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| Click here to select a new forum. | | Nehalem Mac Pro question | Posted by: johnklos on 2016-01-16 22:04:14
Regarding a fancy video card, if you want the boot screen, just keep the original card and use that attached to a monitor for booting. Then just buy a fancy NVIDIA card and install their drivers.
| Posted by: CC_333 on 2016-01-17 00:46:42
Or you could get the ATI Radeon HD 5770. It works very well in my 2008, and I think it was a CTO/BTO option for the 2009 or 2010.
The one I linked to is $180 and includes the special cable it needs to work (don't worry, it's just a cable that goes between the video card and the logic board for extra power; no external PSUs needed), so it should be well within your budget.
Perhaps a newer AMD/NVIDIA card would be faster/better, but this one has the advantage of being completely stock, which therefore means you'll have your boot screens and such, as it has Mac firmware on it.
c
| Posted by: johnklos on 2016-01-17 07:27:42
I think you could find a Radeon 5870 for around $200:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-Radeon-HD5870-1GB-GDDR5-Video-Card-For-Mac-Pro1-1-5-1-With-Power-Cables-/201503661939?hash=item2eea8ddf73:g:~~MAAOSwKrxUY-Ki
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Genuine-Apple-ATI-Radeon-HD-5870-1GB-Graphics-Card-Mac-Pro-MC743ZM-A-/221996177484?hash=item33b000d84c:g:f3cAAOSwL7VWmDtQ
| Posted by: khannonnd on 2016-01-17 16:58:31
That is an interesting alternative. I am thinking of getting something in the 3-4 GB variety.
| Posted by: Yeager on 2016-01-24 07:28:07
I have a 2009 Mac Pro also. I have it flashed to 5,1 and upgraded the CPU to the X5680 6 core. As per Graphics, I have installed a non-flashed HD 7950 that works perfectly without boot screens. If I were in your position, I would probably install some sort of SSD, Upgrade the GPU to a vanilla GTX 970 (Better Mac support with Nvidia Drivers), and maybe flash it to 5,1 and upgrade the CPUs to X5677s.
That machine is still very desirable, and configurable to be just as fast as one of the new Mac Pros. I would not however upgrade to a HD 5770 or HD 5870 if you want to do anything intensive. They are both quite old and do not provide enough performance for the money.
If you have any questions, please ask!
| Posted by: khannonnd on 2016-01-26 11:57:07
I ended up getting a brand new GTX970 from a source that buys the PC version and then flashes it. My God. I have been used to playing a couple of games on a Macbook Pro. This is a whole different world! I suspect the processors are now the bottle neck in terms of graphics power.
One thing I thought of -- this machine was used as a Powerschool server which, I imagine, means it was left on basically all the time. I am eventually going to replace one or both of the 7200 RPM HDs with an SSD, but are there any common failure points on these machines that its use as a server would exacerbate?
Yeager, how much was the upgrade to the X5680 6 core? Did you do it yourself?
| Posted by: CC_333 on 2016-01-26 14:05:07
I've had mine on more or less 24/7 for almost 7 years, and it doesn't seem to cause too much trouble, except it gets *very* dirty inside (I have to blow it out and regoop the CPUs, which I meant to do last summer, but couldn't because stuff happened).
c
| Posted by: rezwits on 2016-01-27 14:53:17
Get an ATI 5770. I put Sonnet SSD card in mine because as a server boot times were about 2 and half minutes. Now boot times are down to 45 secs. So much better when updating "Little "f-%in Snitch" god I hate that program but it is so needed, as I get about 300 screen bundle (VNC) attacks every day, and 100 or so ssh attacks/pings and numerous port 80 hits.
Without an SSD it will feel sluggish, but once you put one in, it will feel like a full throttle machine as fast as todays machines. I am sure you know the SSD stories. For me tho I just was like (I have 8 core 2.66) it's got 8 cores (16) but if feels so slow, with SSD it's like yeah that feels like a 2015 machine. Then you rip a blu-ray at 2x speed, and you can taste it!
Have a fun, oh and don't upgrade the firmware unless you are going to throw in the processor upgrade, you won't get the 1333MHz RAM speed without the CPUs. I guess I'll get the HDMI audio out one day but we'll see...
Laters...
| Posted by: khannonnd on 2016-01-27 17:00:42
So like I mentioned, I have a GTX970 that has been flashed installed. I have the latest NVIDIA drivers installed. Everything seems to be working great but, that isn't saying much since I am used to the graphics performance of a 3 year old Macbook Pro... I decided to run the Engine Heaven Benchmark test (on "extreme" settings), and that yielded the following results:
FPS: 49.0
Score: 1234
Min FPS: 17.2
Max FPS: 64.0
On the Cinebench Open GL test, it gets c. 40-42 FPS.
I know that (1) graphics cards under MacOSX/OpenGL performs VERY poorly compared to under Windows and (2) there is likely a number of bottlenecks in this older system. I was wondering if these results "sounded" right to you guys. I am guessing in terms of removing bottlenecks, putting an SSD in and upgrading the processors is the way to go. The former is easy. The latter will require some time to save! At 12GB of RAM, I am assuming I am ok on that front (at least for now).
| Posted by: CC_333 on 2016-01-28 23:03:40
For the most part, 12 GB is FAR more than you'll ever need*, unless you're doing something extremely RAM intensive like running a dozen or more virtual machines.
*I just upgraded my Mac Pro to 32 GB! 😀 😎
c
| Posted by: johnklos on 2016-01-29 07:53:09
For the most part, 12 GB is FAR more than you'll ever need*, unless you're doing something extremely RAM intensive like running a dozen or more virtual machines. ...or if you plan to visit certain web sites which have tons of Javascript...
| Posted by: CC_333 on 2016-01-29 10:35:57
I knew I forgot to mention something! You'd think 12 GB would be enough for that! Nonetheless, it does almost seem like a "simple" web page wants a fast machine with a Quad-core CPU and 8 GB of RAM to perform *at all* nowadays.
Given how costly RAM is for these Mac Pros (only in the last year or so have 800 MHz FB-DIMMs become somewhat affordable), 12 GB ought to be sufficient, even if it's not optimal.
An SSD would be cheaper than a RAM upgrade, and even a modestly fast one will really speed things up (virtual memory benefits from an SSD as well, and that can alleviate some of the not-enough-RAM issues, although the SSD's life might be somewhat shorter than if you didn't use virtual memory).
c
| Posted by: mrpippy on 2016-01-29 10:47:12
Luckily the MacPro4,1 and up use standard DDR3 ECC DIMMs, which are way cheaper than the weird DDR2 FB-DIMMs of the early Mac Pros
| Posted by: flecom on 2016-03-23 23:35:53
I knew I forgot to mention something! You'd think 12 GB would be enough for that! Nonetheless, it does almost seem like a "simple" web page wants a fast machine with a Quad-core CPU and 8 GB of RAM to perform *at all* nowadays.
Given how costly RAM is for these Mac Pros (only in the last year or so have 800 MHz FB-DIMMs become somewhat affordable), 12 GB ought to be sufficient, even if it's not optimal.
An SSD would be cheaper than a RAM upgrade, and even a modestly fast one will really speed things up (virtual memory benefits from an SSD as well, and that can alleviate some of the not-enough-RAM issues, although the SSD's life might be somewhat shorter than if you didn't use virtual memory).
c the 06 mac pro used FB-DIMMS, op says he has an 09
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