upgrade from mac pro 2007 8-core

[oncilla]

I currently own a mac pro 8-core 3.0ghz from 2007. It only has 5 gigs of memory. It's also been mysteriously restarting on its own and occasionally having trouble booting up, so I'm thinking its time to get a new machine.

I'm leaning towards the 6-core 3.33ghz model and dropping in 16 gigs of ram but do you think this will be a significant upgrade speed wise? This machine would be mainly used professionally for graphic design (cs5), and occasionally Maya. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

That's a bit hard to judge. In programs not heavily optimised for multithreaded work the 3.33GHz Octo will probably be about 125% as fast. In heavily multithreaded apps it'd probably be anywhere between 80% as fast up to about 140% as fast. I wouldn't expect it to be a big performance boost overall though. If you want to see big speed gains, get the 512GB SSD too.

 

[oncilla]

yeah, i considered getting the solid state but it would be the same price as moving up to the 12 core. is it really that much faster?

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

It's faster in a different way. SSD drives can really blow you away at times. A Mac Mini with an SSD drive will feel a lot faster than a 12 core Mac Pro without one in certain tasks such as launching programs etc. Having said that, given the choice between a six core Mac Pro with a 512GB SSD and a twelve core Mac Pro, I'd probably take the twelve core.

 

[strausd]

yeah, i considered getting the solid state but it would be the same price as moving up to the 12 core. is it really that much faster?

If you're gonna get an SSD, don't get one from Apple, they are over priced and not the best in the market. OCZ and OWC currently have some of the best SSDs out right now because of the Sandforce controller they use. OS X doesn't support the TRIM command but the Sandforce controller has almost built in TRIM.

Most people who get an SSD have it just as their boot drive and do not need a high capacity SSD. I plan on getting a 120GB OWC SSD as my boot drive. I will move my home directory over to a Western Digital Caviar Black. With the SSD, my boot times and app load times will be much much faster.

If you do not buy an SSD from Apple, you will need to either put the SSD in the empty optical bay (this will not need a mount because it can just sit in the optical bay area) or buy a 2.5" to 3.5" converter. Many people go with something called an ICY dock. They work well and have a good price.

If you want to know what size SSD you need, open finder and click Macintosh HD at the top of devices. OS X has 4 main folders: Applications, Library, System, and Users. If you move your home directory, you will be moving what is in the "Users" folder. If you look up how big your Applications, Library, and System folders are, that is what will go on the SSD if you move your home directory.

This explains how and why someone would want to move their home directory. Here is a link to OWC SSDs.

Hope this helps!

 

[nanofrog]

I currently own a mac pro 8-core 3.0ghz from 2007. It only has 5 gigs of memory. It's also been mysteriously restarting on its own and occasionally having trouble booting up, so I'm thinking its time to get a new machine.

I'm leaning towards the 6-core 3.33ghz model and dropping in 16 gigs of ram but do you think this will be a significant upgrade speed wise?

Yes, for both single and multi-threaded applications.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

If you're gonna get an SSD, don't get one from Apple, they are over priced and not the best in the market. OCZ and OWC currently have some of the best SSDs out right now because of the Sandforce controller they use. OS X doesn't support the TRIM command but the Sandforce controller has almost built in TRIM.

Most people who get an SSD have it just as their boot drive and do not need a high capacity SSD. I plan on getting a 120GB OWC SSD as my boot drive. I will move my home directory over to a Western Digital Caviar Black. With the SSD, my boot times and app load times will be much much faster.

If you do not buy an SSD from Apple, you will need to either put the SSD in the empty optical bay (this will not need a mount because it can just sit in the optical bay area) or buy a 2.5" to 3.5" converter. Many people go with something called an ICY dock. They work well and have a good price.

If you want to know what size SSD you need, open finder and click Macintosh HD at the top of devices. OS X has 4 main folders: Applications, Library, System, and Users. If you move your home directory, you will be moving what is in the "Users" folder. If you look up how big your Applications, Library, and System folders are, that is what will go on the SSD if you move your home directory.

This explains how and why someone would want to move their home directory. Here is a link to OWC SSDs.

Hope this helps!

Apple's 512GB SSD drive is definitely not overpriced, it's very competetive. Although as you say, most people don't need quite that big a drive. 512GB would be enough to have your user directory on the boot drive though which would be nice. I went for a 256GB drive as my boot drive and mount my user directory on a 1.5TB 7200rpm drive. 256GB is enough for OSX, all my Apps, about 80GB of free scratch space and 64GB for a Windows 7 install (with hibernation and the pagefile turned off of course). I'd love to be able to have a larger SSD with space for my user directory too but alas it's too cost prohibitive right now.

 

[strausd]

Apple's 512GB SSD drive is definitely not overpriced, it's very competetive. Although as you say, most people don't need quite that big a drive. 512GB would be enough to have your user directory on the boot drive though which would be nice. I went for a 256GB drive as my boot drive and mount my user directory on a 1.5TB 7200rpm drive. 256GB is enough for OSX, all my Apps, about 80GB of free scratch space and 64GB for a Windows 7 install (with hibernation and the pagefile turned off of course). I'd love to be able to have a larger SSD with space for my user directory too but alas it's too cost prohibitive right now.

My bad on the 512GB pricing. But in a year from now, it would be cheaper to get from somewhere else considering Apple never lowers their prices as the component prices go down.

Edit: If you didn't buy from Apple you would be able to pick which SSD you want, incase you find one for the same price with better performance than the one from Apple.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

My bad on the 512GB pricing. But in a year from now, it would be cheaper to get from somewhere else considering Apple never lowers their prices as the component prices go down.

Edit: If you didn't buy from Apple you would be able to pick which SSD you want, incase you find one for the same price with better performance than the one from Apple.

Yeah prices should get shaken up a fair bit when Intel's G3 SSDs come out. When they released the G2s they dropped prices by 60% I seem to recall. SSD prices have been pretty much stagnant for a while now, my SSD still costs roughly the same now as it did when I bought it nearly eight months ago.