Time to give up on 2,1 8 core 3 Ghz?

[docderwood]

So....

I purchased am 8 core MP in 2008 (2,1 model designation) 3 Ghz.It has a single HD 4870 Video card.

Of late, it's been getting slower. I've upgraded RAM (now 24GB) and reinstalled 10.7.5 to a 256 MB SSD.

Although this appear to help, video still stutters when playing 1080p 60FPS from our gopro (My 2012 retina MBP has no problems playing it).

Geekbench 3 32 bit gives me a score of 10890 (1561 single core).

The question is this: Any value to upgrading the video card or should I just sell it and wait for the new Mac Pro (or buy the current tower....I frankly like the tower better from an ease of use/upgradeability standpoint).

thx for any help!

 

[Saltymac]

You are caught in the middle zone of having a machine that is "terminal" as a G5 is but is still alive and running most apps for you. It runs Lion but won't run the new OS's as they come out. If you can live with it being three or more OS releases behind the a new card will help. It is a $400 plus to get a step up and allow some future growth use in a 5,1 machine in the future. If you see your self with a new cone tower in the near future then it would be a waste of money. in the short term you might benefit from a new 7200 rpm hard drive and make sure you don't have a bunch of bloat ware on board.

 

[docderwood]

You are caught in the middle zone of having a machine that is "terminal" as a G5 is but is still alive and running most apps for you. It runs Lion but won't run the new OS's as they come out. If you can live with it being three or more OS releases behind the a new card will help. It is a $400 plus to get a step up and allow some future growth use in a 5,1 machine in the future. If you see your self with a new cone tower in the near future then it would be a waste of money. in the short term you might benefit from a new 7200 rpm hard drive and make sure you don't have a bunch of bloat ware on board.

Thanks for the reply. No bloatware.....just did a clean install on the SSD.

I guess I'm just somewhat surprised how it's wheezing so bad trying to play 1080p 60fds Gopro video (although I haven't sat down to figure out how much data that is per second!).

 

[Saltymac]

Thanks for the reply. No bloatware.....just did a clean install on the SSD.

I guess I'm just somewhat surprised how it's wheezing so bad trying to play 1080p 60fds Gopro video (although I haven't sat down to figure out how much data that is per second!).

Here is some recent data on GPU's --

http://www.barefeats.com/gpu680v4.html