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Mac Pro 2.66 Quad still usable ?

C

clipsedsm95

macrumors member
Original poster
May 17, 2012
94
4
New York
Hey guys I know my question is pretty open but I wanna know your opinions can the 2006 Mac pro keep up with today in age apps like Lion Adobe CS5 suite.... 1080P play back. Currently I have a early 2011 Thunderbolt 13 MBP dual core i5.... Will I notice faster speeds or slower speeds on the Mac pro using these applications..? ..... I bought this today ---> http://www.ebay.com/itm/130699829163?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649#ht_2047wt_922

I bought an 4GB on the side totaling to 5GB when installed

In your honest opinions did I do a good buy or spent way to much money on an obsolete machine all opinions are welcomed thank you in advanced.
 
It'll run fine but I don't think you can count on it to support software updates. Put an SSD in it and it'll run great.
 
I haven't looked into what they're going for, but seems like you got it for a decent price. Less than a year ago I sold my Mac Pro 1,1 with dual-quad processors, 8GB RAM, and ATI 4870 vid card for $1950. $589 sounds reasonable to me.
 
bozz2006 said:
I haven't looked into what they're going for, but seems like you got it for a decent price. Less than a year ago I sold my Mac Pro 1,1 with dual-quad processors, 8GB RAM, and ATI 4870 vid card for $1950. $589 sounds reasonable to me.
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Ok great thanks ! Another thing I had a hard time deciding today was either a new mac mini or this because it came down to being the same price but I don't know I felt like the mac mini isn't as fast as the mac pro and the lack of optical drive such a small case and small to no ability to upgrade ram did i do the right thing by going with the mac pro keeping in mind the software I am going to be using?
 
Personally, I'd say you did well. It's a great Mac at a great price.
It is definitely a very capable machine.

Some other members will probably say you should have gotten something newer. They'll make some very good arguments that I can't dispute.

But that doesn't make your new Mac Pro any less capable. For the things you mentioned (Lion, CS5, 1080P playback) the 1,1 will be great.
 
SSD and a lot of ram, and that machine will be still very fast. I have the same with an SSD and 12 gigs of ram, works great!
 
minifridge1138 said:
Personally, I'd say you did well. It's a great Mac at a great price.
It is definitely a very capable machine.

Some other members will probably say you should have gotten something newer. They'll make some very good arguments that I can't dispute.

But that doesn't make your new Mac Pro any less capable. For the things you mentioned (Lion, CS5, 1080P playback) the 1,1 will be great.
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I just did some research and found out my Mac Pro just got slashed from the mountain lion wagon :(:mad: (sigh). EFI 32 aren't supported but firmware update could be the cure from what i've read. But my graphics card is definitely a no go.... If i could just upgrade that and get it going I will but if i start spending too much on this machine I am going to fall into the losing end... :/
 
handheldgames said:
You can't go wrong with that price, even if you are stuck on Lion/10.7. The best bang for the buck on video card options is the 6870, about $140 for a refurb. There are plenty of posts out there on getting it to work.

also read here: http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,1123.315.html
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http://www.amazon.com/XFX-Radeon-MINIDP-PCI-E-HD687AZHFC/dp/B005C31F2M/ref=cm_cmu_pg__header

Is this one right if yea seems perfect because it has the mini display ports!!
 
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I've got a 1.1 that I run fcpx, motion 5 and CS5 photoshop on and it's great. My hard drive setup is the only thing holding me back currently, I only have one 1tb drive in there with everything on it currently.

If I were you and had some extra coin of do as I, and many others have done, and upgrade the professors to x5355s to make it an octo core. Then I put 8gb of ram in there and an ATI 5770. It was like a new machine, but for serious motion5 stuff it would slow down. 8 more gb of ram to bring the total to 16gb and the machine hasn't had a hiccup since.
 
While the 2006 will do you just fine, I think the main reasons why most recommend going with a 2009 or greater are the following:

1. It is already 6 years old. How long until a capacitor blows?
2. Is unsupported by Mtn. Lion and any future OS.
3. New CPUs are so much faster than the Core2Duo based Xeons
4. The cost of RAM upgrades (this might be the big one). It costs more than double for the same amount of RAM in the 2006 compared to a 2009 (you spent $400 on RAM and then #1 happens).

With that said, I've thought about picking up a 2006-2008 just to run my virtual machines. None take a lot of processing power, but the RAM requirements and the cost to upgrade the RAM to 16GB (over $400 at OWC) means I would be better off buying a 2011 refurbed server Mac Mini and 16GB of RAM for less than what you paid for your 2006 Mac Pro + 16GB of RAM.

Again my needs aren't gaming or graphic intensive so for me it just doesn't make sense (just the "cool" factor of owning a Mac Pro).
 
I don't think there's such a thing as an "obsolete Mac." That's evident in the resale values even for 6-year old machines. You might not be able to run the latest and greatest software, but that Mac Pro should have a few years of serviceability left. Your Macbook Pro actually does slightly better in CPU-intensive benchmarks though (i.e. geekbench).

You might need to upgrade the video card.

I still have an old Macbook (original black Core Duo) that's not listed in my sig, with a fresh install of Snow Leopard it's very responsive and fine for surfing the web. It has a new battery and I'll probably sell it.
 
Don't get me wrong, I would love a newer machine. But a 1.1 with say $800 dumped into it, doesn't do too bad of a job for most.
 
I've a Mac Pro 1,1 @ 2.66 Quad that's humming along with 6TB of storage, extra SATA ports, 12GB of RAM and an XFX 5870 card flashed to EFI.

It's still a powerhouse… I'm actually about to drop a pair of X5355 2.66 Quad core Xenon's into it, to double my FCP performance.

Mountain Lion doesn't officially support the Mac Pro, but there is a workaround -- it does officially support EFI32 Macs. (The arbitrary cutoff is entirely marketing.)

There is also, according to the Netkas forums, a way to boot the 1,1's and 2,1's with the 64-bit kernel, but it's kludgy, at best (the hardware supports it, Apple simply never wrote a 64-bit compatible firmware for it).
 
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Yea I was reading that but in all honesty If this thing holds up like my MBP I'll be perfectly fine all jokes aside when I am editing pictures and I am not hone when I visit my mom I use CS3 on her 1.42 eMac yes it is slow but it gets the job done so I think I can handle this Mac pro
 
mustang_dvs said:
I've a Mac Pro 1,1 @ 2.66 Quad that's humming along with 6TB of storage, extra SATA ports, 12GB of RAM and an XFX 5870 card flashed to EFI.

It's still a powerhouse… I'm actually about to drop a pair of E5355 2.66 Quad core Xenon's into it, to double my FCP performance
Click to expand...

You will thoroughly enjoy FCPx with an octo core setup.
 
clipsedsm95 said:
Yea I was reading that but in all honesty If this thing holds up like my MBP I'll be perfectly fine all jokes aside when I am editing pictures and I am not hone when I visit my mom I use CS3 on her 1.42 eMac yes it is slow but it gets the job done so I think I can handle this Mac pro
Click to expand...

OP: I buy and resell several of these a month. Here's my two cents:

1) 2x X5355 ($120 - $150; eBay): http://www.ebay.com/sch/CPUs-Processors-/164/i.html?LH_BIN=1&_sop=15&_nkw=x5355 (You can get better deals if you shop around)

2) Up to 16GB RAM ($56/4GB; Amazon): http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002ORUUAC/ref=oh_details_o02_s00_i00 (I'ev seen RAM like this go for as low as $7.50/GB if you look hard enough)

3) ATI Radeon HD 5770 ($70 - $100; eBay): http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_sacat=0&_nkw=xfx 5770&_sop=1 (ZNFC or ZHFC have both worked flawlessly for me; see #4 below)

4) GPU Power Cable ($12.50; Amazon): http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002UR1654/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00 (Needed for each 5770 you install; 2 needed for 5870, 6870, and some others)

This is by no means the "maximum" upgrade path available to you, but in my experience, it is the best bang-for-buck. If you get an extra 8GB RAM, perform the CPU surgery and drop in a 5770, you're "only" looking at $300-$350 to upgrade to a crazy powerful machine pushing upwards of 10,400 on Geekbench.
 
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Mac Pro

I still have a Mac Pro 2.66 and it still does wonders for me.

I upgraded the memory from the 2GB to 10GB for about 150$.

I then proceeded to add the ATI 5770 graphics card from Apple(got a really good price on it)

I then added some 7200 RPM hard drives (probably an SSD later) it flies... Boots up in about 10 seconds with the SSD.

Added an Airport card as well to make it wireless.

This machine is great and I picked it up for a little bit under 900$ almost 2 years ago.
 
My MP 2.66 is running just fine. All software is current with Lion, Pro Tools 10 HD2 and 12 gigs of ram. It runs my post studio without a hiccup. I'm not doing massive sessions so don't have a problem.

It will eventually be behind though with Mountain Lion, Pro Tools 11 and the new Avid HDX architecture. I figure next year will be the year to get a new cpu. It will be 7 years old by then. Hey...a machine lasting this long and still being current? I'll take it. Maybe a Windows machine next year though.:D:D
 
<s>Quick question I was planning on on using carbon copy to make a duplicate of my MBP on the mac pro then going into recovery to have a fresh install on the mac pro should I got that route or do you guys know any faster way of accomplishing this?</s>



Forget it I just noticed that Lion was re downloadable and I can intall it on an external hard drive putting the Mac Pro in hard drive mode :D
 
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I ordered my Mac Pro 1,1 on 8/17/06 with both 250GB & 500GB internal drives for $2559.

Since then, I've moved to an OWC 240GB SSD, upgraded the RAM to 16GB (8x 2GB), and replaced the video card with an ATI Radeon HD 5770 to drive an LED Cinema Display and two additional monitors.

It still performs very well, but my wife's Macbook Air has a higher Geekbench score...
--
 
While I bought a 1,1 about a year ago and put money into it, knowing what I know now, I would look for at least a 3,1 which should come in at about the same price as 1,1 plus the $500 or so you would put into to it to upgrade the memory, video card and maybe add a SSD. Don't get me wrong, the 1,1 is still a capable machine that can be upgraded to the hilt, however I would rather spend the money on something a little newer, unless of course I already had a 1,1 to begin with.
 
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