Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Mac Pro 1 1 vs 3 1

S

SimonUK5

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 26, 2010
476
7
I"ve got a 1 1, and i've basically just been offered £425 quid for it (I paid 300 a few months ago) , so i'm making money there.

I've been offered a 3,1 for £500, so a £75 quid upgrade. Aside from running Mavericks, how much of a noticeable boost is there? I don't care about benchmarks, id like to hear from people who are actually using the machines, I'll be throwing and SSD in it, and probably go to 8 or 10gb of RAM. Its a baseline 2.8 machine.

Is it worth it? or worth saving and getting a 4,1 or newer?
 
SimonUK5 said:
I"ve got a 1 1, and i've basically just been offered £425 quid for it (I paid 300 a few months ago) , so i'm making money there.

I've been offered a 3,1 for £500, so a £75 quid upgrade. Aside from running Mavericks, how much of a noticeable boost is there? I don't care about benchmarks, id like to hear from people who are actually using the machines, I'll be throwing and SSD in it, and probably go to 8 or 10gb of RAM. Its a baseline 2.8 machine.

Is it worth it? or worth saving and getting a 4,1 or newer?
Click to expand...

Many users will tell you to save for a 4,1 or 5,1 - but to answer your question, for $75, you'll be getting support for newer OS X versions, 800MHz RAM, PCIe 2.0, more PCIe lanes, faster FSB and larger CPU overhead.

If I were in your shoes, I wouldn't take the 3,1. Get the most for your 1,1 and get a newer machine. The 800MHz RAM is a very, very small performance increase in real-world tasks, not to mention DDR2 FB-DIMMs are expensive in high memory capacity, especially if you want 800MHz FB-DIMMs. The dual 2.8GHz E5462s aren't much (if at all) of an improvement over the X5355s, which are the most economical quad cores you can stick in a 1,1 machine. (Not sure which 2.66GHz Xeons are in your 1,1 - if you're still running dual core processors, the upgrade to X5355s costs about $50 from Ebay and is well worth it.) FBS architecture is slow by today's standards, but 1333MHz vs 1600MHz isn't a very large improvement. The only improvement that's really worth talking about is the PCIe improvements. With a 3,1 you get PCIe 2.0 for your GPU - that's twice the bandwidth over your current 1,1 - however, in real world tests, that really isn't much of an improvement either. The difference you'll notice is if you want to run TWO GPUs since the 3,1 has 2 x16 PCIe slots.

Hope this gives you some good information.
-N
 
NOTNlCE said:
Many users will tell you to save for a 4,1 or 5,1 - but to answer your question, for $75, you'll be getting support for newer OS X versions, 800MHz RAM, PCIe 2.0, more PCIe lanes, faster FSB and larger CPU overhead.

If I were in your shoes, I wouldn't take the 3,1. Get the most for your 1,1 and get a newer machine. The 800MHz RAM is a very, very small performance increase in real-world tasks, not to mention DDR2 FB-DIMMs are expensive in high memory capacity, especially if you want 800MHz FB-DIMMs. The dual 2.8GHz E5462s aren't much (if at all) of an improvement over the X5355s, which are the most economical quad cores you can stick in a 1,1 machine. (Not sure which 2.66GHz Xeons are in your 1,1 - if you're still running dual core processors, the upgrade to X5355s costs about $50 from Ebay and is well worth it.) FBS architecture is slow by today's standards, but 1333MHz vs 1600MHz isn't a very large improvement. The only improvement that's really worth talking about is the PCIe improvements. With a 3,1 you get PCIe 2.0 for your GPU - that's twice the bandwidth over your current 1,1 - however, in real world tests, that really isn't much of an improvement either. The difference you'll notice is if you want to run TWO GPUs since the 3,1 has 2 x16 PCIe slots.

Hope this gives you some good information.
-N
Click to expand...

New OS X is a fairly big thing for me, although, i'm semi worried that its going to be made redundant after 10.10, which would be a pain in the ass. Although if its just a 64bit EFI thing, it should be ok?

I"m looking at 4,1s too, knowing that there is no difference between them and a 5,1 .
 
SimonUK5 said:
New OS X is a fairly big thing for me, although, i'm semi worried that its going to be made redundant after 10.10, which would be a pain in the ass. Although if its just a 64bit EFI thing, it should be ok?

I"m looking at 4,1s too, knowing that there is no difference between them and a 5,1 .
Click to expand...

Tiamo's boot.efi for Mavericks works perfectly on my 1,1 - just as smooth as on my 3,1. With a graphics card upgrade, the 1,1 is still a very capable machine, especially compared to a 3,1. There are already methods to run Yosemite on a 1,1 using Clover, and I suspect another generous soul like Tiamo will come up with an even better method once the OS is stable.
 
The 1,1 Mac Pro Hacks are a PITA. Just check out this thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1740775/

Not really worth the hassle. While a 4,1 or 5,1 Mac Pro has a superior architecture than the 3,1 Mac Pro. The 3,1 is capable of running the laxest OS and software OOB. If funds are limited, sell your 1,1 and get the 3,1 Mac Pro.

Lou
 
Get the 3,1.

You can then get newer EFI64 GPU's, double RAM capacity, PCI E 2.0, more lanes, 800MHz ram (not worth the money for 5% speed, buy 667), new OS without tiamo fix, and you can put 3.2GHz quads in it.
 
Depends on specs of both: if 1,1 is 2.66 Dual Core (5150) with 7300GT and someone is offering 425 quid for it, I'd sell immediately. If it's Quad (5355), I wouldn't bother with 3,1 at all, because it isn't a much of an upgrade performance-wise.

If 3,1 is 2.8 single CPU, I wouldn't buy it for 500 quid. 2x 2.8 is still worth such money, especially considering UK prices.
 
The thing i'm concerned about, and i understand know one here knows. Is that there was such a time gap between 3,1 and 4,1, and that the 4,1/5,1 was for sale up until last year whilst being years old. I don't want to get a 3,1 and then have it not support the next OS after 10.10, with a 4,1/5,1 there is no way that Apple can do that...

Bleh
 
SimonUK5 said:
The thing i'm concerned about, and i understand know one here knows. Bleh
Click to expand...

I don't think you can go so far as "no one here knows". The 2006 & 2007 are both 32bit EFI and 2008-2010 64bit. I'm sure someone on this forum can read the specs here http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/index-macpro.html and tell you based on x,y and z that 2008-2010 all fall into the same category pertaining to OS or not. And probably even why! That is not my scene. :D
 
If they are all 64bit then apple can't just dump them and support only one or two they would have to do something to stop you from running the new OS by making you have to have a graphics card that the earlier mac Pros cant power or something like that but the chances of them doing that are slim.
 
OS6-OSX said:
I don't think you can go so far as "no one here knows". The 2006 & 2007 are both 32bit EFI and 2008-2010 64bit. I'm sure someone on this forum can read the specs here http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/index-macpro.html and tell you based on x,y and z that 2008-2010 all fall into the same category pertaining to OS or not. And probably even why! That is not my scene. :D
Click to expand...

Yeah, i understand that they are all 64bit EFI from 2008 onwards. But the 09 onwards is a newer chipset and the same chipset all the way through until they discontinued them..

Hmm, i'm going to try and get a 4,1 but the price in the UK virtually doubles from 3,1 to 4,1
 
iMacBooked said:
I would recommend getting the 4,1 too. No use at all in buying the 3,1 IMO, unless a 4,1 is too expensive. But it's definitely worth the extra money.
Click to expand...

I have just purchased a 3,1 for use with photoshop and premier and to be honest in pretty happy with it I have plans to max everything out as much as possible within the next 6-12 months and take it from there. But I would think a maxed out 08 would be better than a base spec 09?
 
LiamHD said:
I have just purchased a 3,1 for use with photoshop and premier and to be honest in pretty happy with it I have plans to max everything out as much as possible within the next 6-12 months and take it from there. But I would think a maxed out 08 would be better than a base spec 09?
Click to expand...

Way cheaper to upgrade a 4,1 /5,1 though.

Ram for the 4,1 cost nothing compared to the 3,1...

Going to try and get a 4,1. There is a big second hand mac company in the UK, called Scrumpymacs, who are normally pretty good at sorting stuff out. SO i might see if they can hook me up with a barebones 4,1 with no Hard drives and stuff to cut the cost down..
 
SimonUK5 said:
Way cheaper to upgrade a 4,1 /5,1 though.

Ram for the 4,1 cost nothing compared to the 3,1...

Going to try and get a 4,1. There is a big second hand mac company in the UK, called Scrumpymacs, who are normally pretty good at sorting stuff out. SO i might see if they can hook me up with a barebones 4,1 with no Hard drives and stuff to cut the cost down..
Click to expand...
I don't think scrumpymacs will give you a Mac barebones, there is no harm in trying though. I'm aware upgrades are cheaper but the initial outlay is high and I couldn't afford it.
 
I'd definitely go for a 4,1 or later if possible. Ram is cheaper, better CPU upgrade options are the big two.. There's also some design improvements - easier to get the cpu board out and clean, better retention mechanism on the PCIE cards, etc.

If best you could do is 3,1 I'd do that - while there are workarounds to get 10.9 running on a 1,1 it sounds like its more difficult to get 10.10 to get going. Working out of the box is nice, and I'd expect to be able to run future OSX verisons for a while -- the 32->64 processor migration and the 32->64 EFI migration are the main reason its difficult to run newer OS on some older hardware. Given there's virtually zero difference between a 4,1 and a 5,1 (last made 2012), I expect those machines to be able to run latest OSX for a number of years from now.
 
Yeah , 100% on the hunt for a 4,1.

Got a Budget of around 900 quid, should be able to get something pretty good for that.

Sold my 1,1 literally 5 minuets ago for £425 / $713 , so on the hunt now!
 
SimonUK5 said:
Yeah , 100% on the hunt for a 4,1.

Got a Budget of around 900 quid, should be able to get something pretty good for that.

Sold my 1,1 literally 5 minuets ago for £425 / $713 , so on the hunt now!
Click to expand...

You made a good move. Let us know how it all worked out when you get your new box.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back