Any hope for older Mac Pro?

My Mac Pro is a 2007 model and just under the necessary limit to be allowed to upgrade to either Mt. Lion or Mavericks. Is there any sort of upgrade that would make it eligible? (I can supply exact specs if needed)

No Mac Pro models sold in 2007 can be upgraded beyond 10.7.5, and that will be running in 32-bit kernel.
Apple has chosen not to update the firmware that would allow these machines to run 64-bit kernel, ? perhaps there is not enough RAM to store the newer firmware?
The only real upgrade path is to convert that machine into Cash, and use the cash to buy a machine that better meets your needs.

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Top two best video cards for older Mac Pros?

I have some older Mac Pro towers that vary from:
2.66 GHz Quad Core Intel Xeon
..to this:
2 x 2.93 GHz 6 Core Intel Xeon
Looking for at least the top two video cards that are tried and tested that would work best with at least Premiere Pro and AME. I just need to narrow down the unwieldy list that can be found here: http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/tech-specs.html

MikeJamesG wrote:
Looking for at least the top two video cards that are tried and tested that would work best with at least Premiere Pro and AME.
Are you adverse to using aftermarket cards that have been converted to work properly in a Mac? If you aren't, then I'd recommend talking to Dave @ MacVidCards because he can cook you up an nVidia 700-series card that will boot properly in a Mac Pro, run at PCI-E 2.0 speeds, and work wonderfully in Pr/AME.

Good wireless cards for older Mac Pros

I have a Mac Pro Dual-Core Intel Xeon 2.66 GHz at work that we are trying to get online wirelessly. A couple of months ago, we bought a Hawking Hi-Gain Wireless-N USB Adaptor, which was working fine until a recent update was performed. Since then, the computer crashes almost immediately if the wireless adaptor is plugged in, but runs fine when it is taken out. I am curious if anyone else has run into a similar problem when using a wireless adaptor. I also wanted to know if anyone had a recommendation for a different, reliable wireless card for an older Mac Pro.
Thanks in advance.

I have almost the exact same situation.
Same system, a d-link wua 1340 usb wireless adaptor.
Worked fine for several weeks or so until i updated to snow leopard.
Now frequent system crashes, grey screen and the box that tells me to use the power button to shut down.
I tried going back to 10.5 and still the same problem.

8800 GT cards ARE available for older Mac Pros...

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/wa/RSLID?s=topSe llers&fnode=home/shopmac/macaccessories/displays&nplm=MB560Z/A&mco=OTkzNDY

Frank Einstein wrote:
do you think windows will auto-detect the card, since i used my bootcamp install cd to install the drivers for my current windows installation, would it have the drivers for this card installed or no?
currently using the x1900 right now with just the bootcamp drivers.
Before you swapped cards I would download the nVidia drivers now and put them somewhere on your Windows drive, make a folder for them. I'm not sure if you are using XP or Vista. Vista has a larger driver library (and newer) and I would think would detect it, but I'd still want the latest and greatest from nVidia's site.
Worse that can happen is you'd have to start Windows in Safe Mode (basic VGA drivers) and then run the nVidia driver setup from the file you had previously downloaded.
I just ordered the card for my Mac Pro. I had to downgrade my ATI x1900XT due to stability issues.
Steve

Monitor for Older Mac Pro

I am a graphic designer working on an almost 3-year-old Mac Pro with OS 10.4.11. Am happy with computer and OS and feel no need to upgrade at this point. I need a new monitor and have shopped Apple. I'm not yet convinced to spend almost $2,000 on the 30" LCD Cinema Display as the technology is getting out-dated. The problem with the 24" LED Cinema Display is that it has a mini port, and I have read some negative reviews regarding connectivity via a third-party cable hook-up to my DVI port, i.e. the camera doesn't work. Also the cable costs $149. I'm disappointed that Apple hasn't designed monitors for those of us with slightly older (and expensive) models. The people at the Apple Store suggest a non-Apple display. Any suggestions for using the Apple display or purchasing another brand, 24 plus inches, with calibration and good for photo editing? I'm getting desperate.

I have a September 2006 macPro (Quad 3Ghz, 8Gb). I do alot of Photoshop, and HiDef (AVCHD) work in iMovie 08. My MacPro came with the Nvidia 7300 GT. I wondering if the 8800 would make a difference for me? I am especially hopeful for a performance boost in Imovie 08 with the HiDef video files, which are painfully slow in the current configuration.

Is there an add on thunderbolt port available for older mac pro

I would like to purchase the Promise Pegasus 12 TB raid 6 storage system for my 2009/2010 mac pro, but it requires a thunderbolt cable. From what I can see my mac pro doesn't have a thunderbolt port.

In that scenario, what do you figure a partially functional T-bolt channel would go for?
Thunderbolt is primarily of value to laptops and non-expandible machines like the iMac and Mini. In that environment it's like "The Ultimate USB" with bandwidth beyond the pale.
To the Mac Pro, its primary value would be as a ultra high speed I/O bus. At one-third the bandwidth, there are already PCI solutions. It needs to be integrated into the MLB.

Will there be an update for older Mac Pro, 2006 models?

Im running Lion, but Mountain Lion is not compatible with Mac Pro 2006 model(the first one).

No, because the reason you cannot use Mountain Lion is of a hardware nature.
There are some who claim they have successfully booted Mountain Lion on a Mac Pro 1,1. See this article.

Any hope for my Mac Classic?

OK, so I ran out to Radio Shack and bought a computer cable...
My Mac Classic will turn on and has shown me a checkerboard pattern, made a few grindy noises, and then just a plain gray screen. I turned it off and then on again and a few minutes later I got a sad Mac face with some 0s and 1s underneath it. I turned it off and on again and now just have the checkerboard pattern.
Is this it? Must I know turn my Mac into a "Macquarium" or is there maybe a smidge of hope that I can get it working again (or at least be able to transfer some data off of the hard drive?)
Thanks in advance!

The Mac classic uses a memory-mapped screen buffer. If you get a coarse checkerboard pattern on the screen that is visible without squinting, it indicates a memory problem.
The most common problem is accumulated corrosion on the SIMMs/sockets, and the most likely cure is to remove the SIMMs, shine up the tin plating on the contacts with a soft eraser and do not touch them with your (oily) fingers afterward, and re-install them. If your SIMMs have gold fingers, remember that the gold is very, very thin, and you can easily scrub the gold completely off.
While you have it apart a new PRAM battery is also a good idea if it has been off wall power for a few months or more.
Getting the case open to get access to this stuff is not trivial. Procedures are posted on the Web and any number of posters here can help you with it also. Just indicate where you would like to go next and what you would like to accomplish. Posters here are eager to help.

Thunderbolt retrofit for Intel Mac Pro available?

Is there gonna be a retrofit for older Mac Pro (2009) to use Thunderbolt?

A quick search brought up AMD's statement from a year ago, so ancient history but "AMD Does Not Believe in Intel Thunderbolt" might mean they didn't think worth investing in R&D and engineering such a card in 2011.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/other/display/20110228163206_AMD_Does_Not_Believe_i n_Intel_s_Thunderbolt.html
ADC is deal. Long live ADC, remember that?
AMD is apparently not impressed with Intel's Thunderbolt.
An unnamed AMD representative reportedly said that Intel's new Thunderbolt tech will become another proprietary standard that may not be widely adopted. The obvious reason is the current overall lack of devices that can take advantage of the extreme throughput.
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/Thunderbolt-PCI-Express-DisplayPort-10-Gb-s-Propri etary-Standard,news-35083.html

Advice for updating my older Mac Pro

I have an older Mac Pro running Leopard and I’m starting to have issues with my system running effectively, so I’m making the leap to Snow Leopard and possibly Lion. I’m looking for advice on the best methodology to make the change, suggestions on the best set up, and pitfalls to avoid.
Current Set Up
Processor: 2 x 2.66 Ghz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
Memory: 6 GB 667 Mhz DDR2 FB-DIMM
Drive 1: 750 GB internal, with OS 10.5.8. (230 gb used)
Drive 2: 750 GB internal, non bootable backup for Drive 1(225 gb used)
Drive 3: 1TB internal, Aperture Library (906 gb used)
Drive 4: 1TB internal, Aperture Vault (879 gb used)
Drives 5: 1TB external, backup for safe deposit box (912 gbused)
Drives 6,7,8: 250GB external, varying and redundant backup.
The programs I use more often are MS Office, Photoshop CS3 (not quite ready to upgrade, largely because of the pdf presentation removal in subsequent releases), Aperture 2.0, and now iMovie HD 6 (which has an undiagnosed problem and will not function properly).
My current thinking is:
- Ensure back up of Drive 1 on external drives.
- Erase Drive 2
- Install Snow Leopard onto “fresh” Drive 2 as start updrive
- Use migration assistant to transfer user settings to Drive2
- Transfer programs to Drive 2. Can I use MigrationAssistant to transfer CS3, Aperture, and other programs effectively, or should they be reinstalled from disk? What about plugins?
- Leave Drive 1 as is to ensure MSOffice (ver X), CS3 and Aperture functionality. Will these programs run on Snow Leopard? I've seen posts about possible issues with Lion. . .
- Eventually reconfigure backup drives to adequately and effectively utilize available space (my Aperture Library is getting unwieldy and needs reference masters, etc).
As I’m very inexperienced at this, I would appreciate any advice and suggestions.
Thanks!
Steve

SSD Killer-fast Mac Pro
Upgrade RAM to 16GB (4 x 4GB)
Upgrade all the hard drives to 2TB
Upgrade to 10.6.8 and CS5.5
Replace graphic card with ATI 5770
Upgrade the processors with X5355s, which is what many are doing now with theirs.
Forget Lion. Dropped PowerPC and Rosetta code support
Clone your drives.
Keep 40% or more free space on any drive.
Move any non-OS or applications off the boot drive to a data drive.
Move system and apps to SSD
Use SSD(s) for Aperture Library or stripe RAID.
None of the above, sell yours and pick up a 2010 2.8GHz $2100 (people that want or need to run Tiger and PowerPC will likely pay $700 range for MacPro1,1). Upgrade the processor in 2010, with 6-core 3.33GHz $590.
Apple Special Refurbished Mac Pro 2.8GHz Quad
Intel Xeon W3680 3.33 GHz, SLBV2
Intel Xeon UP W3680 3.33 GHz Processor - Hexa-core
W3670 Upgrade photos
At some point, it doesn't make sense to pour money into older system.
But you can, and do it gradually one step at a time.

I am trying to do a migration transfer from an older Mac Pro, running Leopard, to a newer Mac Pro, running Lion. There is a step that asks for a "passcode" to proceed. I have no idea what that passcode is. It seems to want a numeric code.

I am trying to do a migration transfer from an older Mac Pro, running Leopard, to a newer Mac Pro, running Lion. There is a step that asks for a "passcode" to proceed. I have no idea what that passcode is. It seems to want a numeric code. Has anyone had this experience?

This general-purpose article gives detailed step-by-step instructions for using Migration assistant, Setup Assistant, and other mehtods, and discusses the Pros and cons of each mtheod. It is very approachable and easy to understand. Wriiten by Pondini, the resident Time Machine guru.
Setting-up a new Mac from an old one, its backups, or a PC

I have Mac OSX Lion 10.7.4, Quickbooks Pro 2010, Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac, Operating in Windows 7. Are there any recommendations for running Quickbooks Pro 2010?

I have Mac OSX Lion 10.7.4, Quickbooks Pro 2010, Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac, Operating in Windows 7. Quicbooks Pro 2010 is not responding or opening currently. Quickbooks does not support Parallels anymore. I hear Apple Bootcamp is an opton. Are there any recommendations for running Quickbooks Pro 2010 on Mac?

QuickBooks Pro 2010 for Mac is not supported in Lion. QB Pro 2011 will work, but I just got an email today that 2011 will not be updated to work in Mountain Lion. QB Pro 2012 will be updated for ML.
Be aware that the Mac version of QuickBooks is shamefully lacking in features compared to the Windows version. I do use the Mac version, but it has more features than I need for a small business, so it doesn't affect me. No one knows why Intuit seems to hate Mac users, but they show it every day.
If QB Pro 2012 for Mac can be downloaded as a demo, I would strongly suggest testing with it before making a final decision. You will be able to import the Windows data, but possibly not all of it, depending on the Windows version features you use.
Boot Camp allows you to install Windows on its own, bootable partition. When you boot to it, you are of course running Windows in every sense of the word. Just on Mac hardware rather than typical PC gear. Your Windows version of QB will work there without issue. The problem is having to boot back and forth between Windows and OS X, depending on what software it is you need to use at the time.

Older Mac Pro users beware of Mountain Lion upgrade

I work at a company where we have 6 edit suites. Five of those suites are still running Mac Pros; three of them are Early 2008 models, two are Early 2009 models. All of these suites have 30" monitors in them running at 2560 x 1600 resolution. The other suite has a new 27" iMac. All but one of the Mac Pros have their original graphics cards.
When Mountain Lion first came out, I upgraded my Mac mini at home that has FCP7 and FCPX installed on it. Both applications ran fine and I was able to edit a project in FCPX with no problem. A co-worker who works remotely on a 27" iMac had also upgraded his machine and experienced no issues.
Seeing no issues with the ability to run FCP7 under Mountain Lion, I proceeded with upgrading the MacPro suites at our office. After an initial test on one machine to confirm that FCP7 would load and launch projects, I proceeded to upgrade the remaining suites. It soon became apparent after other editors began to use their computers that FCP6 and 7 were affected by the upgrade to Mountain Lion.
While the programs still work fine, one fundamental change that Apple has made in Mountain Lion is to push more of the responsibility for displaying the image on the computer monitor to the GPU of the graphics card. Previously these responsibilities were shared with the CPU. Therefore, if you have an older graphics card (even if it is fully compatible with FCPX, as ours are), FCP6/7 has a difficult time playing back 1080 video in the Canvas window (at any size), without breaking up when there is some degree of movement in the video image.The screen cannot refresh quickly enough to draw the video image without showing horizontal banding and some minor digital garbage.
Rest assured that the render files are clean and the output file will be fine. Once exported, a self-contained .mov file will playback fine in Quicktime, showing no banding where there previously was banding when viewed in FCP. This is an issue with display only. If you can live with it, fine. But it is rather distracting while editing.
I attempted to downgrade one of the Mac Pros to Lion earlier today. While I was able to successfully downgrade (not with a clean install, but another method), both FCP7 and FCPX would no longer launch because they were confused about which version of the OS was running. Using FCS Remover, I deleted both FCP7 and X, then reinstalled FCP7. Still no luck with launching FCP7. I finally decided to reinstall Mountain Lion for the time-being. FCP7 now launches again.
Just a warning to those considering upgrading that you may experience performance issues with FCP6/7 if you are using an older Mac Pro and trying to edit 1080 footage. You may have to upgrade your graphics card to achieve best performance.

Christian Castagna1 wrote:
Yes, we previously we had purchased an ATI Radeon 5770 to enable use of FCPX, and 1080 video plays fine through that in both Early 2008 and Early 2009 models, although it is not fully compatible with those computers. Technically it is only compatible with Mid 2010 Mac Pros. It is unclear if there is a card that is fully compatible with Early 2008 computers and FCPX at this point.
We have noticed some small pixelation around the edges of icons with the 5770 in an Early 2008, but that is intermittent and goes away with a restart. We have not noticed any issues in the Early 2009. We have also just purchased a Radeon 5870 and will be testing that in Early 2008 models to see if the same pixelation issue happens. We will install that card eventually in an Early 2009 computer because it is fully compatible with that machine.
If nothing else, hopefully these graphics cards buy us a couple more years with our Mac Pros.
Can you explain a little more about this please... My primary system is a 2008 8X 3.2GHz system with a ATI Radeon 5770 and I have it running two 27" Samsung monitors and a 37" HDTV (all 1080p) on FCS3. None of the displays have any artifacts under any conditions. What are the compatibility issues? If I'm doing a no-no, I want to know before my next big project...

27 LED monitor and older Mac Pro compatability

Will the new monitor work with older Mac Pro's?

Why does the Apple store list the ATI Radeon HD 4870 Graphics Upgrade Kit for Mac Pro as only the Early 2008 & Early 2009 models?
Only Apple knows, but the comments section, and many posts here, show it works in any Mac Pro/
I'd like to use the new 27" LED with my original 2006 Mac Pro 1,1. I currently have the NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT.
You can use it with the dual-link DVI port (only one port is dual-link) on the NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT with a converter
<http://www.atlona.com/Atlona-Dual-Link-DVI-to-Mini-DisplayPort-Converter-USB-Po wered.html>
The ATI Radeon HD 5770 Graphics Upgrade Kit says it's only compatible with the Mid 2010 version.
There are reports that it also will work in any Mac Pro.
<http://blog.macsales.com/6856-owc-reveals-which-radeon-video-cards-work-with-20 06-2009-mac-pros>
OWC says the Mini DisplayPorts didn't work, but that doesn't appear to be true:
<http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=12165151#12165151>
For three DVI displays, you need dual-link adapters
<http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4279>

Mac benchmarks: iMacs vs older Mac Pro towers

I've been having a great discussion in a PPro Facebook group regarding new editing systems; I have a limited budget for 3 new Macs in our company and I feel confident about purchasing a new Mac Pro (for PPro, AE, color correction and finishing work) and 2 iMacs with Thunderbolt RAIDs (just for editing with PPro).
I'm curious though: when I look at the Geekbench scores for the latest Mac models there are older Mac Pros (2009 - 2013) that seem to outperform the newest iMacs in 64-bit multicore performance. The single core performance has the iMacs coming out on top (I'm only looking at the 27" retina, not the new 5K model). So which score is more indicative of performance while editing with Premiere Pro? I've heard from editors who say their new iMacs run circles around the older towers they replaced so I'm inclined to believe that a new iMac would feel faster than even the last silver Mac Pro tower (2012); but a 12-core beast with a beefy GPU has got to be a serious contender when it comes to intense multiprocessing tasks.
I know that there a lot of factors that determine overall "speed" (GPU, RAM, storage speed) so it won't always be an easy 1:1 comparison with these models. I just want to make sure I'm investing in the right hardware and very curious as to how these benchmarks translate into real world Premiere Pro performance.
TIA,
JVK

jvknowles wrote:
I'm inclined to believe that a new iMac would feel faster than even the last silver Mac Pro tower (2012); but a 12-core beast with a beefy GPU has got to be a serious contender when it comes to intense multiprocessing tasks.
There's a lot involved in this comparison, such as:
CPU core count and speed
GPU capacity
Storage speed
The old Mac Pros are excellent rigs, but limited to SATA2 storage speeds, and their Xeons don't have Intel's AVX available, which will speed things up a bit. One advantage they do have is an open catalog of AMD or nVidia GPUs, assuming you can get them powered by the internal connectors. The new Pros are AMD-only, though the advantage is that they have 2 GPUs versus 1.
Comparatively, the new iMac with its desktop Core i7 processor will be able to push faster GHz, and it also has Intel's QuickSync tech available (hardware h.264 encoding). So if you're doing a lot of output with h.264, you'll see a bit of a kick in the *** with those. The limitations? The GPUs aren't as capable as the ones in the nMP now. And you only have access to a single GPU, where the new Pro has 2. But, if you're not doing any work that can be off-loaded to the GPUs, it won't matter.
As Eric mentions: AE is all CPU, all the time. It wants cores and GHz. It'll make your machine cry, regardless of what it is.

Any hope for older Mac Pro?

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