Mac Pro Upgrade

[JasperZ]

Hi everyone,

I have this question about upgrading a Mac Pro. I am planning to buy an 2006 Mac Pro cheap. I would like to upgrade this Mac Pro with an ATI Radeon HD 5770 1Gb and maybe an intel i7. Would this be possible and are there difference between the current models' motherboard and the motherboard from the 2006 model? Would it also be possible to buy the video card with hdmi output?

Advice will be appriciated!

Jasper

 

[peabo]

Hi everyone,

I have this question about upgrading a Mac Pro. I am planning to buy an 2006 Mac Pro cheap. I would like to upgrade this Mac Pro with an ATI Radeon HD 5770 1Gb and maybe an intel i7. Would this be possible and are there difference between the current models' motherboard and the motherboard from the 2006 model? Would it also be possible to buy the video card with hdmi output?

Advice will be appriciated!

Jasper

You can't put standard desktop processors such as the i7 in a Mac Pro. They will only take Xeons, and the 2006 will only take Woodcrest or Clovertown chips (based on the Core2 tech), the fastest being the quad core 3.0GHz X5365. You can put two of these in the Mac Pro to have 8 cores. The motherboard in the 2006 & 2007 Mac Pros is different from any subsequent models so you're restricted to only these processors.

The Radeon HD 5770 or 5780 are the fastest official cards you can put in the 2006 Mac Pro. You can get an adapter to output HDMI on either card.

 

[JasperZ]

You can't put standard desktop processors such as the i7 in a Mac Pro. They will only take Xeons, and the 2006 will only take Woodcrest or Clovertown chips (based on the Core2 tech), the fastest being the quad core 3.0GHz X5365. You can put two of these in the Mac Pro to have 8 cores. The motherboard in the 2006 & 2007 Mac Pros is different from any subsequent models so you're restricted to only these processors.

The Radeon HD 5770 or 5780 are the fastest official cards you can put in the 2006 Mac Pro. You can get an adapter to output HDMI on either card.

Thanks for the quick reply!

What are the possibilities with an early 2008 model regarding the processor?

 

[ActionableMango]

I can't speak specifically to the 2006 MP, but there are in fact people who have upgraded their MPs from Xeon to the Core i7. However, the price is very nearly the same as the equivalent Xeon, so I don't know what the point is. Also, the Core i7 will not work with the error correcting RAM supplied with the MP, so you'd have to replace all your RAM with non-ECC RAM.

 

[Neodym]

What are the possibilities with an early 2008 model regarding the processor?

There are quite some threads about that topic here on MacRumors. Using the search function would e.g. bring up this one (see post #10).