I have had my new 5,1 3.06 gig Mac Pro with an ATI-5870 for about a year now, and I 'm ready for some upgrades. I know the video card has to go, and was thinking about installing a solid state drive. I already have 32 gigs of ram installed. Which device brands would you suggest? I really don't want a flashed video card, so I guess it's between the ATI and Nvidia 680 for Mac. Whats the most reliable Solid State drive?
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What to upgrade?
- Thread starter tony3d
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I'm in the boat as you expect need memory as well. I have been looking at adding either 32GB or 48GB of memory in 16GB sticks. Also looking at getting the Apricorn X2 and adding either a Crucial M550 512GB or 1TB SSD. I use FCP X as a hobby and work with Ableton Live 9 and Presonus Studio One DAW. Don't know if 48GB RAM would be overkill and worth the extra $$$.
I've been a big fan of my Accelsior boot drive.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/PCIe/OWC/Mercury_Accelsior/RAID
You'll have to decide if the extra cost over a SATA SSD is worth it to you, but for me it absolutely was.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/PCIe/OWC/Mercury_Accelsior/RAID
You'll have to decide if the extra cost over a SATA SSD is worth it to you, but for me it absolutely was.
I have a Velocity Solo x1 in my 3,1. It has caused issues under Windows 7 for me (forced me into the unspeakable horror that is 8.1) but it's super speedy with my 840 EVO under OS X. Coming from a spinner, it's a WORLD of a difference if you've never really used an SSD in your main system.
I'm really digging the Sonnet Tempo Pro with 2 Samsung 830 256GB SSDs in a RAID 0.
I wouldn't sweat the flashed card stuff too much, from what I understand (MacVidCards can comment way better), the Mac versions of cards you get are just their PC counterparts with different software on it, I'm sure they flash things in the factory too.
I dropped in a flashed 7970 with 3GB and couldn't be happier with that either.
You can also add a USB3 card for some faster external storage. - I've been looking for a USB3/eSata one myself.
I wouldn't sweat the flashed card stuff too much, from what I understand (MacVidCards can comment way better), the Mac versions of cards you get are just their PC counterparts with different software on it, I'm sure they flash things in the factory too.
I dropped in a flashed 7970 with 3GB and couldn't be happier with that either.
You can also add a USB3 card for some faster external storage. - I've been looking for a USB3/eSata one myself.
Same i can confirm this as i have the same a velocity solo with 840 evo SSD and yeah... what a difference, the x2 allows 2 sad in raid 0 for read write speed in the 800-1000mb/s
but i only have the single SSD and i still get 350-400 mb/s read write so that does me, I'm not doing any 4k work in the foreseeable future.