Sorry, no way were those new AND Apple certified with heat sinks.
Sure, you can use RAM without proper heat sinks ripped from a server, but why would you want to?
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Upgrade Old Mac Pro or Buy New Mac Pro?
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Sorry, no way were those new AND Apple certified with heat sinks.
Sure, you can use RAM without proper heat sinks ripped from a server, but why would you want to?
When was the last time you bought ram for a Mac Pro? In case you have not noticed the DDR3 ram does not have a heat sink on them. Oh and I don't think I have seen cpus upgrade mentioned in this thread yet the 6 core x5650 are going really cheap now got a matched pair for $350 shipped today to put in my 4,1.
As a mater of fact, today! eBay. 4x4GB for my Mac Pro 1,1. $129, which came to about $163 after exchange rate, shipping, taxes, etc. That was the best rate I could find, the same thing being $270 here in Canada ($320 with taxes and shipping).
Nope, didn't notice! Not sure why (posting in too many concurrent threads, I think), but I thought we were also talking about the Mac Pro 1,1. Clearly not, so apologies, and I stand corrected!
Thanks everyone. looked at the OWC PCI Flash + different RAM options. The total for the 2 would be a little under $1000. I think given that storage expansion, multi monitors, etc are important to me that I should go with the new Mac Pro. I figure if I get the 6 Core $3.7 (discount included) I would be better off as I can get rid of my current system for at least $1,200 and apply that towards the cost difference. So spending 2.5K and I get a new system after having my current one for a few years already. This way I avoid issues with the cinema display port not being thunderbolt for future monitor upgrades and storage options. It will also give me better performance from the CPU, GPU, etc. So that price isn't that bad for a new system (especially since Apple Care will be expiring very soon on my current one. If any issues develop after that expiration it could get even more costly and risk being stuck in the end without the benefits I mentioned above)
The only thing I'm pondering now if I should upgrade the 256GB to 512GB since it would be (if rumors are correct) about $270 more (with discount). Another option would be to upgrade the D500s to D700s but I can't find anything to indicate performance between the 500s and 700s justifies the higher price as if it were the 300s and 700s. Any input on those 2 cards?
The only thing I'm pondering now if I should upgrade the 256GB to 512GB since it would be (if rumors are correct) about $270 more (with discount). Another option would be to upgrade the D500s to D700s but I can't find anything to indicate performance between the 500s and 700s justifies the higher price as if it were the 300s and 700s. Any input on those 2 cards?
That was about the price I could get for using a company using quotes for Good/Excellent (Which it is in that condition) However, I will try and get a higher price (hopefully 1.5K+) with actual buyers instead of letting the company make higher profit. But sometimes machines don't sell that fast so I just referenced that as the highest guaranteed price I could get for it.
Uh, why wouldn't you want to? It's this kind of Apple Luddite-ism that allows Apple to continue charging exorbitant amounts for upgrades. "Apple-certified" RAM isn't better than Dell-certified or HP-certified, especially when it comes to server/workstation-grade components.
Also, they did have heatsinks -- they are literally identical to Apple RAM, likely because it came from the same factory.
Ok I see let me know either way even at higher price. I will see what my thinking is on machine upgrades at that time.
<Yawn...>
"Luddite-ism"? Apple products have a built-in dictionary. You should use it.
Apple can continue to charge their "exorbitant amounts" for upgrades. No one on this forum is paying them.
Apple certified simply means a product tested to work properly in the target machine, according to Apple specs. Why would I order something online, from a different country, that did NOT meet those criteria? That would just be moronic.
Ah, typical strawman arguments from someone who has little technical knowledge. Yes, it would be moronic to buy something that doesn't meet specs... except all of that RAM does meet specs. In fact, I'd bet good money pretty much all 8500/10600 DDR3 ECC RAM from any reputable manufacturer meets Apple's internal specs these days. Furthermore, who said anything about a foreign country? My RAM came from a Dell workstation and was shipped from a well-known company in Texas.
What's really moronic is looking for "Apple certified" items when it's not necessary to do so and is identical to other RAM. There is zero need to overpay 2-3x for "certified" RAM.
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I'd say bump the RAM up to 32 or 64 and slap a 3G 512 SSD or a PCIe solution, and you'll swear you bought a new machine.
I think your lack of RAM has been hurting you more than you suspect.
There's no amount of "upgrading" you or he can do to an existing Mac Pro to get access to Intel's AVX in-chip extensions. And those AVX extensions are a big benefit to FCPX specifically. So if the OP is spending a lot of time in FCPX, then it makes way more sense to replace his Mac Pro with a new one than it does to spend ANY money on the old one.
The old Xeons are great workhorses, but they're OLD WORKHORSES.
Here's a fun home-based benchmark I did to hammer this point home to myself. Two systems in question: a first-gen Macbook Pro Retina with 16GB of RAM and the smallest SSD it comes with, and a heavily customized Mac Pro 5,1 with 2 6-core 3.46GHz Xeons, 48GB RAM, and a bunch of RAID0 storage volumes for media, exports, etc. The video card in the Mac Pro: a GTX570 w/2.5GB of RAM modified to boot properly.
Every benchmark I could run put the Mac Pro WAAAAAAAAY ahead of the laptop. My GB2 64-bit score is somewhere north of 28K with it, for instance.
Using FCPX, I cut and exported the exact same 20 minute footage on both machines. The export time is key here. If the video was 20 minutes (ie, time t) then the Mac Pro took 2t. The laptop: t.
The "little" laptop was TWICE as fast with FCPX as the ol' workhorse of a Mac Pro. AVX. It matters.
@MacPro2014
I recommend that you just go for more RAM and a SSD. Get a 256 GB with a fast HDD and make a fusion drive. This is the best value upgrade you can get.
You will be amazed how big the speed gain will be!
If you need a fast grafic card, get a PC Zotac GTX 680 4GB. Flashing is no problem (if you want to use it with bootcamp), the card is even directly supported by MacOS X (fully working, just install the newest Nvidia drivers) and you don't need an additional power source too.
I recommend that you just go for more RAM and a SSD. Get a 256 GB with a fast HDD and make a fusion drive. This is the best value upgrade you can get.
You will be amazed how big the speed gain will be!
If you need a fast grafic card, get a PC Zotac GTX 680 4GB. Flashing is no problem (if you want to use it with bootcamp), the card is even directly supported by MacOS X (fully working, just install the newest Nvidia drivers) and you don't need an additional power source too.
Sure, that's a very good point, I don't claim to be familiar with FCPX. I appreciate you giving data for a concrete use scenario, rather than synthetic benchmarks. I just have my doubts that for all tasks, the speed increase will be borne out. As you have your anecdotes, I have mine -- I do a lot of genome assembly and lately, haplotyping. The new processors are often slower than the old ones. It really depends on what someone is doing.
If FCPX benefits so much from AVX, then the OP should upgrade, but I'm just pointing out it's not black and white that the new processors are ~30% better. In your case, and I suppose the OPs, it was actually 100% better. In my case, it wasn't even 5%. My point was that synthetic benchmarks especially Geekbench are good for general comparisons, but it's foolhardy to extrapolate those results to all use cases.
That said, I still believe the primary reason the OP thinks his system is "slow" is the low RAM. 6GB is not going to cut it.
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