Mac Pro (Early 2008) 820-2128-A Mobo Question

[Surrat]

Just out of curiosity I ran cinebench R15 on my mac pro 3,1 2.8.
It scored 595 points on the cpu test.

Something to remember when benchmarking the 1,1 2,1 and 3,1 is that they go fastest with 8 ram dimms. If you only have 4 dimms installed, it will slow down some benchmarks.

 

[Ursadorable]

I'm only running 4x 4GB dimms.

 

[Surrat]

I'm only running 4x 4GB dimms.

Yeah, that will lower your score. For the FBDIMM macs to get max memory bandwidth, they need to have 8 matching memory dimms to enable full speed interlacing between the first bank of 4, and the second bank of 4.

 

[Ursadorable]

My 588 to your 595 isn't that much different though. I was more concerned about the 467 that mryingster was getting.

 

[Surrat]

My 588 to your 595 isn't that much different though. I was more concerned about the 467 that mryingster was getting.

True, but my 3,1 has mismatched ram, I have four 4gig, and four 1gig, I dont think I'm getting best speed like that. Will have to wait until I get a set of eight matching dimms to be sure.

 

[mryingster]

True, but my 3,1 has mismatched ram, I have four 4gig, and four 1gig, I dont think I'm getting best speed like that. Will have to wait until I get a set of eight matching dimms to be sure.

My first risers has 4x2GB. The second has 2x2GB and 2x1GB installed, however the system isn't recognizing the 1GB modules. I could try pulling out some ram to make them matched and see if that improves my score.

 

[mryingster]

Yeah, that will lower your score. For the FBDIMM macs to get max memory bandwidth, they need to have 8 matching memory dimms to enable full speed interlacing between the first bank of 4, and the second bank of 4.

So, if I understand correctly, I would be better off performance wise buying 2 additional 2GB dimms so I have 8x2GB, rather than my previous plan of buying 4x4gb so I would have 2x2 and 2x4 on each riser?

 

[nigelbb]

So, if I understand correctly, I would be better off performance wise buying 2 additional 2GB dimms so I have 8x2GB, rather than my previous plan of buying 4x4gb so I would have 2x2 and 2x4 on each riser?

The 4GB 667GHz FB-DIMMs pulled from Dell & HP Xeon servers are so cheap now that you might as well go for 8x4GB.

 

[Kaspin]

For the memory config, I found this on Barefeats site: http://barefeats.com/harper3.html

FILL ALL 8 SLOTS, GO FASTER
As you can see from the results posted above, any configuration that filled all 8 memory slots produced the 7.5GB/s average speed. However, the advantage of the 8 slot configurations over the slowest was only 15%. You may feel you can live with that until you can afford to fill all 8 slots.

THE "X" FACTOR
Though some of our configurations involved various size mixtures, we consulted with an engineer knowledgeable about the architecture of the "early 2008" Mac Pro. He suggested two things that may not show up in our benchmarking:
1. The pairs on the top riser (slots 1&2 or slots 3&4) should match the pairs in the bottom riser (slots 1&2 or slots 3&4) in terms of size if you want the maximum benefit to be gained by interleaving in real world applications.
2. The 2GB and 4GB FB-DIMMs are typically Dual-Rank (DR) while the 1GB FB-DIMMs tend to be Single-Rank. Ideally, you want all DR modules.

 

[mryingster]

For the memory config, I found this on Barefeats site: http://barefeats.com/harper3.html

Excellent information. I will order some RAM, get it all situated properly and see if that affects my benchmarks. Thanks!

 

[Ursadorable]

Those are the wrong cpus!

You need SLANZ X5482. The SLBBG ones won't work.

It turns out they ended up shipping me SLANZ Xeons, and I just finished installing and benchmarking them. They run about 1 degree warmer than the 2.8's.

Benchmarks show an 11.6% speed increase, so for $119, I guess that's not a bad upgrade all things considering.

In total this 2008 Mac Pro ended up costing me:

$200 for the Mac Pro
$82 for 16GB of 800MHz Ram (4x4GB)
$119 for the dual Xeon 3.2GHz
$37 for the Airport Extreme card
$140 for the Velocity Duo x2 Sata3 card
$219 for Samsung 850 Pro 512GB SSD
$110 for EVGA GTX750Ti
$80 for flashing the GTX750Ti

Grand total of $987, not bad for getting away from Windows.

The only upgrade I could see doing is another 16GB of RAM, but even with a RAM drive for my browser cache, I'm not having any memory issues at all.

 

[mryingster]

Finally got new RAM (8x2GB), but it didn't affect performance at all. Still getting about 630 on Cinebench, and 11400 on GeekBench... Sigh... I wonder why your machine is benchmarking so much faster?

Also, this new RAM seems to be making the fans more volatile. Before I would rarely hear them, now they go up and down at the the drop of a hat. Already tried resetting the SMC... Maybe the temp sensor is not registering correctly?

So, I've had my 2008 since it was brand new, so the cost breakdown is less attractive...

2008 $2,200 Mac Pro
2009 $400 Second processor and Heat Sink
2009 $200 Extra RAM
2011 FREE Airport
2013 $80 BluRay
2014 $150 Samsung SSD
2015 $45 PCIe SATA3 Controller for SSD
2015 $115 Radeon HD 6870
2016 $95 3.2 GHz Proc (x2)
2016 $20 RAM

~$3305.00

 

[Ursadorable]

Here's my Cinebench score now.

The only time I hear the fans spin up higher than idle is when I'm benching, or playing an intense game, and even then, it's not by much.

 

[TonyK]

@Ursadorable , interesting. the big difference between our two systems is the OS. I'm running 10.10.5 and my CPU score is 561 cb. My MP3,1 is also a quad core 2.8 while you are running 10.11.3. My system has 32GB of memory so wondering what else could account for that difference.

We're not going to talk GPU because we all know the original 2600 is horrible for GPU performance and that is what I have currently at 10 fps. LOL < hangs head in shame... >

 

[Ursadorable]

We're not going to talk GPU because we all know the original 2600 is horrible for GPU performance and that is what I have currently at 10 fps. LOL < hangs head in shame... >

Yeah, that was the first thing on my hit list to replace, and the GPU flashing is what I waited for before gutting my MP and putting all the upgrade goodies in.

 

[Kaspin]

It turns out they ended up shipping me SLANZ Xeons, and I just finished installing and benchmarking them. They run about 1 degree warmer than the 2.8's.

Benchmarks show an 11.6% speed increase, so for $119, I guess that's not a bad upgrade all things considering.

In total this 2008 Mac Pro ended up costing me:

$200 for the Mac Pro
$82 for 16GB of 800MHz Ram (4x4GB)
$119 for the dual Xeon 3.2GHz
$37 for the Airport Extreme card
$140 for the Velocity Duo x2 Sata3 card
$219 for Samsung 850 Pro 512GB SSD
$110 for EVGA GTX750Ti
$80 for flashing the GTX750Ti

Grand total of $987, not bad for getting away from Windows.

The only upgrade I could see doing is another 16GB of RAM, but even with a RAM drive for my browser cache, I'm not having any memory issues at all.

Glad to hear it was just wrong pictures on the auction instead of the wrong cpus.

 

[Ursadorable]

Glad to hear it was just wrong pictures on the auction instead of the wrong cpus.

Indeed, so am I.