Noticeable Speed Difference? 2.8 vs 3.2

[Dawoo]

Hi there,
I am in a bit of a dilemma, there is a refurb 2.8 mac pro available now for £1549 or I can get a brand new 3.2 for £1799. Is the speed difference that noticeable? and is it worth the extra £300 for the speed boost plus the fact that it is brand new?

Cheers.

 

[derbothaus]

1000 points in geekbench difference between them. Up to you. I'd do it personally unless I was just getting the 2.8 as a stop gap for a hex replacement.

 

[netkas]

Macpro 3,1 can be overclocked from 2.8 to 3.2 with setfsb utility in windows, then reboot into osx and overclock is still present. Just FYI

 

[davew128]

Macpro 3,1 can be overclocked from 2.8 to 3.2 with setfsb utility in windows, then reboot into osx and overclock is still present. Just FYI

What settings should be used? Every time I try that in Boot Camp the machine freezes and fans go nuts.Found the clock chip at ICS9325421 but it seems the basic clock settings are wrong?

Says current FSB is 400/800/100.0/33.3 the first slider at 1069/760 and second one at 379/760. Currenty CPU frequency MMT 2793.2.

What am I missing here?

 

[davew128]

Ugh. I got it to work but only OCed to 2.845 from 2.8. Anything beyond that and it freezes. It carried over to the Mac side as I could see a very small but measurable boost on benchmarks but thats about it.

 

[steveOooo]

Probably better to get the 2.8, if you need it faster, replace the 2.8 with a 6core CPU for I think the same £300 (think its around £400) price

 

[softwareguy256]

For most applications, no. The time that general purpose untuned code spends waiting on I/O will more than easily cover up the gains of a lousy 400 mhz difference.

Hi there,
I am in a bit of a dilemma, there is a refurb 2.8 mac pro available now for £1549 or I can get a brand new 3.2 for £1799. Is the speed difference that noticeable? and is it worth the extra £300 for the speed boost plus the fact that it is brand new?

Cheers.

 

[steveOooo]

I have the 2.8 refurbed with a ssd as the boot - not really any issue amd is super quick - I think the only downer with the whole system is renders within after fx - this down to the ancient ati graphics card ( contemplating sticking a gtx570 )

 

[SteelBlueTJ]

Yea I picked up a 2.8 refurb as well and I'm very happy with it. It replaced my 2007 imac. I decided to go with the refurb 2.8 over the new 3.2 because the price was $500 cheaper and I figured any performance difference wouldnt even be noticeable. I added an ssd for the boot drive and it's blazing fast. Now I havent really done anything intense on it yet, but photoshop cs6 launches in like 3 seconds.