Hey thanks for all of the information and responding! That sounds fantastic. I will go look up the BSEL mod to see if I can deal with the tape job... and see what I can find for cheapie processors. fun fall project!
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
How Old is Your Mac Pro?
- Thread starter TallManNY
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Hey thanks for all of the information and responding! That sounds fantastic. I will go look up the BSEL mod to see if I can deal with the tape job... and see what I can find for cheapie processors. fun fall project!
Bought my 2008 octo 2.8 as soon as they came out. Hard to believe it is almost 5 years old. Still runs just like when I bought it. Other than memory upgrades it has been rock solid . I use it mainly for Photoshop, lightroom and final cut pro. To me the 2008 octo 2.8 was the best value apple has ever offered for a mac pro. Not looking to upgrade anytime soon .
I just recently bought a 2008 Mac Pro, but I'm not a professional.
It sure beats my 2006 iMac, which came with that infamous NVIDIA GPU that failed. This time, if my GPU fails, I can actually fix it. Yeah, making everything hard to get to sure prevents us from messing up our PCs, but it also prevents us from fixing them. The iMac G5 had a way better design, and you could open it very easily and get to every part inside.
It sure beats my 2006 iMac, which came with that infamous NVIDIA GPU that failed. This time, if my GPU fails, I can actually fix it. Yeah, making everything hard to get to sure prevents us from messing up our PCs, but it also prevents us from fixing them. The iMac G5 had a way better design, and you could open it very easily and get to every part inside.
2008 and still running strong. Upgraded memory and video card and it keeps up with the newer models as to speed. Not enough speed improvement on the new ones to spend 6K on a new one. Hoping the NEXT one will be worth it. I've got money burning a hole in my pocket.
Good luck! You won't need it, really, if you follow the online tutorials about how to BSEL and take apart the Mac.
These 1,1 MacPros aren't exactly maximum computers compared to models which can run the current OSX, however they are still strong and competent computers. You can do a lot of heavy duty video/audio/graphic work if they are upgraded. I'm curious how fast they can go with the top-most processors they can house; those are $600 for a pair, maybe more, and probably can't get you over 12,000 Geekbench.
2008 Mac Pro Getting New Life, i.e, iLife
My 2008 Mac Pro 3,1 (see specs in sig below) is still running as well as it did when new though I did have to replace the video card (2600 XT) and logic board under Applecare. No heavy usage - just the usual email, web surfing and personal photo and video stuff using PSE and Premier Elements. I have XP running on Parallels which I needed for work stuff back in '08 but now I'm retired and seldom open it. I'm still running the original 10.5.8 because everything was working great so why upgrade (If it ain't broke, don't fix). When I read on this forum that ML was not supported on Mac Pro models that preceded mine, I decided to take the big plunge and bring my Mac Pro up to ML capable. Next week the Mac goes to my local Apple retailer to get a new 3TB HD with Snow Leopard installed along with iLife 11 so I'll have an almost like-new Mac good for another 4 maybe 5 years. The original HDs with all its apps will remain for use until the day when I've accumulated new apps on the new HD making the old ones redundant. I know most of you on this forum have no qualms about opening the tower and replacing HDs, RAM, cards and boards, but the only thing I feel competent to touch is the keyboard.
My 2008 Mac Pro 3,1 (see specs in sig below) is still running as well as it did when new though I did have to replace the video card (2600 XT) and logic board under Applecare. No heavy usage - just the usual email, web surfing and personal photo and video stuff using PSE and Premier Elements. I have XP running on Parallels which I needed for work stuff back in '08 but now I'm retired and seldom open it. I'm still running the original 10.5.8 because everything was working great so why upgrade (If it ain't broke, don't fix). When I read on this forum that ML was not supported on Mac Pro models that preceded mine, I decided to take the big plunge and bring my Mac Pro up to ML capable. Next week the Mac goes to my local Apple retailer to get a new 3TB HD with Snow Leopard installed along with iLife 11 so I'll have an almost like-new Mac good for another 4 maybe 5 years. The original HDs with all its apps will remain for use until the day when I've accumulated new apps on the new HD making the old ones redundant. I know most of you on this forum have no qualms about opening the tower and replacing HDs, RAM, cards and boards, but the only thing I feel competent to touch is the keyboard.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[I said:
I have the "early 2008", Mac Pro 3.1 , bi-processor 3.2 Mhz, progessively beefed up in Internal drives (4 drawers occupied), PCI Express cards ( 4 eSata outputs , 4 usb3). Last addition : put the system on a 256 GB SSD drive (with AdaptivaDrive bracket converter) yesterday.
Overall extremely satisfied. Runnig now OSX 10.8.2 But I keep Snow Leopard
on one boot volume ( with another for Backup ) because of many programs still requiring Rosetta.
This machine is beginnig to show it's age, though. At startup some relays sometimes fail and make the start abort, so i have to repeat or change to Startup manager, Then it will boot flawlessly.
I hope it will last up to march 2013 where rumors say there will be ( at last) a new generation of Mac Pros.
Mine is a Mac Pro 1,1 bought in 2006. I've replaced the video card - the original was a poor choice by Apple for a "Pro" machine. I've added a PCI card with eSATA ports and connected a dock for bare drives which has Firewire 400/800 and eSATA. Handy since I've filled my internal drive bays. I've always enjoyed booting from various flavors of the OS - some older OSes are friendlier to a few of my important programs and utilities.
I'd successfully used the boot hack with the ML preview and looked forward to doing the same with the release version. Bummer. I don't much care for Lion and don't boot into it often - I'm staying with SL.
When I want/need ML I run it in Parallels where it doesn't seem to mind installing and running in spite of Apple's preemption. I've been with Apple since the Apple ][ so I'm not surprised by their deliberately obsoleting of my main machine - just disappointed.
I'd successfully used the boot hack with the ML preview and looked forward to doing the same with the release version. Bummer. I don't much care for Lion and don't boot into it often - I'm staying with SL.
When I want/need ML I run it in Parallels where it doesn't seem to mind installing and running in spite of Apple's preemption. I've been with Apple since the Apple ][ so I'm not surprised by their deliberately obsoleting of my main machine - just disappointed.
I'm using a 2008 that I bought immediately after it came out, so it is almost 5 years old now. I added a second 1TB drive doubled the RAM, added eSATA and a Radeon 5870. I've upgraded all of my other machines to ML but this one is still running Snow Leopard. I have 10.7 installed on my second disc but almost never boot to it. Its still working fantastically, and the only issue I have ever had is a busted stock graphics card (radeon 2600. I guess there was a recall a couple years back for my exact problem but I never heard about it, so when it died I upgraded).
I will say, after upgrading to CS6, I've noticed a decrease in speed. Lightroom and Premiere Pro almost always use 95% CPU when rendering. Previously I was using Aperture and FCP7 and didn't have these issues, mostly because Aperture doesn't work nearly as hard as lightroom (I'm talking DNG conversions here, lots and lots of DNG conversions) and FCP is 32 bit. So definitely now I'm thinking I need something with a newer gen processor capable of hyper threading.
One other important note: RAM for the 2008 mac pro (800MHz DDR2) is 2x to 3x more expensive than the same quantity of RAM for a 2009 or 2010 box, so although I desperately need to upgrade from 8GB to 16 or 24GB, I have decided instead to just wait for the 2013 rather than continuing to upgrade this machine. If I had a 2009 model, I would probably continue to upgrade it and keep it for the next 3-4 years.
Another note worth thinking about - my late 2011 MacBook Pro (specs in sig) scores about 1000 points higher on geekbench than my mac pro. I still use the desktop for most of my serious work, though. Dual displays and eSATA drives are very time saving
I will say, after upgrading to CS6, I've noticed a decrease in speed. Lightroom and Premiere Pro almost always use 95% CPU when rendering. Previously I was using Aperture and FCP7 and didn't have these issues, mostly because Aperture doesn't work nearly as hard as lightroom (I'm talking DNG conversions here, lots and lots of DNG conversions) and FCP is 32 bit. So definitely now I'm thinking I need something with a newer gen processor capable of hyper threading.
One other important note: RAM for the 2008 mac pro (800MHz DDR2) is 2x to 3x more expensive than the same quantity of RAM for a 2009 or 2010 box, so although I desperately need to upgrade from 8GB to 16 or 24GB, I have decided instead to just wait for the 2013 rather than continuing to upgrade this machine. If I had a 2009 model, I would probably continue to upgrade it and keep it for the next 3-4 years.
Another note worth thinking about - my late 2011 MacBook Pro (specs in sig) scores about 1000 points higher on geekbench than my mac pro. I still use the desktop for most of my serious work, though. Dual displays and eSATA drives are very time saving
Last edited:
2.8 2010 Quad 12 GB and SSD and multiple hard drives and (very cheap 19 Dells) dual monitor
It does everything I need, educational work and development/testing
Low depreciation, high residuals so actual cost low compared to other boxes
Easy to swap disks for testing new OS etc
Top quality Applecare support
Work mostly Windows, leisure mostly OSX apart from games
Whole family Macs apart from some phones (Android)
It does everything I need, educational work and development/testing
Low depreciation, high residuals so actual cost low compared to other boxes
Easy to swap disks for testing new OS etc
Top quality Applecare support
Work mostly Windows, leisure mostly OSX apart from games
Whole family Macs apart from some phones (Android)