How much is reasonable for a Rev A Mac Pro?

[pinnacleseeker]

Hello Everyone,

I'm very interested in purchasing a Rev A. Mac Pro from Ebay. My question is, what is a reasonable price for one of these machines? I realize that different memory configurations, CPU Specs, HD space, and Video Cards could affect the price but in general here is what I am seeing on Ebay:

2 x 2.66 Ghz Dual Core Xeon chips (4 cores total).
between 4 and 8GB memory.
between 250 GB and 1 TB HD Space.
Stock 7300 GT video card 256 MB.

Is it also true that the Rev A Mac Pro's only have PCI Express 1.0? Will this impact video card performance greatly?

FYI, I currently have a bid in for around $1500, how high do you think I should go?

Thanks so much,
Robert

 

[MacVidCards]

Not much higher.

I got my Quad 2.6 on Craigslist...with an X1900XT for $1900 nearly 6 months ago.

Sold the X1900 on EBay and started trying better GPUs.

Craigslist is nice because you can see the machine and go home with it if you like...or walk if you don't.

 

[pinnacleseeker]

Thanks for the reply, there really aren't to many Rev A Mac Pros on Craiglist right now (for my location), but I will definitely keep an eye out.

Could you tell me how satisfied you are with your Rev A Mac Pro?

Thanks,
Robert

 

[Tesselator]

Hello Everyone,

I'm very interested in purchasing a Rev A. Mac Pro from Ebay. My question is, what is a reasonable price for one of these machines? I realize that different memory configurations, CPU Specs, HD space, and Video Cards could affect the price but in general here is what I am seeing on Ebay:

2 x 2.66 Ghz Dual Core Xeon chips (4 cores total).
between 4 and 8GB memory.
between 250 GB and 1 TB HD Space.
Stock 7300 GT video card 256 MB.

FYI, I currently have a bid in for around $1500, how high do you think I should go?

Yeah, that seems good. I don't think I would bid much over that for it though. <shrug> BTW, you can spend another $1K and upgrade it to a full 8 cores at 2.66 if you'd like. I've done it. It works. There's some other more creative upgrade options that will deliver about that speed for less than 1/2 that too. http://www.o0o.it/pro/

BTW, if you do that x5355 upgrade you'll be as fast as the newest MP Apple is charging $3,500 for - at the vast majority of computing tasks.

Is it also true that the Rev A Mac Pro's only have PCI Express 1.0? Will this impact video card performance greatly?

I think I used to know the answer to that but have forgotten. I think not though. You've still got the possibility of two slots at 16x. Here's what that looks like:

• Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT
  Type: Display
  Bus: PCIe
  Slot: Slot-1
  PCIe Lane Width: x16
  VRAM (Total): 256 MB
  Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
  Device ID: 0x0393
  Revision ID: 0x00a1
  ROM Revision: 3008
  
  Displays:
• L246WH:
  Resolution: 1920 x 1200 @ 60 Hz
  Depth: 32-bit Color
  Core Image: Hardware Accelerated
  Main Display: Yes
  Mirror: Off
  Online: Yes
  Quartz Extreme: Supported
  Rotation: Supported
• L246WH:
  Resolution: 1920 x 1200 @ 60 Hz
  Depth: 32-bit Color
  Core Image: Hardware Accelerated
  Mirror: Off
  Online: Yes
  Quartz Extreme: Supported
  Rotation: Supported

You can update to an 8800 on the Nvidia side and I forget what on the ATI side. But both are fast! They're faster on the '08 macs but I guess not a huge difference. Maybe 15% increase over the v1.1 MP. ??? <shrug>

 

[rikoshay]

You've still got the possibility of two slots at 16x.

Nope. In the Rev. 1 Mac Pros only the 1st, or bottom, slot is 16X. The 2008 model came with two. You can look at the Expansion Slot Utility for verification. Go here: HD>System>Library>Core Services>Expansion Slot Utility.

 

[Dark Dragoon]

Is it also true that the Rev A Mac Pro's only have PCI Express 1.0? Will this impact video card performance greatly

The Mac Pro 1.1 does only have PCI Express 1.0/1.1 (can't remember which). This does not impact the performance of the graphics card at all, at-least not on any of the cards Apple supports (in any Mac Pro). It also only has one 16x PCIe slot.

The cards you could upgrade to are the ATI 3870 MAC/PC and the Nvidia 8800 GT for 1st Gen.

Personally I'd skip the ATI X1900 XT card as they need to be cleaned out regularly otherwise they can overheat and die. Hence why I'm running an ATI HD 2600 XT in mine (which is another option).