MP All Models The "I just ordered/bought/got my new/refurb Mac Pro" thread [Merged]

[wildatheart]

If you don't feel short of Hard drive bays, and in the spirit of the cost savings you've made, I might not bother - I am very happy with my Sonnet Plus (not least because it gives me two extra bays) and Samsung 850's, but in real world use you may only notice the faster boot time, vs. an SSD in one of the bays, as the speed's good anyway.

 

[h9826790]

If you don't feel short of Hard drive bays, and in the spirit of the cost savings you've made, I might not bother - I am very happy with my Sonnet Plus (not least because it gives me two extra bays) and Samsung 850's, but in real world use you may only notice the faster boot time, vs. an SSD in one of the bays, as the speed's good anyway.

I am quite sure boot time is almost the very last thing you can feel the difference between SATA 2 and SATA 3. That's proved by plenty of tests / review, the boot time difference usually within a second.

 

[Messy]

Tbh, it's not often turned off, it's either idling or sleeping.

If I get into video production more I suspect I'll invest in the PCIE/SSD route a little more, although I'm hesitant at the moment to throw too much money into the machine.

 

[n8mac]

I just retired my beachballing 2007 iMac with original HD and bought my first MacPro.

Mac Pro 5,1 @2.8 quad, 6gb ram and no HD = $387
Upgraded with 16gb ram and 480 SSD from OWC = $276
Total investment = $663

This thing just flies in comparison to my old iMac. I might upgrade the radeon 5770 later down the road to play Xplane 10, but am on a tight budget.

So far very happy with this beast.

 

[h9826790]

I just retired my beachballing 2007 iMac with original HD and bought my first MacPro.

Mac Pro 5,1 @2.8 quad, 6gb ram and no HD = $387
Upgraded with 16gb ram and 480 SSD from OWC = $276
Total investment = $663

This thing just flies in comparison to my old iMac. I might upgrade the radeon 5770 later down the road to play Xplane 10, but am on a tight budget.

So far very happy with this beast.

A $100 used 7950 can do very well in X plane.

If budget tight, you better avoid OWC, they are not bad, but just usually overprice. IMO, you are paying for their marketing, CS, etc. But not necessary the hardware quality.

$75 can get you 32G RAM already, not 16G.

500G 850 Evo cost <$150

Anyway, for GPU, you can easily get a 7950 (or even 7970 if you are ok with the power management). Do some study, flash it by yourself to make it the "Mac Edition" card. Use / test it for a week. If everything OK, sell the 5770. You may even able to make some money after the upgrade.

Or if you manage to get a cheap 7950, you may consider to keep the 5770 as a backup card.

 

[owbp]

A $100 used 7950 can do very well in X plane.

If budget tight, you better avoid OWC, they are not bad, but just usually overprice.

+1

 

[wildatheart]

I am quite sure boot time is almost the very last thing you can feel the difference between SATA 2 and SATA 3. That's proved by plenty of tests / review, the boot time difference usually within a second.

I time around four seconds difference, which is noticeable as the startup is plenty fast - Can you point me to those tests as I'd like to explore this a little further in case there's an issue with my SATA2

 

[h9826790]

I time around four seconds difference, which is noticeable as the startup is plenty fast - Can you point me to those tests as I'd like to explore this a little further in case there's an issue with my SATA2

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-as-current-blade-ssds.1971040/#post-22867324

I guess the boot time difference may be caused by something like unintentional SMC reset etc, but not really because of SATA 3 speed.

 

[wildatheart]

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-as-current-blade-ssds.1971040/#post-22867324

I guess the boot time difference may be caused by something like unintentional SMC reset etc, but not really because of SATA 3 speed.

Many thanks (I'm off to do some testing and head scratching)!

 

[n8mac]

A $100 used 7950 can do very well in X plane.

If budget tight, you better avoid OWC, they are not bad, but just usually overprice. IMO, you are paying for their marketing, CS, etc. But not necessary the hardware quality.

$75 can get you 32G RAM already, not 16G.

500G 850 Evo cost <$150

Anyway, for GPU, you can easily get a 7950 (or even 7970 if you are ok with the power management). Do some study, flash it by yourself to make it the "Mac Edition" card. Use / test it for a week. If everything OK, sell the 5770. You may even able to make some money after the upgrade.

Or if you manage to get a cheap 7950, you may consider to keep the 5770 as a backup card.

Thanks for the suggestions on the fx card. I have never flashed a card before and am leery about doing so, so will probably stick with one already flashed. But can't hurt to read up on it I guess.

The 7950 looks good. I will be waiting until I see the system requirements for the upcoming Civilization 6 and Obduction first before buying anything. I've been playing Cities Skylines and the 5770 is handling it well.

 

[h9826790]

Thanks for the suggestions on the fx card. I have never flashed a card before and am leery about doing so, so will probably stick with one already flashed. But can't hurt to read up on it I guess.

The 7950 looks good. I will be waiting until I see the system requirements for the upcoming Civilization 6 and Obduction first before buying anything. I've been playing Cities Skylines and the 5770 is handling it well.

Sure, if you have a target game coming up, of course should wait.

For flashed card, there is only one reliable source. And won't be cheap.

For Official Mac card, they are even more expensive.

As you said, there is nothing hurt to study more. For Nvidia card, it's a bit more scary, but the flash process should be very straight forward (download and flash).

For AMD card, you have a little bit more choice (create the ROM by yourself and then flash it). By making you own EFI ROM, that will have best result on compatibility. That's a bit more complicated, however, since most 7950 have dual ROM design. It's basically error proof. Even tough you flash a bad ROM to the card, you can simply flip the switch, boot with the good ROM, and then flip the switch again (when the machine still running), then flash again and Replace the bad ROM with a good one. As long as you keep one ROM save (read only, but don't write on it), you are always safe to flash.

Anyway, either pay someone reliable to do it (IMO, that means MVC). Or do that yourself to save money. From the sharing in this forum, buying a flashed card from an unknown source has high chance to suffer from all sorts of different problem.

Since all flash procedure are well documented in this forum, I just can't see the point why pay a bit more (to an unknown source) and let yourself take the risk. The worse part is that the card may not even come with the original ROM, that will prevent you to fix the problem (if any).

 

[n8mac]

Sure, if you have a target game coming up, of course should wait.

For flashed card, there is only one reliable source. And won't be cheap.

For Official Mac card, they are even more expensive.

As you said, there is nothing hurt to study more. For Nvidia card, it's a bit more scary, but the flash process should be very straight forward (download and flash).

For AMD card, you have a little bit more choice (create the ROM by yourself and then flash it). By making you own EFI ROM, that will have best result on compatibility. That's a bit more complicated, however, since most 7950 have dual ROM design. It's basically error proof. Even tough you flash a bad ROM to the card, you can simply flip the switch, boot with the good ROM, and then flip the switch again (when the machine still running), then flash again and Replace the bad ROM with a good one. As long as you keep one ROM save (read only, but don't write on it), you are always safe to flash.

Anyway, either pay someone reliable to do it (IMO, that means MVC). Or do that yourself to save money. From the sharing in this forum, buying a flashed card from an unknown source has high chance to suffer from all sorts of different problem.

Since all flash procedure are well documented in this forum, I just can't see the point why pay a bit more (to an unknown source) and let yourself take the risk. The worse part is that the card may not even come with the original ROM, that will prevent you to fix the problem (if any).

Ok, a couple of noob questions...
1. Is there any reason to flash the 7950 to a mac FX card if you don't dual-boot? (I will only be booting el capitan)
2. Does the PC 7950 work as is without flashing? (except boot screen)

Thanks for your time.

 

[h9826790]

Ok, a couple of noob questions...
1. Is there any reason to flash the 7950 to a mac FX card if you don't dual-boot? (I will only be booting el capitan)
2. Does the PC 7950 work as is without flashing? (except boot screen)

Thanks for your time.

1) Access the recovery partition. e.g. For El Capitan, if you want to disable SIP, you can only do that in recovery partition. Also, unless you have your own backup boot partition. That's the OSX backup method to boot your Mac and install OSX / recover from time machine backup, etc.

2) Yes, work OOTB, don't need to do anything (true for El Capitan, but not the very old OSX e.g. 10.6)

 

[owbp]

don't need to do anything (true for El Capitan, but not the very old OSX e.g. 10.6)

Also good thing about flashed 7950 is that you will have proper resolution, color, etc (everything except acceleration) in 10.6 (didn't try older OS since i don't have original DVD with Tiger).

 

[h9826790]

Also good thing about flashed 7950 is that you will have proper resolution, color, etc (everything except acceleration) in 10.6 (didn't try older OS since i don't have original DVD with Tiger).

In my experience, proper resolution and colour always there regardless if flash or not. Just the ident in OSX is difference (7xxx vs 7950 in system profile).

 

[owbp]

In my experience, proper resolution and colour always there regardless if flash or not. Just the ident in OSX is difference (7xxx vs 7950 in system profile).

Don't know about 7950 since i flashed it as soon as i brought it home, but i couldn't boot (have screen) with my unflashed HD6850 until i upgraded SL to 10.6.8 (IIRC radeon 6000 kexts are introduced in 10.6.4).
So i had to boot into installer, install on HDD and upgrade system from 10.6 to 10.6.8 with 7300GT and then put HD6850 in.
With flashed HD7950 i can see the screen from the start of 10.6 installation (even though 10.6.8 doesnt have 7000 kexts).
I'm under the impression that EFI in GPU is responsible for that?

 

[h9826790]

Don't know about 7950 since i flashed it as soon as i brought it home, but i couldn't boot (have screen) with my unflashed HD6850 until i upgraded SL to 10.6.8 (IIRC radeon 6000 kexts are introduced in 10.6.4).
So i had to boot into installer, install on HDD and upgrade system from 10.6 to 10.6.8 with 7300GT and then put HD6850 in.
With flashed HD7950 i can see the screen from the start of 10.6 installation (even though 10.6.8 doesnt have 7000 kexts).
I'm under the impression that EFI in GPU is responsible for that?

For unsupported OSX, yes, EFI make the GPU can give out basic display without driver loaded. Without EFI, unsupported GPU not only cannot display with proper resolution and colour, but cannot display at all.

 

[n8mac]

Thanks for the info h9826790. I thought at one point I was going to be running snow leopard for use of old PPC apps from my G5 until I found I could not bring over adobe CS2 and Final cut 5 because of the serial number issue. No biggie. Need to retire those old apps and get some modern software anyway.

I figure I will get a PC 7950 one day if it will run my games and keep the original 5770 if ever needed for a boot screen.

 

[jackhenri]

just adding my 2 pence to this discussion..
I recently 'upgraded/traded in' my 2008 3,1 mac pro for a 5,1 12 core 2.93GHz.. here in the UK.
It was a great deal and I am now super happy with my machine.

The first machine they sent was a 2009 mac pro, refurbed to a 5,1. Graphics was a Radeon 5770.
And it was noisy... I work as a sound editor, and the fans were running really high at like around 2000rpm, (dual monitor) making the mac unusable as a studio computer.

After a few times sending the machine back and forth, they replaced the mac with a 2010 mac pro, and the fan noise was resolved...

SO.. I'm guessing there is an issue with the 2009 souped up mac pros and radeon 5770's//

cheers...

 

[scott.n]

SO.. I'm guessing there is an issue with the 2009 souped up mac pros and radeon 5770's//

Absolutely not. You just had a bad GPU in the first machine.

 

[jackhenri]

Absolutely not. You just had a bad GPU in the first machine.

not sure about that, but before the mac was replaced (with 2010 model) we tried a another 5770 and the results were the same. Also tried them in different PCI slots, and he problem persisted.

I could get the fans to get back to reasonable speed (with 2009 mac pro) i.e.: 800 rpm only after stressing them with 'engine heaven' benchmark.

but I'm no expert, just wanted to hare my experience incase anyone was searching for similar problem

cheers

 

[n8mac]

My 5,1 Mac Pro with 5770 is silent, even while gaming.

 

[mrxak]

My 4,1 died after 7 years of faithful service... the best computer I ever owned. It was holding on until WWDC, but when no nMP announcement came, its heart simply gave out.

Picked up a 5,1 Hexacore 3.46 GHz. Will upgrade to 48 GB of RAM and move over my 4,1's GPU and a couple other PCI cards (including a card for USB 3.0 ports). Should be a nice upgrade and hopefully it'll last me until Apple finally makes a nMP worth getting, and continue to serve as a second desktop machine for legacy software.

I am considering getting a 2 TB SSD for the 5,1. Anyone have any recommendations?

 

[h9826790]

I am considering getting a 2 TB SSD for the 5,1. Anyone have any recommendations?

I think the 850Evo is the easiest and very cost effective solution for 2T SSD.

 

[m4v3r1ck]

I think the 850Evo is the easiest and very cost effective solution for 2T SSD.

I'm still a very big fan of the Samsung (EVO/PRO) SSDs. Since buying 4 of the EVO series, 3x 500GB and 1x 1TB, I've NEVER encountered any mayor problem. Highly recommended!!!

Chees