regardless i run everything i need as of now, and i have win 7 ultimate partitioned.

Anyway, an SSD, ram upgrade and a new graphics card (not official mac stuff) and you will be golden. I can def see myself getting another 2-3 years out of mine if not longer.
 
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Mine is 2006. I use it since end of 2006 and I'll get 2-3 more years out of it easily, unless CS 7 or 8 will need ML :p
 
As long as graphics cards keep appearing my 2010 hex should be good for 3-5 more years. So an impressive 4-8 year cycle. I keep buying laptops though every 2-4 years.
 
Mine was originally a 2.26 Octo core from 2009. Flashed it to MP5,1 when I came out with the tool to do so. Replaced the processors from 2.26 to 2.4 the GT120 to MacVidCards GTX570. The thing is 3 years old. Still going strong.
 
We have about a dozen or so 2008 Mac Pro's and 2x 2.93 Ghz 12-core Mac Pro's. We quit purchasing when Thunderbolt was announced and have held off all purchases until a Thunderbolt-enabled Mac Pro is released. Hopefully this spring as Tim Cook has hinted.
 
My 2008 Mac pro still feels pretty new Quad core 2.8Ghz. Compared to my 2011 i7 MacBookpro, I would say they are equal beasts. In pure raw video encoding to H.264, The Mac book pro barely beats it. As far as graphics performance, Equal. I've noticed not much if any difference so far in games. I had to upgrade to the Radeon 5770, as my gforce 8800 died, so the 1GB of video ram on the Mac Pro may just push it above the mac book pro. I can see using it for another 2 years unless technology just suddenly gets a major jump.
 
I bought an early 2008 Mac Pro 8-core 2.8 in January or February of 2008. It's still going strong. I upgraded the RAM, added an SSD as a boot drive, replaced the stock superdrive with an LG Blu-Ray drive, added another video card, and added a few PCIe cards. My upgrades were done overtime.

The computer still runs unbelievably fast for casual use and I am only a casual user nowadays. Besides daily stuff like email, internet surfing, I use Aperture, Photoshop, rip Blu-Rays and encode BR rips in Handbrake. I edit a little bit of home video once in a while. The only thing a new MP would speed up for me would be my Handbrake encode times, but I could really care less how long it takes.

As I am back in school, I expect my Mac Pro to last until 2014-2016 because I couldn't afford to replace it until mid-2014 at the earliest. Even though I am no longer a power user, I'd really like to replace my MP down the road with another one.
 
My first Gen Mac Pro purchased in 2006 is still kicking as my primary computer. I upgraded the video card along the way and beefed up the RAM, but it's still quite capable running OS 10.8.2 (Yes I hacked it to run Mountain Lion.)

I am curious as to what Apple may have in the pipeline for the Mac Pro in the (relatively) near future though.
 
Mine is an early 2008 Mac Pro. One of the fans has started to rattle, but it otherwise it work fine. Have upgraded RAM and Harddrive.
 
MacPro 2008 3.1 | 14GB Ram | Quadro 4000 | OS 10.6.8 | Internal 9TB SATA RAID 0 |

No new MP unless "needed" software's "minimum requirement" exceeds what's in this box! (10.6.8 excluded)
 
I have a 2008 3.4 gigahertz dual proc 8 cores total and I just bought a 2012 3.06 gigahertz with 12 cores and 128 Gigs of ram from OWC (but as my previous post downgraded to 64 gigs of ram).

The 2008 3.4 boots up exactly as fast as the 2012 one. Both have 512 Crucial SSD drives though.

I got rid of my 2009 2.26 8 core one. It felt much slower than my 2008.
 
2010

Just put an SSD 512 gig drive in my 2010 Mac Pro, and it is a new machine, am thinking that when prices come down some more, I'll add a second SSD as well. Am considering going to 32 gig from 16 gig, but don't expect that much of a difference in speed or performance from that upgrade, I just want to speed up Video processing a bit. Can't wait for the 2013 however, looking forward to it whenever it finally shows up, in the meantime, my Pro still has alot of life left in it
 
2008 Mac Pro 3,1. Upgraded the GPU to a flashed 4870, and upped the RAM to 18GB.

Solid machine, runs like a champ. Only issues I've had have been the 8800GT dying (which Apple replaced but which I no longer trusted hence the GPU upgrade) and the countless Super drives I've been through until Applecare ran out.

Still use it as my main machine for day to day stuff and some 3D. It's no longer a rendering machine though.
 
I have the Mac Pro 1,1 with dual 3 ghz Xeons, and I've increased the ram to 6 gb, and bought an Intel SSD for it. Have also replaced the graphics card, the optical drive, and filled up the hd bays. Bought an Apple Cinema Display a year or so after getting it.

It does everything I need it to do, but I can't upgrade to ML. Waiting for Apple's next Mac Pro...
 
2006 Mac Pro. Wouldn't be thinking about an upgrade yet if it weren't for the dropped Mountain Lion support.

No age shown. :D
 
2008 Mac Pro here also. Updated the boot drive and scratch disk to SSD's and upgraded the ram to 8 megs. No complaints. I can easily get another 2-3 years out of it, unless Apple tells me other wise with the OS update that no longer supports my machine.
 
4 1/2 years so far. Got the medium video card (8800). Have since added 2 256GB SSDs and have 2 regular hard drives stripped for another 640GB.

Upgraded through the years to 14GB RAM. Have 2 LCDs.

Still plenty fast. About the only limitation for me is no USB3, though I suppose I could buy a card. I don't think I'll buy any more USB2 hard drives.

It was way overkill for what I needed back then, but I wasn't going to limit myself to a computer with a 4GB RAM max, like all the other Apple consumer computers back then.
 
Mac Pro 3,1, 2.8 GHz Octo with 16 GB DDR2 800mhz, 120 GB SSD boot drive, 2.5 TB HDD storage, Sapphire HD5870 Vapor-X GFX card and OS X 10.6.8.
Still kicking arse and taking names, won't replace till it doesn't do that any more.
Team Obsolete FTW.
 
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gpzjock said:
Mac Pro 3,1, 2.8 GHz Octo with 16 GB DDR2 800mhz, 120 GB SSD boot drive, 1.4 TB HDD storage, Sapphire HD5870 Vapor-X GFX card and OS X 10.6.8.
Still kicking arse and taking names, won't replace till it doesn't do that any more.
Team Obsolete FTW.
Click to expand...

Apparently you no longer have to flash PC video cards to work in the Mac since 10.8
 
DesterWallaboo said:
Apparently you no longer have to flash PC video cards to work in the Mac since 10.8
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depends on the card series. One of the reasons i got the 6870.. def the best price point card on the market imho. If you don't flash it you wont have a boot screen, but honestly who needs the boot screen? Especially with an SSD that screen is up for what... 3-4 seconds?
 
Phrygian said:
depends on the card series. One of the reasons i got the 6870.. def the best price point card on the market imho. If you don't flash it you wont have a boot screen, but honestly who needs the boot screen? Especially with an SSD that screen is up for what... 3-4 seconds?
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Fo' shizzle. :D
 
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