I am wondering whether its worth putting anymore money into my MP 1,1 or selling it and buying a slightly newer model, at least a 2008 sing or dual processor with 64bit EFI. As it is, I spent close to retail on a used AMD 5770 video card for this machine. It currently has 9GB of RAM, but I find with Aperture 3.0, running a VM in parallels, and having all the other apps open that I do, it might be better to get a newer machine, then upgrade this one. I know there are many who advocate upgrading the processors, putting in SSD's, but for my there are certain limitations of this machine you cannot upgrade, so why invest anymore in it. The bus speed, the PCI limit and the EFI 32bit are things that cannot be upgraded and will always be bottlenecks (EFI excluded). For now the machine is meeting my needs but im slowly getting to the point where I want better performance. I am also leery of just how much more performance I will get from a processor upgrade.
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Wondering about upgrading Mac Pro 1,1 or just replacing
- Thread starter ashman70
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Going from 4x2.26GHz to 8x3.0GHz might be noticeable enough to bother with. Apple may discontinue 32bit EFI support at some point in the future (10.8 maybe) so that's the only real reason to sell & get a 2008 model.
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Look at your swap / memory used - depending on what you're doing with parallels you may be past the 9gb ram you own. If you're into swap then adding another 4 or 8 GB of ram will be a very cheap way to majorly improve system speed.
I owned that machine and went to a 4x3GHZ machine and it was not night and day for sure, except multicore encoding.
If you've still got free ram at 9 GB well then you just need to upgrade.
I owned that machine and went to a 4x3GHZ machine and it was not night and day for sure, except multicore encoding.
If you've still got free ram at 9 GB well then you just need to upgrade.
9GB of ram should be fine for what your doing. Are your programs lagging while using them? Seeing beach balls? As mentioned above, what's your page ins/outs? If page outs are 10% or more of your page ins, that's an indication you need more ram. But a slow hard drive can drag down your system too. I do know if you have any 512 mb memory modules in it, get rid of them. I did own a 2006 2ghz Mac pro. Upgraded the processors to 2.33 ghz quads and saw a big jump in performance. It's worth the upgrade if you can get a good deal on some clovertown quads. But if your worried about the 32 bit EFI, go find a 2009 or above Mac pro. The ram is cheaper.
1,1 is old so upgrades are expensive (in terms of bang for buck). RAM is particularly egregious (~$50 per gb...Ouch!)
I sold my 1.1 on Craigslist/Kijjii for $800 2-2.66 4-core, 9 gigs of ram
Bought a 3.1 off Craigslist/Kijjii for $900 2-2.8 8-core, 2 gigs of ram
$300 for 2X4 gigs of ram so now has 10 gigs of ram
I considered doing the CPU swap, then decided the above seemed more cost effective and safe.
I may do a 5770 video on this later on
The only hiccup was that it booted into 64 bit OS so my sound card doesn't have 64 bit drivers. Took a bit to sort out, but am booting 32 kernel now! So nice with SSD
No brainer for me
All running smooth
B
Bought a 3.1 off Craigslist/Kijjii for $900 2-2.8 8-core, 2 gigs of ram
$300 for 2X4 gigs of ram so now has 10 gigs of ram
I considered doing the CPU swap, then decided the above seemed more cost effective and safe.
I may do a 5770 video on this later on
The only hiccup was that it booted into 64 bit OS so my sound card doesn't have 64 bit drivers. Took a bit to sort out, but am booting 32 kernel now! So nice with SSD
No brainer for me
All running smooth
B