Hey MR!
I recently inherited an 8-core (2 x 2.66 GHz) Early 2009 Mac Pro, which was purchased for use by my father's company and, from my understanding, performed functions that one would buy a MacBook Air for. The only hardwares upgrade made on the machine are the addition of a small SSD (configured to store the OS and applications; the Home folder is on the default HDD) and four sticks of OWC RAM. The graphics processor seems to be the stock model for the machine's year--the ATI Radeon HD 4870.
I'm a guy with a background in visual design and motion graphics and an ambitious hobbyist in front-end web development. Right now, I use a pretty custom build of some of the higher end components available from last year's market, put together to run Windows 7. Not too shabby at all, no complaints--but I've been wanting to jump over to an OS X environment for years now.
I just did a clean wipe of the computer, freshened up with a new install of Mac OS X 10.7 on the SSD and a bootcamp partition to run Windows 7 on. I'm planning on buying another HDD or two for storage, and I think 16 GB RAM sounds about right for the work I'll be doing these days (though an upgrade doesn't sound too bad in the future).
My question, as a person with very limited knowledge of the Mac Pro line, is what are the rest of my options (if any) in terms of upgrading my Early 2009 Mac Pro to be on-par with Apple's offerings today? What, more broadly, does the upgradeability scene look like for the Mac Pro line? What do you suggest, in the context of both hardware and perhaps even software, I should do to maximize the performance and/or lifespan of the machine?
I would appreciate any advice or suggestions offered; I apologize if the information I am looking for is easily searchable. I can't really put together a solid, reliable source of information from forum searches--I'd feel much more confident getting a more comprehensive round-up from a targeted set of questions.
Thanks!
I recently inherited an 8-core (2 x 2.66 GHz) Early 2009 Mac Pro, which was purchased for use by my father's company and, from my understanding, performed functions that one would buy a MacBook Air for. The only hardwares upgrade made on the machine are the addition of a small SSD (configured to store the OS and applications; the Home folder is on the default HDD) and four sticks of OWC RAM. The graphics processor seems to be the stock model for the machine's year--the ATI Radeon HD 4870.
I'm a guy with a background in visual design and motion graphics and an ambitious hobbyist in front-end web development. Right now, I use a pretty custom build of some of the higher end components available from last year's market, put together to run Windows 7. Not too shabby at all, no complaints--but I've been wanting to jump over to an OS X environment for years now.
I just did a clean wipe of the computer, freshened up with a new install of Mac OS X 10.7 on the SSD and a bootcamp partition to run Windows 7 on. I'm planning on buying another HDD or two for storage, and I think 16 GB RAM sounds about right for the work I'll be doing these days (though an upgrade doesn't sound too bad in the future).
My question, as a person with very limited knowledge of the Mac Pro line, is what are the rest of my options (if any) in terms of upgrading my Early 2009 Mac Pro to be on-par with Apple's offerings today? What, more broadly, does the upgradeability scene look like for the Mac Pro line? What do you suggest, in the context of both hardware and perhaps even software, I should do to maximize the performance and/or lifespan of the machine?
I would appreciate any advice or suggestions offered; I apologize if the information I am looking for is easily searchable. I can't really put together a solid, reliable source of information from forum searches--I'd feel much more confident getting a more comprehensive round-up from a targeted set of questions.
Thanks!
