Updating your older Mac Pro for a few more years of good use...

Hello everyone, I wanted to share my tips for getting your aging Mac Pro running better for Mavericks and the FCPX 10.1.
Please note your Mac Pro's specs before doing what did..I am an editor and use the 3 big A's to get my work done. Adobe, Apple, Avid (not so much Avid)
I got a great deal on it for only $1300. I did a bunch of research and decided my upgrade options were best for my machine and the way I use it so your upgrade options my differ slightly. (do your research!!!)
I have 2009 Nehelem Mac Pro 2x 2.66 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon.  Installed was 6GBs of factory RAM, an upgraded ATI 512 GPU, and 1,  1TB WD Black system drive. (this was a nice upgrade compared to my 4 core Mac Pro)
I was running 10.8 and all my apps were installed and running. I installed 3 more 7200rpm drives to fill the drive bays. Momentus XT's 2TB each.
(I upgraded to Mavericks, as  you know it overwirtes the old OS, I wanted the new FCPX...) more on this later.
1- RAM,
I removed the puny 6GBs of RAM it came with and installed 32GBs of 1066 Mhz DDR3 from OWC. I decided 32 would be enough for my needs looking into the App requirments and of course the cost. I noticed a slight difference in some performance. (to my dissapointment) fcpx beachballs!!
However now you will have more RAM to allocate RAM for programs that can read it. After Effects anyone...
link- http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Mac-Pro-Memory#1066-memory
2-GPU,
I had a 5770 sitting in the closet, and put that in and bascilly it sucked!   I never like the 5770.  fcpx beachballs!!
I contacted apple they informed me FCPX is written for GPUs and that a large card (while they didnt suppport it at the time) would be the best upgrade to better performance. So I installed the AMD Sappire 7950 3GB GPU from OWC. This is a monster card! and right away I noticed a huge difference in the perfromace of FCPX and AE! Not only that but the card supports up to 2K I believe... and is a great price... and for you gear heads it looks bad *** and the fan is super quiet!
less fcpx beachballs
link-http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Sapphire/100352MAC/
3- Hardrive,
Ok so now I'm thinking my machine is a beast! I have all this RAM and a huge GPU and the top ESATA drives you can buy, butI was still getting beachballs and FCPX was painfully slow at times..needless to say I felt Apple backing my in a corner to drink more coolaid a get the new small round black can...What to do???
As I mentioned before I did not do a clean install....Most folks dont like going through the pain of 2 days to do a clean install but I knew deep down it would have ot be done. Before I did that I decided to do some research on those new SSD cards everyone is raging about. Remeber your Mac Pro's bus speed is only so big...remember this when doing this last and most important upgrade!!
The market has all kinds of SSD drives for sale and OWC has a PCIe option (too much money for me) they have 3G drives 6G drives and so on. I could be wrong but buying a more expensive 6G card is a waste of money with bus speed of the Nehelem (this my differ with Westmere) I bought an of the self Kingston Hyper X 120GB (get at least 240GB if you can) and the OWC Mac Pro Drive Sled.
This by far was the best upgrade! Before installation please go through the pain of the clean install...For Mavericks you need to create a bootable drive on a USB stick first. You then need to monut SSD in an empty enclosure in order to get it to mount for the OS to be installed
OSX install Instructions-http://www.macworld.com/article/2056561/how-to-make-a-bootable-mavericks-install -drive.html
link- Drive Sled http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MMP35T25/?utm_source=go ogle&utm_medium=shoppingengine&utm_campaign=googlebase&gclid=COyxzMyOub0CFcqUfgo d8xUAPQ
kin
link-SSD http://www.kingston.com/en/ssd/hyperx
PCIe Expansions
H.264 Encoding-
Matrox Compress HD PCIe card, This card is amazing however it does not support Compressor 4.1 but it does support legecy Compressor 3 and I did successfully install both Apps in Mavericks. (You must hide legecy versions in a folder in applications)
ESATA CARD-  4 Port 6G Caldigit esata card.
USB 3.0- Newertech 2 port USB3.0 Mac Pro Card. I dont recommend buying this card. Mac Pro Nehelem, was not made for USB3.0 and the drives I plug into it rarely mount...if ever mount... restart...when they do its a little faster than firewire and close to my Esata options. Dont bother....
I have setup my drive structure as follow.
Drive Bay 1 All System Apps run on the SSD drive.
Drive bay 2 hold the contents of all the Media for my projects.
Drive bay 3 hold all the AutoSaves and the FCPX Libaries and daily Project backups and renders.
Drive bay 4 Is Special Effects drive.
Dual Samsung 27 inch HD displays
M_Audio Monitors
1-3TB Caldigit RAID
12-TBs of drives attached to every port on the back.
2_USB docking ports voyager s3 for archive drives.
Now that I have all these upgrades, a clean install, fresh updates to my softwares, my Mac Pro runs better that ever! My boot ups time is twice as fast as before and my OS is very snappy...Oh yeah FCPX, After Effects, Boris RED, Mail, Safari all open at the same time a running brilliantly!
Many of us are not ready to upgrade to the new Mac Pro, and as we all know the legecy Mac Pro was built like a tank with military grade proccessors and endless upgrade options. It wont ever be as fast as that new black can but I know I will be working faster with my trusty Mac!
Good luck!
basementape films

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.

Similar Messages

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    SSD Killer-fast Mac Pro
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    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.

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    I have used my older Mac Pro and now my new 2011 iMac fo play the many movies and TV shows I have dowloaded. Great results.
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    I wish there was a sticky for this as "iMac vs nMP" is common daily question and very much the same basic specs and needs.
    https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5772339?tstart=0
    As in past, 6 (or maybe 8) cores, base memory so you can save and upgrade from 3rd party.
    Monitors vary too much in cost range, and you can do better outside Apple, but are one time cost.
    A Mac Pro only needs to be replaced half as often, can be upgraded (cpu, RAM, flash SSD storage, even GPU). Hard to other than Apple stopping support in 5-6 years or software by then catching up or putting more demands on computers.
    An iMac is not going to run as cool and quiet and because of its shape has to be allowed to run hotter it seems. You can stress and pound on those Xeon systems all day max it out and it is quiet beast.
    See what a graphic and tech professional has in recommendations:
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    the "nMP" is actually called "Late 2013" but I agree, other than a few 10s of t housands sold would better easier to be called an Early 2014 (there could be a Late 2014 as well).
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  • Imac vs mac pro for FCP?

    Hello folks,
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    hmmm, interesting. Of course the mac pro would be better, no doubt. But for my purposes I still wonder if it's worth the cost.
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    Eric

  • 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.
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    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...

  • Bought my mac pro for 1099.  to repair it cost 754, is it worth repairng?, bought my mac pro for 1099.  to repair it cost 754, is it worth repairng?

    bought my mac pro for 1099.  to repair it cost 754, is it worth repairng?, bought my mac pro for 1099.  to repair it cost 754, is it worth repairng

    It all depends - if you can put that $754 towards a new unit, an you can afford to add a little something to it, then I would go for a new computer. How old is your machine? Only you can make the decision. If your machine is older, you might want to ask the Apple Store or AASP about their 'flat rate pricing' - a scheme by which you pay a little over $300 and they repair everything on the machine. They may stick to their guns and only offer you the $754, but it's worth asking about.
    See this concerning the flat rate repair option.
    Good luck,
    Clinton

  • 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.

  • Early 2008 Mac Pro for home use

    Hello guys,
    I've been using usual Windows PCs at home (watching movies through HDMI, playing a few games - Counter Strike and random racing games), browsing internet, working in PS and Light room etc, but mostly for watching HD movies. But I was able to get myself Early 2008 Mac Pro - 10gb memory, two dual core intel xeon processors, 256 Ati Radeon graphics cards and 1tb ssd hard drive. Now I wanted to know how good is Mac Pro for home use? As I said I don't do many things with my windows based PC and wanted to switch to faster, quieter mac pro. Any opinions?  How good it is as a home entertainment center?
    P.S. Counter strike is available now for Mac, so I don't really care about other games.

    dump the 2600XT and there I would pay for a Mac Edition AMD 7950, else PC card
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    even though 8 cores it is 6 yrs old and most things don't use 8 cores that much, it predates the i7-920,
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    It does not get the official nod of support from Apple for Windows 8/8.1 but it does if you want run 7 or 7 Pro (dual cpu support)
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