How much more powerful would this be

[crimsonangel]

I do not currently own a mac but am in love with the OS and really want to buy one. Im not really strapped with cash at the moment and I dont want the mini or an imac. I did some searching on ebay and found a mac pro priced at $1100.

A1186
2x 2.0GHz Dual-Core Xeon (4-core)
1GB RAM
160GB HARD DRIVE
DVDRW - SUPERDRIVE
NVIDIA 7300GT

My current computer is one I built a few years back and its specs are.
AMD athlon 3800+x2
2 gigs ram
Nvidia 9800GT


My other question is in the future would I be able to upgrade the processors that are currently in this mac pro I might buy with quad core ones so I could have 8 cores.

 

[Dan73]

I do not currently own a mac but am in love with the OS and really want to buy one. Im not really strapped with cash at the moment and I dont want the mini or an imac. I did some searching on ebay and found a mac pro priced at $1100.

A1186
2x 2.0GHz Dual-Core Xeon (4-core)
1GB RAM
160GB HARD DRIVE
DVDRW - SUPERDRIVE
NVIDIA 7300GT

My current computer is one I built a few years back and its specs are.
AMD athlon 3800+x2
2 gigs ram
Nvidia 9800GT


My other question is in the future would I be able to upgrade the processors that are currently in this mac pro I might buy with quad core ones so I could have 8 cores.

Well that doesn't seem much like like an upgrade to me... about the same CPU, less RAM and a worse video card... so why would you want it?

I'm not sure about upgrading the CPU, if its not soldered to the motherboard then you can upgrade it. BUT you will NOT be able to upgrade to to i5/i7's (Which have 4 physical, but 8 virtual cores, just saying because there are no chips with 8 cores ) because of a different socket type.

 

[Dark Dragoon]

I'm not sure about upgrading the CPU, if its not soldered to the motherboard then you can upgrade it. BUT you will NOT be able to upgrade to to i5/i7's (Which have 4 physical, but 8 virtual cores, just saying because there are no chips with 8 cores ) because of a different socket type.

That Mac Pro should take two quad core processors, giving it 8 physical cores.
The processors are socketed. For example in this thread the author upgraded to an octo (2 x quad) 2.66GHz.

As for whether it's worth buying a mac Pro 1.1 and then upgrading it, thats a different matter.

 

[crimsonangel]

Well that doesn't seem much like like an upgrade to me... about the same CPU, less RAM and a worse video card... so why would you want it?

I'm not sure about upgrading the CPU, if its not soldered to the motherboard then you can upgrade it. BUT you will NOT be able to upgrade to to i5/i7's (Which have 4 physical, but 8 virtual cores, just saying because there are no chips with 8 cores ) because of a different socket type.

Im more interested in the cpu and the processing power it can provide compared to the cpu im currently running (I would think that these two dual core xenon's would be significantly faster and better for multitasking than my current cpu is. It would be more of a Xeon 5130 vs athlon 3800X2, I would think that a single xenon based on the core2 architecture would perform some deal better than the AMD counterpart. Not to mention this mac would have two 5130's.) Ram would be an easy upgrade and so would the video card. as for upgrading to i5's or i7's im not so much interested at the moment. I think I would have more than enough power upgrading to 2 quads that arent i5's or i7's and If I ever wanted any of the newer model mac pros I could always sell this one and with my upgrades make a good amount of money to found my next purchase.

 

[Qusus]

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