MP 1,1-5,1 Upgrading to 3,1

[LordeOurMother]

I currently own a Mac Pro 1,1, and it works like a champ. Runs logic beautifully and runs the few games I play pretty decently.

However, at some point in the next year or two, I foresee myself upgrading to a 3,1 purely due to obsolescence (El Cap will start showing its age at some point). Prices are coming down on them and they can be hacked to run Mojave.

It should mostly be a matter of buying the machine and then just transferring over my hard disks. However graphics cards are a bit more finicky on these machines than other parts.

I currently have a Radeon 5500 in the machine, but i would like to upgrade that card so I can run slightly more recent games on low settings.

What's a good graphics card that will run in both the 1,1 and the 3,1 when I get it, that's better than the stock card in the 3,1s? Budget is around 100-150 GBP.

 

[orph]

if you can skip the 3,1 and get a 4,1/5,1
GTX 680 is a good cheep gpu and you can flash it, there about £50 or less on ebay (will work in your 1.1 i think).

the 3,1 is not relay much of an upgrade at all from a 1,1 almost the same CPU.

edit i meant GTX680 not 660 my bad

 

[LordeOurMother]

if you can skip the 3,1 and get a 4,1/5,1
GTX 660 is a good cheep gpu and you can flash it, there about £50 or less on ebay (will work in your 1.1 i think).

the 3,1 is not relay much of an upgrade at all from a 1,1 almost the same CPU.

It's just a matter of software, not hardware, tbh. The 1,1 fits my current use case sufficiently well. However, the 3,1 can run Mojave and the 1,1 cannot.

The 4,1 or 5,1 might be a consideration if I see one at a good price when I go to buy one in a couple of months/a years time. Just depends on when El Cap starts showing its age. I don't get to use my desktop enough due to travel to justify spending more than a few hundred on it, but I love these Mac Pros and the old G5s as tinker machines.

 

[iluvmacs99]

I currently own a Mac Pro 1,1, and it works like a champ. Runs logic beautifully and runs the few games I play pretty decently.

However, at some point in the next year or two, I foresee myself upgrading to a 3,1 purely due to obsolescence (El Cap will start showing its age at some point). Prices are coming down on them and they can be hacked to run Mojave.

It should mostly be a matter of buying the machine and then just transferring over my hard disks. However graphics cards are a bit more finicky on these machines than other parts.

I currently have a Radeon 5500 in the machine, but i would like to upgrade that card so I can run slightly more recent games on low settings.

What's a good graphics card that will run in both the 1,1 and the 3,1 when I get it, that's better than the stock card in the 3,1s? Budget is around 100-150 GBP.

If you are planning to get the 3,1, then the top graphics card to get without hitting this machine's bottleneck is the GTX-770. It will work all the way to Mojave running the hacked version with the 3,1 and gives a pretty decent GPU performance. I don't know if the 770 will work with 1,1. Perhaps others can comment on this.

 

[tsialex]

I currently own a Mac Pro 1,1, and it works like a champ. Runs logic beautifully and runs the few games I play pretty decently.

However, at some point in the next year or two, I foresee myself upgrading to a 3,1 purely due to obsolescence (El Cap will start showing its age at some point). Prices are coming down on them and they can be hacked to run Mojave.

It should mostly be a matter of buying the machine and then just transferring over my hard disks. However graphics cards are a bit more finicky on these machines than other parts.

I currently have a Radeon 5500 in the machine, but i would like to upgrade that card so I can run slightly more recent games on low settings.

What's a good graphics card that will run in both the 1,1 and the 3,1 when I get it, that's better than the stock card in the 3,1s? Budget is around 100-150 GBP.

Just a note, with a Radeon HD 5xxx or HD 6xxx GPU you can use up to High Sierra. Mojave don't support HD 5xxx/6xxx at all and this can't be patched/hacked.

 

[LordeOurMother]

Just a note, with a Radeon HD 5xxx or HD 6xxx GPU you can use up to High Sierra. Mojave don't support HD 5xxx/6xxx at all and this can't be patched/hacked.

Hence the whole point of this thread!

Looking for a graphics card I can use now *and* later.

 

[tsialex]

Hence the whole point of this thread!

Looking for a graphics card I can use now *and* later.

If you really want to use a GPU with MP1,1 too you are limited to what have ElCapitan drivers, so probably only NVIDIA GTX 680 will work, AMD GCN GPUs don't work with MP3,1 Xeons after High Sierra, lack of SSE4.2 that AMD drivers need.

Pre-boot configuration support will work only with MP3,1 since a flashed GTX 680 is a EFI64 only GPU.

 

[LordeOurMother]

If you really want to use a GPU with MP1,1 too you are limited to what have ElCapitan drivers, so probably only NVIDIA GTX 680 will work, AMD GCN GPUs don't work with MP3,1 Xeons after High Sierra, lack of SSE4.2 that AMD drivers need.

Pre-boot configuration support will work only with MP3,1 since a flashed GTX 680 is a EFI64 only GPU.

Thank you! I appreciate this.
[doublepost=1565886223][/doublepost]

If you are planning to get the 3,1, then the top graphics card to get without hitting this machine's bottleneck is the GTX-770. It will work all the way to Mojave running the hacked version with the 3,1 and gives a pretty decent GPU performance. I don't know if the 770 will work with 1,1. Perhaps others can comment on this.

I’ll have to find out. It seems like a solid card.

 

[AlexMaximus]

Hence the whole point of this thread!

Looking for a graphics card I can use now *and* later.

I would not go for a 3.1 at all at this point in time. A 5.1 tower is already very old, - a 3.1 is ancient. Unless you are on an extremely low budget, I would not go older than a 4.1. Once the new Mac Pro 2019 is out, the price of 5.1 machines should go down. This is the point to scoop one out with a AMD 580 card or better.

 

[LordeOurMother]

I would not go for a 3.1 at all at this point in time. A 5.1 tower is already very old, - a 3.1 is ancient. Unless you are on an extremely low budget, I would not go older than a 4.1. Once the new Mac Pro 2019 is out, the price of 5.1 machines should go down. This is the point to scoop one out with a AMD 580 card or better.

It’s not that I can’t afford it-I have the money. It’s that owning one of these machines is just a hobby for me. I record in logic sometimes with a friend and otherwise I don’t have the time to justify more than maybe £250 on a desktop. But I want a Mac tower to tinker with and have fun and play Modern Warfare 2 when I’m home. 4/5,1s haven’t reached that price yet. 3,1s have dipped below that.

For reference, I currently study in one country, live in another, and spend 3 months of the year in another.

When I finish this bachelors, I think I want to upgrade slightly as a present to myself and the many hundred pounds difference between the 3,1 and the 4,1/5,1s does make a difference when u’ll use the machine maybe 3 or 4 times a month to play mw2 and make some music, maybe run some basic data analysis.

But as it stands, the 3,1 is the middle of the road between slightly expensive hobby investment and not wasting money on something I don’t really use all that often.

If price to performance was my primary concern I would get a slightly older Mac mini or iMac. I like the towers.

It might be the case that my nomadic lifestyle calms down in the next year or so-in that instance, I will get a 5,1 in a heartbeat, especially if the new pro does make a dent in that market.
[doublepost=1565888940][/doublepost]That being said, a decent graphics card would have the practical benefit of letting me play a few games that aren’t currently accessible to me.

 

[orph]

ops i meant to say GTX 680 not 660 my bad

my main problem with a 1,1 to 3,1 is it's not relay an upgrade, it will cost a bit and you wont get much from it

if your in the uk gumtree is the best place to look
https://www.gumtree.com/p/desktop-w...on-quad-core-1tb-hdd-16gb-ram-wifi/1349420187
4,1 £290

https://www.gumtree.com/p/desktop-w...-120-512-mb-2x-hdd-macos-hi-sierra/1349342093
5,1 £300

there fairly cheep now

 

[LordeOurMother]

ops i meant to say GTX 680 not 660 my bad

my main problem with a 1,1 to 3,1 is it's not relay an upgrade, it will cost a bit and you wont get much from it

if your in the uk gumtree is the best place to look
https://www.gumtree.com/p/desktop-w...on-quad-core-1tb-hdd-16gb-ram-wifi/1349420187
4,1 £290

https://www.gumtree.com/p/desktop-w...-120-512-mb-2x-hdd-macos-hi-sierra/1349342093
5,1 £300

there fairly cheep now

Oh shoot, you’re not wrong. I had been checking ebay. (I’m from the states originally and only really knew about Craigslist, which isn’t used here much...)

 

[tsialex]

Oh shoot, you’re not wrong. I had been checking ebay. (I’m from the states originally and only really knew about Craigslist, which isn’t used here much...)

You should scrap your plans for a MP3,1 and start to search a MP4,1 single CPU. A MP4,1 can be firmware upgraded to MP5,1 and you can upgrade a single CPU MP4,1 with standard lided Westmere Xeons, so it's a very cheap Mac to have peak performance.

 

[iluvmacs99]

When anyone buys such an old computer like this; they are all about 10-11 years old (2009 mac pro 4,1 or 2008 mac pro 3,1), I suggest buying a computer that you "CAN" immediately extract most of its value within the 1st year, because even the 4,1 and 5,1 will start losing their value when the 7,1 comes into market. Right now, the 4,1 and 5,1 are, to me, very pricy for computers that are so so old. You're not going to get back your investment with these machines when you sell it and the longer you let it sit there not being used, the faster its value go. You could position your money for something else better. You'll also lose a lot of value compared to a more recent Mac Mini or iMac as these machines are simply non-desirable as they big, power hungry and non-mobile when you try to re-sell them later. Buying a 4,1 is an investment if you plan to use it a lot, keep it longer and have an expanding need to upgrade.

 

[mikehalloran]

Once the new Mac Pro 2019 is out, the price of 5.1 machines should go down.

I'm not so sure about that but agree that waiting till the 7.1 actually ships is a good idea.

If the AV cards that work in the 5.1 can be made to work in the 7.1, you should see a lot of audio pros finally abandon their cheesegraters for the new one—they've been waiting seven years. If those cards don't work, then I suspect that the anticipated flood of 5.1s onto the market is unlikely to happen.

In any case, no one knows except a few inside Apple — and they're not telling.

Expect MOTUNation to have a number of threads about this one way or another as soon as the 7.1 ships.

http://www.motunation.com