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Upgrading my 2009 Mac Pro - need advice

Decided to run Geekbench on my computer as it is now before I upgrade the processors. I'm still waiting on my thermal paste, washers and thermal pads.

Running 64bit test:
Single Core: 1838
Multi Core: 14094

Operating System Mac OS X 10.9.1 (Build 13B42)
Model MacPro5,1
Processor Intel Xeon E5520 @ 2.26 GHz
2 processors, 8 cores, 16 threads
Processor ID GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 26 Stepping 5
L1 Instruction Cache 32 KB x 4
L1 Data Cache 32 KB x 4
L2 Cache 256 KB x 4
L3 Cache 8192 KB
Motherboard Apple Inc. Mac-F221BEC8
BIOS Apple Inc. MP51.88Z.007F.B03.1010071432
Memory 32768 MB 1066 MHz DDR3
 
Cinebench R15

OpenGL: 44.58 fps
CPU: 756 cb

That's with AMD Radeon HD 7950 Mac Edition and stock CPUs -stats in post above.
 
echoout said:
I did the same thing. Both Geekbench and C4D scores more than doubled!
Click to expand...

Nice. I see you went with 3.33GHz. I'm going 2.8GHz so I probably won't get double my current score. The x5680s were too expensive. I could get two 5660s for half the price of one 5680, but that's sweet that you got those. Why didn't you just go ball to the wall and get 5690s? :)
 
Mac Gus said:
Nice. I see you went with 3.33GHz. I'm going 2.8GHz so I probably won't get double my current score. The x5680s were too expensive. I could get two 5660s for half the price of one 5680, but that's sweet that you got those. Why didn't you just go ball to the wall and get 5690s? :)
Click to expand...

The jump to the 5690s was just too much money for the lack of speed in the jump. I didn't think $1400 for the CPUs was too bad since I got the entire computer for under $800. It left me a nice budget.
 
echoout said:
The jump to the 5690s was just too much money for the lack of speed in the jump. I didn't think $1400 for the CPUs was too bad since I got the entire computer for under $800. It left me a nice budget.
Click to expand...

I'm guessing your Cinebench score doubling had something to do with running two GPUs!?
 
It's been less than 24 hours with my x5660s:

Take your time and good luck.
 

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Mac Gus said:
Awesome. Looks like you have the same graphics card as me too.

Are you not going to update your RAM to 1333? And why no Maverick?
Click to expand...

I'll probably move to Mavericks soon. I'm pretty conservative upgrading OS versions.

RAM would cost me close to $300 to replace it…probably later. I think all the x5600s can run on 1066 speed RAM.

My GPU is a flashed PC card.
 
CPU's are here! Kinda nervous about doing this but i guess i'll be giving it a go tonight
 
After some sweating, crying and a few cuss words I got it! :cool:
 

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deezayy said:
After some sweating, crying and a few cuss words I got it! :cool:
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Good job. It's a great feeling, no?

I ran a bunch of stress tests (64-bit Geekbench, Cinebench, etc.) for my own reassurance after dropping mine in. It will at least get the fans going and let you know how you're doing on cooling.

CPUs are pretty robust. As long as they havent been grossly overclocked, they should last a long time.
 
CrazyNurse said:
Good job. It's a great feeling, no?

I ran a bunch of stress tests (64-bit Geekbench, Cinebench, etc.) for my own reassurance after dropping mine in. It will at least get the fans going and let you know how you're doing on cooling.

CPUs are pretty robust. As long as they havent been grossly overclocked, they should last a long time.

yeah my first time doing geekbench locked up the whole thing. ripped everything apart and realized i may have put on too much thermal grease the first time. going to give it another shot now.
Click to expand...

That seemed to fix my problem! Geekbench went from 18k to 26k! (I had the 2.93 8 core previously)

To anyone else trying this all I can tell you is take your time. I work in IT for a fortune 500 company and that is by far the hardest, most stressful CPU swap I have ever done. Tighten the heatsink down in a star pattern and once you cannot tighten the bolts with your hand loosely on the screwdriver, stop and fire it up. I ordered a Klein T15 screwdriver from amazon (you can probably find it at home depot) and used 2 - #8 Flat Metal Washers from home depot (30pack) on each post. Also with the thermal paste you should make sure that it is the size of the original to make sure that the heatsink sits flush when you tighten it down.
 

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CrazyNurse said:
I ran a bunch of stress tests (64-bit Geekbench, Cinebench, etc.) for my own reassurance after dropping mine in.
Click to expand...

Always good idea I encoded roughly 20 hours of x264 video in Handbrake on mine to stress test. Passed with flying colours, excuse the pun, in about half the time it would have took on my old setup. Added bonus cpus were about 20C cooler and the machine was using roughly 75w less maximum power draw the whole time, just about the same it takes less when idle now as well...
 
This thread is so amazing! Just started researching the upgrade process for my 4,1 Mac Pro and I had no idea how deep the rabbit hole went. I knew about CPU upgrades, but with processors being so cheap, it's completely viable now.

My dual processor machine is mainly for programming and I'm wondering if I should jump for the 2.8 6-core or 3.33 4-core? I do Handbrake encoding as well and am primarily interested in speed, which is why the cheaper 3.33 is more appealing to me right now. Not too worried about core count.
 
mmendoza27 said:
My dual processor machine is mainly for programming and I'm wondering if I should jump for the 2.8 6-core or 3.33 4-core? I do Handbrake encoding as well and am primarily interested in speed, which is why the cheaper 3.33 is more appealing to me right now. Not too worried about core count.
Click to expand...

You should be the 6 core upgrade will be about double the speed of old machine the 4 core you speak of about a half faster. Add in about 33% less power consumption at idle about 70w less at maxed out cpu tasks and in my case about 20C less at that maxed out idea for the cpu temperatures. All due to the smaller more efficient process the 6 core chips were built with.
 
MacUser2525 said:
You should be the 6 core upgrade will be about double the speed of old machine the 4 core you speak of about a half faster. Add in about 33% less power consumption at idle about 70w less at maxed out cpu tasks and in my case about 20C less at that maxed out idea for the cpu temperatures. All due to the smaller more efficient process the 6 core chips were built with.
Click to expand...


I forgot the 6-core at 32nm chips. I'm interesting in having a high clock speed since I think that will benefit me more. Other than minor things that I have done in the past that have used all cores, I'm pretty sure most of my programming tasks primarily use one core. Thanks for the response.
 
mmendoza27 said:
I forgot the 6-core at 32nm chips. I'm interesting in having a high clock speed since I think that will benefit me more. Other than minor things that I have done in the past that have used all cores, I'm pretty sure most of my programming tasks primarily use one core. Thanks for the response.
Click to expand...

alias make='make -j 12' in your .bashrc to have your compiling use all the cores on the machine when doing it, change to 24 if you wanted all the threads available used.. That is for a project using make of course I'm sure Apple must have something similar that can be done for its stuff.
 
MacUser2525 said:
alias make='make -j 12' in your .bashrc to have your compiling use all the cores on the machine when doing it, change to 24 if you wanted all the threads available used.. That is for a project using make of course I'm sure Apple must have something similar that can be done for its stuff.
Click to expand...

Xcode will compile one class per core I believe. Most of my projects aren't that huge yet but it's true that the multi-threading will help.
 
mmendoza27 said:
Xcode will compile one class per core I believe. Most of my projects aren't that huge yet but it's true that the multi-threading will help.
Click to expand...

Your caught in the MHZ trap going back to your prior point. That being in addition to the smaller process processors when they change a generation like that they also have more work that can be done per thread per clock speed than the older architecture. You get a speed of increase in the amount of work done per thread so that at a lower speed the new can do just as much or more as higher clocked older arch can.

Edit: Oh and I am pretty sure these things have a turbo mode on them as well for the single core burst use for a single cpu bound task to use to complete faster.
 
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My supplies for the swap came in so I'm going to attempt this today. Thanks to everyone for posting their experiences. I'll update this once I get the swap done.
 
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