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Mac Pro 1.1 and some upgrades

S

siemieniaka

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 4, 2017
5
0
Hello there folks :) I want to buy a Mac Pro of my friend for cheap. It's a stock 2x2.66, 4gb, 7300GT model from 2006. I checked some internet posts and decided it would be awsome to get one and upgrade it to dual quad E5345 cpu's (I won't do intense stuff so I don't need dual x5365 and TDP of them is to much for raw power that I won't use), up to 8gb ram and some newer GPU, but. There's always a "but" problem... The ram. I'm not from US so shopping in OWC is out of the question. How can I tell if DDR2 667 ECC Ram is compatible with MP 1.1? I've heard that not all ram even with the same specs are compatible? Also what third party GPU could I put in there, even for the price of boot screen that I don't consider as a problem? I thought about GT 640 for now and later maybe GTX 660. OS that I will use will be 10.7.5 Lion and nothing more (probably and maybe :) ). Please help me out if you can :)
 
siemieniaka said:
Hello there folks :) I want to buy a Mac Pro of my friend for cheap. It's a stock 2x2.66, 4gb, 7300GT model from 2006. I checked some internet posts and decided it would be awsome to get one and upgrade it to dual quad E5345 cpu's (I won't do intense stuff so I don't need dual x5365 and TDP of them is to much for raw power that I won't use), up to 8gb ram and some newer GPU, but. There's always a "but" problem... The ram. I'm not from US so shopping in OWC is out of the question. How can I tell if DDR2 667 ECC Ram is compatible with MP 1.1? I've heard that not all ram even with the same specs are compatible? Also what third party GPU could I put in there, even for the price of boot screen that I don't consider as a problem? I thought about GT 640 for now and later maybe GTX 660. OS that I will use will be 10.7.5 Lion and nothing more (probably and maybe :) ). Please help me out if you can :)
Click to expand...


I would suggest you do some research over in the Mac Pro forum, as all of your questions are pretty common and would be addressed there in detail.

https://forums.macrumors.com/forums/mac-pro.1/

I had a Mac Pro 1,1 that I ran with the updated BIOS patch so I could load current OSs' on it and it worked great. As for GPUs, you can use many of PC based NVidia cards to keep your investment down if you're not concerned about boot screens. You might also look at flashed ATI cards if you have access to a PC with the proper PCI slot, as it's not hard to do.

There is server based RAM out there that works just fine, you just have to get the specs for the Mac Pro RAM and do some searching. As I recall, the RAM I had in mine was originally Dell server RAM that I picked up on eBay for a minimal amount of money (compared to OWC, which is top shelf stuff, but pricey for the 1,1.)

Good luck - I assure you there is a great deal of information in the Mac Pro forum that you'll find quite useful. With some tweaks and minor upgrades the Mac Pro 1,1, is still a viable machine for most work.

MacDann
 
Let's put aside the hardware problems, although I decided to go for dual E5345, 8-16gb ram and GTX 570 when I update firmware to Mac Pro 2.1 and OSX 10.7.5. I have a software issue, my friend doesn't have OSX 10.6 install discs nor 10.7 or any of the iLife suite that I would like to have. Where should I get them? What is a sweet spot to get retail mac software that is not sold retail anymore?
 
Snow Leopard discs can be purchased direct from Apple, at least on the Canadian Apple site, as well as Lion.
http://www.apple.com/ca/shop/product/MC573Z/A/mac-os-x-106-snow-leopard
http://www.apple.com/ca/shop/product/D6106Z/A/os-x-lion

iLife '11 can still be found on Amazon on DVD... Seems a touch pricey, so I'd check Ebay for a used copy.
https://www.amazon.ca/Apple-MC623Z-A-iLife-11/dp/B003XKRZES

I post Canadian links, but Google can be your friend for local sources. Hope this helps a bit.
 
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Thank you:) Also I'm looking to upgrade to 10.11 one day on this 1.1/2.1(with cpu upgrades) but is it risky? What could happen if it fails? Can hardware break or only thing will be OS destruction and OS reinstall back to 10.7.5?
 
Thanks. Also I have a question to MP 1.1 owners that use it to render videos. At the moment I own x2 4200 cpu from AMD and rendering 480p on it is like 1:1 and 720p/1080p is around 3:1 (three times long as the movies length). How faster would be a maxed out MP 1.1 with CUDA/Open GL usage?
 
Thank you! That's nice to hear :) But still I was wondering about all the editing software that I would like to use like iMovie for starter (want to check it out) and Final Cut Pro 7, Adobe Premiere Pro CS5-6 and I had doubts. Which one and if they can use GPU OpenCL/CUDA cores for gpu acceleration? I think Premiere Pro CS5-6 they do use it, but I don't know if iMovie does or FCP7?
 
MacDann said:
I would suggest you do some research over in the Mac Pro forum, as all of your questions are pretty common and would be addressed there in detail.

https://forums.macrumors.com/forums/mac-pro.1/

I had a Mac Pro 1,1 that I ran with the updated BIOS patch so I could load current OSs' on it and it worked great. As for GPUs, you can use many of PC based NVidia cards to keep your investment down if you're not concerned about boot screens. You might also look at flashed ATI cards if you have access to a PC with the proper PCI slot, as it's not hard to do.

There is server based RAM out there that works just fine, you just have to get the specs for the Mac Pro RAM and do some searching. As I recall, the RAM I had in mine was originally Dell server RAM that I picked up on eBay for a minimal amount of money (compared to OWC, which is top shelf stuff, but pricey for the 1,1.)

Good luck - I assure you there is a great deal of information in the Mac Pro forum that you'll find quite useful. With some tweaks and minor upgrades the Mac Pro 1,1, is still a viable machine for most work.

MacDann
Click to expand...
Hi we don't want to divert from the OPs post but we have a similar questions we have posted and gotten few helpful responses but not enough to go on, can you please tell us if the Radeon 7850 can be flashed with PC and where we would find information for that, we have searched everywhere but found nothing. Do you have any idea what the average power consumption is for a Pro 1.1 with a 7850, someone is saying on here that the Mac Pro 1.1 is "Power Hungry" can you please shed some light on that?
Thanks
 
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