Should I sell or can I upgrade my 2011 Mac Pro?

[Lance2020x]

Hello! I'm a professional Video Editor (I say this so you know RAM and Processor are important to me) and I'm needing to do an upgrade.

I have an old Mac Pro that was a powerhouse machine in its day. I'd like to find out:
A. How much is it worth if I were to sell it?
B. Could I upgrade this to a Quad-Core+ machine (Mac or Hackintosh) that will last me a year or two so that I can save up for a brand new machine? Would that even be worth it?

Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro1.1
Processor Name: Dual-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 3GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 12 GB
Bus Speed: 1.33 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MP11.005C.BO8
SMC Version (system): 1.7f10
Comes with a giant Apple Display for video editing.

 

[h9826790]

A) Not much, just few hundred dollars.

b) Yes, you can upgrade the CPU to dual X5365, and make your machine with 8 cores.

 

[Lance2020x]

A) Not much, just few hundred dollars.

b) Yes, you can upgrade the CPU to dual X5365, and make your machine with 8 cores.

Thank you for the quick response!

I think this is the route I'd like to go in. I did a quick search on this and came up with many mixed results. Do you have any link to a resource on steps for this upgrade?

 

[monokakata]

There are many threads on this site about upgrading the 1,1 Mac Pro, so you'll want to search for them.

Upgrading it to 8 core isn't difficult (I did it). It ran FCP X pretty well (with 14 gb RAM) but a hex-core 5,1 Mac Pro was a lot faster.

I wouldn't put a lot of money into it unless you like to tinker. In the end, I gave mine to a student. I wasn't able to get anybody to pay even $400 for it, and it also had a 5770 video card and I was going to toss in 4 disks total.

I'm not sure about the "2011" in your title, though. If it's a 1,1, then it's not a 2011 machine -- not even close.

 

[h9826790]

I'm not sure about the "2011" in your title, though. If it's a 1,1, then it's not a 2011 machine -- not even close.

Agreed. If someone sold this to you and said it is a 2011 model, then (s)he way lying. The 2011 model should have the following information.

Model Identifier: MacPro5,1
Boot ROM Version: MP51.007F.B03

Even though the pervious owner never upgrade / update the machine. The firmware version should start with MP51, not MP11. And the system profile should able to correctly identifier the machine is a MarPro5,1.

About your upgrade, it's all about what's your budget. you can get a pair of X5365 with less than $200 dollar in eBay.

However, if you plan to sell it (let's say you get $400 from it), and then buy a 2009 8 core Model (which is cheaper but has the same hardware as the MacPro5,1 apart from the CPU), it may cost you something like another $600. But then, you have a much better 8 core 16 thread machine.

And you can further flash the machine to use 5,1 firmware, and then install dual X5690 to make your machine run even faster then the new Mac Pro.