Wifi cards for early 2008 mac pro (remove imac card?)

[gogul1]

Hello I just bought a second hand mac pro 2008 3.1 with eight core xeon processors.
One of the problems is that I turned it on and managed to connect my bluetooth keyboard and mouse but cannot get any wifi which suggests the is no airport card installed (no wifi logo in top right hand corner of desktop screen either).
I do have a 2006 iMac which this is replacing as it's knackered and slow as hell. It does have wifi built in and was wondering if I should salvage it for parts (namely the wifi card). Is this possible or is the wifi card likely to be fused to the Motherboard etc
Any advice would be greatly appreciated as I'm a peasant and don't want to fork out for something I might already have installed in another computer.
(Very surprised it doesn't have wifi considering its newer than my 2006 imac which came with it preinstalled)

UPDATE
went into my more info about this mac and under wifi it has
COREWLAN: 4.3.2 (432.47)
COREWLANKit: 3.3.2 (332.36)
Menu extra: 9.3.2 (932.35)
System Information: 9.0 (900.8)
IO80211 Family: 6.3 (630.35)
Diagnostics: 3.0 (300.40)
Airport Utility : 6.3.2 (632.3)

No mention of a named wifi card or anything but not sure if it would anyway...

 

[NOTNlCE]

Hello I just bought a second hand mac pro 2008 3.1 with eight core xeon processors.
One of the problems is that I turned it on and managed to connect my bluetooth keyboard and mouse but cannot get any wifi which suggests the is no airport card installed (no wifi logo in top right hand corner of desktop screen either).
I do have a 2006 iMac which this is replacing as it's knackered and slow as hell. It does have wifi built in and was wondering if I should salvage it for parts (namely the wifi card). Is this possible or is the wifi card likely to be fused to the Motherboard etc
Any advice would be greatly appreciated as I'm a peasant and don't want to fork out for something I might already have installed in another computer.
(Very surprised it doesn't have wifi considering its newer than my 2006 imac which came with it preinstalled)

UPDATE
went into my more info about this mac and under wifi it has
COREWLAN: 4.3.2 (432.47)
COREWLANKit: 3.3.2 (332.36)
Menu extra: 9.3.2 (932.35)
System Information: 9.0 (900.8)
IO80211 Family: 6.3 (630.35)
Diagnostics: 3.0 (300.40)
Airport Utility : 6.3.2 (632.3)

No mention of a named wifi card or anything but not sure if it would anyway...

Personally, I wouldn't destroy the iMac for an AirPort card. You can get a Wireless N AirPort card on eBay for around $20-25. If the iMac is slow as heck, you should try formatting the disk and reinstalling the OS once you take your data off the system. No reason to destroy a functional computer.

The 3,1 did NOT ship with an AirPort card by default, (yes I was a bit surprised as well when I got my 3,1) but since it was marketed to "Pros" and many users had gigabit networks already in place, it seems to make a bit more sense. The AirPort Extreme in your 06 is NOT soldered to the motherboard and CAN be removed if you so desire, but I would urge you not to do so. HERE is a guide to remove the AirPort card from your iMac, and HERE is a guide to installing it in your 3,1. As an experienced technician, I can safely vouch that avoiding that amount of work is well worth $25, but that's just my 2 cents.
Good luck!
-N

 

[gogul1]

Thanks

Thanks I have taken imac apart before to replace Hdd so would be slightly easier than the first time. The 06 card isn't Wireless N though so have opted to purchase a new shiny one to install and will use your link to fit it once it arrives. Plan to upgrade a few components so it can be as good as it can be for a 6 year old computer. Have ordered 8gb of ram (to make it 10), a KFA2 Nvidia GTX 680 graphic card and a PCIE ssd mount so I can boot from SSD in a PCIE slot (approx 400mbs speed) to try and blow some dust off of it but it's likely the cpu will hold it truely back but will be miles faster than my 06 imac so I'll be happy )

 

[NOTNlCE]

For sure it's gonna be a great workhorse. Those upgrades will make it fly, I have very similar ones in my 3,1. When you're installing the WiFi card, have patience. Getting the antenna wires attached to the new AirPort card can be frustrating. Good luck with your upgrades!
-N

 

[gogul1]

Thanks I don't plan on using it much for heavy duty workloads so it should keep me going a few years. What is the 3.1 like for gaming? With the 680 I'd like to play a few good ones if possible but not sure if cpu bottleneck will be able to handle a few of last years big titles.

 

[NOTNlCE]

Thanks I don't plan on using it much for heavy duty workloads so it should keep me going a few years. What is the 3.1 like for gaming? With the 680 I'd like to play a few good ones if possible but not sure if cpu bottleneck will be able to handle a few of last years big titles.

The CPU is going to bottleneck the 680 in gaming performance, but you should be able to run most if not all titles at reasonable settings. The only "struggle" I've had was BioShock Infinite had to be turned to to "Very High" instead of "Ultra" with my GTX 660 2GB.

 

[gogul1]

Jolly good

Cool. Shame The Mac Pro 2008 is quite stringent in it's upgrades. Be great if you could upgrade any part you wanted but that doesn't keep apple rich ;o)

 

[energy23]

The CPU is going to bottleneck the 680 in gaming performance, but you should be able to run most if not all titles at reasonable settings. The only "struggle" I've had was BioShock Infinite had to be turned to to "Very High" instead of "Ultra" with my GTX 660 2GB.

Did you play Bioshock Infinite under Windows or OS X? Max OS performance with gaming is usually pretty terrible when compared under Windows. The CPU for the 2008 Mac Pro gets a geekbench score of about 11,000 while a very popular choice for the PC side for games is the Core i7 4770 which gets a score of around 14,000 in geekbench. The 2008 Mac Pro shouldnt be held back by the processor. And quite honestly. Bioshock is extremely demanding on graphics anyway.

However, saying 'very high' settings doesnt tell the whole story anyway;
What resolution? FSAA at 2X, 4X? Frame rates? Etc?

 

[NOTNlCE]

Did you play Bioshock Infinite under Windows or OS X? Max OS performance with gaming is usually pretty terrible when compared under Windows. The CPU for the 2008 Mac Pro gets a geekbench score of about 11,000 while a very popular choice for the PC side for games is the Core i7 4770 which gets a score of around 14,000 in geekbench. The 2008 Mac Pro shouldnt be held back by the processor. And quite honestly. Bioshock is extremely demanding on graphics anyway.

However, saying 'very high' settings doesnt tell the whole story anyway;
What resolution? FSAA at 2X, 4X? Frame rates? Etc?

Infinite was played under Windows. That Geekbench score means nothing as far as gaming goes, since most games are single threaded. If you read closely, the i7 performs so well because of its 4K+ single core performance, vs the ~1600 of a single E5462. Game was played at 1080p, and if you monitor CPU usage while gaming, you will see that much of your CPU is "unused" because the game engine does not take advantage of the 8 available cores. I can't imagine the OP is that concerned about gaming with the transition from an '06 iMac to an '08 Mac Pro. That being said, the '08 is nothing to frown at - just older hardware.