There is hope for reasonable upgrades for 1,1 or 2,1 Mac Pro owners

[TheEasterBunny]

I have been watching eBay, for about 3 months now.
My searches, and the auctions I have been watching are for the X5355 and X5365 Xeons.
I have noticed a recent trend. On the auctions these chips have been going for less, quite a bit less in fact. I saw pairs of 5355's go for $40.00 to $62.00.
Also the 5365's have been edging lower from the common $350.00 a pair to recently (this week) less than $200.00.
Today I bought a pair of 5365's for $100.00! Including shipping.
Some sellers have had chips up for 30 days at a set price of 350. Then the have re-posted for 300.00 for a week or so. Then shifted to an auction to sell them for under 200.00.
My 5365's will be here next week, can't wait.

 

[Tesselator]

I've been watching too. As I've seen it over the past 5 or 6 months the x5355's go for about $100 a pair and the x5365's go for about $200 a pair (all ± $25).

The people charging more never actually sell them. It fact I think some people purposefully create two accounts just to advertise higher prices in order to make their average-priced auctions look more reasonable. This happens a lot with RAM too.


So you will be upgrading your 1,1 from x5355 to x5365 processors? If that's the case do a bunch or real-worldish benchmarks before and after the swap and publish the differences. It would be great to know how Handbreak, Photoshop, LightRoom, Aperture, iTunes, AfterFX, iPhoto, iMovie, File Compressors, and so on behave under the two different processors.

 

[ReanimationLP]

Since most corporations are starting to discard / recycle servers of these vintages, you will start to see lower and lower prices on these processors. Servers, especially rack mount ones are very tough sales for recycle companies and eBay sellers, so most of the time they will get gutted for parts and the parts get sold out.

Don't be surprised too to see FB-DIMMs start to come down in price as well. You may have to beef up the heatsinks though.

 

[Tesselator]

You may have to beef up the heatsinks though.

Probably not actually. It was only the first versions of the under 1GB DIMM modules that actually ran hot enough to warrant Apple type heatsinks. About 90% of all 1GB DIMMs and 100% of all 2GB and higher DIMMs don't actually need those - and actually do not run cooler with them on - even when.

 

[TheEasterBunny]

I've been watching too. As I've seen it over the past 5 or 6 months the x5355's go for about $100 a pair and the x5365's go for about $200 a pair (all ± $25).

The people charging more never actually sell them. It fact I think some people purposefully create two accounts just to advertise higher prices in order to make their average-priced auctions look more reasonable. This happens a lot with RAM too.


So you will be upgrading your 1,1 from x5355 to x5365 processors? If that's the case do a bunch or real-worldish benchmarks before and after the swap and publish the differences. It would be great to know how Handbreak, Photoshop, LightRoom, Aperture, iTunes, AfterFX, iPhoto, iMovie, File Compressors, and so on behave under the two different processors.

During my time I have seen some sell at auction for over $300.00 but very few, most have been "buy it nows" that the quantities they have reduce. I assumed they were selling but, it could be the seller creating his market in hopes of higher prices. The price on the 5365, is astonishing. Such an old processor going so high. 5150/60 are posted for less than $10.00! Same era chip, granted far less performance, but wow.
I have 5150's.
It will be interesting to see the differences, I should double GB score, but I'm not that excited about the scores as I am about real world power. I do a lot of file compressions of work files. Compressing jpeg's with any real gain of space, takes a long time since they are already compressed. I store a year and a half's worth (2 TB of compressed jpeg's) of business files at all times.
I use:
Keka (uses a 7z algorithm) set at max compression
CS5 (10 to 15 layer files, and some repair work if things don't go right)
Automator (to batch rename files)
For home and fun:
Handbrake (trying to figure it out, just started playing with it)
iMovie (my wife kite boards, I record her, she just started this year, should be fun videos!)

Once upon a time I built custom wintel workstations, did repair, refurbished, bought and sold used systems in my own small shop. This was during the PC boom. Most of my work was for (native owned) casino's in Northern Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and southern central Canada.

 

[Snowshiro]

The price on the 5365, is astonishing. Such an old processor going so high. 5150/60 are posted for less than $10.00! Same era chip, granted far less performance, but wow.

I believe the X5365s were produced in relatively low numbers compared to the other processors you mentioned. By the time they arrived (July 2007) Intel was almost ready to release Harpertown Xeons - the next generation of processor with a number of improvements and the X5365 was just a short-term gap filler. Hence they're more scarce, and combined with the best in class performance for certain architectures command a much higher price.