Mac Pro 2006 Graphics Dilema

[emmab2006]

Hello All ! ,

Hope your all well , getting a bit cold now isn't it ! .. well at least it is in the UK.

Right , Basicaly as some of you will know from my last post on whether i was going to buy a 2006 Mac Pro , well i did indeed Purchase it , and i have since upgraded it to from the specifications it shipped with , the current spec is as follows ,

So quite a few upgrades , now me in my infinite wisdom didn't realize that the PCI-E Ports in the Mac Pro 1,1 are 1.0 and not 2.0 , so i'm stuck in Dilema ,

Do i Sell the 5870 And get a 5770 as According to http://www.barefeats.com/wst10g5.html , the Performance is Near identical to An HD 5770 on the PCI-E , 1.0 Bus ,

i just dont know what to do , its just a bit upsetting , and i know there will be people who say '' oh you should have got a 2008 Mac Pro '' , well i dont work i have been Diagnosed with a Permanent Condition , so money isn't exactly at a premium especially in this Economy ! ,

Please can you give Some Advice ? i really am stuck as to what to do ?

Thanks All ,

Hope your Well , Emma x

 

[Wardenski]

IMO just keep the 5870. Seems a lot of hassle to go through to get a 5770.

 

[emmab2006]

well getting a 5770 isn't really issue i have the money and i already have a card picked out to flash

 

[paulrbeers]

well getting a 5770 isn't really issue i have the money and i already have a card picked out to flash

Unfortunately, what Barefeats doesn't explain is that the lack of speed on the 5870 could be due to the 2 - dual core 2.66ghz processors not feeding enough data to the 5870. It could also be because of the PCIE1.0; however, 16x PCIE1.0 runs at the same speed as PCIE2.0 8x and many cards high end cards still run at their full potential in an 8x PCIE2.0 slot (based on my research). It isn't until you get to some of the top cards on the market today that an 8x PCIE2.0 seems to bottleneck the cards.

What I am trying to say is, your upgrade to the processors should alleviate most of the processor bottleneck and as long as you are running the 5870 in a16x PCIE1.0 slot, you shouldn't lose much of the performance of the 5870 due to PCIE1.0 (although don't run it in an PCIE1.0 8X slot).

 

[emmab2006]

Well it is two 2.33Ghz Quad Cores not two 2.66 dual's , but the performance is still poor , i have brought a 5770 and i will see how different it is , and if its the same we will see ,

 

[666sheep]

Well it is two 2.33Ghz Quad Cores not two 2.66 dual's , but the performance is still poor , i have brought a 5770 and i will see how different it is , and if its the same we will see ,

What performance exactly? Overall? Gaming? Which apps for instance?
Maybe instead of messing with graphics cards you should think about getting modern SSD (if you don't have one already)? What HDD setup do you have?
5870 is very good GPU for 1,1 but it will show its power mostly in gaming and apps supporting OpenCL.

 

[lloyd709]

First of all don't disappointed with your 1,1 Mac pro - it's a great and very powerful computer. I have one with upgraded processors (2 quad core 2.66), an SSD boot drive and a 5770 graphics card. Now, when these graphics cards came out I was also bothered by the fact that I wouldn't get a performance increase if I bought a 5870. I actually initially bought 2 5770's and 1 5870 to do some serious testing (seeing if I could crossfire the 5770). In the end it turned out that Barefeats was spot on and for what ever reason the 5870 performance is limited to the same as the 5770. Now, the only reason I wanted better performance was for games. The 5870 even running at full speed gives you absolutely no performance bump over the 5770 on anything other than games. But what it does do is run a lot louder!! The 5770 is whisper quiet. But if you do want the 5870 for games then even that's going to disappoint with any modern games now!

So, my recommendation would be to stick an SSD in as boot drive (the best performance bump you are ever going to get) and love your machine and enjoy getting a kick out of it still holding it's own for many years to come!