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"Ultimate" Mac Pro 2,1

B

bob93329

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 17, 2017
26
3
Hello Guys,
i finally get some money for picking up old mac pro 1,1 (around 90$)
I saw you can buy pair of X5355's on alliexpress for around 5$ each, and non-mac HD 5770 for around 25$.
Rams are also very cheap, as i saw for a 4x4gb kit of ECC DDR2 memory for around 20$. Witch gave me a total of around 160$ with shipping, is it worth it? Also, can i flash a PC HD 5770 to get a bootscreen on my mac? I would like to use this mac for basic office usage like Office and web browsing, i know, i can just buy a pc. I had so many PC's so i wanted to try a mac :)
If i made mistakes in writing im sorry, im Polish :)
[doublepost=1510512060][/doublepost]https://www.aliexpress.com/item/For...108.1000016.1.66ab38d5g3HBn6&isOrigTitle=true
Will this CPU's Work in 1,1?
 
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By the way, can you play games on this mac? You know, i have ryzen "gaming" rig but hey, its good to know :)
Only game that i play in free time is League Of Legends, if you can check that out it will be amazing, its hard to find some "gamin" videos with mac pro 2,1 on youtube :)
 
I don't play games anymore, so I couldn't say for sure. I would guess it's not very efficient at gaming, though you can upgrade the graphics card to a certain point, which could help a little bit. Mac Pro 1.1 stops at El Capitan, so that might be the first show stopper to come.
 
Okay, i bought it today for 90$ with DHL shipping. It have 2gigs of ddr2 ecc, i have another ddr2 kit of 2 but without ecc, can i mix them? Btw can it run Yosemite or Mavericks on 2gigs or leave it stock until cpus/ram will arrive?
[doublepost=1510581411][/doublepost]@mikas can you test cinebench r15 CPU benchmark? I just wanted to know some numbers ;)
 
I play often RE4 on the mac pro 2.1
With a 5770 you could play the RE6
 
bob93329 said:
Okay, i bought it today for 90$ with DHL shipping. It have 2gigs of ddr2 ecc, i have another ddr2 kit of 2 but without ecc, can i mix them? Btw can it run Yosemite or Mavericks on 2gigs or leave it stock until cpus/ram will arrive?
[doublepost=1510581411][/doublepost]@mikas can you test cinebench r15 CPU benchmark? I just wanted to know some numbers ;)
Click to expand...
2GB is not enough. You can get it to boot allright, but there is no memory to run any software. I believe that even surfing the web would take it to it's knees quite quickly. I don't think you can mix the memory. I bought a full 32GB set similar modules from eBay. They (the RAM) run quite hot, probably because of the lack of proper heatsinks, but heat is within the specs still.

Sure I took all the tests possible back then. Attached are GeekBench 3.3.0 and Cinebench R15.

edit. GeekBench 4.1.4 added. It differs from GB 3.3.0, andit might give a better perspective in regards to newer machines.
 

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For your intended use case I wouldn't bother upgrading the CPUs or the graphics card. Maybe substitute a 2 x 4GB or 4 x 2GB memory configuration as 8GB should be more than sufficient.
 
Thanks for all help.
Ill be upgrading all sort of stuff, GPU, CPUs and Rams.
GPU will be ofc HD 5770 , flashed to be mac card.
ECC rams are cheap, you can buy 8gigs for around 20$ as i said so they will be upgraded as well.
And CPUs, costing around 10$ for 2 of them. By the way, what is the best revision of X5355 for Mac?
I know 2gb is very small amount, but i just want to install the OS and wait for other parts :)
So whats the best running OS on this mac? Mavericks, Yosemite or El Capitan?
 
Personally I would install El Capitan. There are quirks with it I have read, but it's the newest, and software support is still quite reasonable for it.

I have learned from this forum, that you don't want the engineering samples. I think your best bet is that SLAEG. There are X5365's too as an option for you. Last time I checked they were significantly pricier though. I don't know what is the price difference today.

I can allmost feel your enthusiasm from here. You are going to give this retro machine a new life. I wish you good luck.
 
Thanks dude, im glad to hear that :)
I wanted mac pro since it came out, but price was too big, finnaly i can afford it :)
[doublepost=1510594160][/doublepost]Ill be making something like "Progress" with pictures :)
[doublepost=1510594307][/doublepost]Sorry for that much question but im curious. I have old EVGA GTX 9800GTX+ video card, from PC ofc, will it work in mac with El Capitan?
 
bob93329 said:
By the way, can you play games on this mac? You know, i have ryzen "gaming" rig but hey, its good to know :)
Only game that i play in free time is League Of Legends, if you can check that out it will be amazing, its hard to find some "gamin" videos with mac pro 2,1 on youtube :)
Click to expand...
I went from the Radeon 5770 to a Sapphire Radeon 3GB 7950 in a 8 core model. It's a niiiice card
 
Btw, sorry for that much questions, but i think thats last,
i found MSI Twin Frozr HD 5770, is it any good? Will i be able to flash it?
Or, i need "reference model" with blower style cooler, both are around 20$ but MSI i 2$ more with that great cooler :)
 
I foujs those rams for 3$ each with 3$ shipping. Will they work for Mac? I want to buy 2 of them.
 

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Looks like compatible. Attached my dumped memory modules, an the new ones are those HP ones. Regardless of the brand, your memory code at the dimm's looks like kind of very similar, what do experts say about this?
 

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Okay, i think mac will arrive today, also i got information from aliexpress, my cpus are send :).
Btw, So ya, i think ill need rams, gpu and 6pin cable :)
So last question, can i buy HD 5770 from any brand and than flash it? You know like XFX or MSI :/
 
Some info, i got a package with mac, unfortunately some aluminium parts on top are bent (thanks dpd) but everything works perfectly. Just ordered 8 gigs of ram so it will have 10gb right now.
Im trying to install El Capitan but its a bit harder than i thought. Now im running Lion :)
But this machine even on 2x Dual core cpus with 2 gigs of ram runs perfectly fine in modern tasks like web browsing, even youtube playback in hd works :)
 
bob93329 said:
By the way, can you play games on this mac? You know, i have ryzen "gaming" rig but hey, its good to know :)
Only game that i play in free time is League Of Legends, if you can check that out it will be amazing, its hard to find some "gamin" videos with mac pro 2,1 on youtube :)
Click to expand...

You can play games on these machines. I run the latest World of Warcraft:Legion expansion on mine with a Radeon 5770 under El Capitan and it works fine on moderate settings - I get about 40-45 FPS which is more than reasonable. These are great machines still!
 
So nice :)
I think HD 5770 will be a good choice for me :)
Finnaly i finished installing El Capitan, i got old 8500 GT which have a out of box support for 10.11 :)
So ya, i need to wait for memory, CPUs and gpu 6pin cable but i think that will be a good deal :)
 
bob93329 said:
Some info, i got a package with mac, unfortunately some aluminium parts on top are bent (thanks dpd) but everything works perfectly. Just ordered 8 gigs of ram so it will have 10gb right now.
Im trying to install El Capitan but its a bit harder than i thought. Now im running Lion :)
But this machine even on 2x Dual core cpus with 2 gigs of ram runs perfectly fine in modern tasks like web browsing, even youtube playback in hd works :)
Click to expand...
There's is absolutely nothing wrong with a 1,1 Mac Pro other than the fact Apple decided to drop support for it. Put any other compatible OS on it and you'll find it's no worse than an officially supported Mac.
 
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