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Can I do anything to upgrade my Mac Pro set up? Specs inside.

silvergts1998

silvergts1998

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 11, 2008
47
3
Here's my set up.

2 X 3 GHZ Quad-Core Xeon
10GB 800 MHZ DDR2 FB-DIMM
4- 1 TB Western Digital Hard Drives
1- USB 1 TB external Hard Drive

I replaced my original 500 GB hard drive that came with my system from Apple with the Western Digital 1 TB. I notice that the Western Digital Hard Drive is much noisier than what I had before. has anyone else experienced this?

What should I get for my main OS drive? I want speed and quietness in the drive with reliability.

Can my Memory be upgraded to something faster in my system?

I notice that my computer seems to be a little slower and not sure if that has to do with all the hard drives I have on the computer.


Thanks for the advice.
 
How about a faster boot drive?

I have a WD VelociRaptor and it made a huge difference in boot times, application launches and opening large files.
 
silvergts1998 said:
Here's my set up.

2 X 3 GHZ Quad-Core Xeon
10GB 800 MHZ DDR2 FB-DIMM
4- 1 TB Western Digital Hard Drives
1- USB 1 TB external Hard Drive

I replaced my original 500 GB hard drive that came with my system from Apple with the Western Digital 1 TB. I notice that the Western Digital Hard Drive is much noisier than what I had before. has anyone else experienced this?

What should I get for my main OS drive? I want speed and quietness in the drive with reliability.

Can my Memory be upgraded to something faster in my system?

I notice that my computer seems to be a little slower and not sure if that has to do with all the hard drives I have on the computer.


Thanks for the advice.
Click to expand...

Can you do anything to upgrade your Mac Pro set up?
Not considering cost at all and keeping the same basic configuration:

Add an SSD as boot.
Go to the 2TB drives (the Green 2TB are actually faster than the Black 1TB)
Get a better CL grade RAM and faster overspec'd refresh ratings can actually help a little.
Get more memory: 12GB is nice (nicer) I think and many apps will go a little faster.
Get NAS or eSATA to replace the USB External.

If it's a 2008 machine you can also overclock it with that ZDNet overclocker for free. It doesn't work in earlier macs tho - it just messes things up.

There's also Speed Freak (about half way down the page) and CPU Speed Accelerator but I can't notice any difference (AT ALL) when using them.
 
The type of drives I have are:

WD Caviar Black 1 TB, SATA 3 Gb/s, 32 MB Cache, 7200 RPM, dual processors.
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=488

I figured this drive would be a good one.

I notice when I am using IMovie and I try to do some editing, I hear the hard drive working and then all of a sudden imovie 09 shuts down. It seems like when there's a kind of a load on the computer with this program it doesn't do too well at times. With 10 gig of ram, I would think that is plenty! Am I wrong?

Here's the video I shot and made. Nothing fancy..it's about 2 minutes long.

http://www.vimeo.com/4622114

I just got the canon 5D MKII and was playing with the HD portion of it. So I don't know if that was too much for my computer to handle?


Are the solid states drives that much faster? Are they worth the money? If so I would buy one. But how much of a difference are we talking here?
 
silvergts1998 said:
The type of drives I have are:

WD Caviar Black 1 TB, SATA 3 Gb/s, 32 MB Cache, 7200 RPM, dual processors.
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=488

I figured this drive would be a good one.

I notice when I am using IMovie and I try to do some editing, I hear the hard drive working and then all of a sudden imovie 09 shuts down. It seems like when there's a kind of a load on the computer with this program it doesn't do too well at times. With 10 gig of ram, I would think that is plenty! Am I wrong?
Click to expand...

iMovie09 is flakey. It's not your hardware it's extremely unstable code. Apple blew chunks with iMovie09.

Here's the video I shot and made. Nothing fancy..it's about 2 minutes long.

http://www.vimeo.com/4622114
Click to expand...

Nice grouping!

I just got the canon 5D MKII and was playing with the HD portion of it. So I don't know if that was too much for my computer to handle?
Click to expand...

No. Any mac pro from 2006 on should be very fine for that.


Are the solid states drives that much faster? Are they worth the money? If so I would buy one. But how much of a difference are we talking here?
Click to expand...

They are about the same speed as a 3 drive RAID0 or a 2-drive RAID0 with fast or short-stroked drives. Where they shine the most is access speed. A RAID0 with 3 drives is probably like 10ms or something even tho the individual drives are around 5 or 6ms. SSD's are 0ms. :) So, where there's lots of small files (like the OS) they really fly. For video I think they're probably no better than a RAID0 set up and worse if you consider how small they are.
 
Tesselator said:
iMovie09 is flakey. It's not your hardware it's extremely unstable code. Apple blew chunks with iMovie09.



Nice grouping!



No. Any mac pro from 2006 on should be very fine for that.




They are about the same speed as a 3 drive RAID0 or a 2-drive RAID0 with fast or short-stroked drives. Where they shine the most is access speed. A RAID0 with 3 drives is probably like 10ms or something even tho the individual drived are around 5 or 6ms. SSD's are 0ms. :) So, where there's lots of small files (like the OS) they really fly. For video I think they're probably no better than a RAID0 set up and worse if you consider how small they are.
Click to expand...


So iMovie09 is flakey? That's not good, but good to know! I thought it was my computer pooping out on me! Phew!!! I love my mac pro.

So with my 4 tB hard drives internal can I do a raid set up? If so how? If not what do I need to do to make it happen? Based what you see, are the drives I have now junk? Mediocre? Good?

THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR RESPONSE AND ADVICE!!!!!
 
silvergts1998 said:
So iMovie09 is flakey? That's not good, but good to know! I thought it was my computer pooping out on me! Phew!!! I love my mac pro.

So with my 4 tB hard drives internal can I do a raid set up? If so how? If not what do I need to do to make it happen? Based what you see, are the drives I have now junk? Mediocre? Good?

THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR RESPONSE AND ADVICE!!!!!
Click to expand...

You want RAID 0. Here's the instructions:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2559
 
Tesselator said:
iMovie09 is flakey. It's not your hardware it's extremely unstable code. Apple blew chunks with iMovie09.
Click to expand...

He's right... go get FCP or Express if on a budget. I end up taking my 5D2 footage to prores and it screams right along my MP, and I have 2 gig ram less.

I don't even mess with faster drives, but I think when Snow Leopard comes out, I may just revamp my HD situation.
 
I'd pull out 2 Gb of Ram how do you have this etup if it's 4x2Gb + 2 x 1Gb, i'd rip out the 2x1Gb and sell them on flea bay.

Max Upgrades max_flow for 800 MHz FB DIMMs (http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&Product_ID=174)

Buy an Intel® X25-M SSD as your boot drive

Buy a NewerTech eSATA Extender Cable
http://www.newertech.com/products/esata_cable.php

and then a esata external HD case case and put your leftover 1Tb Western digital in there (OWC Mercury Elite-AL "Quad Interface" eSATA, FireWire 400/800
+USB2 Combo Drive Enclosure for SATA Hard Drives)

Maybe wait for the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 confirmed for June release?
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/693969/
 
jnc said:
Software update includes an iMovie update... I'd try it, but I'm not moving to 10.5.7 yet.
Click to expand...

iMovie09 has not changed. Some underlying system files do to with video playback were tho. So I guess iMovie will be as much or more crashy as before.
 
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