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MP 3,1 (08) - Installing El Capitan, opinons?

O

Omega Mac

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 16, 2013
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Considering repurposing an old 3,1 MP 2008 and installing El Capitan.

Currently installed Snow leopard on a Mirror SATA I'm wondering should I step up to Mavericks or Lion and then move up again to EL Cap or should I simply do a clean install to El Cap from USB boot drive?

No programs to worry about currently.

Pro's & Cons' welcome in advance. Thanks.
 
Omega Mac said:
Considering repurposing an old 3,1 MP 2008 and installing El Capitan.

Currently installed Snow leopard on a Mirror SATA I'm wondering should I step up to Mavericks or Lion and then move up again to EL Cap or should I simply do a clean install to El Cap from USB boot drive?

No programs to worry about currently.

Pro's & Cons' welcome in advance. Thanks.
Click to expand...
You don't need to install any interim versions of OS X to get to El Capitan, and you don't need to do a clean install either, unless you really want to. You do need to have a backup in case something goes wrong.
 
Im running El Capitan on my 3,1. No issues. Can go directly to it.

Kinda crazy that this almost 10 year old machine still works like a champ for day to day casual use.
 
El Cap ran flawlessly on my 3,1 before I sold it. It was the most solid OS that ran on it imo. Making a bootable USB would be the best way to do it of you are doing a clean install.
 
Great thanks for the feedback.

I'll fire up Diskmaker X once I'll remove the mirror to do a clean install because I'd like to try RAID 0 the OS drives as 80GB SSD, intel 2 if I remember. I'm interested to see how performance shapes up.
 
El Cap great on 3,1. Just make sure you have an SSD for your boot. Upgrading your GPU to support metal is a nice addition as well.
 
Done, fast and without a hitch! Superb!!!
[doublepost=1498084206][/doublepost]
honeycombz said:
El Cap great on 3,1. Just make sure you have an SSD for your boot. Upgrading your GPU to support metal is a nice addition as well.
Click to expand...

What card do you recommend?

I upgraded it in 2013 with a Radeon HD6850... for some bitcoin mining fun (but that didn't go too far) and after some research seemed to be as far as you might take the the 3,1 GPU upgrade.

It would be great to think there might be an even more up to date GPU option than this!
 
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The GTX 680 2GB is great, supports metal and doesn’t break the bank but some of it depends on what you want to do. I got mine of ebay already flashed for Mac so I didn’t have to mess around with anything other than installing Cuda and NVidia drivers. If you want to flash it yourself you can definitely get it for less. The 680 also comes in 4GB but that seemed like overkill for my needs.
 
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honeycombz said:
The GTX 680 2GB is great, supports metal and doesn’t break the bank but some of it depends on what you want to do. I got mine of ebay already flashed for Mac so I didn’t have to mess around with anything other than installing Cuda and NVidia drivers. If you want to flash it yourself you can definitely get it for less. The 680 also comes in 4GB but that seemed like overkill for my needs.
Click to expand...

Why I just found this very useful website, seem the 3,1 can take any card the 4,1 and 5,1 can but you might not get the benefit of the higher end cars.

MACVIDCARDS.COM > http://www.macvidcards.com/i-want-the-best-graphics-card-for-my-mac-pro-where-do-i-start.html

No connection to the site but they even sell cards. Nice simple and to the point site.
 
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the bigger question is if its worth hacking high sierra onto the 3,1 once it goes final
 
weezerr said:
the bigger question is if its worth hacking high sierra onto the 3,1 once it goes final
Click to expand...

Actually that's a thing. How come in App Update it suggest Sierra when that machine is debarred by Apple, it's an awful tease and might lead to some confusion and disappointment from some.
 
Omega Mac said:
Actually that's a thing. How come in App Update it suggest Sierra when that machine is debarred by Apple, it's an awful tease and might lead to some confusion and disappointment from some.
Click to expand...

It is possible to install Sierra so I assume high sierra will also be able to be installed. Requires a work around though as not officially apple supported.
 
A little update:

The El Capitan drive is no longer selectable in the target disk to reboot on a restart. Nor did holding down "alt" when booting bring up drives to select boot drive, say if I wanted to boot from thumb drive/ext drive.

Perhaps something has corrupted in the SL boot up. If I disable that drive the El Capitan drive will boot fine.
 
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