MacPro 3.1 options...

[mistuk]

Hi all - I'm trying to decide what best to do with my 3.1 Mac Pro

Its got 6GB RAM - I've stuck a 265Gb SSD in it. It's got the 8800 nVida graphics card.

I use 2 x 24 inch displays with it.

I'm keen to go 4K at some point and will be using some applications that support CUDA...

I can't work out if it's worth upgrading it or selling and buying a 5.1... What would you do?

Cheers

 

[nigelbb]

here are some cost effective upgrade options.
Used on eBay for <$100 8x4GB (32GB) 667MHz FB-DIMMs pulled from Dell or HP XEON servers. Performance all but identical to the expensive 800MHz parts that only Apple ever used.
Used on eBay for $50 GTX570 - as good as or better than the GTX680 for CUDA apps
Apricom Velocity PCIe card in slot 2 to give SATA-3 speeds for SSD rather than the slugged SATA-II performance in drive sled
USB-3 card with OS X supported FL1100 chipset so no drivers are required e.g. Innatek 4004

 

[filmak]

Do you have any specific apps/needs? or just for general use?

 

[mistuk]

Photoshop CC & Lightroom, PixInsight (specialised astrophotography app) & Logic Pro. Also use the machine as a plex server too

Thanks for the ideas!

 

[pastrychef]

Hi all - I'm trying to decide what best to do with my 3.1 Mac Pro

Its got 6GB RAM - I've stuck a 265Gb SSD in it. It's got the 8800 nVida graphics card.

I use 2 x 24 inch displays with it.

I'm keen to go 4K at some point and will be using some applications that support CUDA...

I can't work out if it's worth upgrading it or selling and buying a 5.1... What would you do?

Cheers

I have had a 2,1, a 3,1, and a 5,1. In my opinion, the 5,1 was much better than the previous models in many ways. If I were in your position, I would definitely upgrade to 5,1.

 

[filmak]

I fully agree with pastrychef, while the 3,1 is still very good, you will find it, as I did, lagging a bit in lightroom, especially with 20+ megapixels photos (5DmkII), it's not in any way anything terrible, but I would suggest to go for a 5,1 if you can.

Are you happy with its performance right now in LR? if yes and you decide to keep the 3,1 you will certainly need a better GPU to support 4K, the 8800 is old (ancient?) and already has some hardware problems...

The SATA bus is the same sata2 ver. in both machines but you will find better PCIe / GPU performance and CPU upgradeability with the 5,1.

You can check this Lightroom performance tests (by Tony Hart and other people) and judge by yourself :
https://www.icloud.com/numbers/000Vg1fWlODvlyXY4du2_TuTw#Benchmarking_-_Public_v4
http://www.tony-hart.com/blog/tags/test mule/essays/

 

[mistuk]

Great info - thanks very much all