MP 1,1-5,1 Old Mac Pro Questions

[Dimitris1980]

Hello,

i have some questions regarding the old Mac Pros. First of all i have to say that i am not experienced with them because there are professional computers. My daily computer is a Mid 2007 Imac 20" Intel Core 2 Duo 2ghz, 4 gb Ram, 250gb hard drive, Ati 128mb video card which i bought in April 2008. I use it only for the internet, to see some news, to pay my bills and to download old games and programs (www.macintoshgarden.rg) for my retro Macintosh computers which are seven right now that i am writing. I use more my mobile phone than my computer especially for social media and ebay/amazon sites. I like lot the Mac Pro computers because they are beautiful and expendable but they are also very expensive. Some times i check for older models for a good price but i see that these models like the Mac Pro 2.1 do not have the ability to install the latest Mac OS. Why is that? They are really strong machines, isn't it pity that so expensive machines stick on older OS? For instance i found someone who sells a Mac Pro with the following technical characteristics:

Mac Pro 2.1 (2 xeon cpu's x 4 core = 8 cores total,28 GB RAM Nvidia 2gb, 120 GB Samsung EVO SSD). It runs El Capitan and Windows 10.

My Imac runs also El Capitan and until now i can do all the daily stuff mentioned above and the speed is ok, not something special but ok. I guess this Mac Pro runs lot faster than my Imac? How good is with gaming? Also how well can it run Windows 10? Is it worth to buy and old Mac Pro for a good price just for daily regular stuff?

Thank you

 

[jvlfilms]

Hello!

I think the main consideration would be your budget for a new machine.

By default, the Mac Pro 2,1 is a slightly newer model from the 2007 iMac and the expandability gives it an edge over your current model. But how much extra performance would you get with everything maxed out? Plus, the machine is no longer supported so it’ll be harder to maintain and install OS’s going forward.

Obviously this costs a bit more but my recommendation would be to get the M1 Mac Mini. When you factor in all of the additional expenses beyond the actual machine it may be worthwhile to just get a brand new M1.

If anything, I’d say to look for a 4,1 or 5,1 cMP which perform a lot better in Windows and are overall way faster machines.