MacPro1,1 vs. 3.1?

[KingJosh]

As I type this from my 1,1 running ML, I wonder why everyone is so ready to call these machines dead. Reminds me of that King in Lord of The Rings who thought his son was dead. So he had booked The Royal Hall, hired 20 Moaning Grievers and ordered 1 Funeral Pyre, Royal Size. Just as all was going along nicely, he got news from one of the hobbits that his son wasn't actually dead.

Unable to deviate from his schedule, he lit the blaze anyway.

ML runs on 1,1 and 2,1 just fine so far. You just need a GPUU that isn't as old as the machine.

All of this planning for their death is quite premature. Even the official Apple release documents for ML Server indicate that ML will work on 1,1 and 2,1. So far only 1 person on this board claims to have read documents that say this support will be intentionally pulled. Nobody else has been able to corroborate or verify. My guess is that "Deep Throat" was trying to sound more important and "in touch" than he actually was and is too embarrassed to admit it.

Keep using your 1,1 and schedule it's funeral when it is ACTUALLY DEAD.

best analogy of all time

 

[Maury]

I find the following website to be handy. Just select up to three Macs to compare and it will provide quite a bit of detail.

So basically the very newest machines are a little less than 2X as fast as my 1,1 according to Geekbench (it would be nice if they put the version numbers in the pop-ups). That's not huge, I just don't find my machine to be slow by any measure.

Support for newer vid cards would be nice, but from my experience the 4870 runs any game I play at perfectly reasonable rates. I'm more worried about a lack of cards when this one (inevitably) dies than outright performance.

 

[derbothaus]

So basically the very newest machines are a little less than 2X as fast as my 1,1 according to Geekbench...

Geekbench Averages:

1,1: (Base 2.0GHz) 3,700-5,400 (Dual 3GHz)
5,1: (Base 2.8GHz) 8,800-23,000 (Dual 2.93GHz Hex)

 

[Redneck1089]

So basically the very newest machines are a little less than 2X as fast as my 1,1 according to Geekbench (it would be nice if they put the version numbers in the pop-ups). That's not huge, I just don't find my machine to be slow by any measure.

Support for newer vid cards would be nice, but from my experience the 4870 runs any game I play at perfectly reasonable rates. I'm more worried about a lack of cards when this one (inevitably) dies than outright performance.

Well, if you want a new video card you can always go and buy yourself a Mac version of the 5870, which is what I am running in my 1,1 Mac Pro.

 

[GermanyChris]

I wouldn't sweat it too much.

Is there a REASON to move to Mountain Lion? Just because Apple builds it, doesn't mean you have to move to it. If there isn't a reason to upgrade, then don't worry about it.

I'll upgrade when Apple provides a reason. None of the 250 "new" improvements overcame the problems with Lion, so at the moment I am still with Snow Leopard.

I have been through this before when we moved from 16bit to 32bit computing. It will be YEARS before the software can take advantage of the new hardware (if ever). Consider - the 1,1 MacPro is almost 6 years old, but we are just now getting 64-bit software into the mainstream.


A macbook air may have a faster geekbench score than my 1,1 mac pro, but there is no way in hell it could outperform my mac. It would melt trying to do what I do on my machine every day. I'm not doing anything earth-shaking - just a little more than using MS office.

I live in the multi-threaded world, and in that world RAM is king. The clockspeed of the CPU is not very important.

Example - my hobby is 3d Art. I am not good at it, but I like doing it. I can be rendering a scene in Vue, setting up the next scene in Poser 2012, converting a mesh with a XDresser (running under WINE) & converting clothing textures in Photoshop Elements - and my swap file is still 1.2Mg.

You aren't doing this on a Macbook Air. Or an iMac for that matter. They simply don't have the RAM capability to have all of this running at the same time. That is the beauty of the MacPro. Run all of your apps at the same time, just flipping between them as necessary.

Many people just can't leave the "one application at a time" paradigm behind. I made the jump back in 1992 when OS/2 2.0 came out. Once you get your head wrapped around it, you don't go back to doing 1 thing at a time.

remember recent iMacs can do 32GB of RAM and has a faster processor..

But worse non upgradable graphics

 

[Wild-Bill]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

I personally think Lion sucks, and ML doesn't seem to do anything to make it suck less. My MP 3.1 is perfectly happy on Snow Leopard.
My only concern now is figuring out how to make iCloud work on it......by June.

 

[thekev]

Sounds like excellent advice.

My only concern is that if ML doesn't run on the 1,1, the price will drop right out of it. That said, it's not clear how much value is left in it, although from a use perspective, it's 100% valuable to me.

----------

Bleh it's not like they're worth that much these days anyway. Computers in general aren't something I'd consider on the basis of residual value. If you expect it to tank I guess it would make sense to to upgrade once a new one comes out, but that's likely to drop the value further.

Time will tell. Meet back at Gold Master. I know removing makes no sense. But they'll remove it anyway with some cover as how they needed to get the distro small enough for lower bandwidth customers. Distortion field in full effect. "Now buy a new machine for God's sake!"

Yeah... pretty much forced upgrades rather than getting people to upgrade via offering compelling options. I want to make jokes about zombies and shielded cables, but I do not wish to be banned.

A macbook air may have a faster geekbench score than my 1,1 mac pro, but there is no way in hell it could outperform my mac. It would melt trying to do what I do on my machine every day. I'm not doing anything earth-shaking - just a little more than using MS office.

I live in the multi-threaded world, and in that world RAM is king. The clockspeed of the CPU is not very important.

Example - my hobby is 3d Art. I am not good at it, but I like doing it. I can be rendering a scene in Vue, setting up the next scene in Poser 2012, converting a mesh with a XDresser (running under WINE) & converting clothing textures in Photoshop Elements - and my swap file is still 1.2Mg.

The macbook air isn't really designed for such work, and the gpu is probably untested with your software. Now you made me wonder what you do and why you say you're not good at it. Have some confidence in your work.

The 1,1 is good for years. I think of all the MacPros it is the best investment... was. It was the leap to new processors and is furthest from the intro of TB. TB will come to the next Pro and when the peripherals are cheaper it will be a must have, but the machine is currently quite snappy with most all things. It isn't sluggish the way an old computer is sluggish.

The 1,1 will be an 8+ year machine for most people, even if ML is the last OS that supports it.



Agreed. I've seen plenty of people online talking about ML-Preview running on their 1,1 with an upgraded graphics card. Though the machines are aging and hitting the autumn years, they aren't close to dead. These will still be good for 2 years and possibly 4, depending on what you do.

Unless someone is a game freak, editing tons of video professionally, or doing CGI work all the time, I wouldn't recommend thinking of selling until 2014 when a low-end Mac Mini will make the 1,1 look like a bicycle on a freeway.

Computer hardware at the quad xeon level has been kind of stagnant. From Apple the primary offering started as a dual socket machine at the quad core level. Most of the $700+ software commonly run for commercial purposes was capable of seeing a reasonable benefit from quad cpus at that time, as in enough functions scaled with core count. At this point there are programs that can go to 20+ cores and there are some that don't scale well at all past where they did years ago. Most of the gains have been new architecture or minor clock speed boost. It's understandable that when much of it hasn't been
really revolutionary, people keep their machines longer.

Geekbench Averages:

1,1: (Base 2.0GHz) 3,700-5,400 (Dual 3GHz)
5,1: (Base 2.8GHz) 8,800-23,000 (Dual 2.93GHz Hex)

You know 64 bit geekbench says 9201 on the 2008 mac pro 8 core (the $2800 one). Regardless seeing a lot of benefit from the newer hardware depends on paying considerably more new if you can afford one of the upper models and being able to benefit from higher core counts unless it's a gpu thing. It's silly the the Mac Pro 1,1 never got 64 bit efi.

Sometimes I feel the reality distortion field is refreshed more frequently than the mac pros.

 

[derbothaus]

You know 64 bit geekbench says 9201 on the 2008 mac pro 8 core (the $2800 one). Regardless seeing a lot of benefit from the newer hardware depends on paying considerably more new if you can afford one of the upper models and being able to benefit from higher core counts unless it's a gpu thing. It's silly the the Mac Pro 1,1 never got 64 bit efi.

I know. These are only 32-bit because you can run 32-bit geekbench for free. And it is the numbers listed in Mactracker. The Geekbench site is totally weak on their averages and not too fun to navigate. I use a 8x3.2GHz 2008 at work. It is great, the memory is hard to find and spendy though. Never have any laying around

 

[thekev]

I know. These are only 32-bit because you can run 32-bit geekbench for free. And it is the numbers listed in Mactracker. The Geekbench site is totally weak on their averages and not too fun to navigate. I use a 8x3.2GHz 2008 at work. It is great, the memory is hard to find and spendy though. Never have any laying around

That's still a solid machine. Unless we're talking about a 12 core or something there hasn't been anything that would warrant an upgrade since then if you already own such a machine. I wouldn't personally purchase a 2008 machine today given Apple's cycle of planned obsolescence, potential service costs on an aging machine, and that a 2009 would seem like a better option given the ease of of the 6 core upgrade.

I'm kind of annoyed with Apple lately. Even with Mountain Lion, I haven't heard a thing about potential support for 10 bit displayport standards under thunderbolt or whatever connection they choose. It seems like they are lagging on anything OpenGL/graphics related unless I'm unaware of more recent developments. It seems like Leopard was the only OS that briefly supported this with a couple gpus . That's actually one of the things I'm waiting on, and I've been waiting for quite a long time.

The popular opinion seems to be that if it doesn't affect the average user, it's completely unimportant .

 

[deconstruct60]

As I type this from my 1,1 running ML, I wonder why everyone is so ready to call these machines dead.

Apple's Vintage and Obsolete hardware policy.
".. Vintage products are those that were discontinued more than five and less than seven years ago. Apple has discontinued hardware service for vintage products with the following exception: ... "
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1752


The Mac Pro 1,1 was discontinued on 4/2007 with the 2,1. Plus five would be 4/2012 which is next month. The only thing that might deliver a "get of jail free card" to that process is the the 2,1 was primarily the same as the 1,1. Extremely minor change to firmware and a bump in CPU package. However, the 2,1 doesn't really buy all that much more time. It was discontinued in 1/2008. Meaning it has less than a year before it drops onto the vintage list.

Why Apple would spend resources on an OS+hardware configuration that is a best 6 months from retirement and at worse 2-3 into retirement upon the OS release? It is a rather curious way to spend scarce resources.

While Apple not supplying parts for a 1,1 machine doesn't necessarily kill it on the exact de-support date. It does call into question sinking more capital into the machine.

Unable to deviate from his schedule, he lit the blaze anyway.

Apple sets the de-support schedule. Not users.

ML runs on 1,1 and 2,1 just fine so far. You just need a GPUU that isn't as old as the machine.

As above... sinking money into an about to be de-supported platform can be done but it is a rather curious practice.

Even the official Apple release documents for ML Server indicate that ML will work on 1,1 and 2,1.

Official what? The OS isn't released. These are absolute final, no changes to be made, complete peer reviewed for release documents that will ship in the Summer??? Apple's ML docs are completely defect free at this point months before the user release?

And why only the server docs? Why not the regular OS docs? Because Apple thoroughly vets the server docs before working on the general OS docs?

 

[MacVidCards]

The Mac Pro 1,1 was discontinued on 4/2007 with the 2,1. Plus five would be 4/2012 which is next month. The only thing that might deliver a "get of jail free card" to that process is the the 2,1 was primarily the same as the 1,1. Extremely minor change to firmware and a bump in CPU package. However, the 2,1 doesn't really buy all that much more time. It was discontinued in 1/2008. Meaning it has less than a year before it drops onto the vintage list.

Perfect, you proved my point. A 1,1 and a 2,1 are the same machine. If Apple is bound by their own rules (that you have quoted/linked) then they will HAVE to make ML run on 1,1/2,1. THIS IS GREAT NEWS !!!!!

Why Apple would spend resources on an OS+hardware configuration that is a best 6 months from retirement and at worse 2-3 into retirement upon the OS release? It is a rather curious way to spend scarce resources.

Scarce Resources? Perhaps you have been Rip Van Winkeling a VERY long nap. If you do some googling you will find that Apple has been rather profitable while you were sleeping. As they are now the wealthiest company on the planet, how could you EVER think they have "scarce resources"?

They could afford to make their next Apple Store out of solid gold and STILL have enough "resources" to make ML run on 1,1 and 2,1.

"Scarce Resources"....very funny.

And the thing everyone keeps glossing over...IT ALREADY RUNS ON 1,1 !!! So some spend-thrift accountant let the foolishly squander "scarce resources" to make it work in the first place. THEY HAVE ALREADY INVESTED MONEY IN MAING IT WORK. And as you have so succinctly proven, Apple has basically pledged support for 2,1 until well after ML comes out...looks like we are all worrying about nothing.

Thank you for your informative post, will really help people rest easier.

 

[jamesr19]

Your MacPro will be more than capable of running ML, it's just Apple being a little funny really.

Here is a link to a guy who installed it on his MacPro 1,1: http://www.j4mie.co.uk/blog/2012/02/18/how-to-install-mountain-lion-on-macpro11/

 

[deconstruct60]

Perfect, you proved my point. A 1,1 and a 2,1 are the same machine. If Apple is bound by their own rules (that you have quoted/linked) then they will HAVE to make ML run on 1,1/2,1. THIS IS GREAT NEWS !!!!!

Not sure what you are smoking. There isn't a particularly good reason to port 10.8 to 2,1 either since it too will probably be dead before a stable 10.8.3 gets delivered. In other words, the Mac Pro 2,1 will die off (in terms of Apple support) before Apple can get the OS to a very stable point and no more than 25% into 10.8's lifecycle.

Anyone who wants to skate out onto that thin ice is welcome to, but , to be crystal clear, that is a dubious "bet the farm" move if looking to support from Apple.

Scarce Resources? Perhaps you have been Rip Van Winkeling a VERY long nap. If you do some googling you will find that Apple has been rather profitable while you were sleeping.

Apple is profitable because they say 'No' alot. Apple acts like Scrooge McDuck. They try hard not to spend money (i.e., export practically all manufactuoring to Chinese chop-shops , only 10.x.(n-1) security updates , only 5 years on hardware support, etc. )

Apple has $100B of sharehold money that they refuse to give to the owners of the company. There is at least $20B of cash they are squatting on that is doing nothing but collecting interest. They have no intention to spend it or give it to the owners. You think they are out to give the customers some of that cash? You're drinking way toooooo much kool-aid if

They could afford to make their next Apple Store out of solid gold and STILL have enough "resources" to make ML run on 1,1 and 2,1.

Would/could/should isn't tracking what apple does. Apple could have ported 10.6 to the G5 which was not quite 5 years old on the vintage list. They didn't. I'm not sure why folks on the initial transitionary EFI-32 Mac Pro think they are going to get better treatment than the G5 folks did.

And the thing everyone keeps glossing over...IT ALREADY RUNS ON 1,1 !!!

Not in the stock configuration.

There is difference between "there is kludge that makes it run" and "supported".

I have no doubt folks will make it run. There is substantive doubt that Apple will officially support that.

 

[Phildo]

MacPro3,1's are fairly commonly available, and they'l run 10.8 IIRC. But I really don't know much about the differences. Can some point me to a compare-and-contrast between the two?

You've got a few months - start looking for a used 2009 4,1 or a 2010 5,1 at the right price. Keep looking around and you'll find one cheap enough sooner or later.

Replace the processor with a 3.33GHz six core W3680 (search for W3680 on here for the full info).

With a 4,1 or 5,1 you've got cheaper RAM (ie DDR3), so that's cheap and easy to max out.

 

[MrCaptain]

why should they NOT remove (32-bit) drivers when all the machines they support can run 64-bit? it takes up space and it even if it won't be used, it requires testing debugging etc, to see it does not interfere with other stuff, to ensure a stable release.

as stated, they already removed 7300GT driver.



but that was a case of some few kexts being kept, but ultimately support being ruled out due to bad performance. but for ML the deal is 64-bit

Here is the real source for the 32-bit removal claim:

Running El Capitan Beta on mac 1,1 typing this right now.

 

[Maury]

I just realized I never followed up in this thread.

I ultimately caved and purchased a 5,1, the base model. Ultimately my logic was simply that since I already had all the other bits and pieces - monitor, keyboard, drives, etc. - the real dollar cost between this and the top-end iMac was basically a wash, and this machine would be faster. Soon after they released the iMac with the retina, which is the machine I was really looking for, but c'est la vie.

Moving from the MP1,1 to 5,1 was a hair-raising experience. In the new machines you have to use an external drive for user storage, which is annoying (really, they couldn't put a single SSE SSD slot in there?!) because the computer often boots before the drive, causing OSX to open into a default user. Its even more annoying because Apple's move-your-computer app has no idea how to deal with more than one drive, and promptly failed and caused me significant ongoing problems due to lingering user/group permissions settings that it basically just made up on the fly.

I would not recommend this machine to anyone except hard-core video developers. If you have a 3,1 or 4,1, keep it. If you have an older machine, get the iMac.

Here's my full review...

https://maurysrandomproductreviews.wordpress.com/2015/01/19/the-new-mac-pro/

 

[MacVidCards]

Maury, I think you have a 6,1 Mac Pro.

 

[Maury]

Maury, I think you have a 6,1 Mac Pro.

That is precisely what I have.

That and a senior moment!

 

[haralds]

As I type this from my 1,1 running ML, I wonder why everyone is so ready to call these machines dead. Reminds me of that King in Lord of The Rings who thought his son was dead. So he had booked The Royal Hall, hired 20 Moaning Grievers and ordered 1 Funeral Pyre, Royal Size. Just as all was going along nicely, he got news from one of the hobbits that his son wasn't actually dead.

Unable to deviate from his schedule, he lit the blaze anyway.

ML runs on 1,1 and 2,1 just fine so far. You just need a GPUU that isn't as old as the machine.

All of this planning for their death is quite premature. Even the official Apple release documents for ML Server indicate that ML will work on 1,1 and 2,1. So far only 1 person on this board claims to have read documents that say this support will be intentionally pulled. Nobody else has been able to corroborate or verify. My guess is that "Deep Throat" was trying to sound more important and "in touch" than he actually was and is too embarrassed to admit it.

Keep using your 1,1 and schedule it's funeral when it is ACTUALLY DEAD.

I have an upgraded 1,1 (2,1 with upgraded CPUs and GPU) running Yosemite, a 3,1, and a 5,1. Performance wise, there is very little difference between the 3,1 and 2,1. The 3,1 is in use by my wife, so I am keeping it. But in hindsight, I would have bought the 5,1 instead. The 3,1 has a little added convenience in not dealing with upgrade hassles due to EFI, but that is manageable. Currently, I am running an Apple Radeon HD 4870 in the 2,1, since it allows booting of Tiger for that nostalgic feel. But I have also use an HD 5870 in it. Both machine are 8 core, while my 5,1 is now a 12 core machine.