What year is this Mac Pro?

[dexum175]

http://newyork.craigslist.org/que/sys/3540532430.html

Looking to buy from this guy on craigslist like right now, but just want to know what year it is the guy said it's 207??? Mac Pro never looked this good in year 207 haha

[SandboxGeneral]

Originally Posted by dexum175

http://newyork.craigslist.org/que/sys/3540532430.html

Looking to buy from this guy on craigslist like right now, but just want to know what year it is the guy said it's 207??? Mac Pro never looked this good in year 207 haha

My best guess from his description, given the graphics card and Xeon CPU, is that it's a Mac Pro 2,1 (Early 2007). I recommend getting the app MacTracker to help you identify it, which is what I did. Then I'd call or email the seller asking for more specifics.

[simsaladimbamba]

It is the Mac Pro 2,1, an eight-core Mac.

PS: And while it is nice to get all that software with that Mac, you will unlikely get any of the licenses, as they alone are worth the asking price, thus you can just pirate them yourself.

Mac2Sell, Gazelle or eBay (Việt Nam, Türkiye, Česká republika, Hanguk) might be good price checkers.

[SandboxGeneral]

Originally Posted by simsaladimbamba

It is the Mac Pro 1,1 from 2006, it was discontinued in 2008, since Apple did not release any new Mac Pro models in 2007, except the Mac Pro 2,1, an eight-core Mac.

PS: And while it is nice to get all that software with that Mac, you will unlikely get any of the licenses, as they alone are worth the asking price, thus you can just pirate them yourself.

Mac2Sell, Gazelle or eBay (Việt Nam, Türkiye, Česká republika, Hanguk) might be good price checkers.

Just curious, how can you tell it's a 1,1 vs. a 2,1 given the Craigslist description?

[simsaladimbamba]

Originally Posted by SandboxGeneral

Just curious, how can you tell it's a 1,1 vs. a 2,1 given the Craigslist description?

Sorry, the subject of the sale said it was a quad core, the description said it was an eight core, but what got my focus in the description were the offered software suites, thus I ignored the "eight core" in the description. I edited my original reply, and I am now going to eat something with pasta.

[dexum175]

Originally Posted by simsaladimbamba

It is the Mac Pro 2,1, an eight-core Mac.

PS: And while it is nice to get all that software with that Mac, you will unlikely get any of the licenses, as they alone are worth the asking price, thus you can just pirate them yourself.

Mac2Sell, Gazelle or eBay (Việt Nam, Türkiye, Česká republika, Hanguk) might be good price checkers.

Cheers, no I don't care about the software, I'll be making it my own... and if it's the 2006 or even 2007 model I'm not buying.

[SandboxGeneral]

Originally Posted by simsaladimbamba

Sorry, the subject of the sale said it was a quad core, the description said it was an eight core, but what got my focus in the description were the offered software suites, thus I ignored the "eight core" in the description. I edited my original reply, and I am now going to eat something with pasta.

Haha! I like your edited post comment!

[PowerPCMacMan]

The 2,1 and 1,1 share the same case design.. You can tell the difference between the Harpertown 3,1 mac pro by the way the memory risers are set up. If you see a horizontal bar dividing the two risers, then its a 3,1 Mac Pro, or Harpertown.. Clovertown and Woodcrest use similar case designs where the memory area does NOT have this horizontal bar dividing the two riser boards..

[Omnius]

Originally Posted by dexum175

http://newyork.craigslist.org/que/sys/3540532430.html

Looking to buy from this guy on craigslist like right now, but just want to know what year it is the guy said it's 207??? Mac Pro never looked this good in year 207 haha

We've had a few threads about this. It seems this is more common in New York State than in most places but people are loading 1,1 and 2,1 mac pros with pirated software and asking very high prices. The sellers tend to know very little about the mac pros themself and often make misleading statements.

Among the common misleading statements are:

"It has the max possible ram" or "the ram has been maxed out" - (they really mean the ram slots are full with small amounts of ram ie: random ram that totals to far less than the max supported ram)

They almost always claim the mac pro has Mountain lion when it really only has lion (in the case of early mac pros, mountain lion isn't even supported). Or they claim if they know something about macs, they claim it has snow leopard but it actually has leopard.

"it has $4000 worth of the best design software possible, a design studio's dream!" - If they won't include the dvds or appropriate licensing documentation, don't buy it.
Also, only a fool wouldn't reset a hard drive to factory standards before selling it and a fool wouldn't reset a hard drive to factory before buying it.

"Tons of blazing fast hard drive space!" - almost always a couple TB of failing 5400 rpm hds.

blah blah blah super fast GPU - Generally bad gpus, failing gpus, incompatible gpus, or just the factory gpu.

Of course, like half of all craigslist ads claim a computer is very snappy or very fast. Rarely is this the case.

Almost everyone claims a 1,1 mac pro they're selling is actually a 2009 or 2010.

They often mislead about the number of cores.

It's a mac pro! (it's actually an old G5)



Really a lot of this comes down to the fact that many mac pro buyers on craigslist are not well versed with computers and not pro users. People are attempting to take advantage of the ignorant.

http://buffalo.craigslist.org/sys/3560670939.html

This guy claims its maxed ram but he's got random low increment chips (random ram totaling 9gb). He claims it runs mountain lion but its running lion (as per the picture). He claims it has 2 blue ray drives but he has 1 factory super drive and 1 blue ray drive (as per the picture). None of the software comes with any documentation to support its properly licensed. He claimed it was a 2009 or 2010 model, it's actually a 1,1. A few weeks ago he was asking $3,000 for it.

Be VERY VERY careful when dealing with mac pros for sale on craigslist. They seem to be the item people are looking to take advantage of others with.

Ask questions, be suspicious. Ask for more screenshots from the system report. I occasionally will contact a person from 2 email addresses. I will ask different types of questions. 9 times out of 10, if you suspect something is wrong, something is very wrong.

[thekev]

I'd emphasize once again this is worth nowhere near the asking price, and you'd have to be quite ignorant to pay more for preinstalled pirated software. Let me put it this way. I wouldn't want pirated apps, so I wouldn't pay extra for them. If you don't mind them being pirated, why wouldn't you save money and locate them yourself? I'm not advocating piracy. It's just really stupid to pay for clearly pirated software in either circumstance (again just making a point). Even legitimate software is not always legally transferable.

Originally Posted by Omnius

We've had a few threads about this. It seems this is more common in New York State than in most places but people are loading 1,1 and 2,1 mac pros with pirated software and asking very high prices. The sellers tend to know very little about the mac pros themself and often make misleading statements.

It's common in LA too. If it's an 8 core it's definitely a 2007 judging by the gpu. Those aren't worth $1300. At that price point, it should be an 8 core 3,1 or quad 4,1. As you mention, some scumbag is just loading it with pirated software to push up the price. I hate people like that. I don't believe the owners are that ignorant. My bet is on them being jerks.

[Yebubbleman]

Originally Posted by dexum175

http://newyork.craigslist.org/que/sys/3540532430.html

Looking to buy from this guy on craigslist like right now, but just want to know what year it is the guy said it's 207??? Mac Pro never looked this good in year 207 haha

He was obviously missing the extra zero from the year. This Mac Pro was a high-end CTO model that was tacked onto the first (1,1) generation of Mac Pro sometime in 2007. It's still a beast, but it's limited to only being able to run the latest version of OS X 10.7 Lion, which is fine for today while it is only one version of OS X behind the current, but when 10.9 eventually comes out, support for that machine will start to drop in a lot of places. I don't know that I'd spend that much money on one. I'd probably rather put that same money into a baseline Early 2008 (3,1) model as that one will at least take any of the modern Mac Pro video cards (from either NVIDIA or ATI) as well as support Mountain Lion, and perhaps even OS X 10.9.

Originally Posted by SandboxGeneral

Just curious, how can you tell it's a 1,1 vs. a 2,1 given the Craigslist description?

It's an 8-core 3.0GHz Mac Pro that comes with a GeForce 7300 GT; the 1,1 was never offered in an 8-core configuration, whereas the 2,1 matches that description perfectly. See Mactracker for more details.

[SandboxGeneral]

Originally Posted by Yebubbleman

It's an 8-core 3.0GHz Mac Pro that comes with a GeForce 7300 GT; the 1,1 was never offered in an 8-core configuration, whereas the 2,1 matches that description perfectly. See Mactracker for more details.

Did you see post #2 in this thread? That's precisely what I said and recommended to the OP. However, thank you for confirming my guess on the version though.

[dexum175]

Originally Posted by Omnius

We've had a few threads about this. It seems this is more common in New York State than in most places but people are loading 1,1 and 2,1 mac pros with pirated software and asking very high prices. The sellers tend to know very little about the mac pros themself and often make misleading statements.

Among the common misleading statements are:

"It has the max possible ram" or "the ram has been maxed out" - (they really mean the ram slots are full with small amounts of ram ie: random ram that totals to far less than the max supported ram)

They almost always claim the mac pro has Mountain lion when it really only has lion (in the case of early mac pros, mountain lion isn't even supported). Or they claim if they know something about macs, they claim it has snow leopard but it actually has leopard.

"it has $4000 worth of the best design software possible, a design studio's dream!" - If they won't include the dvds or appropriate licensing documentation, don't buy it.
Also, only a fool wouldn't reset a hard drive to factory standards before selling it and a fool wouldn't reset a hard drive to factory before buying it.

"Tons of blazing fast hard drive space!" - almost always a couple TB of failing 5400 rpm hds.

blah blah blah super fast GPU - Generally bad gpus, failing gpus, incompatible gpus, or just the factory gpu.

Of course, like half of all craigslist ads claim a computer is very snappy or very fast. Rarely is this the case.

Almost everyone claims a 1,1 mac pro they're selling is actually a 2009 or 2010.

They often mislead about the number of cores.

It's a mac pro! (it's actually an old G5)



Really a lot of this comes down to the fact that many mac pro buyers on craigslist are not well versed with computers and not pro users. People are attempting to take advantage of the ignorant.

http://buffalo.craigslist.org/sys/3560670939.html

This guy claims its maxed ram but he's got random low increment chips (random ram totaling 9gb). He claims it runs mountain lion but its running lion (as per the picture). He claims it has 2 blue ray drives but he has 1 factory super drive and 1 blue ray drive (as per the picture). None of the software comes with any documentation to support its properly licensed. He claimed it was a 2009 or 2010 model, it's actually a 1,1. A few weeks ago he was asking $3,000 for it.

Be VERY VERY careful when dealing with mac pros for sale on craigslist. They seem to be the item people are looking to take advantage of others with.

Ask questions, be suspicious. Ask for more screenshots from the system report. I occasionally will contact a person from 2 email addresses. I will ask different types of questions. 9 times out of 10, if you suspect something is wrong, something is very wrong.

Yes great input!, I'm looking else where this guy has no clue about the computer, can't trust it.

[Omnius]

While there are still specialized reasons to use old model mac pros, consider that often a modern mac mini can thoroughly outperform old model mac pros. Factor in the insane cost of ram for the old pro models and the lack of a future, they're an investment for people doing very specific work.

Realistically, it's not worth spending the money for the vast majority of users(even many pro users) to get an old mac pro unless it's cheap or heavily upgraded.

[TheEasterBunny]

Originally Posted by Omnius

While there are still specialized reasons to use old model mac pros, consider that often a modern mac mini can thoroughly outperform old model mac pros. Factor in the insane cost of ram for the old pro models and the lack of a future, they're an investment for people doing very specific work.

Realistically, it's not worth spending the money for the vast majority of users(even many pro users) to get an old mac pro unless it's cheap or heavily upgraded.

To a degree I agree with you. Providing the mini's are newer than the pro by 2 years or more.
I have 2 C2D mini's one is a 2.0Ghz, and the other is a 1.83 both are 2007 (2,1).
I was considering a purchase of a faster Mac. I choose a Mac pro 2006 (1,1). I could have gotten a mini with an i7 and full ram and it would have been about $1200.00.
The Pro was $300.00 is easily 4 times faster than the mini's even if i took the ram to 32GB's (way more than I need) the Pro would still come in at 700.00.
I work with images mostly, with PS. I do not need, nor want 10.8. If I do decide I want 10.8 or higher I can use a variety of boot loaders.
After struggling to upgrade my mini's HD to a SSD, and upgrading it's RAM, with all the dis-assembly to access these components, I am ecstatic with the Mac Pro choice.

[thekev]

Originally Posted by TheEasterBunny

To a degree I agree with you. Providing the mini's are newer than the pro by 2 years or more.
I have 2 C2D mini's one is a 2.0Ghz, and the other is a 1.83 both are 2007 (2,1).
I was considering a purchase of a faster Mac. I choose a Mac pro 2006 (1,1). I could have gotten a mini with an i7 and full ram and it would have been about $1200.00.

In the US you should be able to get a 4,1 mac pro within $1200. The 2,1 mentioned here started out over $4000, so sellers want them to still be worth something. The reality is that the machine should have justified its cost after a few years even with a residual value of $0. Otherwise they spent too much initially.

[Omnius]

Originally Posted by thekev

In the US you should be able to get a 4,1 mac pro within $1200. The 2,1 mentioned here started out over $4000, so sellers want them to still be worth something. The reality is that the machine should have justified its cost after a few years even with a residual value of $0. Otherwise they spent too much initially.

This is quite true. Generally speaking pro users selling an old machine are just trying offset the cost of a newer machine. You can't blame them for trying to lessen the cost, but it's problematic that so many are unreasonable, untrustworthy, dishonest or blatantly trying to screw people.

Before the latest iteration of consumer grade macs came out, there was still a vocal minority advocating that 1,1 and 2,1 mac pros have a worth around 600-900 despite the clear drop down to the 300-400 range. However, since the latest imacs and minis have come out and are really showcasing superior tech, it's hard to find anyone that is familiar with mac pros that are seriously arguing that the old models are worth more than 300-400. The old pros and really all of the older intel macs are now seriously showing their age. They're not worthless, but you have to factor in their age.

Old G5s are now selling for around as much or only a little more than the cost of their case. At some point, it's very reasonable to assume the old mac pros will reach that point too.

[thekev]

Originally Posted by Omnius

This is quite true. Generally speaking pro users selling an old machine are just trying offset the cost of a newer machine. You can't blame them for trying to lessen the cost, but it's problematic that so many are unreasonable, untrustworthy, dishonest or blatantly trying to screw people.

I don't spite anyone who is reasonable and doesn't attempt to push old hardware by loading it with pirated software. I forgot to mention, what I meant by $0 wasn't that the older ones are worthless. It was that assuming a rational purchase decision, the total value should have been justified as a purchase without having to count on residuals to consider it a successful purchase. I think computers can be a bit volatile to bet on high residuals, so I tend to discourage that practice.

Originally Posted by Omnius

Before the latest iteration of consumer grade macs came out, there was still a vocal minority advocating that 1,1 and 2,1 mac pros have a worth around 600-900 despite the clear drop down to the 300-400 range. However, since the latest imacs and minis have come out and are really showcasing superior tech, it's hard to find anyone that is familiar with mac pros that are seriously arguing that the old models are worth more than 300-400. The old pros and really all of the older intel macs are now seriously showing their age. They're not worthless, but you have to factor in their age.

Old G5s are now selling for around as much or only a little more than the cost of their case. At some point, it's very reasonable to assume the old mac pros will reach that point too.

Yeah I haven't tried to calculate reasonable cost or the pricing they'll move recently. It's just that if you're going to spend a lot, it should be a 4,1. That might actually be able to use newer gpus going forward, and some people on here have successfully upgraded them to 6 or 12 core versions. In this case it's a 2,1. I think if you were going to spend north of $1000, it should be on something newer that will retain official support on the latest software. The other problem is that the old ones come with unknown history. Buying a used computer isn't the same as buying a new warrantied one that uses older parts, even if hardware failure rates are likely lower on desktops in most cases (G5 era aside).

[Phildo]

Originally Posted by thekev

Yeah I haven't tried to calculate reasonable cost or the pricing they'll move recently. It's just that if you're going to spend a lot, it should be a 4,1.

This.

The price on the Craigslist Mac Pro is currently $1,300. That's a lot of dollars for a 2006 or 2007 Mac Pro.

You can find a 2009 4,1 for that price easily enough.

Heck, you can currently get a refurb 2010 with warranty on the AppleStore for $1,819. Or, a 2012 3.2GHz for a few hundred more. Link.