Should I or shouldn't I - a question about my mac pro

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PurduEE

[H]ard|Gawd
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About two years ago, my father in law decided that Apple products were the way to go. He promptly purchased a couple macbooks, a macbook air, and a mac pro. About 6 months ago, he determined that he no longer liked macs and gave pretty much all of it to me. The Mac Pro is a first-gen 2x3.0Ghz Xeon 5160s, 8GB RAM (4x1GB, 2x2GB), 2 x1900xt's. I'm changing out the video to a single 8800GT and adding another 8GB of RAM to the currently empty memory slots. However, I'm tempted to do one additional upgrade, but I figured I'd ask the folks on [H] to see what they thought...

I'm seriously considering removing the E5160s for a pair of E5320 BSEL modded to go from 4 cores to 8. I mostly use this system for graphic design and VMs, and I think the increased cores would be more useful that the 667Mhz clock speed difference. Price for 2xE5320s is like $350 and I see used pairs of E5160s on e-bay for around $300, so total investment would like be less than $150 (worst case) total.

Thoughts?
 
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Sounds like a fun project. I'd do it.

The only concern I have is if the first gen Mac Pro would support those two quad core chips. I honestly don't know, and maybe you've already done the research.
 
QwertyJuan said:
Why are you swapping the video? Is a single 8800GT faster?
Click to expand...

There's no crossfire support, so the x1900xts are just 2 dual-slot cards. My father-in-law has a 4x24" setup, so he needed the extra card. I have only 2 monitors in my setup, so I don't need the extra card. Single x1900xt vs. single 8800gt isn't much of a contest, the 8800gt comes out on top and is quieter/cooler (single slot).

The only thing that kept me from doing it was hunting for the stupid EFI bios for the 8800gt for the MacPro 1.1, which is different from the second-gen macs. For an "expandable" system, the Mac Pro is awfully limited.
 
Which generation macs? (just list the production date), some of us/I might be able to find a workaround to allow bigger, better graphics cards. (though, since it's one of those custom 'power macs,' it's way less likely, but still possible).
 
The 8800gt might be faster, but unless you actually play 3D games under Mac OS (or do heavy rendering) you probably won't notice. If you want it for gaming under Windows, you can install an off-the-shelf PCI-E video card and it will work under Windows, just not in Mac OS.
 
Yep. People have upgraded their processors to dual quad-core processors.

From this thread on MR, The MacPro supports only 51xx and 53xx Xeons. Dunno if BSEL is going to do you any favors, though. You may want a 1333MHz FSB processor, from what I've heard/inferred.. I'm not an expert, though. Some instructions both threads refer to.

I think this is the thread about a guy who did it. Tools, etc, detailed.

There's a few ROMs floating around for graphic-card-options for the EFI32 MacPros; one just has to flash an appropriate PC card.

A good place to ask is Macrumors/MacPro forum. There's a real enthusiast base there. Or, search for whatever questions you have using Mroogle.

Sorry about the link mess ;) Just trying to give resources.

EDIT -
QwertyJuan said:
What chipset? :confused: Now I'm really confused.
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I think jeremyshaw is referring more to SLI then CrossFire, which required the NF200 chip, or something along those lines. Crossfire will work in Windows, but since the 1.1 and 2.1 models dynamically allocates PCIe lanes, the only way to run Crossfire is with two PCIe ports with 8x lane width. Even then, Crossfire isn't OSX

EDIT 2 - I don' think the HD 3870 Mac & PC has been mentioned yet - bearfeats tested out and I would imagine it can be used - Spanky Delux post #5 here gives the x16 ->x8 performance drop as 7% and invokes Tom's Hardware.
 
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Dr.Pants said:
Yep. People have upgraded their processors to dual quad-core processors.

From this thread on MR, The MacPro supports only 51xx and 53xx Xeons. Dunno if BSEL is going to do you any favors, though. You may want a 1333MHz FSB processor, from what I've heard/inferred.. I'm not an expert, though. Some instructions both threads refer to.

I think this is the thread about a guy who did it. Tools, etc, detailed.

There's a few ROMs floating around for graphic-card-options for the EFI32 MacPros; one just has to flash an appropriate PC card.

A good place to ask is Macrumors/MacPro forum. There's a real enthusiast base there. Or, search for whatever questions you have using Mroogle.

Sorry about the link mess ;) Just trying to give resources.

EDIT -


I think jeremyshaw is referring more to SLI then CrossFire, which required the NF200 chip, or something along those lines. Crossfire will work in Windows, but since the 1.1 and 2.1 models dynamically allocates PCIe lanes, the only way to run Crossfire is with two PCIe ports with 8x lane width. Even then, Crossfire will work Windows only. Having trouble finding examples, though (probably dealing with "special" drivers :p)
Click to expand...

Ok, now I understand what he was saying about the chipset. :)
 
Dr.Pants said:
Yep. People have upgraded their processors to dual quad-core processors.

From this thread on MR, The MacPro supports only 51xx and 53xx Xeons. Dunno if BSEL is going to do you any favors, though. You may want a 1333MHz FSB processor, from what I've heard/inferred.. I'm not an expert, though. Some instructions both threads refer to.

I think this is the thread about a guy who did it. Tools, etc, detailed.

There's a few ROMs floating around for graphic-card-options for the EFI32 MacPros; one just has to flash an appropriate PC card.

A good place to ask is Macrumors/MacPro forum. There's a real enthusiast base there. Or, search for whatever questions you have using Mroogle.

Sorry about the link mess ;) Just trying to give resources.

EDIT -


I think jeremyshaw is referring more to SLI then CrossFire, which required the NF200 chip, or something along those lines. Crossfire will work in Windows, but since the 1.1 and 2.1 models dynamically allocates PCIe lanes, the only way to run Crossfire is with two PCIe ports with 8x lane width. Even then, Crossfire isn't OSX

EDIT 2 - I don' think the HD 3870 Mac & PC has been mentioned yet - bearfeats tested out and I would imagine it can be used - Spanky Delux post #5 here gives the x16 ->x8 performance drop as 7% and invokes Tom's Hardware.
Click to expand...

I appreciate all the links. I really went the 8800gt route just for a cooler, faster card than what I had. I don't really care about gaming on the Mac Pro, I have another system for that.

It appears that x5355s may be a better deal on ebay if I keep my eyes and ears open. I think I'll hold off on x5320s and wait for 5355s which won't need a mod to run 1333Mhz.

Thanks.
 
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I got 2 x5350s - quad core @ 2.66GHz/1066 FSB. Hopefully I can BSEL mod them to run 3.33GHz/1333 FSB.

Hopefully the chips will take that kind of an overclock at stock volts. We'll see.

Regardless, I should cover a good bit of their cost when I sell my two dual-core 5160s.
 
PurduEE said:
I got 2 x5350s - quad core @ 2.66GHz/1066 FSB. Hopefully I can BSEL mod them to run 3.33GHz/1333 FSB.

Hopefully the chips will take that kind of an overclock at stock volts. We'll see.

Regardless, I should cover a good bit of their cost when I sell my two dual-core 5160s.
Click to expand...

if not, bsel mod the voltage as well! (and yes, it is possible, not sure if it will work on the Mac Pro's, but...)
 
I say...go for it. Seems like you got a pretty good supply of macs anyhow, just incase something goes wrong, lol
 
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