What can I do to upgrade my Mac Pro 1,1?

[rp911]

I'm an old-timer with Macs but a total newbie with upgrades.

I picked up a new 8-core Mac Pro yesterday, but haven't taken it out of the box yet. Concerned about the new Mac Pro coming out soon and whether I should just upgrade my 2006 Mac Pro for now -- or maybe permanently.

It's a 2 X 2.66GHz with 7GB of RAM. I got a nice speed boost by putting in a 120GB SSD drive last year as a boot and application drive. Everything else on it is stock from 06.

But I am doing some HD video and a lot more design work, and it's time for an upgrade.

How good can I make my 1,1 and what would the recommended upgrades be?

Thanks ..

 

[derbothaus]

Not too much else. More memory and invest in a 5770 GPU. All other possible upgrades would have diminishing returns.

 

[Neodym]

For video work 8 cores could be beneficial, so that may be a third upgrade option next to memory and a better video card.

 

[James_C]

I am in the same boat, with a 1,1 2006 Mac Pro. My advice would be take the new Mac Pro back if you can get all your money back (keep it if you will be recharged a restocking fee). Carry on with your current Mac Pro for a couple more months (well it's lasted 5+ years so a couple more months will not hurt). The Mac Pro's should see some updates by the end of March when Intel's new chips become available. Also by then we may see an update in the iMac's. The Current Quad Core i7 iMac's are pretty close to the current Mac Pro's in performance for things like Photoshop, although Video editing and compression will benefit from the additional processors in the 8 core Mac Pro's. Once both have been updated I would consider upgrading to either a new iMac or Mac Pro. I would not bother keeping the current Mac Pro and trying to upgrade it, as people will still pay daft money on eBay for them. In any case you are getting to the point after 5 years where you are going to get an increased risk of it dying due to component failure. It may well continue to work fine for another 3 years, but I would trade up in a few months.

 

[rp911]

I am in the same boat, with a 1,1 2006 Mac Pro. My advice would be take the new Mac Pro back if you can get all your money back (keep it if you will be recharged a restocking fee).

I did get it at an Apple Store here, can return it within 14 days ... hmmm. I almost went through this a few months ago and decided to wait to see if a new Mac Pro would emerge, which it hasn't, of course. I suppose that's the usual dilemma ... wait a little bit longer or just take the plunge.

I appreciate the thoughts.

 

[James_C]

One of the reasons that I am waiting for the new revisions of the Mac Pro is if I do go the Mac Pro route, I want one with a Thunderbolt port.

 

[Check 6]

I would like to ask basically the same question. I have a Mac Pro with a quad core 2.93 processor 6 gb of 1066 DDR 3 and the ATI Radeon 4870 graphics card with 512 mb of RAM. I have two internal 1 tb drives and also two optical drives.

Besides the normal stuff I use aperture and Photoshop

My thoughts are first, to add more RAM at least to 8 GB as currently set up I have three 2 gb simms installed with the fourth bay empty

second would be a updated graphis car, or is that really necessary

By the way I am running Lion. I appreciate the comments

 

[derbothaus]

I would like to ask basically the same question. I have a Mac Pro with a quad core 2.93 processor 6 gb of 1066 DDR 3 and the ATI Radeon 4870 graphics card with 512 mb of RAM. I have two internal 1 tb drives and also two optical drives.

Besides the normal stuff I use aperture and Photoshop

My thoughts are first, to add more RAM at least to 8 GB as currently set up I have three 2 gb simms installed with the fourth bay empty

second would be a updated graphis car, or is that really necessary

By the way I am running Lion. I appreciate the comments

You can upgrade to the 5870 if you are a gamer with a large screen. A 5770 runs cooler and has 1GB of memory but otherwise your 4870 is on par with it performance wise and a 5870 gives only a smallish boost to productivity apps over either the 4870 or 5770. A 5870 really shines if you run Windows games and is about 2x as fast as either the 4870 or 5770 doing that.
If you are getting more memory get at least a 4GB DIMM to get you to 10GB because you need to start buying higher density sticks. They are way cheaper now and you may find your self wanting even more memory down the road.
You could get an SSD and really feel an upgrade and probably not need a new box for a couple years, depending. Check your HD used capacity and subtract your Home folder contents. This will tell you how large an SSD you will need. Backup the home directory to one of your larger HDD's. Erase your Home directory contents, Image your OS to SSD. Boot to SSD and tie your Home directory on HDD as Home folder path in System prefs. Reboot. Now have tons of storage and a major speed boost. SSD+HDD, cheap and fast with little space limitations.

 

[Check 6]

You can upgrade to the 5870 if you are a gamer with a large screen. A 5770 runs cooler and has 1GB of memory but otherwise your 4870 is on par with it performance wise and a 5870 gives only a smallish boost to productivity apps over either the 4870 or 5770. A 5870 really shines if you run Windows games and is about 2x as fast as either the 4870 or 5770 doing that.
If you are getting more memory get at least a 4GB DIMM to get you to 10GB because you need to start buying higher density sticks. They are way cheaper now and you may find your self wanting even more memory down the road.
You could get an SSD and really feel an upgrade and probably not need a new box for a couple years, depending. Check your HD used capacity and subtract your Home folder contents. This will tell you how large an SSD you will need. Backup the home directory to one of your larger HDD's. Erase your Home directory contents, Image your OS to SSD. Boot to SSD and tie your Home directory on HDD as Home folder path in System prefs. Reboot. Now have tons of storage and a major speed boost. SSD+HDD, cheap and fast with little space limitations.

Thanks, and now for an old dummy, I have 2gig sims in slots one through three, can I put a 4 gig sim in slot four and be ok or do I have to keep all slots the same.

And from your comments I will keep my current graphics card as I don't game and don't run windows on this computer.

 

[Check 6]

Talked to the folks at Apple today and the answer is that there is no problem putting more dense ( as in 4 gig) in slot four and leaving the 2 gig Dimms in slots 1 thru 3 so I ordered a 4 gig Dimm. nice people and very helpful

 

[joaoferro37]

Fast boot up drive

I upgrade a customer's old Mac Pro using 2X 7200 RPM 2.5" drives as boot up drive and it does increase the performance.
I do see less spinning wheel opening applications.
I can use a SSD instead but I need large capacity thus I use a RAID module which takes two drives in one Mac Pro SATA slot.

 

[berndkiltz]

To Check 6: Your Macpro is quite up to date, but 6GB of Ram ist far to less. I noticed the switch from 8 to 16 GB, was worth the money. So get al least 12 Gigs!
Also, putting in a SSD for Bootdrive will make your Mac "feel" much faster.
Leave the other stuff as it is, but upgrading these 2 Things will more than get you over to the next MacPro revision. My MacPro 3,1 (early 2008) runs very smooth since I updated to SSD (Samsung 470 256GB) and 16 Gigs of Ram (4x4 GB)