I have an early 2008 mac should i upgrade to mavericks have heard some bad reports

i have an early 2008 mac should i upgrade to mavericks have heard some bad reports

I have an early 2008 iMac running Yosemite and I am not experiencing any real difficulties. I did upgrade to 6 GB of RAM, which has helped.
I purchased the RAM from OWC.
Other World Computing

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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.

I have an early 2008 Mac Pro, 8 gb ram with a Dell 27" display and a 42" LG TV. I am thinking about upgrading the stock ATI Radeon 2600 graphics card for better resolution, preferring 2 dvi outputs. Does anyone have any suggestions on the best card?

I have an early 2008 Mac Pro, 8 gb ram with a Dell 27” display and a 42” LG TV. I am thinking about upgrading the stock ATI Radeon 2600 graphics card for better resolution, preferring 2 dvi outputs or 1 dvi and 1 vga vs 1 dvi and a mini. I don't do a lot of Final Cut Pro, gaming, etc. I am interested in best value for the graphics card.
Does anyone have any suggestions on the best graphics card for these larger displays for the best value?
Thanks,
Kevin

I recommend you install nothing older than the Apple-firware 5770, about US$250.
RE: Mac Pro Replacement Graphics cards
1) Apple brand cards,
2) "sold in the Apple store" cards, and
3) "Mac Edition" cards ...
... show all the screens, including Boot up screens, Safe Mode, Installer, Recovery, debug screens, and Alt/Option boot screens. At this writing, these choices include:
1) Apple brand cards:
• Apple-firmware 5770, about US$250** works near full speed in every model Mac Pro, Drivers in 10.6.5
• Apple-firmware 5870, about US$450
2) "sold in the Apple store" cards
• NVIDIA Quadro 4000, about US$1200
• NVIDIA Quadro 5000, about US$2500
3) "Mac Edition" cards -- REQUIRE 10.8.3 or later:
• SAPPHIRE HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 MAC Edition, about US$480** Vendor recommends Mac Pro 4,1
• EVGA GTX 680 Mac Edition, about US$600
The cards above require no more than the provided two 6-pin aux power connectors provided in the Mac Pro through 2012 model. Aux cables may not be provided for third-party cards, but are readily available.
If you are Meet ALL of these:
• running 10.8.3 or later AND
• don't care about "no boot screens" etc AND
• can re-wire or otherwise "work out" the power cabling, THEN:
You can use many more cards, even most "PC-only cards"

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 have lion 10.7.5, should i upgrade to mavericks?

i have lion 10.7.5, should i upgrade to mavericks?

pkozz wrote:
i have lion 10.7.5, should i upgrade to mavericks?
Normally I'd say clone your internal drive to an external, install Mavericks on the external and try it out that way (something I happened to do yesterday), but since the connections you have for a low cost external are slow, it wouldn't be a fair comparison. In any case, while the real benefit of staying current should be increased security, the recent security issue with Mavericks that was heavily covered in the popular media (imagine that!) suggests waiting a bit to upgrade might be a good idea, and Lion is still supported.

Early 2008 Mac Pro CPU Upgrade

About 6 months ago, I purchased a early 2008 MacPro with a single quad-core 2.8 ghz CPU. Is it possible to add the second processor to this machine?

Yes it is possible, but most likely not financially viable.
You will void your warranty and of the more difficult items to track down will be the heat sink for the CPU! Mind you, finding a 2.8Ghz CPU will be difficult on it's own. But in essence, if you have some cash to blow and are willing to get your hands full of thermal paste, then yes, have a go!
http://www.hardmac.com/articles/72/
and
http://www.o0o.it/pro/
Remember, on your head be it!
-Jacques

I have an Early 2008 Macbook, can I upgrade to OS X Mountain Lion?

Please advise. Thanks

To Upgrade to Mountain Lion... Your Mac must be one of the following models:
iMac (Mid 2007 or newer)
MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer)
MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)
MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)
Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)
Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)
Xserve (Early 2009)

Hello, I have a early 2008 Mac Pro and it won't boot even with SL DVD

My Mac Pro (3.0GHz quad core (dual CPUs) 8GB 667 RAM) won't boot. it gets to the grey screen/ Apple logo and hangs on the logo for a few seconds then flashes either the question mark folder icon or on the circle-slash icon () for about half a second then the logo for a few seconds and repeats. It will go into Target Disk Mode (T) but not Diagnostic Mode (D)
Here's what I have done to try to fix it:
unplugged all peripherals
tried to force DVD boot holding C (checked disc for errors on SL iMac)
removed all HDDs and rebooted holding C, plus a combination of having some in/ some out.
removed first DVD-ROM and used second drive
removed second DVD-ROM and used first drive
held shift during startup
held option during startup
removed graphics card
put HDDs back in with GFX card out, plus combinations
put only the boot drive HDD in (not time machine or 3rd HDD)
put blank HDD in and booted DVD
put mac formatted (used iMac to format) HDD in and booted with DVD
used an G4 USB keyboard again for all of the above
All of this has not worked so I am stuck with what to do. 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, but I made sure it was using the 3rd HDD I had put in the machine a couple of days before so it shouldn't be interfering with normal operations. I had also formatted it to NTFS earlier but reformatted it on the Mac Pro to Mac OS Extended - I don't know if this is even relevant.
Any suggestions (except taking it to a Apple repair centre as I can usually fix anything myself!)
Thanks.

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

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

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.

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.

Early 2008 Mac Pro Startup Problems.

Hi all,
I have an Early 2008 Mac Pro - 2x 2.8ghz Intel Xeon Quad Core processors, 12 gigs of Ram, 1x Nvidia 8800GT graphics card and I am running Windows Vista 64bit through bootcamp. I am running Snow Leopard. I have one monitor it is a Samsung 226bw - 22inch and it is connected via dvi and vga on the monitor side.
I have recently had my computer updated to the latest 10.65 (something like that).
Anyway my current problem is that:
a)The computer does not load up any operating systems and it is just a blank screen.
b) Sometimes all you hear is the Apple loading Chime "doong" constantly, and a blank screen.
c) Sometimes I can get to the windows selection screen for safe mode. I pick safe mode but it just goes to a blank screen. Also the monitor does not pick any signals up as it goes no source etc.
What I have tried:
a) I have changed the monitor cables 3 different ones.
b) I have taken all the other hard drives out.
c) I cannot get into Mac OSX or Windows Vista ( however Vista is the default OS right now)
d) I can connect my main hdd and copy all my windows stuff, but I cannot see any of the apple osx.
My suspicions are it is graphics card,or hard drive related.
I have ordered a new graphics card a ATI Radeon 5770 ( wont come for 6days) and I have a new hard drive a WD Black Caviar 1tb.
My Questions:
a) I would like to know what your ideas are on my current situation and Mac Pro symptons.
b) Is there a way I could format the WD Black Caviar HDD to a Mac Extended one in Windows on my laptop connected via sata?
c) If "b" is possible could I then use my Mac Pro/Mac OSX or snow leopard discs to create a OSX for my Mac Pro?
d) Or should I just wait for my graphics card to come and see if is just the Nvidia 8800gt failing?
e) If it is not the graphics card then do you believe it is the hard drive? or could it be something else?
Any assistance would be kindly appreciated.
KInd Regards
Bobby

Vista on its own hard drive? Windows doesn't like to move the drive bay.
you could boot from Vista DVD (I'd upgrade to Windows 7 SP1 when possible)
clone backups - for both
emergency boot drive / OS X DVD - you can, and should, always have more than one Mac OS boot volume handy. So yes use 10.6 DVD
Preventative and disk maintenance (Disk Warrior etc)
You would need something like MacDrive8 or Paragon HFS8 to really have good access to HFS from Vista assuming the volume is safe to mount and access.

Early 2008 Mac Pro - ATI 4870 - Apple 30'' Monitor - SL .... Does it work?

I have an early 2008 Mac Pro with a ATI 2600XT on an Apple 30" Cinema Display. I want to upgrade the video card to take advantage of the new features of Snow Leopard.
Before I take the plunge on buying the ATI 4870 I want to make sure there are no issues with this configuration... Does anyone have an experience with this setup? any issues? ( I assume I will not need to load the drivers since SL should have them)
Also how is the noise level of the ATI 4870? is the GTX card better in this regards?
Thanks in advance,

Other than benchtests and synthetic, there are no OpenCL aware or optimized apps out there. So it is a non-starter I think.
There are performance tests and depends on what you prefer and type of work. Some places the GTX is better and more RAM might help. The $100 is the other factor.
The ATI X1900 and 2600 and 3870 didn't look that good to my eye and I use the 8800GT, shame it was dropped, it was a nice card (just needed better $189 price, but that is true of the X1900 ($89?) and others. I think $349 is way too much for 4870 512MB. Flash PC.
Barefeats has OpenCL TEST in Snow L.

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.

Upgrading early 2008 Mac Pro

I work in animation, I have a Early 2008 mac pro. I am a motion graphics artist, I currently have a 2gb graphics card in the system but only 10gb of ram. Will I only see the best performance if I also max out the computer memory to 32gb of ram??

8 DIMMs are suppose to improve memory bandwidth by 15%+
SSD for system and for scratch, for photo libraries also helps - you have to watch for SSD PCIe controllers though and your free 16x slot for those.
Putting the system on SSD helps, and with 500GB $300 or half size for $160 and Samsung 840 EVO.
www.macperformanceguide.com

I have an early 2008 mac should i upgrade to mavericks have heard some bad reports

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