Just purchased a 3,1...what next?

[Twimfy]

Did you put the SSD in a PCIe card to install? There is a difference between adding it by eSATA and with a PCIe.

The other thing that I would suggest is make sure that your fan and the fan cage is clean. My 3,1 is a dust magnet and keeping it clean will keep it cooler.

No, machine hasn't even arrived yet, it's due today, that's another thing on the list but I just want to get it and get it up running first before I spend any more cash.

Sure, I own a Hackintosh, too, the MacPro isn't mine.
For a lot of games, imho it still would be worth the money though to upgrade the GPU in a 3,1, since we aren't talking about some $1000 TitanX (my card was 190€ earlier this year). As I said, it heavily depends on what you want to do...

Well I guess whatever I put it in, it's going to be a step up from the stock ATi card, I'm really not looking for stellar GPU performance tbh.

 

[Twimfy]

Well it arrived. Full of dust which I soon sorted.

Original Apple 320Gb HDD was still in it so that is being converted to a Win 8.1 partition right now. GTX 650 is in and working fine on Apple Drivers and is a nice step up from the HD4000 I've been using for the past 6 months.

Only things that are bothering me are the condition of the case which has bent corners either side of the door (can this be fixed with some brute force?)and the fact that my SSD is being propped up by a piece of cork I had lying around.

Otherwise I'm pretty happy, it's running cool and quiet and so far hasn't flinched at anything I've thrown at it.

 

[gpzjock]

I have run since 2008, an Octo 2.8 GHz 3,1 with 16 GB of 800MHz RAM, HD 5870 gfx, a 128 GB SSD for boot and 2.4 TB of HDD storage. 2 sticks of RAM have failed in 7 years and were replaced under lifetime warranties.
If you install SMC Fan Control you can run the hotter RAM with no issues, just tweak the fans up by about 20% each. None of my RAM has failed since I did so and the Mac is still much quieter than either of the Hackintoshes I have built since.

 

[Twimfy]

I have run since 2008, an Octo 2.8 GHz 3,1 with 16 GB of 800MHz RAM, HD 5870 gfx, a 128 GB SSD for boot and 2.4 TB of HDD storage. 2 sticks of RAM have failed in 7 years and were replaced under lifetime warranties.
If you install SMC Fan Control you can run the hotter RAM with no issues, just tweak the fans up by about 20% each. None of my RAM has failed since I did so and the Mac is still much quieter than either of the Hackintoshes I have built since.

Might give this a try. At the moment nothing seems to be getting obscenely hot. All of the sticks in the machine are crucial 800mhz sticks. They never seem to push beyond 50C, that's testing with Handbrake and some gaming but I'd rather be safe than sorry.

 

[OS6-OSX]

The other thing that I would suggest is make sure that your fan and the fan cage is clean. My 3,1 is a dust magnet and keeping it clean will keep it cooler.

1. Add a Vantec fan to increase air flow (connections in the optical bay if you are not using 2 DVD's)
2. Place the SSD a. on a PCIe card, b. in the optical bay or c. on a drive sled made for SSD's.
3. Spray the dust out including the PSU

And yes I add this picture to most 3,1 posts. I will add it to my signature!

 

[Fl0r!an]

Claiming this in literally every thread about upgrading a 3,1 doesn't make it become more true.
I believe you that it's correct for certain heavily CPU-bound games/engines, but it certainly isn't true as universal statement. Currently I have a MacPro 3,1 here for testing, so I just took the time to benchmark my old HD 5870 (approx. the same level as your GTX 660) against my R9 280 (approx. the same level as your GTX 960). Didn't do any mods to the cards so they were both running @ 2.5GT/s. Results:

Unigine Heaven: 1920x1200, medium settings (default)
HD 5870: 38.5 FPS avg.
R9 280: 54.6 FPS avg. (+ 42%)

CS:GO: 1920x1200, everything maxed out, 4x FSAA
No improvement at all, both cards 115 FPS

Tomb Raider: 1920x1200, everything maxed out
HD 5870: 42 FPS
R9 280: 58.6 FPS (+40%)

Metro: 2033 Redux: 1920x1200, everything maxed out, 2x SSAO. This game sadly doesn't offer a benchmark or a FPS counter, so I can only describe the change with words
HD 5870: unplayable, looks like 10-15 FPS to me (gets playable without SSAO though
R9 280: Way better, doesn't feel like constant 60FPS but for me it's playable. I guess it's around 25-30 FPS in average.

Everything tested in latest Yosemite with trashed AppleIntelCPUXYZBlahBlah.kexts to restore the full performance of the R9 card (got crippled by Apple some time ago...).
When I find the time, I'll do a more comprehensive benchmark with some more games and a Windows comparison, maybe also difference of PCIE 2.0 mod.

Short update on this: Currently I have a GTX 570 here, which should be quite a lot faster than the HD 5870 judging by PC benchmarks (should be almost on par with a HD 7870).
In Heaven it's almost 10% faster in average, but you can notice huge FPS drops when the scene changes.
In CS:GO (which was already running CPU- or Bus-limited on the AMD cards) the performance is a lot worse: Approx. -25% in average compared to HD 5870, again with huge drops every now and then.

I guess the Nvidia drivers have more CPU overhead in OS X which shows especially on the old 3,1. I'll try Web Drivers later, but I don't expect them to have any notable performance improvements for a old Fermi card.

EDIT: Web Drivers increased Heaven performance by <1 FPS, CS GO benchmark has risen by about 10% to 97FPS avg. Some maps remain unplayable though because of this massive FPS drops.

 

[pastrychef]

Unfortunately, the 3,1s will show it's age in graphics performance. MacVidCards has stated on multiple occasions that 3,1s have a hard cap of 35FPS when running Unigine Valley.

That doesn't mean that a 3,1 can't play any games, it just means that its limitations are beginning to show and, that going forward, more demanding games may become an issue. Judging by the benchmark results you've posted, it still handles many games well enough to play, particularly with the R9 280.

MacVidCards also stated that despite having a card cap when running Unigine Valley, the 3,1s are able to fully utilize the capabilities of video cards for computational needs. He was speaking of Nvidia cards, but I would imagine the same is true of AMD offerings.

 

[kevink2]

I've recently upgraded the HD capacity of my 3,1. And rather than worry about location of files (HDD, SSD), I decided to try the fusion route. 960GB SSD and 2TB drive for my home directory, boot off another 500GB SSD. (I almost made the same mistake I see others made. I wrote 960MB SSD initially

Let OSX manage the space.

 

[Fl0r!an]

Unfortunately, the 3,1s will show it's age in graphics performance. MacVidCards has stated on multiple occasions that 3,1s have a hard cap of 35FPS when running Unigine Valley.

Yeah, I'm not concerned about the absolute performance (I don't expect any miracles from a 2008 machine), but about the performance difference especially between GTX 570 and HD 5870. The Nvidia should be at least on par. I'll do some benchmarks in my Hack when I find the time.

 

[cw48494]

Won't matter. The CPUs are a bottleneck. Moving from 660 GTX to a 960 GTX provides only a 5% performance increase. I know firsthand as I have a 2008 Mac Pro with those cards.

Hopefully this will no longer be the case with DX12/Metal API games, spreading the work-load evenly across all cores, essentially killing the CPU bottleneck.

 

[bladerunner2000]

Hopefully this will no longer be the case with DX12/Metal API games, spreading the work-load evenly across all cores, essentially killing the CPU bottleneck.

Unlikely.

 

[cw48494]

Unlikely.

Gotta have hope! Sure, it's likely going to be a huge let-down, but it's currently the goal.