Wi-Fi on older Mac Pro?

How do I get Wi-Fi on my mac pro that does not have a built in wireless card (yes it has ethernet of course but It is not practical to run an ethernet cable in this situation)? I ask because I cannot find anything as simple as "Wireless Card" in the online apple store.
Thanks, Pat.M.

If I am reading your profile correctly .. a TP-Link TL-WDN4800 will do nicely.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007GMPZ0A/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=tonymacx86com-20
Otherwise let me suggest a rather easier and often pretty cheap solution that is bullet proof.
Get a bridge router and use that. What you buy depends on the main router. eg if you have an apple AE or TC as main router then any Apple router in wireless extend mode will provide ethernet to wireless bridge.
A second hand AE can be cheaper than a dedicated decent wireless card and you can locate it better on a few meters of ethernet cable.
If you have a different brand you cannot use the AE or TC but you can use the Express. Or use a similar router that has universal bridge or WDS. This is not 100% straight forward.. what you have now dictates what you will install.

Similar Messages

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. But I also have a lot of Blu Ray disks.

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.
But I also have a lot of Blu Ray disks.
I am going to load windows 7 via Boot Camp for other reasns. After that is done, and even with an external Blu Ray player, is it still not possible to play Blu ray movies?
Thanks for your consideration.....

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.
But I also have a lot of Blu Ray disks.
I am going to load windows 7 via Boot Camp for other reasns. After that is done, and even with an external Blu Ray player, is it still not possible to play Blu ray movies?
Thanks for your consideration.....

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 an older Mac Pro (2006). I want to install Boot Camp and Windows. I have installrg a purchased Snow Leapord on the machine. To install Windows, am I limited to Windows 7? And where are the Windows 7/Boot Camp Drivers? On the OS disk? Download? Tha

I have an older Mac Pro (2006). I want to install Boot Camp and Windows. I have installed a boxed Snow Leapord on the machine. And it says the download of the Boot camp drivers cannot continue because they are not available. But at that point I have not inserted a windows disk, so how does it know i have XP?
So it appears I am limited to Windows 7? And where are the Windows 7/Boot Camp Drivers? On the OS disk?
Finally, since I have necer considered Windows 7 before, I assume there are no compatability issues with mainstream applications that were running in XP?
Thank you.

You're welcome
Just remember to reformat the partition (bootcamp partition) to NTFS with the windows installer, ensure to pick the correct partition.

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.

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...

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.

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.

How to install Lion on older Mac Pro

I had a Macbook Pro that I installed Lion onto. The Macbook pro overheated and is now dead. I'd like to install Lion on my older Mac Pro (can't install Maverick on this computer) and when I go to the app store it says Lion isn't available in the U.S. Anyway to get it onto this computer? If not, I have no way of syncing this Mac.

Then: Contact Customer Service: Contacting Apple for support and service - this includes international calling numbers.

Update OS on older Mac Pro effect on CC

Has anyone updates their older Mac Pro (2009) to OS 10.10? I'm wondering if CC works well and might be faster.

I don't do Mac, but I have some saved links to read
Yosemite sometimes has problems, often related to "default" permissions needing to be changed
-one person's solution https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1689788
-and a Java update https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1507936
-http://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/creative-cloud-and-yosemite/
-https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/global/mac-os-yosemite-compatability.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.

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.

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.

Need help with video on older Mac Pro

I have a 2008 Mac Pro that more than meets all of the specs for FCP X, except the Mac App store won't let me buy and download because the video card in the system doesn't meet specs. I've found an apple support page that lists the compatible video cards for FCP X. Here's my issues:
1. Most of the cards on the list are older and not easily obtainable anymore.
2. Even with models that are newer, it's had to find one labeled for Mac - so can I just use any old model of, say, a Radeon HD 5670 or do I need one specificlaly made for Macs?
3. Bottom line is what card can I use in a 2008 Mac Pro that will meet the specs and that I can actually purchase?
Thanx...Jon

jhyiesla wrote:
I've found an apple support page that lists the compatible video cards for FCP X.
. . . . . . . . . so can I just use any old model of, say, a Radeon HD 5670 or do I need one specificlaly made for Macs?
A Radeon HD 5670 is a Radeon HD 5670 - if it's on the compatible list, it will work in your Mac.
This is my pet checklist for questions regarding FCP X performance - you may have already addressed some of the items but it's worth checking.
Make sure you're using the latest version of the application - FCP X 10.0.5 runs very well on my 2009 MacPro 2 x 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon with 16 GB RAM and ATI Radeon HD 5870 1024 MB. I run it with Lion 10.7.5.
First, check that you have at least 20% free space on your system drive.
For smooth playback without dropping frames, make sure 'Better Performance' is selected in the FCP X Preferences - Playback Tab.
If you have not already done so, move your Projects and Events to a fast (Firewire 800 or faster) external HD. Make sure the drive's formatted OS Extended (journalling's not required for video). You should always keep at least 20% free space on the Hard Drives that your Media, Projects and Events are on.
Check the spec of your Mac against the system requirements:
http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/specs/
Check the spec of your graphics card. If it's listed here, it's not suitable:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4664
If you are getting crashes, there is some conflict on the OS. Create a new (admin) user account on your system and use FCP X from there - if it runs a lot better, there's a conflict and a clean install would be recommended.
Keep projects to 20 mins or less. If you have a long project, work on 20 min sections then paste these into a final project for export.
If you ever experience dropped frames, I strongly recommend you use ProRes 422 Proxy - it edits and plays back like silk because the files are small but lightly compressed (not much packing and unpacking to do) - but remember to select 'Original or Optimised Media' (FCP X Preferences > Playback) just before you export your movie, otherwise it will be exported at low resolution.
If you have plenty of processor power, for the ultimate editing experience, create Optimised Media - most camera native files are highly compressed and need a great deal of processor power to play back - particularly if you add titles, filters or effects. ProRes 422 takes up much more hard drive space but is very lightly compressed. It edits and plays back superbly.
Hide Audio Waveforms at all times when you don't need them (both in Browser and Storyline / Timeline). They take up a lot of processor power. (Use the switch icon at the bottom-right of your timeline to select a format without waveforms if you don't need them at the moment, then switch back when you do).
Create folders in the Project and Events libraries and put any projects you are not working on currently, in those folders. This will help a lot. There's a great application for this, called Event Manager X - for the tiny cost it's an invaluable application.
http://assistedediting.intelligentassistance.com/EventManagerX/
Unless you cannot edit and playback without it, turn off Background Rendering in Preferences (under Playback) - this will help general performance and you can always render when you need to by selecting the clip (or clips) and pressing Ctrl+R.
The biggest single improvement I saw in performance was when I upgraded the RAM from 8 GB to 16.
Andy

No End or Home key on older Mac Pro. Is there a workaround?

My older MacBook Pro runs Snow Leopard and does not have a key labeled "End" or "Home". I'm using Word for Mac 2011 and trying to figure out how I can navigate to the end of the document I'm working on. I'm hoping there is either a key command or a macr

Hi Ham4592,
If you are looking for Home and End key functionality, you may find the following article helpful:
Mac notebooks: Key placement and functions
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3164
Additional key behaviors
The Numlock key has been removed on Late 2007 and later Mac notebooks.
Home key functionality is performed by pressing Fn (Function) and Left Arrow key.
End key functionality is performed by pressing Fn and Right Arrow key.
Page Up key functionality is performed by pressing Fn and Up Arrow key.
Page Down key functionality is performed by pressing Fn and Down Arrow key.
Cheers,
- Brenden

Wi-Fi on older Mac Pro?

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