Just upgraded to dual 2.93GHz quads

[BJonson]

Um, wow. Had a dual 2.4ghz 8 core 5,1 and wanted an upgrade. Picked up on ebay 2 x 2.93ghz Nehalem quad core cpus for $125 each. Dropped them in just now and increased my geekbench 32bit score from 13000 to 16279. That has got to be the best dang upgrade for the money I have ever seen.

I know I went from a 32nm cpu to a 45nm but the temps are the same, fans are the same and watts only increased from 80 to 95 for each cpu. The increase of 3300 in geekbench is amazing. If you have a dual 4,1 or 5,1 and you don't have at least these cpus you are not having fun. Next step up is going 6 core but those puppies start at $500 each. Can't beat $125 each.

 

[violst]

Congrats, thats a great price and a great performance boost.
The 2.93 8 core mac pro is the fastest 8 core mac pro apple made and it still has a lot of pop.

I agree that is a great bang for the buck upgrade.

Good luck with it.

 

[BJonson]

For those interested I got the x5570 cpu at 2.93ghz.

 

[pastrychef]

I did the exact same thing you did and paid the exact same price for my X5570s back around April/May.

I am extremely happy with the upgrade.

 

[Amethyst]

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1523036/

I did same thing too. back to Jan $190 each. T_T

 

[MacMadness]

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1523036/

I did same thing too. back to Jan $190 each. T_T

Just upgraded my 8-core 2.26Ghz to 2.93Ghz as well.

As far as HD's...boot is OWC 480GB 6G SSD / two PCIe Acelsior 480GB cards...one as work drive,
...other as scratch disk for photoshop. / & three 4TB Caviar black HD's (work, storage and backup drive)

Just loaded her up with 96GB of OWC ram goodness and ran some big photoshop tests.
In the middle of a 2 hour Digilloyd memory stress test run as I type this.

So far everything is looking good and looking forward to putting her back
in service with all the new advanced weaponry onboard.

 

[flowrider]

This thread, posted less than a month after I bought my new 5,1 Mac Pro was the impetus that got me thinking about a processor upgrade to my brand new machine. My machine was the same as the OPs, a 5,1 2.4GHz DP 8 core 2010 model. I began researching both here, on other Mac forums and the Geekbench site. I decided rather than use the X5570s that the OP used I would try W5590s. 2.93GHz vs. 3.33GHz. I knew the TDP would increase from from the stock 80 watts to 130. The X5570 the OP used has a TDP of 95 watts, and as has been stated were used by Apple in it's top processor in 2009 on the dual CPU models. I was also aware that I would be "downgrading" from a newer generation 56XX series process to the older generation 55XX processor.

But, from my research, I believed my machine could safely handle the extra TDP of the processors, and the W5590s would provide a nice speed bump. The X5690 is still priced too high on the market for me to think about at this time, maybe a couple of years in the future.

As far as price goes, the "upgrade" cost me almost nothing. The 2010 and later Mac Pros, use regular lidded (IHS) CPUs, and unlike the lidless CPUs used on the 2009 dual CPU Models, the used IHS CPUs are actually worth something. I bought and sold both sets of CPUs on eBay for virtually the same price.

The installation went very smoothly. I have installed smcFanControl and upped the fan speed slightly to compensate for the added TDP.

I got a nice speed bump as the attached shows. It also was puzzling to me to see that the Geekbeench score is higher on Lion than in Mountain Lion. I am very happy with my decision.

Lou