MP 2.66 (2006) vs MP 2009

[bobbydaz]

At my studio I am currently running a first gen MP 2.66 quad with 6.5g ram and wondering how much difference I would notice changing for a new 2.93 quad or 2.26 octo. Used mainly for graphic design so Photoshop, Quark, Illustrator etc. If the difference isn't that great would I better to spend some money on more ram and a bigger faster HD for my existing MP?

Alternatively I could purchase a 2009 MP and pass my MP onto one of our designers who is running a G5 2.5 dual. Would he notice much of a performance improvement?

Just trying to work out the most cost effective option in these tight times.

 

[TrapOx]

Alternatively I could purchase a 2009 MP and pass my MP onto one of our designers who is running a G5 2.5 dual. Would he notice much of a performance improvement?

It would only be 2-3x faster.

 

[cal6n]

From a performance point of view, you'd both notice some improvement, although I don't think either of you would deem it to be earth-shattering. There's another factor to consider, though. That 2.5 GHz liquid-cooled G5 is almost certainly going to spring a leak and fall over at some stage. When (not if) this happens, you're going to suffer some lost productivity while you organise a replacement machine.

My instinct would be to retire the G5 in favour of your current machine and buy yourself the highest spec machine you can afford as a hedge against the future.

 

[Fomaphone]

From a performance point of view, you'd both notice some improvement, although I don't think either of you would deem it to be earth-shattering. There's another factor to consider, though. That 2.5 GHz liquid-cooled G5 is almost certainly going to spring a leak and fall over at some stage. When (not if) this happens, you're going to suffer some lost productivity while you organise a replacement machine.

My instinct would be to retire the G5 in favour of your current machine and buy yourself the highest spec machine you can afford as a hedge against the future.

before you do, though, would you mind running CineBench R10 on that dual 2.5ppc? that's what i upgraded from, and i must say i notice a HUGE difference in final cut pro, compressor, bridge (for illustrator tracing of images) for after effects, and photoshop, even though my new machine has less half a gig less RAM

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/cinebench.html

 

[bearcatrp]

Save some money and upgrade the 2.66 quad to a 3ghz octo. Get the chips used on ebay. I just did my 2ghz mac pro to a 2.33ghz. Fairly easy.

 

[AlexH]

Save some money and upgrade the 2.66 quad to a 3ghz octo. Get the chips used on ebay. I just did my 2ghz mac pro to a 2.33ghz. Fairly easy.

That's what I'm considering. Might be my spring project.

I have a quad 2.66 GHz Mac Pro (2x dual core chips = 4 cores total). I'd love to grab 2x 2.33 quad core chips.

Are you happy with the performance? Everything stable and working nice and cool? How's the temps?

 

[bearcatrp]

Here are some stats doing cinebench tests:

2.0 ghz quad
render 1 cpu 2184
multi cpu 7457
open gl 2867

2.33 octo
render 1 cpu 2534
multi cpu 14834
open gl 2867

2.8 octo 2008 mac pro
render 1 cpu 3232
multi cpu 18245
open gl 6093

Temps rose a few degrees. I use smcfancontrol to control the fans. Got to this forum to see a few of us who has done this:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/661839/ . So far so good. I use this mac pro for crunching data for world community grid and a media server. Did the upgrade on sunday so now cycling 200 hrs before running 24/7 (doing this according to artic silver recommendations).

 

[cal6n]

Upgrading the dual core processors in an early Mac Pro to quads will improve performance, but only in multi-threaded apps and so this doesn't appear to be particularly relevant in your case. To my mind, an upgrade like this should be of a far lower priority than dealing with the potential problems that a leaking G5 would cause to your business.

XLR8yourMac has an extensive archive regarding this issue. Some were replaced by Apple. Others were not. I was lucky!

This may help you to get your priorities right!