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

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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.

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"

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

Early 2008 Mac Pro + nVidia 8800: Never going to work?

This forum is littered with threads about early 2008 Mac Pros with the nVidia 8800 card - none of them positive.
I was unfortunate enough to wait for Apple to release such a machine and buy it. Graphics performance is dire given the hardware available. The machine routinely crashes with the window manager hang problem (the user interface just locks up, yet network services etc. still work), in the way familiar to anyone blighted by this particular bug; just run the Folding@Home client on your machine if you want to experience the joy. Or screensavers, sometimes, so I've had to turn those off. And I've had to turn off monitor power saving too, because I too suffer from the 'monitors sometimes don't wake up' bug. And of course I can't sleep the machine either, because firmware upgrade or not, it's still not reliable. And after all this, still the machine crashes.
SSH to the machine; try to restart cleanly; even 'sudo reboot' won't restart it. Apple have achieved something I've never seen out of any Unix or Unix-like operating system, ever; the kernel is unable to kill its own processes.
There have been no indications from Apple that I've seen on these forums over several weeks that the problem is even being acknowledged, let alone tackled. Latest reports indicate that even the 1st gen Mac Pro owners are suffering if they install the 8800.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1460752&tstart=0
My machine rarely makes it through the day without a forced reboot due to the window manager hanging. I can't do any work on it. I can't rely on it. I can't enjoy it. I can't even use it for web browsing without fear of it hanging.
There seem to be no facts about this at all. So all I can ask for is opinions. Does anyone have any offering of hope that early 2008 Mac Pros might ever work properly with 8800 cards? Y'know, little things, like actually being able to handle graphics? Or sleeping the monitors? Or, heaven forbid, sleeping the whole machine? Or should I just send it back as unfit for purpose?
Yours, tired and exasperated... :-/

I posted this in some other blog (forum), I should have posted this here also but I hope this gives you and all with these problems hope!! I also ran some fish tank test some else posted to get the folding problem to happen and I can not get it to happen at all now, and since my 8800 went in I get NO LOCKUPS, SCREEN FREEZES, shaky blurry video when I boot, so far NOTHING, IT JUST WORKS!!!!!!!!
Now that I think about it the person who said to use the fish tank program had a bad 8800 and maybe you do also!! here is the link to that:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6965475&#6965475
I purchased my first mac pro early 08 2 months ago (amazon.com).
2 quad core 2.8's, 2 gig apple 4 gig OWC total 6 gig ram,2-WD raptors (1st mac 2nd boot camp winxp 32 bit), apple care.
I had all my problems with the ATI card (I always purchased ATI, never Nvidia, for all the PC's I built) a couple of times I bought the first ones out, these had all kinds of problems until good drivers that actually worked were released (usually 6-12 months after the release of the card).
So I try not to buy routers, graphic cards, etc.. for at least 6-12 months, but back to my 2600 card!!
When I received my mac the graphics would freeze, I did a lot of online reading only to find out the ATI 2600 was the problem, the cure was to hook up 2 monitors to the card (and that worked!!).
Then they came out with the firmware update, now my main monitor would after 2 days on a reboot be scambled (samsung syncmaster 213t, NEVER had ANY problem with it before on any PC I had, so I knew it was not the monitor) to fix the problem I had to either turn power off to the syncmaster or resetting PRAM (worked for a couple more days, then the same problem).
I called apple and they sent a tech out within days to replace the ATI card, the replacement did the same thing after a couple of days, so I called Apple back and they took a bunch of info from my computer (BTW not much at all loaded in the mac side) and said to call back in a week, so I called back a week later and they said they were going to exchange the card for either another ati 2600 or the Nvidia 8800, I said 8800 and a day later on a saturday I received it, swapped the card and NEVER HAD ANY PROBLEMS at all!!
So I don't know if the ATI card has problems with certain monitors or they are just poorly made (maybe AMD is mad with Apple that Apple did not use AMD processors).
I have read others that swapped with the 8800 and their problems went away also!!!!
Maybe some have no problems with the 2600, but I would not recommend it to anyone, if you can avoid the 2600 GO WITH THE 8800, the drivers will get better (and the 8800 will eventually outperform the ATI)and you will not be sorry.
Apple is awesome, they are 2nd to none, their is no other company like this anymore that I have dealt with in a long time (not just because they gave me a 8800), like I said in the beginning of this post I always purchased ATI cards and would have kept it if it would have worked but 2 doing the same, ATI [AMD] has lost my support until they prove otherwise.
I recommend Mac's to everyone now!!
good luck and let me know it any of this has helped!!!!!!!!!!

Early 2008 Mac Pro wakes up from sleep with Mavericks.

Ever since I upgraded to OSX Mavericks on Tuesday, my early 2008 Mac Pro keeps waking up from sleep mode every couple hours. It goes back to sleep again on its own though after a minute, so I'm thinking it's some kind of new automated feature that I'm not aware of. With the Mac Pro being fairly loud when it wakes up from sleep mode, it woke me up three times last night! Is there some kind of option in the system preferences that I'm not aware of that can deactivate this new behavior? I usually only shut down my computer once a week, and keep it in sleep mode when I'm not using it most of the time, but I'm going to have to start shutting it down every night now to keep it from waking me up throughout the night...

Hello MARl0,
You may want to disable the Power Nap functionality, if available, in System Preferences -> Energy Saver.
OS X Mavericks: Change Power Nap settings
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14391
Cheers,
Allen

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.

Early 2008 Mac Pro to run Yosemite?

Hello all.
I have an early 2008 Mac Pro 3.1 with quad-core Intel Xeon and I am trying to do a clean install of Yosemite with a bootable USB flash drive. When I power up the machine (while holding option key) I see the Yosemite installer. I double click it. I get the apple logo with the progress bar across the bottom, but it only gets about 25% of the way and then I get the circle with a line. Any ideas? I have upgraded the EFI per (EFI and SMC firmware updates for Intel-based Macs - Apple Support)
Thank you!

The installer flash drive is defective or you don't have a 2008 MP.
Upgrading to Yosemite
You can upgrade to Yosemite from Lion or directly from Snow Leopard. Yosemite can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for FREE.
Upgrading to Yosemite
To upgrade to Yosemite you must have Snow Leopard 10.6.8 or Lion installed. Download Yosemite from the App Store. Sign in using your Apple ID. Yosemite is free. The file is quite large, over 5 GBs, so allow some time to download. It would be preferable to use Ethernet because it is nearly four times faster than wireless.
    OS X Mavericks/Yosemite- System Requirements
    Macs that can be upgraded to OS X Yosemite
         1. iMac (Mid 2007 or newer) - Model Identifier 7,1 or later
         2. MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer) - Model Identifier 5,1 or later
         3. MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later
         4. MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer) - Model Identifier 2,1 or later
         5. Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later
         6. Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later
         7. Xserve (Early 2009) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later
To find the model identifier open System Profiler in the Utilities folder. It's displayed in the panel on the right.
     Are my applications compatible?
         See App Compatibility Table - RoaringApps.

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 + Mini Displayport?

Is there a way to upgrade the video card in an early 2008 Mac Pro to support Mini Displayport? I'd like to get the LED Display but I'd like to avoid using a DVI to Mini DisplayPort adapter in favor of simply getting a new video card.
I noticed the new 2009 Mac Pro's have NVIDIA cards that support Mini DisplayPort; will these work in an early 2008 Mac Pro? Is there any option for this?

by 2nd generation mac pro, do you mean the pre - early09 version?
if so, how certain are you that this card will work on it? apple site states only early09 compatibility with no mention of prior generations. pls clarify, as i'm looking into buying a displayport card and have a mac pro of a generation right before the early 09.
i also found this alternative:
http://pcworld.about.com/od/desktops/Mini-DisplayPort-Faster-Graph.htm

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.

Early 2008 Mac Pro and the 5870

Several sources has stated that this card will work in the Early 2008 Mac Pro, but I am having issues. The card tests as bad and on restart the card is not seen as being installed. I can Screen Share and verify through System Profiler that the card is not seen by the system. Is anyone else having this issue, or is it just my luck?

and this is an Apple version card, right? not a PC.
What other video card did you have etc?
Apple ATI 5770 and 5870 work with 10.6.4+ in all Mac pro models.
ATI Radeon HD 5870 Upgrade
Radeon 5870 vs 5770 GTX 285 4870

Early 2008 Mac Pro

For some reason following booting up my Early 2008 Mac Pro running 10.8.2 Mountain Lion will NOT recognize my external hard drive connected via USB nor will iTunes 10.7 recognise both my iPhone 4 & iPad 2.
I upgraded to Mountain Lion yesterday and everything worked fine until booting this morning.
What is going on?
Thanks.

No the external drive does not appear in Disk Utility.
Also wondering why iTunes cannot see either my iPhone 4 or iPad 2, both connected via USB on the front of my Mac Pro?
The difficulties I am experiencing are similar to what occured when I first tried to upgrade to ML. Back then, shortly after ML's release, post install ML would switch off my Apple keyboard.
I have waited since then for a fix, and had hoped the issue to have been resolved by 10.8.2. It appears only partially resolved.
In the end the Apple employee at the Genius bar re-installed Lion and mentioned that after a Google search other Apple users with the same model as mine were reporting the same issues.
I may have to return to my AppleStore to have Lion reinstalled post a clean wipe of the ML HDD.

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.

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.

Upgrading early 2008 Mac Pro

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