Just finished my MacPro4,1 to 5,1 3.46 Hex Single cpu upgrade

[Korican100]

It was pretty damn easy I must say. Geekbench before and after scores below.

Lil backstory. I had a decked out MacPro3,1 (geekbench of 12500) and I needed some more PCIe 2.0 slots, and a little faster video editing speeds. So MP4,1 was best way to go with budget (came across a good 4,1 body)

Did the update - easy as pie. Grabbed a @W3690 off of ebay, and just threw it in this baby. There are youtube links out there that show the process from start to finish. Again, real easy.

Anyway, I upgraded a 4,1 2.66 ghz 8gb of 1066 ram --> flashed it to 5,1. Got a W3690, threw 24gb of 1333z ram in it. Reset my pram, and I was off to go.

Here are my geekbench 3 @ 64bit scores before:

And here they are after the upgrade.

Very happy now. I got an extra velocity x2 solo card (i already had one) I am using a 480gb OWC 6g ssd as my video scratch disk. And two 120gb striped 6g SSd's on the other x2solo as my boot drive. This puppy feels a lot faster than my macpro3,1. And I have an improved setup for my video editing purposes at this time.

I still have my eye on a new MP when I get the budget for it. But for right now, I think this will do.

Thanks.

 

[malcbo]

Thanks for sharing your experience.

I'm waiting for the W3690 bought on ebay to arrive home to do the same.
Already did the firmware update and also threw 32GB 1333 ram.

 

[Korican100]

Thanks for sharing your experience.

I'm waiting for the W3690 bought on ebay to arrive home to do the same.
Already did the firmware update and also threw 32GB 1333 ram.

Sweet. Good luck in your journey!


One thing to note though. I see you have 32gb ram. With the W3690, things go a little different with the ram setup.

Here is some information someone gave me:

"Just a reminder. If you want the RAM run at 1333MHz, you can only use slot 123, that means 3x8G. If you want more RAM later on and use the remaining slot, you RAM will run in double channel config and the speed can only achieve 1066MHz. So, for best performance, the next step will be 3x16G.

If you think you may need 64G RAM, W3690 can't give you this option at this moment. Only X5690 can run with 4x16G RAM on your 4,1 (must flash to 5,1 firmware to use this chip) with this speed. Both chip have the same clock speed, but X5690 is design for dual CPU config, it can handle more RAM than W3690. However, it's much more expensive than the W3690."

 

[malcbo]

Just receive the CPU today and its already up and running in my Mac Pro.
I tested it with OS 10.9.4, 10.11 and Win7.

Under Mavericks, encoding a 1080p took about 17 mins with the 4-core, and less than 10 mins with the 6-core.

Regarding RAM, my 32GB (4 x 8GB) is indeed recognized and working at 1333MHz.