Debating about 1,1 CPU Upgrade(5335)

[bunnspecial]

In doing some reading, one of the popular CPU swaps for the 1,1 seems to be to change out the original 5150s(2.66ghz dual core) for 5335s(2.0ghz Quad Core).

I have a couple of IBM rackmounts gathering dust, so have a matched pair of 5335s readily at my disposal. Looking at the spec sheet and comparing the 5150s to the 5335s, it looks like I get double the L2(8mb vs 4mb) although I would presume that this is related to the fact that it's also double the number of cores. Of course, that comes at a loss of clock speed.

For the most part, I don't do a lot of "heavy lifting" with my 1,1-its mostly used for word processing/Excel and web browsing. I do use Adobe Lightroom a fair bit, though, which is where I seem to notice the most bottleneck and lag(the adjustments/sliders aren't as instantaneous as they are on my MBP), so would do the swap if I would see the benefit in this particular application.

I suppose that-in the worst case-I could just do the swap and evaluate it myself since I already have the processors on hand.

On the other hand, from what I've seen the 5300 series processors seem to be dirt cheap across the board now.

In my searching, I haven't found any specific references to quad-core processors that are close to or faster than 2.66ghz. That would seem to be ideal since(theoretically) I shouldn't see any loss in performance for the single-threaded applications I use frequently but would also get the benefit of more cores for multi-threaded applications. I'm assuming that LR could take advantage of more cores.

Can anyone who has done this exact swap(5150 to 5335) comment on it? In addition, could anyone suggest a quad-core that will at least come close to 2.66 and work without too much trouble?

 

[orph]

hay, you can get faster CPU's if want.
check activity monitor and see what your bottle neck is before doing anything like installing lower clocked CPU's.

sounds like most the tasks you do want a higher clock speed, RAM or SSD rather than more cores.

 

[bunnspecial]

hay, you can get faster CPU's if want.
check activity monitor and see what your bottle neck is before doing anything like installing lower clocked CPU's.

sounds like most the tasks you do want a higher clock speed, RAM or SSD rather than more cores.

Thanks-

I should mention that I'm currently running everything off an SSD and have 16gb of RAM.

I rarely see anything maxing in Activity Monitor. I leave the CPU usage graph on my dock all the time. Admittedly, though, I don't think I've ever payed attention to it when using Lightroom-a time when I probably should since that's where my bottleneck with the system seems to be.

 

[cw48494]

You could be like me and buy a set of e5320 for $6 and BSEL them for 2.33ghz effective clock speeds; I'm still waiting to nail a set of e5350 but they are hard to find due to being an engineering sample chip, I would love the 3.33ghz effective clock speed after a simple BSEL.

 

[orph]

unless you relay want to bring new life to you 1.1 it might be worth thinking about a newer computer maybe a mac min on ebay with an i5?

dont drop to a lower Ghz CPU with out a relay good reason even if you get more cores.

 

[bunnspecial]

unless you relay want to bring new life to you 1.1 it might be worth thinking about a newer computer maybe a mac min on ebay with an i5?

dont drop to a lower Ghz CPU with out a relay good reason even if you get more cores.

"Buy a new computer" is not an answer that I come on this forum to get. If I wanted to hear that, I'd go on any of the other fora on this site where that is the standard response. I have been under the impression that most folks here are here to keep getting the most we can out of our current hardware-not just get a new(and virtually unupgradeable) computer.

I have a mid-2012 15' MBP(non-Retina) with an i7 and 16gb of RAM.

I want to continue using the Mac Pro form factor for my work computer because I prefer the(internal) expandability of it for things like hard drives(i.e. I love having an internal time machine drive).

I was asking-specifically-in this thread if what amount to a free upgrade(aside from time) for me would be worthwhile-and it sounds like it's not.

 

[dfritchie]

Generally the newer processors have better optimizations over the older ones. Doubt you would see much difference between 2 and 2.66Ghz. i just put 5365's in my 1,1 because Handbrake will use all the cores you can give it. Made a huge difference in video encode times. Was well worth the $80 it cost me. In normal use upping to 3 Ghz is not real noticeable until you start using something that really hits the cpu's.

 

[VAGDesign]

I would recommend a matching pair of 5355. They use less power than 5365, they are cheaper and you have an 8 core Mac Pro that runs everything decent with SSD and 16GB RAM.

I bought 18 months ago a matching pair from eBay for $30 on a sale from somebody who sells server parts.

So unless you go to max-out going to 5365 (3GHz) I think going to 5355 (2,66GHz) is more wise regarding temps/wattage/cost.

 

[bunnspecial]

I would recommend a matching pair of 5355. They use less power than 5365, they are cheaper and you have an 8 core Mac Pro that runs everything decent with SSD and 16GB RAM.

I bought 18 months ago a matching pair from eBay for $30 on a sale from somebody who sells server parts.

So unless you go to max-out going to 5365 (3GHz) I think going to 5355 (2,66GHz) is more wise regarding temps/wattage/cost.

Thanks for the suggestion on those.

They look like an idea solution-I can retain my current single core performance but get a big benefit in instances where I can take advantage of multi-core performance.

I too found them for $~30 a pair on Ebay, so that's most likely the route I'll go with.

 

[IowaLynn]

Not cheap and unless you have those SSDs on PCIe SATA III, the blade form factor with adapter do give the highest I/O which does help, use the one 8x PCIe slot with XP941 or newer SM951 (256GB not 128GB, or 512GB), prices are much better now too vs a year ago.

 

[orph]

sorry i did not mean to offend, you have a 4 cores at 2.6ghz im not shore that putting in cpu's that are only 2ghz (even if you move up to 8 cores) will give you a speed up in the tasks mentioned.
if you want a upgrade look at CPU's with a faster GHZ rating like the 3GHZ chips mentioned, for most tasks a faster cpu will just be faster..

unless you are looking at something like video rendering or 3D work (how often will you be using handbrake?) where more cores can help, even then a lot of tasks are still single or dual core locked.

on ebay i see a pair of "MATCHED PAIR Intel Xeon CPU X5365 SLAED 3Ghz/8m/1333 SOCKET 771 for Mac Pro 1,1" for £57

an cheep ssd may help,

 

[bunnspecial]

After a few small issues, I did the 2,1 EFI upgrade and then installed a pair of 5355s(quad 2.66ghz). It was also a good chance to get all the dust bunnies out of it, too.

I've been working on this computer for about 3 months, and think I finally have it to a point where I'm mostly content with it.

All said and done, here are my upgrades:

256gb SSD
2TB internal WD Black-half for storage and half for time machine
16gb RAM(from 6gb)
8800GT/1GB from MacVidCards
2x Quad Core

The only thing really left to do is to upgrade the SMC to 2,1-I'm told that this will fix the jet engine wake from sleep that I'm currently getting.

I'm running 10.9 on it. It's more than capable of 10.10 or 10.11, but I still prefer 10.9.

The system still "feels" quite new. I get a lot of compliments on it-I have dual 23" aluminum Cinemas hooked up to it, so it's aesthetically quite attractive, and everyone who uses it is surprised by how fast it is. They're even more surprised when I tell them it's nearing 10 years old. I think this computer still has a LOT of life left in it.

BTW, as an interesting side note I have a random 80gb SATA drive in the computer. It was from an old Dell, and the owner asked me to recover the data as the computer had died. I've been meaning to reformat it and use it for something(I don't know what) but it's mostly just been sitting there.

I inadvertently left the SSD out at one point yesterday while working. I hit the power button, and was quite surprised to see the computer booting into Windows XP! Unfortunately, I didn't get too far-the hardware configuration had obviously changed quite drastically which causes XP to require re-activation. I also had no mouse and keyboard support. I work with Macs so much that I forget that you can't swap drives around in Windows and have everything work perfectly like you can with a Mac. I've been known to boot my first-gen Mini via a Powerbook running Leopard in TDM-all Leopard installs are universal unless they've specifically been modified otherwise, and early Intel machines can boot off APM drives.

 

[VAGDesign]

Only with Windows 8.1 and 10 you can swap HDDs and they work as Mac OS X. I have tried it some months ago when I upgraded my PC from a Quad Intel setup to an AMD FX 8-core. I pressed the button and booted right up!

Congratulations for the upgrade I'm glad I gave you the 5355 idea and it worked ;-)

 

[orph]

sounds like the upgrade worked well I'm relay happy for you.

might be worth getting a external drive for backups, just in case.
always good to have backups separate from live data (I keep a double redundancy backup system when i can).

and might be worth looking at newer GPU's something like a silent gt 640 or gt 740 the 8800's are meant to be a tad loud (iv got a GTX660 there relay cheep now on eBay & the GTX760's cost about the same price).

 

[bunnspecial]

Thanks guys. I haven't had TOO much time to play with it as it's my office computer and I'm on vacation until the middle of next week.

My office is a bit of an Apple museum(I have a mini Localtalk network including a 512Ke, Q700, beige G3, and B&W G3 all hooked up to a Laserwriter, and then bridged to my Quad and Mac Pro so they can also print to the Laserwriter) and the computer fits in really plus is very useable. I write exams and so forth on the Mac Pro(although sometimes I have to use the Quad as I have some PPC-only software and don't want to go back to Snow Leopard on the Mac Pro). I just need to get one of my Cubes in to round out the collection

I kind of hate to upgrade the GPU since I didn't spend a small amount of money on the 8800, and I also like having EFI booting. I may look at that down the road, though. Honestly, with all the other computers running(especially the SGI Octane that I also babysit) I don't even notice the GPU.