I have a MacPro 1,1 what kind of upgrades can I make to it?

use search. There are like three threads on page one that answer your questions.

CPU's - Xeon 5355s (around $100 for a pair) are the best from a price/performance ratio. Lots and lots of walkthroughs available.

Video Card - many choices based on which OS you use - went with a Apple badged 5770 when they were first released.

Memory - how much would be based on your useage - I have 22Gb and my swap file is currently 4.1Mb.

SSD Hard drives - You have 2 unused SATA ports on the motherboard - I slapped 2 OWC 240Gb underneath my optical drive (which I still use on a regular basis) - configured for a Raid 0, they make my system very fast.

If you are into those kind of things - the CPU upgrades should boost your geekbench score up to around 10,000 or so.

Intarweb said:

Currently I'm on 10.6 something at home. What video cards are compatible?

How long did it take you to swap out the CPU's? I've seen a couple videos on YouTube. Is it as easy as the videos make it out to be?

I have 12gig of ram.

I didn't know that there were two bare SATAs inside. So I can have a total of six HDD?!?!!!?

So doing just the CPU swaps I'd get more than double the performance?

Do you know of a list of the tools I would need to do the CPU swap?

Thanks for the response. I really appreciate it. I'm dreading spending money on a new Mac and if I can make ridiculous improvements for under $500 to my current machine I would be ecstatic.

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I'll add that this machine will be doing nothing but Photoshop and video editing. There will be no gaming whatsoever. The Photoshopping will be heavy though.

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I am still on 10.6.8 myself - 10.7 didn't add anything that I needed, so I have ignored it and 10.8. Important rule - resist the impulse to mindlessly upgrade - if the new OS or application doesn't add anything to your workflow - ignore it. Or you will be like me and spend a weekend backing off software and resetting your workspace (Like I am going to have to do this weekend - the new iTunes no longer sees my 1st gen ATV - I am not replacing a $500 PreAmp or a $2,000 TV to use a $99 3rd gen ATV.)

I haven't swapped CPU's yet - I am in the middle of a project through the end of the year, but come New Years, I'll do the swap out. Tools - A really long Torx wrench - I forget the number, but check any of the tutorials - they have the number - and some arctic silver - while you have it machine open make sure you clean everything.

The way I check to see if I need more memory is to run everything I am doing & check the swap file in Activity monitor. In my case, it rarely gets tapped, even when I am ripping DVDs, rendering in Poser 2012, adjusting a model in Hexagon and adjusting material zones in Photoshop Elements.

I have 6 HDs in my MP - see sig for details.

As far as performance - a lot will depend on what you do - if your software is written to take advantage of multiple cores, you will see a marked increase. I have found geekbench to be irrelevant - what matters is that I can run multiple memory and cpu intensive tasks all at the same time with no loss of responsiveness - which is much more important than some silly number.

As far as video cards, root around in this forum - lots of recommendations - I went with the Apple badged 5770 because the fan died on my 3870 - I didn't have a card to put back in to do all of the necessary hacks to use a PC video card at the time.

ssgbryan said:

.....I haven't swapped CPU's yet - I am in the middle of a project through the end of the year, but come New Years, I'll do the swap out. Tools - A really long Torx wrench - I forget the number, but check any of the tutorials - they have the number - and some arctic silver - while you have it machine open make sure you clean everything.

Click to expand...

Should be a long T-15 torx. I will be doing the same thing to my MP 1,1. Swapping in a pair of 5365 3.0 GHz processors as they have become a lot cheaper these days.

Adding some SSDs will also speed up performance to the aging MP 1,1.

Intarweb said:

with GeForce 7300.

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and it still works !?

You can skip the SSDs

You skip the traditional SSD installs. I realize lots of folks have gone for this and there will probably be some highly charged emotional reactions to that remark but it's true none the less.

• A fast 500 or 512GB SSD is what, between $300 and $400?
  
  
• But a 2 drive RAID0 using the new-ish Barracuda 3TB, 3-platter drives are extremely close to the same speed over the first 4TB of so of the platter and that's $220 (total). Here's what I get from my 2-drive, 6TB, RAID0, and larger transfers of 100GB files reflect these times as indeed being very typical:
  
  
  
  
• A 3 drive RAID0 using the same drives will be faster than the SSD, give you 6TB of high-speed space, 9TB total, and cost roughly the same as the SSD.
  
  
• The new WD and Seagate SSHD drives are also comparable in speed to SSD drives but come in larger sizes and are much cheaper! I think the 1TB drives are like $175 or something.
  
  
• Of course placing the SSHD drives in a RAID0 array will nearly double their performance as well.
  
  
• Then of course there are the mSATA devices which can be placed into a RAID0 array and yet only occupy a single internal SATA connection. These drives are comparable in price to the cheapest full sized SSD drives and as fast or a tad faster than some of the "good" full sized SSD drive models available. When adapted in this way they produce 1.1GB/s sustained reads and 820MB/s sustained writes. Since the MacPro1,1 SATA buss configuration is only capable of about 600 to 620MB/s (sustained real world) they will be capped at that till you place them in a machine with a faster SATA buss. But that's 600MB/s per connection so two of those (4 drives total) in a software RAID0 would always give you 1.2GB/s sustained reads and writes. The processored RAID adapters are like $50ea and I think 256GB mSATA drives can be had for like $150. Here's what just one single mSATA SSD drive profiles like in an XPS-12 convertible notebook:
  
  
  
  And here is an example of the kinds of adapters I'm talking about: http://www.mfactors.com/dual-msata-to-sataii-2-5-inches-ssd-adapter/ Those can then be adapted to MacPro drive sleds or placed under the CD/DVD drive up top - as you like.

So as you can see standard SSD drives are probably the poorest choice there is - just one step up from a single rotational drive and WAY over priced.


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Don't Forget To Remember Memory.

A few here have already mentioned RAM upgrades but I thought it might be useful to add some details on this topic.

The MacPro1,1 can be upgraded to 64GB that I have seen using 8GB FB DIMMs. This is often not disclosed and for some reason most sites proclaim 32GB to be the limit. In fact I think it may be possible to upgrade it to 128GB if you can find 16GB DIMMs. I've never seen 128GB done in a MacPro1,1 however so I can't say 1st hand. I heard about a MacPro3,1 that had that much but I couldn't verify it directly from the source.

32GB (over 24 or 16) comes highly recommended - from me. You don't want less than 16GB for sure (!!!) and 24GB I believe causes a partition which can cause a few problems under some circumstances.

You do NOT need the Apple heat sinks and therefor 32GB of ram can easily be had for $250 used on e-bay. Make sure he has a return policy and as soon as you receive the ram install it and start running memory tests on it. Do this for at least 24 to 36 hours! Rember is the best tool I've encountered and you can run instances of it for faster testing - typically one instance per core. Just duplicate the app the number of times you have cores, run them all and give each one a segment of RAM to work on. All your 8 cores (after you upgrade to the x5355 or x5365 processors) will remain at 98% until the tests are finished, you quit, or whatever.

Additionally running 32GB or 64GB or RAM in your machine without the Apple heat-sinks will raise the ambient temp by less than or about 1˚C and the two RAM sensor locations report a 2.5˚to 4˚C increase under rigorous use (like this Rember session outlined above) so if that is of concern to you then SMBFanControl set to 1100 or 1200 RPM (still virtually silent), will more than equalize any possible adverse affects. Probably the only reason Apple decided to put those heat-sinks on in the first place is that Steve burned his finger once on an opened prototype Intel MacPro.

Install that 10.7 OS! Yeeeah-buddy!

On the topic of OS version it's extremely worth upgrading to 10.7.5 which is faster by leaps and bounds over all other OS versions preceding it! It's more stable than all others till you get way back to 10.5.5 I think it was. There are also many Apple and 3rd party upgrades which affect the capabilities of your machine that are ONLY available under OS X 10.7.4 and above. There's lots of inconveniences and hackery work-a-rounds you may need to go through to get full (modern) function on versions older than 10.7.4 so 10.7.5 is really recommended!

IMO the only reason to not upgrade to 10.7.5 is fear. Fear of change. Or perhaps being too lazy to learn to click on icon X instead of icon Y, etc..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Lion#New_or_changed_features
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Lion#Release_history

The only issue I have with the RAIDed boot disk it you're using precious bays for the RAID setup. I can take an SSD throw it atop an ATA optical, drag my home folder to another drive and still have three bays left for storage.

Tesselator said:

The MacPro1,1 can be upgraded to 64GB that I have seen using 8GB FB DIMMs.

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Theoretically yes, but you'd need first:
– find compatible 8GB FB DIMMs (not all will work)
– use chameleon method to boot 64-bit kernel (Apple limited 32-bit kernel to 32GB, even if 32-bit PAE allows up to 64GB)

Tesselator said:

You skip the traditional SSD installs. I realize lots of folks have gone for this and there will probably be some highly charged emotional reactions to that remark but it's true none the less.

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Your comparison is flawed. Yes - modern platter drives have come a long way in terms of speed, BUT:

• You put the focus solely on the transfer of large files, where platter drives may be able to compete with some questionable (in terms of data integrity and security) workaround. Where SSD really shine are the seek and load times which are important for small files - typical for e.g. OS files.
• You have set up your magnetic drives in a RAID-0, thus doubling failure probability compared to a single-drive SSD. To overcome that, you need additional drives for regular backups - which will negate the price comparability you claim (not even counting follow-up costs like e.g. energy etc.).
• SSD's produce less heat and less noise.

Therefore it is usually recommended to have a setup with a comparably small SSD (like 120-256GB) for the system partition, which are pretty affordable these days, complemented with (a) bigger harddrive(s) for data storage. And even then it is not recommended to have those in a RAID-0 setting - unless you don't care for your data!

Tesselator said:

So as you can see standard SSD drives are probably the poorest choice there is - just one step up from a single rotational drive and WAY over priced.

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Your argumentation is wrong and your recommendation is unsafe at best, unless you are talking of a scratch drive.

Neodym,
Real world experience shows all of your counter-points to be lacking. I know like everyone else here, that those are the standard arguing points. But they're not actually true (for 90% of users) when one applies common sense and real-world experience. The other 10% are database freaks...


GermanyChris,
Yeah, that's a point. Unless you just happen to look at it in another light. Like the light which shines on the fact that it's the SSD which is taking up an extra SATA port. Maybe if RAIDs couldn't be partitioned then that would be more true. But it just depends on how one decides to view things...

Tesselator said:

Neodym,
Real world experience shows all of your counter-points to be lacking. I know like everyone else here, that those are the standard arguing points. But they're not actually true (for 90% of users) when one applies common sense and real-world experience. The other 10% are database freaks...


GermanyChris,
Yeah, that's a point. Unless you just happen to look at it in another light. Like the light which shines on the fact that it's the SSD which is taking up an extra SATA port. Maybe if RAIDs couldn't be partitioned then that would be more true. But it just depends on how one decides to view things...

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My Thoughts on that run like this. There is no speed benefit PATA to SATA so run the bluray SATA and the DVD PATA. Gets the boot drive out of the way and lets me have two optical drives.

GermanyChris said:

My Thoughts on that run like this. There is no speed benefit PATA to SATA so run the bluray SATA and the DVD PATA. Gets the boot drive out of the way and lets me have two optical drives.

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I'm not sure what you mean. Your sentence isn't clear to me. We're talking about MacPro 1,1. There are 6 SATA ports, 4 sled-bays, and 2 IDE connectors. BlueRay, DVD, and CD are all in one device. I have no idea why anyone would want two optical drives mounted inside a MacPro unless they had no memory or something ƒ. That leaves room under the optical (BR/DVD/CD) drive for two full sized drives (connected to SATA) and then of course the 4 full sized sled-bays.

ƒ - If the person is copying/cloning buttloads of optical media they can do so hands free without tying up their computer by selecting appropriate and inexpensive stand-alone hardware.

Tesselator said:

I'm not sure what you mean. Your sentence isn't clear to me. We're talking about MacPro 1,1. There are 6 SATA ports, 4 sled-bays, and 2 IDE connectors. BlueRay, DVD, and CD are all in one device. I have no idea why anyone would want two optical drives mounted inside a MacPro unless they had no memory or something ƒ. That leaves room under the optical (BR/DVD/CD) drive for two full sized drives (connected to SATA) and then of course the 4 full sized sled-bays.

ƒ - If the person is copying/cloning buttloads of optical media they can do so hands free without tying up their computer by selecting appropriate and inexpensive stand-alone hardware.

Click to expand...

I want two optical devices I want to be able to rip and burn at the same time, BluRay and DVD. My way gives me two optical's and 5 SATA ports. I have a RAID card coming so that will change to a total of 10 SATA ports

Tesselator said:

Neodym,
Real world experience shows all of your counter-points to be lacking. I know like everyone else here, that those are the standard arguing points. But they're not actually true (for 90% of users) when one applies common sense and real-world experience. The other 10% are database freaks...

.

Click to expand...

Say what? I think you've lost yo mind fella. Applications, OS's, etc. are made up of tons of small files. This requires a LOT of seeking to find each and every one of them. A mechanical hard drive takes over 10ms to find each file. An SSD is almost instantaneous (less than 1ms) thus meaning that each file is available now. This is the exact reason why, during reboot, an SSD will start a computer in HALF the time mechanical drives can. It has nothing to do with maximum read speeds. Even an SSD during bootup, will not hit it's maximum read speeds because it isn't reading large files sequential files, it is reading a ton of little files located throughout the drive. I've personally compared RAID 0 w/ 7200 rpm drives to an older SSD (a couple years back) and the performance was night and day.

IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH DATABASES.

If there was no real world benefit, why would almost every review site recommend SSD's as the #1 best upgrade you can do to increase day to day (not gaming) productivity?

GermanyChris,
Yeah, I suppose... if "ripping and burning" is what you do with your mac pro then I guess you would know best how to go about it.



paulrbeers,
Nope no loss of grey-matter here... I just took the time to actually test it. Sure if 10 seconds at boot time and NO OTHER speed-ups are what's important to you then you may be right. I went so far as to place the OS (10.7.4 stuffed with apps and add-ons to the tune of 900GB) on a slow drive connected via USB 2.0. Guess what, yup, in the real world there are no practical performance differences - when the caches are appropriately set up as prescribed by Apple and almost all 3rd party venders. So while all these number sound great and sell lots of SSDs it's mostly just BS. BTW we're NOT talking about an SSD vs a single rotational media device ya know. The RAID0 is less than 10s behind a fast SSD for restarts.

Tesselator said:

GermanyChris,
Yeah, I suppose... if "ripping and burning" is what you do with your mac pro then I guess you would know best how to go about it.

Click to expand...

Not ready to go optical less yet.

GermanyChris said:

Not ready to go optical less yet.

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Me neither. It's just not what I do with a workstation (AKA MacPro).

On the side topic of going optical-less I guess that's nearly upon us now however. CD and DVD sales and rentals (here in Japan anyway) are at about 10% of what they were about 10 years ago. Yet movie and music consumption is up overall by a little over 30% from that same time period <shrug>. I guess DVDs and CDs are going the way of the liquorice pizza.

Tesselator said:

GermanyChris,
Yeah, I suppose... if "ripping and burning" is what you do with your mac pro then I guess you would know best how to go about it.



paulrbeers,
Nope no loss of grey-matter here... I just took the time to actually test it. Sure if 10 seconds at boot time and NO OTHER speed-ups are what's important to you then you may be right. I went so far as to place the OS (10.7.4 stuffed with apps and add-ons to the tune of 900GB) on a slow drive connected via USB 2.0. Guess what, yup, in the real world there are no practical performance differences - when the caches are appropriately set up as prescribed by Apple and almost all 3rd party venders. So while all these number sound great and sell lots of SSDs it's mostly just BS. BTW we're NOT talking about an SSD vs a single rotational media device ya know. The RAID0 is less than 10s behind a fast SSD for restarts.

Click to expand...

It's also not about just fast restarts, applications load up in fractions of the time. Thumbnails in applications like iPhoto and Aperture load up faster because all of the files are more readily available. Even pulling up websites out of your cache is faster. Why? Because these are all items that rely on lots of smaller files being accessed. Something Mechanical drives do NOT do well. No matter what RAID/speed mechanical drives run at, they CAN NOT overcome the amount of time it takes them to seek and file the files. The more small files you access, the greater an SSD will overcome the difference of a Mechanical drive. Let's also not forget that RAID 0 increases your failure rate exponentially so if that's what it takes to "sort of" get what you can get out of an SSD it just doens't seem worth it.

I applaud your devotion, but "You, my friend, are all that's left of their religion"...

Edit: It would also be helpful if you would learn how to properly quote people when having a discussion so we can be alerted to a response. I only came into this thread to add to my original response when I saw you had "sorta" responded.