Early 2008 Mac Pro: Add larger internal hard drive?

ref: Early 2008 Mac Pro
The original tech specs specify the use 4 1T internal hard drives.
Can I use a 2T hard drive in the internal bays instead?

Hi himacdallas1,
There is no problem replacing one or more of your 1 TB HDDs with a 2TB HDD, or just adding 2TB drives in empty bays, unless you have a raid configuration, in which case all the drives in the set-up should be identical.
The Western Digital Caviar Black is an excellent choice:
http://macperformanceguide.com/Storage-Drive-WesternDigital-CaviarBlack-2TB.html
The above link is a bit out of date, and this is the manufacturer's current website page for its Caviar Black Range:
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=100
Regards,
Bill

Similar Messages

Early 2008 Mac Pro-What type of HD? Smart failing?

I have an early 2008 Mac Pro and have two hard drives in it. The main system drive is a 2TB Western Digital drive I installed about a year ago. The 2nd drive is a 1TB Seagate drive which is the original drive that came with the Mac Pro.
When looking at Disk Utility a few days ago I realized the drive is showing up in Red and it's saying that SMART is failing. I've never had this happen before and like having a warning.
First Question:
When SMART shows up as failing can it be a false alarm or is it likely a definite sign of impending hard drive failure? When this happens, does the drive frequently fail quickly or does it take awhile? The fortunate thing is I back this drive up frequently to Time Machine.
Second Question:
What SATA speed does the Mac Pro handle? I see many hard drives that are 3.0GB/s and some that are 6.0GB/s. Does the Mac Pro handle the faster 6.0GB/s? If not, would they still work but just not at the additional speed?
I may consider upgrading to a 1.5TB or 2TB but figured I'll go with a Western Digital or Seagate drive. I see cache ranging from 16MB to 64MB and speeds at 5400RPM and 7200RPM. Between these two which is more important, large cache size or RPM's?
Thank you for your help.

Run WD Lifeguard (*Windows program or their ISO you burn to CD) is best and almost only reliable way.
If a drive has started to use spare blocks it is gone.
IT DOES NOT MATTER. Any 3.5" SATA drive is a drive is all SATA and mostly about features and specs. So just buy the newest size you need. 64MB cache and 7.2K (Green can have trouble on Macs and are more for backup and storing movies etc).
I recommend WD 10K VR newest 250GB 200MB/sec for system $152, and WD Black or Hitachi.
http://www.macperformanceguide.com likes 2-3-4TB.
Questions like this get asked unfortunately.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3908030?tstart=0
For every drive, you want to have multiple backup sets (clone and Tm) because drives and backups do fail and you want an alternate boot drive and to restore when needed.

Hi everyone,I am new to this so please forgive me any mistakes I may make.Early 2008 Mac Pro desktop installed ML ok but next day nothing, reinstall ok restart same problem ML installer remains on my snow leopard disk. Any help appreciated.Kind regards

There I go first mistake straight off. I was wondering how to fit my big long problem in. My fault I am sure but if anyone can help please.
Early 2008 Mac Pro Desk Top, 2 hard drives 1)snow leopard, 2)lion.
I have downloaded Mountain Lion usuing disk 1,selected no.2 as my destination, installed ok everything fine, set my startup as no.2 in preferences, switch off. Next day start up - nothing, my only way to get moving was physcally remove disk 2, and let snow leopard restart.
Reinstalled, everything fine, then same problem on restart next day, remove disk,and so on.
The mountain Lion installer remains in the snow leopard dock.
I know the problem is me, so if anyone is kind enough to be able to offer a solution it needs to be in easy speak (press button a, press button b) because I am not that savvy.
my best regards to all, and thank you.

Where did you get Mountain Lion? Did you download the 4+ GB file from the App Store? If so, then I would try doing the following:
Drive Partition and Format
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your second drive on which Lion is installed (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
Install Mountain Lion
Double-click on the Mountain Lion Installer application in your Applications folder. Follow instructions to install Mountain Lion on your old Lion drive - Drive 2. When the installer finally finishes it will restart the computer automatically from Drive 2. At this point there is no need to change the Startup Disk unless you want to boot from your Snow Leopard drive.
You will startup to the Setup Assistant in which you will configure your own admin account. You can, if you want, omit that part and instead choose to migrate your Home folder and other data from the Snow Leopard drive. I would recommend you do that unless you wish to do it manually at a later time. In this case create your new admin account using the exact same username and password that you now use on your Snow Leopard system.

I have an early 2008 Mac Pro and want to install a 3TB internal hard drive. Is this compatible? The manual indicates 1 TB per bay, but I have already installed two 2 TB hard drives in two other bays, and have had no problems. Any suggestions?

I have an early 2008 Mac Pro and want to install a 3TB internal hard drive. Is this compatible? The manual indicates 1 TB per bay, but I have already installed two 2 TB hard drives in two other bays, and have had no problems. Any suggestions?

RE: SATA Bus speed:
Typical Rotating drives available today, whatever their SATA spec, can source data off the spinning platters no faster than about 125MBytes/sec.
SATA 3 is rated at 6G bits/sec, which theoretically is about 750 Mega Bytes/sec
SATA 2 is rated at 3G bits/sec, which is theoretically about 375 Mega Bytes/sec
SATA 1 is rated at 1.5G bits/sec, which is theoretically about 187.5 Meg Bytes/sec
None of the SATA Busses is a bottleneck for consumer Rotating drives you can buy today. Trying to speed up the SATA Bus will not provide any real-world performance increases for Rotating Drives.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/22690384

I just installed a 3TB hard drive on an early 2008 mac pro and the system doesn't recognize the drive. What now?

I just installed a 3TB hard drive on an early 2008 mac pro and it is not recognized/not visible. What now?

If the drive is correctly installed on to the sled, and the mounting screws are snug, not tight, and the sled is inserted properly so that all the roof-tangs catch as the sled is inserted, failure to show up in Disk Utility means the drive is not useable.
A Bug in 10.8.4 and later precludes Disk Utility ERASE-ing large drives in Internal bays. Use PARTITION only, and create one new partition, GUID partition Map, Mac OS Extended (journaled) Volume.

With Boot Camp, should I install the 64 bit version of Windows 7 (Home Premium edition) OR the 32 bit version when installing onto an early 2008 Mac Pro operating OSX Lion with a 1 TByte internal HDD?

With an early 2008 Mac Pro I'm about to add a second internal drive (1 TByte SATA) and initially install OSX Lion onto the new drive. Then to partition this new HDD via Boot camp. But my question is whether I am best advised to purchase the 64 bit version of Windows 7 (Home Premium) or the 32 bit version of Windows 7 (Home Premium) for the Windows sector of the disk What are the differences, and will I notice a difference in performance?

In chart from wiki, (scroll down to "Comparison chart") check the maximum CPUs supported.
You don't see this on MSoft's 1st searched for chart hit. This is one reason you will regret not paying for Professional+ if you get Home Premium 64 as I did for Mac Pro early 2008.
Home Prem Task Mgr sees 4 processors vs. the 8 that are seen by Pro+.
Costs more than a Mac upgrade to Lion if you make that mistake.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions

How do I fix my early 2008 mac pro boot hard disk. Lost everything when it crashed hard, can not reinstal via cd/dvd drive... are there any fix get it boot from dvd drive?

I have an early 2008 MAC PRO Quad Core 3.0ghz processor. 8 Gig of rams, with a 1 Gig memory Radeon 5770 HD Graphic Card running the latest Version of Snow Leopard OS. Last week lighting struck the house take out all of my hard drives (4) thank god the surge protector mitigated the mother board from damaged, use the Parted Magic to check out the motherboard and it intact with no damage. I can boot with the Parted-magic and be able surf and post this question to this forums. I replaced a newly formatted hard drive and trying to installed OS X Mountain Lions to the new drive, but unable to have it boot in my MAC PRO DVD, I get the usual chimes during the booting processed but the screen remain blackout, but able to boot with Parted-Magic to surf the web and access Apple sites/forums.
I am not well verse in using the Parted_Magic to repair or get my-mac to boot normally so I can reinstall OS X. Any help would appreciated.
Thank you
Disabled Veteran.

Go to System Profile and look, does it say "MacPro3,1"?
That is 2008.
FBDIMM would be 800MHz. Did you use older slower 667MHz in yours?
You can but take a hit in performance.
Sounds like MacPro1,1.
Mac Pro (3.0GHz quad core (dual CPUs) 8GB 667 RAM)
In 2007 March an 8-core 3GHz did come out 2,1.
So just to be clear.
===========
It was all working fine a couple of days ago. At the time it randomly shut down I was trying to use Boot Camp to create a Windows 7 area,
Whenever you want to install Windows, remove all the drives other than the one Windows goes to. And if you use a dedicated drive YOU DO NOT NEED Boot Camp Assist, unless you use XP, which really is limited and crippled (one processor, 1.9GB RAM support).
And when it freezes, your only choice is to nuke (reformat) and restore or get out that backup CLONE you made before (ie, Step #1 in the Boot Camp Guide).
Sure that whole NTFS / MBR / GUID could be an issue, but you should just have a blank drive or clone.
No don't bother Apple, they seem to not have a good sense about Windows on Mac Pro anyway.
Other than zap pram from cold boot / tried booting with NO drives inside and just 10.6. DVD - should be fine.
You should be fine iwth Windows 7 DVD and one drive, or even XP.
Make sure you take your time and reconnect cards etc properly and any cables.
Booting from OS X DVDs may not work if there is a drive with a totally shot directory or partition table. Put them in FW case and turn on AFTER OS X is booted.
Why aren't people Cloning as a Backup Strategy
Carbon Copy Cloner 3.4.2
How To clone

External desktop drives for early 2008 Mac Pro: USB 2.0 or 3.0 question

I have an early 2008 Mac Pro 3,1 (OS 10.6.8).
I currently have a 1 TB Fantom Drive with USB 2.0 that I use for the Time Machine. I want to get the second external drive to use as a boot drive so I can install & boot from Mountain Lion to use Maya 2014 3D application software that requires the Mountain Lion OS. For all other applications, I want to stick with Snow Leopard (10.6.8), which works well for me.
Most of the searches I've done for external drives have USB 3.0. Some have USB 3.0/2.0.
Questions:
1. Will one of the USB 3.0-only external drives work with my early 2008 Mac Pro 3,1, which is only equipped for USB 2.0? If so, would I need some sort of adapter? (I realize that the speed would still be USB 2.0 speed.)
2. Or do I need to get the USB 3.0/2.0 external drive (which is more expensive)? I am assuming this would not require any adapter.
3. Will I be able to boot from the external drive with Mountain Lion?
Thanks for any help with this.
S

First, many thanks to both Grant Bennet-Alder and The hatter for their fast responses to my questions. I really appreciate this information. Based on your suggestions I did some research in order to better understand the proposed solutions.
Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:
You can add a PCIe card to get these interfaces:
eSATA
USB-3
1. Does one need to get a separate PCIe card for each interface, or is there one PCIe card for multiple interfaces?
The hatter wrote:
Installing or cloning OS X should be done on SATA II drive bay or external and then moved to the PCIe - depends what card you buy, and some issues are with arrays (no need for system on one).
2. I went to http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/faq/, which says, "By default, a single 3 Gb/s Serial ATA -- sometimes referred to as SATA 2.0 or SATA II -- hard drive is installed in the first of four bays for all models." I interpret that to mean that SATA II is a in the first bay located on my internal hard drive. Can I create a partition here and install Mountain Lion as a separate system, and then move it to a PCIe SSD?
3. Or, can I install it on my external Falcon Drive (which has a Partition Map Scheme : GUID Partition Table, and which, I believe means it is not a bootable drive). Following that installation could I then move it to the PCIe SSD and boot Mountain Lion from there?
4. Or, if partitioning is an option, can I just clone it to the Falcon Drive for backup?
My apologies for my ignorance. This is not my forte. Thanks for any help you can give.

Problem on my early 2008 Mac Pro

I had this problem with my early 2008 Mac Pro which started last week.
Some background; I'm using 8GB RAMs, using Snow Leopard and bootcamp Windows 7 and 3 days before the start of the problem, I had replaced the original 320GB HDD for 640GB HDD and reinstalled both OSes.
While I was playing some videos in Windows 7 last week, it displayed the blue screen with memory dump message and restarted on its own. Thereafter, I was unable to load Windows 7 and SL respectively, both hung before they can be loaded. In SL, I noticed that there were some faint red dots in the Apple logo and subsequently, the entire screen started to flicker with some random black and white strips. In Windows 7, it frozen at the Windows logo with a 640x480 resolution. My default resolution was 1920x1200. However, I managed to loaded into the safe mode of Windows and extracted my work.
I tried to re-install SL and it hung again at the Apple logo followed by the flickering.
I sent it to my local service centre and the technician removed my video card, RAMs and memory risers and cleaned the contact, ran the stress test overnight, AHT3A152 and ASD3S123 tests and concluded that he found no issues with the hardwares and the problem did not occur again.
The Mac Pro was sent back to me today and earlier, I started up with no problem and decided to remove the Windows partition and I restarted it again to confirm everything was ok. However, at the next startup, the problem re-surfaced and I could no longer start up my Mac Pro in SL.
I tried to swopped back the original 320GB HDD, but the problem still persists. Before I send back my Mac Pro to the service centre tomorrow, I would like to have some 2nd opinions. Based on my description, what is the likely cause of this problem, is the newly replaced 640GB be the root cause?

Do you keep Windows on its own hard drive?
I would have kept the 320GB while using Windows WD Lifeguard to test, zero, run extended tests and slow long format of the new WD 640. Then just cloned system to new drive.
Casper 6.0 seems to be great utility if you want to avoid reinstalling 7, though I've found 7 to be fast and easy to install even with dozens of programs to add.
Are you using the current / latest graphic driver for 7? I don't notice you even list which card.
RAM - there is no perfect test, AHT finds some while Memtest takes time and may find others.
Windows may be more sensitive to weak hard drive sectors and memory than Mac OS or than HFS+.
Do you have any 3rd party devices? PCIe? Cables etc?
And you can't boot off Windows 7 DVD or Safe Mode?
Windows should automatically offer to boot in Safe Mode.
Also, try restore from last good restore point.

Early 2008 Mac Pro - worth bothering with?

Hi,
Someone in my building threw out an early 2008 Mac Pro with no hard drives.
I put in a spare that I have lying around and it seems ok -- but a bit slow. I'm now in the process of installing Mavericks on it.
I'm curious if this computer is worth bothering with? If so, what are some essential upgrades that would make this hum? I'm assuming an SSD? Should I bother finding extra ram for it (it has 4gb now).
What would be some good uses -- I already have an apple tv and a htpc in the living room.. I suppose I can use it in the bedroom? Can this be a functioning secondary computer for my wife who doesn't game but does use iPhoto/Word/Netflix etc? And if so what should I add?
Thanks everyone for your help!

alphaace wrote:
If my wife just watches netflix/browser/word etc --- no games -- but does do a heavy bit of photo editing -- should I upgrade the gpus?
And if so, what would everyone recommend?
Also, I need to buy some hard drive caddies (only one left in it) -- however, I need a converter to put in a ssd right (as they are 2.5")? Any recommendations on those?
I have been able to find Mac Pro drive caddies on eBay. Here's one that would get you a set of 4:http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-Mac-Pro-Hard-Drive-Sled-Caddy-Complete-Set-1-4-Mac -Pro-2006-2008-/111386524693?pt=US_Drive_Bay_Caddies&hash=item19ef277c15. The screws appear to all be there.
In terms of adapters, this one was in my 2006 Mac Pro when I got it, and it seemed to work fine, although I didn't keep it in there very long:
http://www.amazon.com/Icy-Dock-EZConvert-2-5-Inch-Converter/dp/B002Z2QDNE
OWC sells a couple of 2.5" drive adapters also.
I wouldn't worry about upgrading the graphics until your wife has had a chance to do some photo editing on it. You may not need to upgrade the card for a while, if ever.

Need help with graphics card options for an early 2008 mac pro

Hello,
   I have an early 2008 mac pro with 2 x 3.2 GHz quad core Intel Xeon and 6Gigs of ram, currently running with an Nvidia Geforce 8800 GT with 512mb.
    It is also running 10.7.2.
   I would like to either add a video card on top of the one I am currently running or replace it completely if necessary.
   I do video editing on the Mac, no gaming and only a small amount of photoshop, and as the resolutions get larger I would like to have my machine keep up.
   My questions are,
     1. What cards would you the community suggest?
     2. Can I add a whole other card to my system or do I have to replace the current one?
     3. If I can hold two cards what special accomidations would be needed in regards to final cut performance if any?
    Thank you for any help you would like to give.
Rob

The two main cards for mac pros are the apple versions of the ATI Radeon 5770 and 5870.
The 5770 requires one aux power adaptor and the 5870 requires two. So generally you could only have one 5780 or two 5770's.
Video cards which don't require aux power should be able to coexist with these cards so log as it's all within the power supply maximums of course.

Compatible graphics cards for the early 2008 Mac Pro 3,1?

I have an early 2008 Mac Pro 3,1 with the 2.66Ghz Quad core processor that is running Lion. I had an ATI Radeon Card in there that didn't last very long (I've read not great reviews about them recently) and now I need a replacement that will be compatible with my system and that will last me longer than my previous card did. The problem is I don't know what my options are. Can anyone reccomend me a viable replacement? I do video/audio production so something high end would be nice.
Thanks,
-RH

There are some good ideas, comments and tests just how much difference and in what applications.
The differences between 2.5GT and others are less than you might think.
There is no-compromise performance for some areas of CS6 and CUDA with ML and GTX 570 or above. The new EVGA GTX 660-Ti FTW w/ 3GB $330 looks to be very popular and that is the "mid-range" today, compared to $400-500 where GTX 680 sits or ATI 79xx series.
If you have to use 10.6.8 that is a bigger factor and some cards require 10.7.4 or later.
The 5x70 were average cards when they came out. There is no reason to have a system where early boot is totally dependent upon firmware and couldn't do basic video. Anyway some people are willing to swap out the 5770 and keep it just for debugging.
As to the original question: can't tell if you were interested in asking if a MacBook Pro Retina or something else... kind of hard to argue. A 12-core 3.33GHz with 48GB and 5 internal hard drives - it is hard not to do whateer you throw at it esp. if cost is not the primary concern but work is and it is suppose to pay for itself.

I have an early 2008 Mac Pro, which has re-booting problems. Also what does the spinning beach-ball indicate?

Hi, I have an early 2008 Mac Pro which has re-booting problems.
Processor speed is: 2.8
Memory: 2GB 800 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM
2 x 28GHz Quad Core Intel Xeon
I am running OSX Yosemite Version 10.10
My Mac Pro keeps re-booting. Last year I had to replace my graphics card. My original card was the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 255MB, and that is what I have now. At this precise moment my Mac Pro is running perfectly, except that it is slow and the spinning beach-ball keeps appearing. I have managed to do some work with the disk utilities, verifying, cleaning and partitioning. Some errors were found and when it was cleaned this seemed to help my Mac Pro to function properly. Although I am able to use my Mac Pro now, from day to day I still experience re-boot problems. Also quite unexpectedly my mac dictionary has an error, it closed itself down and will not open at all, I had the message to say that a report will be sent to Apple.
I have tried starting my computer with an external hard drive fitted via a USB cable, I use for back-ups. This worked and I was able to wipe my hard drive clear and replace all info from the back up I had done only a few days ago.
This worked for a few days and then the same problem started again.
I am beginning to wonder if I need to buy a new hard drive.
If there is anyone who has some answers to help me solve my problem, I would be most grateful.
Robert

When you have the beachball activity, note the exact time: hour, minute, second.
These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.
The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select
          SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages
from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select
          View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Scroll back to the time you noted above.
Select the messages entered from then until the end of the episode, or until they start to repeat, whichever comes first.
Copy the messages to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of it useless for solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.
Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.
Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Where and what type of solid state drive should I buy for my early 2008 Mac Pro Desktop??

where can I buy and what type of solid state drive should I use to upgrade my early 2008 Mac Pro Desktop??

Rick,
When you get a chance.... DSLReports is off line: their SQL server decided to take its indexes and access to data. Power. Not enough of the right kind of UPS. Same happened to StorageReview's "Drive Reliability Database" about 8-9 yrs ago.
dslreports.com is offline
Fri Apr 20 09:05:55 EDT 2012
SSD: Loading CS5 plus other little monsters might matter.
Lots of small I/Os
latency of 1/100th where nanoseconds replace those "long" milliseconds
System: Small and fast.
DLLoyd even goes for short-stroking drives to get and maintain highest I/O
The new 10k VRs hit 200MB/sec - I still use them and still find them useful, long lasting, feel responsive with whatever I ask of them. I know they get criticized and "cost too much"
Just bought a new WD Black and yes it is better than the 2008 model I was using.
600GB 10K $200 vs $150-220 for WD Black. your choice
I can destroy a 7.2k drive, I have brought ever 10K drive back after a simple WD Extended Test in Lifeguard.
I don't really care about $$/GB or I wouldn't have just bought Intel 128GB $149
Database: the pros put the index in memory and page fix (virtual volumes in memory; cache; hold disk drive index in memory). Caching storage has been around for almost 40 yrs.
Today you can use SSDs as front end cache to hold DB indexes and frequent data for web servers and such adn use slower secondary storage.
SSD + SAS + 4TB storage
Separating the system from data: #1 must
Having data on array: been what I use
I put a large photo library on 2 x 10K VRs vs SSD and couldn't tell much difference (SSD is soundless of course) But my WD Blacks make as much noise and run 15*C hotter than those 10K (not what you expect?)
While 10K and 7.2K are in the 140-180MB/sec range, they are in 3.0 to 12.0 ms seeks, not 0.01 ms.
People wonnder why shrink a drive to 2.5" (or why not go down to 1.8".
How long does it take to reposition a disk head? how often? the 10K VR travels on outer tracks at 70 MPH. Really trying to fly off into space.
It uses one step to find the "zip code" and then another DSP to find the "house."
True of any high density perpendicular recording mechanism.
And of course while the Raptor-X tried to find a home with famers, Cheetah buyers, the WD 10K line has more of a home where servers and small form factor drives - and 100s of them - can fit in a rackmount server I imagine.
Anyway.... if SR and DSLReports can drop out of site due to power and hardware failure and loss... we can learn some and hope to protect our own data and investments.

What upgrade graphic card do i need for a early 2008 mac pro

I have a early 2008 Mac Pro. ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256 MB is what i have now. What is a good upgrade graphic card to get.

The GTX 780 6GB runs fine on the dual PCIe internal power cables -- as does the GTX 680 and Radeon HD 7950. The same can't be said of the GTX TITAN or GTX 780 Ti or Radeon R9 280X -- all of which require an auxiliary power feed to avoid a nasty power down of your tower at the worst moment when too much wattage is demanded of the Mac Pro's factory power supply.
Did I mention that the GTX 780 with 6GB of GDDR5 matches the 6GB of GDDR5 in the TITAN?
The one fallacy to my 'sweet spot' award has to do with OpenCL. In case you hadn't noticed, the AMD Radeon GPUs smoked the NVIDIA GeForce GPUs running Photoshop's OpenCL accelerated Iris Blur filter and rendering LuxMark's OpenCL accelerated Room scene.
- http://www.barefeats.com
So depends on budget, whether you want a PC card for less but no "early EFI boot screen" prior to drivers loading, and what apps and needs you have.
The one thing for sure is that 2600XT should have been retired ages ago and even more so with 10.8.3 and above, it could be trouble or just... PITA/POS.

Early 2008 Mac Pro: Add larger internal hard drive?

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