10.7 vs 10.8 vs 10.9?

[FLECOM]

So I use a MacPro 1,1 as my main desktop at home and stumbled across instructions for installing 10.8 on it (since it's unsupported technically) it has 10.7 or 10.6 on it I don't even know, is there any reason I should upgrade?

should I wait till 10.9? I never seem to notice any difference between all these versions after 10.6 but is there one?

machine has dual quad 2ghz xeons (low voltage), 16gb ram, and a sandisk ssd if it matters

 

[Archer1212]

Eh. I wouldn't bother unless you want the more integrated iCloud support or a specific feature. If there is software you use that requires that OS then sure, I could see updating. Honestly I would just wait it out until you need to upgrade your hardware first.

 

[Sixthsense]

Well, the only gain you will really see is if a specific application requires 10.8. I would be careful upgrading . You could possibly bork your kext for your ethernet on a unsupported mac pro or a hackintosh. I really don't bother upgrading, unless there is a major security issue or the application in question requires it. If you do update. Always use the combo updater.

 

[AndreRio]

If was me I would upgrade. At least it's not win8.1!!

 

[Spazturtle]

Your mac isn't 64bit, no really point in upgrading.

You may want to look into getting a new mac, even a Mac mini would be faster then your current mac in all aspects.

 

[bbenz33]

Your mac isn't 64bit, no really point in upgrading.

You may want to look into getting a new mac, even a Mac mini would be faster then your current mac in all aspects.

I know the Core 2 architecture is quite old, but I somehow fail to see how 8 cores get out performed by 4 cores even with them being significantly newer. Based on a little research the OPs currently system is still slightly faster than the fastest Mac mini (specific cases aside).

As for the OPs original question I don't see many major changes since 10.6 that would make me want to upgrade as they tend to be purely cosmetic and not essential to what I care about.

 

[MrMike]

Did you put those CPUs in yourself FLECOM? It doesn't look like they came with the Mac Pro 1,1.

If you do a lot of file sharing/transfers, Mavericks is worth it. The first DP blew ML out of the water in this respect.

For some reason I find this rarely comes up though, I guess most Mac users don't have a file server or NAS.

Your mac isn't 64bit, no really point in upgrading.

Which is silly, because the CPUs support it. This was a dumb move on Apple's part.

You may want to look into getting a new mac, even a Mac mini would be faster then your current mac in all aspects.

It's tough to find hard evidence of this, because reviewing 8 Core2 cores vs 4 Ivy cores with HT is tough. Finding 4 Core2 cores vs 2 Ivy cores with HT is easy though, and it looks like the Core2 will still win for video encoding. In all other aspects, it does appear that a quad-core Ivy would trade blows with it on rendering tasks and beat it in other aspects.

With that said, buying a Mac Mini is silly if he's happy with his computer, and because Haswell Minis should be out in the next three months and his computer is still functional.

 

[dandragonrage]

It's tough to find hard evidence of this, because reviewing 8 Core2 cores vs 4 Ivy cores with HT is tough. Finding 4 Core2 cores vs 2 Ivy cores with HT is easy though, and it looks like the Core2 will still win for video encoding. In all other aspects, it does appear that a quad-core Ivy would trade blows with it on rendering tasks and beat it in other aspects.

With that said, buying a Mac Mini is silly if he's happy with his computer, and because Haswell Minis should be out in the next three months and his computer is still functional.

A friend has one of these dual quad-core C2D Mac Pros and it will absolutely NOT beat my 4.2GHz (at the moment) i5 2500k in ANY video encoder. Between the significant clockspeed and IPC improvements, my chip is MUCH better. His machine would probably be a bit faster if I stayed at stock speed, but not by that much.

Honestly if I owned that, I'd sell it and get something newer and more efficient. Core 2 was great for its time, but it's from 2006. I actually just started using MCEBuddy to reencode video on my E8400 server, and it takes ~90 minutes to transcode things that my 2500k takes about 10 minutes to do, and the 2500k is set to higher settings (e.g. subme 5 on the 2500k vs 3 on the E8400). I actually thought Core 2 was BETTER than that in my mind, but was surprised to see that it was far worse than I remembered. Of course the difference is not all CPU - my 2500k also has much more RAM and an SSD.

 

[FLECOM]

Did you put those CPUs in yourself FLECOM? It doesn't look like they came with the Mac Pro 1,1.

yes I did after the cpu swap machine draws about ~200W full load according to my watt meter

I'm not planning on upgrading it any time soon... got this macpro a couple months back for $300 with a radeon 5770 and with the ram, dual quads and SSDs it flies...

I use it to check my email, browse the internet, play portal and TF2... so no, not planning on replacing it with a mac mini to open gmail faster

additionally the machine IS 64-bit, it just has a 32-bit EFI... the hack seems to allow the installation of the 64-bit (10.8) kernel on the 32-bit EFI

but my question was do any of these newer versions of macos have any "must have" stuff... I don't use any cloud services

 

[InorganicMatter]

No, they don't. In fact, Lion was a regression from Snow Leopard in my and many others' opinions, and Mountain Lion has only brought us back to where we were with 10.6.

If you network with Windows PCs, Snow Leopard is better. It was the last Mac OS to use real Samba, and not Apple's clone. Works way better with printer sharing and Active Directory.