2006 Mac pro Questions

[Kipsley]

Hi everyone. I finally got sick of Windows getting worse and worse and I went and bought a Mac Pro. I got it from Ebay for about $400 AUS and it seems great. Very fast, nice and quiet. But... I do have a few questions as I am new to Macs. Last Mac I owned was in 1995.

I am now the proud owner of a Mac Pro (2006) Quad Core 2.66Ghz Xeon 12GB Ram with 1 TB HD and Nvidea GeForce 7300 GT Graphics. A refurbished ex-office machine.

So my questions.

Mac says she is only running on 8GB Ram. Seems one bank is not working. Looked in machine and pulled the slot to see 3 banks, all fitting well. One slightly different to other two (This is the one not working). Working ones are "SMT 4GB DDR II PC 5300 667 Mhz 4096M-FB667 and P6AALO" The bank not working is given as "SMT 4GB DDR II PC 5300 667Mhz ECC 4096M-FB667 and 92025H". So I'm wondering if the "EEC" means it is for a different Mac as I know the year of manufacture seems to be something to watch.

Next is the graphics card. I looked online and it seems the ATI Radeon HD 5770 may boost my graphics a bit, though I am also lead to believe the HD 5870 is still ok to use. Would like an opinion from someone who knows Macs better than I please.

My Mac is running Lion 10.7.5

Thanks guys..... Kipsley

 

[dellar]

Congrats. I bought a 2006 Mac Pro Quad 3.0Ghz mid last year for $400AU from Gumtree with 19GB RAM. I had scored a 30" ACD separately a month before - which is sweet. I still use the stock NVIDIA card. From what I know the memory banks can be temperamental (given the Mac is coming up to a decade old I would think things would start to fray).