Has anyone else here other than my self and Dadi_oh (http://www.ehmac.ca/mac-desktops/92270-matched-pair-xeon-e5150-2-66ghz-8mb-macpro1-1-2006-a.html) taken on the challenge of a DIY upgrade of the CPUs of their Mac Pro 1.1?

I just finished upgrading my Mac Pro quad 2.66 GHz gen 1.1 to a Mac Pro quad 3.0 GHz gen 1.1. I got the matched set of Xeon 5160s (dual 3.0 GHz) CPU for a really great price on eBay. I found a German instructional video, YouTube - Prozessortausch beim Mac Pro online:

xOF435jCg8E

It really doesn't matter that I couldn't understand what they were saying as the visuals were great in explaining the process. Also for text and picture based instructions you can go to:

Upgrading CPUs of a Mac Pro to Quad Core Xeons (http://www.hardmac.com/articles/70/)

It was a great little project and wasn't hard at all if you take your time. Total time from disassembly to up and running again was probably 1.5 to 2 hours (with a couple of breaks). I used to do this sort of thing all the time in my PC days but I have to say doing it with a Mac Pro is such a pleasure comparatively speaking because the Mac Pro is so beautifully designed and engineered. No tangle of cables and the clutter typically found in a PC.

If anyone is contemplating such a thing, I would say just do your home work to know what CPUs are compatible and make sure you have some confidence in working around the inside of a PC and it can be a great inexpensive (relatively speaking... all the compatible quad core Xeons are still pretty expensive, although you can find deals if you look diligently) way to extend the useful life of your Mac Pro 1.1 (especially if you have a quad 2.0 GHz).

+1

Very easy upgrade if you take your time. Biggest roadblock could be finding a suitable 3mm long handle hex driver to remove the heatsinks. I made my own with a 3mm hex bit... cut a slot in the base with a dremel tool and taped a long handled flat head screwdriver into the slot. Worked great.

Spend a week or two researching the prices on eBay and then just wait for the right deal to come along. You can use any of the Clovertwon Xeon's.

Xeon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeon#5300-series_.22Clovertown.22)

Can I get a ballpark cost to say a 2.8 8 core?

Can I get a ballpark cost to say a 2.8 8 core?

Can't be done at 2.8 (you have to go no higher than a 53xx series i.e. Clovertown)... you either have to go 2.66 GHz (X5355 Clovertown quad x2) or 3.0 GHz (X5365 Covertown quad x2) both are still crazy expensive but I have seen a single 2.66 GHz X5355 Clovertown quad for around $300... but I haven't seen any matched pairs recently.

I've got a matched pair of qx9775 processors with lga771 pin configuration. What can I wedge these into? If I can pick up an old Mac pro 1,1 or 2,1 that can take them, it might be worth it!!

I've got a matched pair of qx9775 processors with lga771 pin configuration. What can I wedge these into? If I can pick up an old Mac pro 1,1 or 2,1 that can take them, it might be worth it!!

These will not work in any Mac Pro. All Mac Pro CPUs are Xeon server/workstation grade processors. The only processors the will work in a Mac Pro 1.1, or 2.1 are Xeon 5100 series ("Woodcrest") or Xeon 5300 series (Clovertown).

5100-series "Woodcrest"
Woodcrest Produced From 2006 to 2009
Max. CPU clock rate 1600 Mhz to 3000 Mhz
FSB speeds 1066 MT/s to 1333 MT/s
Min. feature size 65nm
Instruction set x86
Microarchitecture Core
CPUID code 06Fx
Product code 80556
Cores 2
L2 cache 4 MB
Application DP Server
Package(s)

* LGA 771

Brand name(s)

* Xeon 51xx

List: List of Intel Xeon microprocessors#"Woodcrest" (65 nm)

On 26 June 2006, Intel released the dual-core CPU (Xeon branded 5100 series) codenamed Woodcrest (product code 80556); it was the first Intel Core microarchitecture processor to be launched on the market. It is a server and workstation version of the Intel Core 2 processor. Intel claims that it provides an 80% boost in performance, while reducing power consumption by 20% relative to the Pentium D.

Most models have a 1333 MT/s FSB, except for the 5110 and 5120, which have a 1066 MT/s FSB. The fastest processor (5160) operates at 3.0 GHz. All Woodcrests use LGA 771 and all except two models have a TDP of 65 W. The 5160 has a TDP of 80 W and the 5148LV (2.33 GHz) has a TDP of 40 W. The previous generation Xeons had a TDP of 130 W. All models support Intel 64 (Intel's x86-64 implementation), the XD bit, and Virtualization Technology, with the "Demand Based Switching" power management option only on Dual-Core Xeon 5140 or above. Woodcrest has 4 MB of shared L2 Cache.

Model Speed (GHz) L2 Cache (MB) FSB (MHz) TDP (W)
5110 1.60 4 1066 65
5120 1.83 4 1066 65
5128 1.83 4 1066 40
5130 2.0 4 1333 65
5138 2.13 4 1066 35
5140 2.33 4 1333 65
5148 2.33 4 1333 40
5150 2.66 4 1333 65
5160 3.00 4 1333 80


5300-series "Clovertown"
Clovertown Produced From 2006 to present
Max. CPU clock rate 1600 Mhz to 3000 Mhz
FSB speeds 1066 MT/s to 1333
Min. feature size 65 nm
Instruction set x86
Microarchitecture Core
CPUID code 06Fx
Product code 80574
Cores 4
L2 cache 2x4 MB
Application DP Server
Package(s)

* LGA 771

Brand name(s)

* Xeon 53xx

List: List of Intel Xeon microprocessors#"Clovertown" (65 nm)

A quad-core (2x2) successor of the Woodcrest for DP segment, consisting of two dual-core Woodcrest chips in one package similarly to the dual-core Pentium D branded CPUs (two single-core chips) or the quad-core Kentsfield. All Clovertowns use the LGA 771 package. The Clovertown has been usually implemented with two Woodcrest dies on a multi-chip module, with 8 MB of L2 cache (4 MB per die). Like Woodcrest, lower models use a 1066 MT/s FSB, and higher models use a 1333 MT/s FSB. Intel released Clovertown, product code 80563, on 14 November 2006[13] with models E5310, E5320, E5335, E5345, and X5355, ranging from 1.6 GHz to 2.66 GHz. All models support: MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, Intel 64, XD bit (an NX bit implementation), Intel VT. The E and X designations are borrowed from Intel's Core 2 model numbering scheme; an ending of -0 implies a 1066 MT/s FSB, and an ending of -5 implies a 1333 MT/s FSB.[12] All models have a TDP of 80 W with the exception of the X5355, which has a TDP of 120 W. A low-voltage version of Clovertown with a TDP of 50 W has a model numbers L5310, L5320 and L5335 (1.6 GHz, 1.86 GHz and 2.0 GHz respectively). The 3.0 GHz X5365 arrived in July 2007, and became available in the Apple Mac Pro [6] on 4 April 2007.[7][14] The X5365 performs up to around 38 GFLOPS in the LINPACK benchmark. [8]

Model Speed (GHz) L2 Cache (MB) FSB (MHz) TDP (W)
E5310 1.60 2x4 1066 80
L5310 1.60 2x4 1066 50
E5320 1.83 2x4 1066 80
L5320 1.83 2x4 1066 50
E5335 2.00 2x4 1333 80
L5335 2.00 2x4 1333 50
E5345 2.33 2x4 1333 80
X5355 2.66 2x4 1333 120
X5365 3.00 2x4 1333 120




Xeon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeon#5300-series_.22Clovertown.22)

Actually the 9775 are xeons underneath (hence the lga771 socket). They are an unlocked "look what we can do" processor from intel and work with a dual CPU motherboard with a 5400 (I believe) chipset which is also used typically with Xeons. :)
I guess I'd just need a willing guinea pig system to see if it would work before spending any molah.

To your point though, this might require a 3,1 system and they're 1600 FSB so with thr price of a 3,1 system being pretty steep it might be worth it.

Actually the 9775 are xeons underneath (hence the lga771 socket). They are an unlocked "look what we can do" processor from intel and work with a dual CPU motherboard with a 5400 (I believe) chipset which is also used typically with Xeons. :)
I guess I'd just need a willing guinea pig system to see if it would work before spending any molah.

To your point though, this might require a 3,1 system and they're 1600 FSB so with thr price of a 3,1 system being pretty steep it might be worth it.

Sorry they are not Xeons. They are Core 2 Extreme Processors

From the Intel site:

Intel® Core™2 Extreme Processor QX9775
(12M Cache, 3.20 GHz, 1600 MHz FSB) (http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=34692)
http://ark.intel.com/inc/images/badge/34531_64.gif

LGA 771, also known as Socket J, is a CPU interface introduced by Intel in 2006. It is used in Intel Core microarchitecture based DP-capable server processors, the Dual-Core Xeon is codenamed Dempsey, Woodcrest, and Wolfdale and the Quad-Core processors Clovertown, Harpertown. It is also used for the Core 2 Extreme QX9775.

As has already been provided if you want to know all things Xeon go to:

Xeon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeon#5300-series_.22Clovertown.22)

To be Xeon they must be branded as such... the lga771 socket does not make it a Xeon.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e2/Xeonlogo.svg/125px-Xeonlogo.svg.png etc...

For example these are all Xeon socket types:

LGA1156 Socket
LGA1366 Socket
LGA771 Socket
LGA775 Socket
Socket 603
Socket 604

Yes the 9775 runs on a 5400 chipset but that doesn't mean it will be compatible with a Mac Pro 3.1. It may work but it certainly was not designed to and like you said you sure would want to have a "guinea pig" system to test it out on...

At any rate it isn't a Xeon and isn't "designated" to work on any Mac Pro.

Given a $1k trade to a Nehalem 2.66 from an entry original and all the benefits of that seems a lot of work to upgrade something with limited bus and ram speed and no multithreading....

Now if a 2.66 Nehalem could got to a 3.33 for $600 THAT might be worth it.

Given a $1k trade to a Nehalem 2.66 from an entry original and all the benefits of that seems a lot of work to upgrade something with limited bus and ram speed and no multithreading....

Now if a 2.66 Nehalem could got to a 3.33 for $600 THAT might be worth it.

I agree that isn't worth the cost of upgrading a 1.1 to octos (unless you can get a really good deal like Dadi_oh did). But for a Mac Pro 1.1 2.0GHz to a 2.66GHz or 3.0 GHz quad or a 2.66GHz to a 3.0 GHz quad where the cost of the upgrade (roughly $100 -$200) is less than upgrading your RAM by 2 or 3GB, it is money well spent IMO.

I liked the old days when upgrading my LC475 was simple with a Daystar chip,
Our lives were so much easier then, Where did those days go?

ZIF chips for the G3's and Daughterboards for the 7300's.

How I miss those old jumper board days.

Sorry guys...Having a flash back Monday.

:)

Hey Screature , you were the one who advised me a while back to upgrade from a G4 to a Mac Pro.... instead of a G5, been loving it ever since. Now onto the upgrade, I found a pair of engineering sample Xeon L5320 @ 1.86 Ghz Quad cores for $150.00 for both ! It was pretty easy to change. I now have 8 cores and lower power consumption ( hence the L 5320)
Average temps on my machine never get past 29 C.
Just check out:
o0o.it :: Mac Pro Xeon Upgrade And Overclock Guide (http://www.o0o.it/pro/)
He has a wealth of info on this particular mod/ upgrade. Hope this helps !

Hey Screature , you were the one who advised me a while back to upgrade from a G4 to a Mac Pro.... instead of a G5, been loving it ever since. Now onto the upgrade, I found a pair of engineering sample Xeon L5320 @ 1.86 Ghz Quad cores for $150.00 for both ! It was pretty easy to change. I now have 8 cores and lower power consumption ( hence the L 5320)
Average temps on my machine never get past 29 C.
Just check out:
o0o.it :: Mac Pro Xeon Upgrade And Overclock Guide (http://www.o0o.it/pro/)
He has a wealth of info on this particular mod/ upgrade. Hope this helps !

Did you do the pin mod to get bus speed to 1333?

Hey Screature , you were the one who advised me a while back to upgrade from a G4 to a Mac Pro.... instead of a G5, been loving it ever since. Now onto the upgrade, I found a pair of engineering sample Xeon L5320 @ 1.86 Ghz Quad cores for $150.00 for both ! It was pretty easy to change. I now have 8 cores and lower power consumption ( hence the L 5320)
Average temps on my machine never get past 29 C.
Just check out:
o0o.it :: Mac Pro Xeon Upgrade And Overclock Guide (http://www.o0o.it/pro/)
He has a wealth of info on this particular mod/ upgrade. Hope this helps !

Glad hear it rb4... great price on the cpus, nice to see that some other people are taking on the experience of tinkering in their Mac Pros. Are you happier with your 8 core despite the clock speed loss?

P.s. Thanks for the link... I had seen that article in doing my research... very comprehensive of that particular installation.

Glad hear it rb4... great price on the cpus, nice to see that some other people are taking on the experience of tinkering in their Mac Pros. Are you happier with your 8 core despite the clock speed loss?

P.s. Thanks for the link... I had seen that article in doing my research... very comprehensive of that particular installation.

Yep I did the pin mod even though it doesn't show the bus speed change in any of the utilities like Hardware Monitor, but if I boot into Windows the clock speed reports as 1333 and the CPU is at 2.3Ghz ....sweet, and I am very happy. I will probably wait to find some 3.0 Ghz 5365 CPU's at a price and go from there!

Regards

Yep I did the pin mod even though it doesn't show the bus speed change in any of the utilities like Hardware Monitor, but if I boot into Windows the clock speed reports as 1333 and the CPU is at 2.3Ghz ....sweet, and I am very happy. I will probably wait to find some 3.0 Ghz 5365 CPU's at a price and go from there!

Regards

Congrats rb24... glad to hear you are happy. :clap:

My son has just acquired a 2 ghz 1,1 . I thought I'd help him upgrade it to 8core. At least, till I got a load of the price. Maybe while he's waiting for a rb42 type deal he should just be happy adding ram and a newer video card. Or do people feel adding the 3 ghz woodcrests would be a worthwhile exercise? It'd be fun anyway. What are recommended upgrades to the display card?

My son has just acquired a 2 ghz 1,1 . I thought I'd help him upgrade it to 8core. At least, till I got a load of the price. Maybe while he's waiting for a rb42 type deal he should just be happy adding ram and a newer video card. Or do people feel adding the 3 ghz woodcrests would be a worthwhile exercise? It'd be fun anyway. What are recommended upgrades to the display card?

5770 for video card. Low power good performance. Buy a PC version and flash it. I got one for $115 shipped.

My son has just acquired a 2 ghz 1,1 . I thought I'd help him upgrade it to 8core. At least, till I got a load of the price. Maybe while he's waiting for a rb42 type deal he should just be happy adding ram and a newer video card. Or do people feel adding the 3 ghz woodcrests would be a worthwhile exercise? It'd be fun anyway. What are recommended upgrades to the display card?

From a 2.O GHz... depending on the price... I think a 3.0 quad is worth it.

Compatible video cards for the Mac Pro 1.1 can be hard to find and tend to be expensive, except for the, ATI Radeon HD 5770 (http://store.apple.com/ca/product/MC742ZM/A?fnode=MTY1NDA5OQ&mco=MTg2OTU0NzM) which are readily available and reasonably priced (relatively speaking).

5770 for video card. Low power good performance. Buy a PC version and flash it. I got one for $115 shipped.

It can be risky... if the flash goes wrong you are dead in the water... personally for this upgrade I would get it from Apple becuase if things go south you have some recourse... But maybe that is just me....

Risky, yes. Especially if it's me flashing. Wasn't I arrested once for that? Is there any advantage , other than price, to sully a good Mac with a pc card? Does everything work the same as the Apple version Dadi oh?

As for the processors, I'll likely watch awhile for better clovergulch prices before getting 3 ghz woodcrest (they are reasonable price and can be resold) Is there any market for 2 ghz woodcrest?

It can be risky... if the flash goes wrong you are dead in the water... personally for this upgrade I would get it from Apple becuase if things go south you have some recourse... But maybe that is just me....

No. That is just you :D

Kidding of course. I think that even if you get a bad flash you can always go back to the original bios. I didn't really view it as risky when I did it. Just backed up the original bios first and flashed away. Life on the edge...

I looked into Flashing. netkas.org seems to be one of the main sources of info and one of the main ROM hackers is there (ROMinator I believe he calls himself).
A PC version will work if you reflash, but you may have some weird issues. The apple logo doesn't show up during bootup (no big deal) and often the fan is always blowing at top speed. This was enough to make me break down and get the 5770 from apple. I just installed it and at first the fan blows for a few minutes and then it quiets down to barely audible.
Good Luck sornek!

I looked into Flashing. netkas.org seems to be one of the main sources of info and one of the main ROM hackers is there (ROMinator I believe he calls himself).
A PC version will work if you reflash, but you may have some weird issues. The apple logo doesn't show up during bootup (no big deal) and often the fan is always blowing at top speed. This was enough to make me break down and get the 5770 from apple. I just installed it and at first the fan blows for a few minutes and then it quiets down to barely audible.
Good Luck sornek!

The boot screen shows if you are plugged in on one of the monitors with a VGA-dvi adapter which happens to be my case.

The weird fan issues are if you use a flash from a different card than yours. If you take your original bios and just add the EFI section as per the instructions then you should have the same fan profile as the original PC version.

I took my powercolor pcs+ 5770 and modified the bios myself. Fan profile is perfect.

yeah, thanks, Mckitrick. What annoys me, though, is they're $20 less at the US Applestore :ptptptptp

hmm. It'll obviously take a bit more thought. Don't think the boy would mind the logo thing as long as all else can be wangled proper. Nothing like saving bucks.

No. That is just you :D

Kidding of course. I think that even if you get a bad flash you can always go back to the original bios. I didn't really view it as risky when I did it. Just backed up the original bios first and flashed away. Life on the edge...

You get no Apple on boot though right? Just curious to see if it is always the case. Where did you get it for $115? That's an amazing price, so had had to flash it yourself, it didn't come pre flashed?

You get no Apple on boot though right? Just curious to see if it is always the case. Where did you get it for $115? That's an amazing price, so had had to flash it yourself, it didn't come pre flashed?

I get the boot screen OK. If you hook up a monitor via a DVI to VGA adapter then you get the boot screen. If you go straight DVI to DVI then no boot screen as far as I have read. In my case I have 2 monitors hanging off my 5770 and ne of them is using the VGA input on the monitor coming from a DVI t VGA adapter. That monitor shows the boot screen. The other monitor is hooked up directly by DVI cable and it doesn't show anything until the system boots.

So, if the boot screen is important to you then you can use the adpater trick. If not just hook up with DVI and assume it is booting ok. You will know within a minute ;)

I picked up the card from a guy on a overclock.net classified section. Came like new in original box with the Dirt2 activation included. $115 US shipped to my door. I think it was a "good" deal but not out of the question since you can buy this card for $135US new at Newegg.com. Not sure what Newegg.ca charges. I really like the Powercolor PCS+ cooler. The fan is quite large and makes almost no sound.

edit: Here is the price in Canada. $133 minus a $10 MIR.

Newegg.ca - POWERCOLOR PCS+ AX5770 1GBD5-PPG Radeon HD 5770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 CrossFireX Support Video Card (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131327&cm_re=powercolor_pcs%2b-_-14-131-327-_-Product)

If anyone buys one of these and wants the ready to go modified BIOS for it let me know and I'll fire it over to you.

I get the boot screen OK. If you hook up a monitor via a DVI to VGA adapter then you get the boot screen. If you go straight DVI to DVI then no boot screen as far as I have read. In my case I have 2 monitors hanging off my 5770 and ne of them is using the VGA input on the monitor coming from a DVI t VGA adapter. That monitor shows the boot screen. The other monitor is hooked up directly by DVI cable and it doesn't show anything until the system boots.

So, if the boot screen is important to you then you can use the adpater trick. If not just hook up with DVI and assume it is booting ok. You will know within a minute ;)

No bigbie really except I wonder what happens if you have a Boot Camp install and want to choose your Boot disk on the fly by holding down the Option key, I wonder if you would get the screen that gives you the options. Just curious because this occurs during the boot up not after.

No bigbie really except I wonder what happens if you have a Boot Camp install and want to choose your Boot disk on the fly by holding down the Option key, I wonder if you would get the screen that gives you the options. Just curious because this occurs during the boot up not after.

Good point. I do have bootcamp and get the graphics to select which OS to boot. If I had straight DVI maybe I wouldn't see it....

I guess you could always select the boot disk from within OSX and restart for blind startup into the correct OS.

Dadi_oh, so how is it going running the 2.33 at 2.66GHz is it staying stable and cool?

Dadi_oh, so how is it going running the 2.33 at 2.66GHz is it staying stable and cool?

I don't run at 2.66GHZ all the time. If I have a batch of Handbrake encodes to do then I set it to 2.66 to get the 15% faster encode. I monitor the console and am getting no ECC errors so the RAM is all happy (8 X 2GB). The only thing keepin me from running at 2.66 all the time is the fast running clock. If you enter time and date preferences it automatically updates to the correct time but I am afraid of what it might do to Time Machine or other system SW to always have the clock bouncing around.

I thought that the solution might be to have some sort of script that resynchronizes the system clock every 5 minutes or so. I would just have to discover the CLI command to resynchronize. Do you know what it might be? Haven't really dug into this one yet.

I don't run at 2.66GHZ all the time. If I have a batch of Handbrake encodes to do then I set it to 2.66 to get the 15% faster encode. I monitor the console and am getting no ECC errors so the RAM is all happy (8 X 2GB). The only thing keepin me from running at 2.66 all the time is the fast running clock. If you enter time and date preferences it automatically updates to the correct time but I am afraid of what it might do to Time Machine or other system SW to always have the clock bouncing around.

I thought that the solution might be to have some sort of script that resynchronizes the system clock every 5 minutes or so. I would just have to discover the CLI command to resynchronize. Do you know what it might be? Haven't really dug into this one yet.

Sorry no, the fast running system clock is what is holding me back from even trying the ZDNet overclocking tool.

Seems to be $20. MIR @ ncix. Weird.

NCIX.com - Buy Powercolor Radeon HD 5770 PCS+ 875MHZ 1GB 4.9GHZ GDDR5 2XDVI HDMI DP DIRECTX11 PCI-E Video Card - AX5770 1GBD5-PPGV2 (AX5770 1GBD5-PPG) In Canada. (http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=56154&vpn=AX5770%201GBD5%2DPPGV2%20%28AX5770%201GBD5%2DP PG%29&manufacture=PowerColor)

Seems to be $20. MIR @ ncix. Weird.

NCIX.com - Buy Powercolor Radeon HD 5770 PCS+ 875MHZ 1GB 4.9GHZ GDDR5 2XDVI HDMI DP DIRECTX11 PCI-E Video Card - AX5770 1GBD5-PPGV2 (AX5770 1GBD5-PPG) In Canada. (http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=56154&vpn=AX5770%201GBD5%2DPPGV2%20%28AX5770%201GBD5%2DP PG%29&manufacture=PowerColor)

Well that would appear to be a smoking deal then. If anyone needs the Mac flashed BIOS for this let me know.

Seems to be $20. MIR @ ncix. Weird.

NCIX.com - Buy Powercolor Radeon HD 5770 PCS+ 875MHZ 1GB 4.9GHZ GDDR5 2XDVI HDMI DP DIRECTX11 PCI-E Video Card - AX5770 1GBD5-PPGV2 (AX5770 1GBD5-PPG) In Canada. (http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=56154&vpn=AX5770%201GBD5%2DPPGV2%20%28AX5770%201GBD5%2DP PG%29&manufacture=PowerColor)

Well that would appear to be a smoking deal then. If anyone needs the Mac flashed BIOS for this let me know.

Funny looking thing though, eh?

Funny looking thing though, eh?

You mean the card is funny looking?

Being a hardware guy there are a couple of things that I like about this card.

1) non-reference design meaning they shortened the card from the original.
2) Bigger fan than original "batmobile" reference design = slower spinning = quieter
3) Copper heatsink slug = get the heat away from the core faster. This guy runs very cool. Under Furmark torture test it only hits the low 60's.


But yeah, I kinda like the Batmobile look. I have a 5870 reference design in my PC gaming machine (eyefinity 3 X 23" monitors).

You mean the card is funny looking?

Being a hardware guy there are a couple of things that I like about this card.

1) non-reference design meaning they shortened the card rom the original.
2) Bigger fan than original "batmobile" reference design = slower spinning = quieter
3) Copper heatsink slug = get the heat away from the core faster. This guy runs very cool. Under Furmark torture test it only hits the low 60's.


But yeah, I kinda like the Batmobile look. I have a 5870 reference design in my PC gaming machine (eyefinity 3 X 23" monitors).

Yeah, the card, as I don't know what you guys look like... ;)

Yeah, the card, as I don't know what you guys look like... ;)

Pretty much the same as my Avatar :D

Pretty much the same as my Avatar :D

Funny dat... me too! :D

Guess I'll be needing that rom, Dadi Oh, thanks for the offer. I ordered the card today from ncix due to being able to just hobble in and pick it up free of shipping. I imagine newegg got the value wrong. It is a $20 manufacturer's rebate. With the stinking HST, minus the rebate, when I get it, $135.16.
When I'll get around to the surgery, I don't know, but at least I'll have it ready to go. My son works graveyard which kinda complicates things, timewise.
I guess he'll need to get windoze up and running. Does this card need any additional cabling or anything?

Guess I'll be needing that rom, Dadi Oh, thanks for the offer. I ordered the card today from ncix due to being able to just hobble in and pick it up free of shipping. I imagine newegg got the value wrong. It is a $20 manufacturer's rebate. With the stinking HST, minus the rebate, when I get it, $135.16.
When I'll get around to the surgery, I don't know, but at least I'll have it ready to go. My son works graveyard which kinda complicates things, timewise.
I guess he'll need to get windoze up and running. Does this card need any additional cabling or anything?

I have 2 ROM files but the forum won;t allow me to upload either ROM files or Zip files. PM me with an email and I can send to you.

The first, named PC5770.rom is the original ROM from the card. You should still backup your own ROM just in case Powercolor did some updates between my card and your card.

The second ROM is PCMAC5770.rom and this is the Mac version of the ROM that should work on your Mac Pro. I used a PC to flash the ROM using ATIFlash tool. Created a bootable USB stick, put ATIFlash and the new ROM on the stick, booted to the stick, and flashed the card. Then moved the card back over to my Mac. There are ways to flash the card in the Mac but they seem rather complicated on first read. Unfortunately the Zeus tool (Mac version of ATIFlash) does not support the 5700 series of cards yet.

You are also going to need a 6 pin power cable to run from the Mac Pro motherboard to the 5770 card. You can find these on eBay for about $10.

Or you can download yourself from my message over at netkas. There is lots of support there for what you are trying to do.

5770 efi rom (http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,374.msg3916.html#msg3916)

Or you can download yourself from my message over at netkas. There is lots of support there for what you are trying to do.

5770 efi rom (http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,374.msg3916.html#msg3916)

Thanks again, Dadi_Oh, I've got your roms.
I'll keep you posted here and there of my progress.

Well gentlemen, I managed to score a (semi-cheap?) matched pair of quad-core X5355 2.66GHz SLAC4 Xeons off eBay so wish me luck on this! Ideally they should be arriving in the next week or so and I'll try my hand at taking apart the beast that is my MacPro1,1, albeit probably with some assistance/wrenches/thermal grease from whichever ACMT buddy I can bribe with some beers :)

Really, my good ol' Mac Pro is undergoing a bit of a renaissance as of late; tossed in another 8GB of RAM (16 total), added another 20" Cinema Display to give my previous one a companion, and striped three 500GB disk for movies/music/general scratch storage. Biggest difference by far though is the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD (120GB) I added for boot/apps/user files. That thing is quite simply amazing! There's nothing like launching the entirety of CS5 in under 10 seconds with no disk grinding! :D I would, without reservations, suggest it to anybody looking for a boost in general "snappiness."

Still debating going with the 5770 upgrade as well, although I'm not sure if I want to try my hand at flashing a PC model or just pay the additional Apple Tax for an "official" Mac model :rolleyes:

Well gentlemen, I managed to score a (semi-cheap?) matched pair of quad-core X5355 2.66GHz SLAC4 Xeons off eBay so wish me luck on this! Ideally they should be arriving in the next week or so and I'll try my hand at taking apart the beast that is my MacPro1,1, albeit probably with some assistance/wrenches/thermal grease from whichever ACMT buddy I can bribe with some beers :)

Really, my good ol' Mac Pro is undergoing a bit of a renaissance as of late; tossed in another 8GB of RAM (16 total), added another 20" Cinema Display to give my previous one a companion, and striped three 500GB disk for movies/music/general scratch storage. Biggest difference by far though is the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD (120GB) I added for boot/apps/user files. That thing is quite simply amazing! There's nothing like launching the entirety of CS5 in under 10 seconds with no disk grinding! :D I would, without reservations, suggest it to anybody looking for a boost in general "snappiness."

Still debating going with the 5770 upgrade as well, although I'm not sure if I want to try my hand at flashing a PC model or just pay the additional Apple Tax for an "official" Mac model :rolleyes:

Hey Mr. Cobalt. good on ya for taking the plunge. I really recommend looking at the German video a couple of times at least, before starting. It really isn't that hard you just need to be patient and take your time.

Congrats on the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD (120GB) I am just in the process of waiting for mine to arrive, hopefully tonight (fingers crossed). Good luck with the CPU upgrade and report back when you're done if you're so inclined. :)

Hey Mr. Cobalt. good on ya for taking the plunge. I really recommend looking at the German video a couple of times at least, before starting. It really isn't that hard you just need to be patient and take your time.

Congrats on the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD (120GB) I am just in the process of waiting for mine to arrive, hopefully tonight (fingers crossed). Good luck with the CPU upgrade and report back when you're done if you're so inclined. :)
Alas everything got held up in Customs for a couple days so I doubt I'll have anything to report until after the long weekend. Definitely going to be doing some before & after Geekbenching though.

I'm sure you'll be very happy with the SSD. It makes a pretty stunning difference especially with random disk access. While my 3-drive software-striped RAID can get close to the SSD's performance in sequential read/writes (especially at 512 KB sizes and higher), the SSD just blows it away in every other category (except price per GB ;)) But I'm sure you know all that :D

Still debating going with the 5770 upgrade as well, although I'm not sure if I want to try my hand at flashing a PC model or just pay the additional Apple Tax for an "official" Mac model :rolleyes:

Flashing a PC model worked like a charm for me. I bought a powercolor pcs+ 5770 and modified the bios myself. This model has a very large, very quiet fan. With a dvi to VGA adapter on one of the outputs I get the boot screen as well. Only thing is the display port output doesn't work but this may be a limitation of the apple version as well. So if you only want two monitors then no issue. I can provide guidance on the bios mod on request.

Flashing a PC model worked like a charm for me. I bought a powercolor pcs+ 5770 and modified the bios myself. This model has a very large, very quiet fan. With a dvi to VGA adapter on one of the outputs I get the boot screen as well. Only thing is the display port output doesn't work but this may be a limitation of the apple version as well. So if you only want two monitors then no issue. I can provide guidance on the bios mod on request.
Yeah, I've been keeping an eye on the previously-mentioned Powercolor 5770 model (http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=56154) on NCIX, especially since the manufacturer's rebate keeps getting extended, and $117 is a heck of a price... Also wouldn't need a miniDP-to-DVI adapter for my second monitor as I would with the Apple card.

I'm only wary of the flashing because I've never done it before, and because I only have DVI monitors, so not having access to the option-key boot selection screen/EFI interface/etc worries me. Odd question but can you see single-user mode or verbose boot mode with the flashed card (boot with cmd-S/cmd-V respectively)? Alternately, I suppose I can keep my old 7300GT around (or installed) just in case :o

Also: am I correct in assuming that I would need the proper Mac Pro AUX power cable as well? The Powercolor mentions including "One 6-Pin PCI Express Power connector" but I'm guessing that ends in molex connectors rather than Apple's specific internal aux power port style. Did you modify your own cable or pick one up off eBay, etc?

I suspect that verbose mode will work in my situation just because of the dvi to VGA adapter. I could try an experiment to see what happens in pure dvi.

You need the pcie power cable. I got one off eBay for about $8 shipped. This is not the same as what the card came with. That is probably 4 pin molex to 6 pin pcie power.

I suspect that verbose mode will work in my situation just because of the dvi to VGA adapter. I could try an experiment to see what happens in pure dvi.

You need the pcie power cable. I got one off eBay for about $8 shipped. This is not the same as what the card came with. That is probably 4 pin molex to 6 pin pcie power.

OK. Just tried an experiment. Unplugged the VGA monitor and I do not see any of the verbose mode messages on the DVI screen. First screen I see is after it boots. Works fine on the VGA when connected though. So if your second monitor supports both VGA and DVI inputs then you could use the VGA with a dongle all the time or, if there is a big benefit to DVI, then just use the VGA connector when you want to see the boot sequence.

OK. Just tried an experiment. Unplugged the VGA monitor and I do not see any of the verbose mode messages on the DVI screen. First screen I see is after it boots. Works fine on the VGA when connected though. So if your second monitor supports both VGA and DVI inputs then you could use the VGA with a dongle all the time or, if there is a big benefit to DVI, then just use the VGA connector when you want to see the boot sequence.
Hmm, alright. Thanks for the test Dadi_oh :) Alas, both my monitors are Cinema Displays so no VGA options that I know of. I may have a spare VGA monitor kicking around somewhere though.

However, I suspect I will convince myself to pick up the Powercolor model regardless, since the price is right and, let's face it, I'm a nerd that likes a bit of a challenge :D Also, it's not like my 7300 is dead; I'll keep it around just in case I run into any boot troubles.

Anyways, to get slightly back on the thread topic: my processors finally made it through Customs and are apparently out for delivery now. I, alas, am at work, so I suspect that I'll have to make a trip to the post office tomorrow to pick them up... Unless CPost decides to leave them on my doorstep, which I kinda hope they don't :-/

Hmm, alright. Thanks for the test Dadi_oh :) Alas, both my monitors are Cinema Displays so no VGA options that I know of. I may have a spare VGA monitor kicking around somewhere though.

However, I suspect I will convince myself to pick up the Powercolor model regardless, since the price is right and, let's face it, I'm a nerd that likes a bit of a challenge :D Also, it's not like my 7300 is dead; I'll keep it around just in case I run into any boot troubles.

Anyways, to get slightly back on the thread topic: my processors finally made it through Customs and are apparently out for delivery now. I, alas, am at work, so I suspect that I'll have to make a trip to the post office tomorrow to pick them up... Unless CPost decides to leave them on my doorstep, which I kinda hope they don't :-/

I'll trade you my Cheapo Acer displays for your Cinema displays so you can see the boot screen ;)

Actually you make a good point. If you leave the 7300 in there you would probably see the boot display on that. I actually wanted to see about setting up a third display on my Mac Pro that would point at my work bench. I fix Macbooks and it would be nice to have the schematic up on the display while I work rather than flipping through paper pages. But a passive DP to DVI dongle does not give me a third display out of the 5770. I might need an active DP to DVI adapter. I have one on my gaming PC (5870 with 3X 23" eyefinity) but I don;t feel like climbing behind the desk to borrow it. I might just see what happens if I pop the 7300 back in there and put the third monitor on it.

The upgrade should go easy peasy if you take your time and follow the guides.

Most of all... have fun with the upgrade.

I'll trade you my Cheapo Acer displays for your Cinema displays so you can see the boot screen ;)
Hmm, I'll have to think on that ;)

The upgrade should go easy peasy if you take your time and follow the guides.

Most of all... have fun with the upgrade.

Heh, well, an update on this: Read on for my odyssey but the TL;DR version is I almost had a couple minor heart attacks but got 'er done and my precious is back up and running smoothly with the quad-core X5355s. Temperatures on the CPUs and heatsinks remain stable and, taking into account my previously recorded temps on the original 5150s, everything is in line with my expectations. I'll post before/after benchmarks and temperature/power readouts when I get a chance to fully run them. Preliminary results: Super-speedy, and just as cool and quiet as before.

But now, for those looking for a delightful tale of Mac Pro upgrading: The Odyssey

First of all, the actual disassembly was indeed easy peasy and I think I could do it in my sleep now. Didn't have any trouble with the memory cage screws as I'd seen reported on some other sites, and every else slotted in and out without issue. No, my real problems probably stemmed from, well, I'm gonna say gremlins, 'cause I could have sworn that I did everything just perfectly with the proc swap and re-assemble.

There did feel like there was quite a bit of pressure needed to latch up the processor sockets but then again I think that's probably normal (and I know I got the processor alignments right because with the notches, et al that would be really tricky to screw up :D)

I will admit though, this was my first serious experience with thermal grease. I picked up some Arctic Silver 5 as well as their ArctiClean "Thermal Material Remover and Surface Purifier Kit" which did a fine job of removing any paste from the heatsinks and CPUs, new and old. Following Artic Silver's handy online guides for the 5300 series (http://www.arcticsilver.com/pdf/appmeth/int/hl/intel_app_method_horizontal_line_v1.1.pdf) the application of new grease went smoothly (I thought) and then the heatsinks got screwed down in the proper diagonal pattern. So then, put everything back together, covers on, fans & RAM in, etc etc. All told even taking my time and cleaning everything thoroughly while it was all open on the table I had it to this stage in about an hour and a half (even including time spent driving to the store to pick up canned air). Now, plug it all in, press power and… Nothing.

First minor heart attack.

Well, not nothing: power light on and solid, fans on at normal levels, drives spinning up. Just no video, or any sign of further life. Seems braindead. Check to see if video's seated, check via remote desktop to see if it's actually booting and joining the network but: nothing.

Much troubleshooting ensues. Many power downs and restarts. Strip the system of all non-essential parts, peripherals, drives, aftermarket RAM, etc. Move video card to different slot, boot off yesterday's backup disk. Try basically everything. No Dice.

Boot with no RAM or drives installed just to see what happens. With my head stuck in the now very-empty memory cage notice a small but bright slow-blinking red LED buried just above the cage. Hmm, pretty sure that light hadn't been blinking on any of the other prior boot-ups. Get a flashlight to read the very small text on the motherboard:

CPUA -> FAIL

Second slightly-more-serious heart attack.

Rip everything apart. Cage out, fans out, CPU A heatsink off, CPU unlatched and scrutinized. Grease application looks fine to my untrained eye and in a cursory inspection it appears to match up with online photos of similar procedures. Figure, ah what the hell: put the system's bare minimums back together. Single hard drive, single memory riser with single stick of RAM, don't even screw down the memory cage or anything else for that matter. Leave CPU A completely out and boot the system.

Success! Crazy fans on startup due to no heatsink A (and its associated thermal sensor) installed but it comes to life. Amazingly slow with no SSD and only 2GB of RAM but it boots, shows CPU B's 4 cores, and temperatures and power consumption all seem fine.

Well then. Determination sets in. Either I have a dead processor on my hands (in which case I may be in for some hassles as the seller I bought them off of vanished off eBay after shipping them to me) or I am just being incompetent. After some consideration I choose to believe in a unified theory encompassing both mankind's inherent goodness (eBay sellers included), and the general ineptitude of n00bs such as myself.

So: Closely inspect the socket, processor and heatsink. All the processor contacts look fine and the socket looks normal as well. I haven't slopped any excess thermal grease anywhere other than where it should be so I'm thinking I can rule out a weird short, however my grease application looks a tad sparse near the left side, as if I perhaps didn't place the heatsink squarely down onto the processor, or perhaps tightened the left side too much too soon, thereby squishing the grease over to the right. Visions of a totally burned-out processor dance through my head… Briefly consider removing CPU B's heatsink to compare but if it ain't broke… (or overheating, or blinking FAIL…)

Clean & prepare the processor and heatsink again, tint the heatsink lighter than I had before, and follow the instructions to the letter in the application of the grease to the processor. The subsequent heatsink placement proceeded at the pace of a crippled snail to ensure that I was lining everything up just-so. Then tighten it down, counting screw rotations to ensure that everything was exactly even.

Again frankenstein the bare minimums of the system back together. Connect power & video, press the power button and… Crazy fans! No chime! No video! Blinking power light on the front panel! Cursing ensues. But looking again: no blinking FAIL light on the motherboard this time… Shut it all down, unplug power, pray, Google symptoms, and perform voodoo. Swap around the memory riser boards, press and hold the power button to perform an SMC reset. Plug it back in and press power. The delay for the power-on self-test to complete is the longest 3 to 5 seconds of my life, then…

SWEET MOTHER OF BOOT CHIME!

It comes back to life, albeit slowly and with its guts wide open on the kitchen table. No evil blinking lights to be seen. System Profiler shows two 2.66 quad core CPUs and temperatures look right in line. Realize I've been holding my breath for some time now. Exhale, do a little happy dance, then shut it down and put everything back together, praying that I don't mess anything up in the process. I don't. It boots up back into my normal profile & configuration, and continues to run quietly, coolly, and, best of all, fast. I honestly have no idea what I could have done wrong in the first place though, unless my placement of the processor in the socket was slightly off (seems unlikely/impossible) or my thermal grease skillz were just that sub-par (perhaps more likely?).

Perhaps I just had some computer-fixing karma that needed to be evened out :)

fin


You've reached the end! Congrats! How about some other brief notes of possible interest (ie. Google bait)
- I had read in some places that the Mac Pro heatsinks used torx screws but on my model they were 3 mm hex heads which, from further reading, seems to be the standard. I'm glad I just got an extender for my existing screwdriver & bits and didn't try to track down a long T-handle torx or the like.

- While the CPU specs read out fine in System Profiler, the "About This Mac" window reads the CPU type as unknown. If you are obsessive about things like this (like me!) then I would suggest downloading and installing the very small "AboutThisMac" package from here (http://forums.xlr8yourmac.com/software/AboutThisMac.zip) (direct download link, also mirrored here (http://web.me.com/matt_tracey/AboutThisMac.zip)) which in my case makes the About This Mac window read as "2 x Intel® Xeon® CPU X5355@2.66GHz" I'm guessing future system updates might require this package to be reinstalled though if they overwrite the updated file.

- As Dadi_oh states: Take your time, follow the guides, and don't panic. You'll pull through and probably only feel a lingering sense of stress for the next day or so :D

CLEAR!!!!! .... zzzzzztttt... WHACK.... budda bump budda bump budda bump.... :D

Man I would have had a heart attack, two seizures, and an aneurism... Congrats on hanging on through to the end. And a happy ending at that.

Fixing Macbooks for a hobby I have to tell you that "chime" can be one of the happiest sounds in the world at the time.

I think that the references to Torx are that you "can" use a torx driver to simulate the hex (I think a T15 or something like that) but the best solution of course is to use the proper hex driver.

Welcome to the Octo macpro1,1 club.

Mr. CoBalt what a nightmare. The one thing I would note and actually hadn't previously mentioned is that for whatever reason I have noticed on my Mac Pro 1.1 when replacing the video card it can take a few boots for the video card to be recognized by the system. This happened to me when swapping out my 2.66s for the 3.0s. So my question is how many restarts did you do before taking everything a part the second time. It took 3 boots for my video card to work when I did mine.

Also I wonder it the power connectors to the heat sinks were fully seated the first time as I found them to be a little fiddly to fully seat, especially the heat sink power connector closest to the memory riser boards.

At least everything worked out in the end. If I had to go through what you did I don't think I wouldn't have any hair left or it would have turned grey in the process. Congrats that you persevered. :clap:

Congrats you got it done. This is exactly why I don't do this sort of stuff any longer ... to me it's just not worth it. If you do enjoy the DIY stuff and getting it all done more power to you! (I used to like it once upon a time).

I would say 2x SMC resets and 2x pram zapping when changing components is a necessity to get things all cleared out and happy again ... or at least always worked for me.

Congrats you got it done. This is exactly why I don't do this sort of stuff any longer ... to me it's just not worth it. If you do enjoy the DIY stuff and getting it all done more power to you! (I used to like it once upon a time).

I would say 2x SMC resets and 2x pram zapping when changing components is a necessity to get things all cleared out and happy again ... or at least always worked for me.

Indeed YMWV will vary when taking on this kind of project. Personally I enjoy the challenge. For Dadi_oh and I it went smooth as silk, unfortunately for Mr. Cobalt it was more like rubbing sand paper on your "sensitive" parts. ;)

Welcome to the Octo macpro1,1 club.
Why thank you, it's a most enjoyable club once you pay those membership dues :D

Seriously though folks, thanks for all the feedback (plus double points for reading through that entire long tale!) :clap:

…unfortunately for Mr. Cobalt it was more like rubbing sand paper on your "sensitive" parts. ;)

:lmao: To be honest I treated it all as a learning experience and I was confident enough in my abilities that I was sure I would be able to get everything back up and running, I just needed to find the right combination of troubleshooting steps that lead to success, even it involved putting the original CPUs back in and just chalking it up as a learning experience. If my IT day job (usually in a Windows environment) has taught me anything it's that I can get to the bottom of most problems with enough applied time, care, curiosity, and a touch of optimism/naiveté (take your pick) ;)

…how many restarts did you do before taking everything a part the second time. It took 3 boots for my video card to work when I did mine.
Hmm, I don't recall how many exactly but it was quite a few in the stock-except for-the-new-processors configuration while I was trying to figure out if it was just silently booting without video (checking via Remote Desktop, etc.). Prior to the full second disassemble I even put my backup boot drive in just to see if I could hear the drive heads chattering during boot (Silence! An unexpected downside of an SSD! ;)) I don't recall if I reset the SMC at that stage though, but I'm pretty sure I did at least once.

Also I wonder it the power connectors to the heat sinks were fully seated the first time as I found them to be a little fiddly to fully seat, especially the heat sink power connector closest to the memory riser boards.
The connection on the lower (CPU B) heatsink was indeed tricky to get on there but I managed it with some contortions on the first re-assemble and then never touched it again. CPU A seemed very easy to reach & reattach but the system will boot without it connected, with the side effect that the fans freak out and there's obviously no temp reading on that heatsink :)

Indeed YMWV will vary when taking on this kind of project. Personally I enjoy the challenge. For Dadi_oh and I it went smooth as silk, unfortunately for Mr. Cobalt it was more like rubbing sand paper on your "sensitive" parts. ;)

Yep that's the way it goes sometimes ;) I started into the mac mod club with my LC series stuff, changing around pad resistors to overclock ;) That could get funky if you were not great with a soldering iron (or in some cases a pair of them!)

Yep that's the way it goes sometimes ;) I started into the mac mod club with my LC series stuff, changing around pad resistors to overclock ;) That could get funky if you were not great with a soldering iron (or in some cases a pair of them!)
Well my soldering skills are definitely sub-par so thank goodness for socketed processors :D

octoMac benchmarking and temp monitoring continues in my limited spare time but as I'm sure you can imagine, doubling the system's cores has produced basically a doubling of floating point and integer performance – and power usage (:o) but not heat, so I'm assuming my Arctic Silver is doing the job. So now I'm being held back by FSB/memory limitations but I doubt there's much I can do about that short of a new Mac Pro :rolleyes:

However, I did pull the trigger on a 5770 (The aforementioned Powercolor PCS+ model from NCIX (http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=56154)) since it's down to 99 bucks (with the $20 mfg. rebate). Pre-rebate with $10 express shipping and AB tax + insurance it was $138 which, compared to the price of the "official" Apple card (and not having to get an additional miniDP to DVI adapter), was a bit too good to pass up. Of course buying that triggered a hunt for the proper Mac Pro PCIe video power cable in order to supply juice to the bad boy…

For the edification of the internet and for those of you possibly in a similar situation I found a few different options:

The homebrew route: get some molex splitters and use power from the CD/DVD bays along with the card's included power cable. But since Apple already supplies those handy 12v aux power connectors, you just need the right cable with the right plug on each end. You could make your own, in which case I'll leave that and the molex method as an exercise for the reader, but when going the "official" route there are three different part number for variants on this cable…
There are two Apple part numbers for this same cable: 922-7128 or 922-8446. The 8446 one is more recent, and in Apple's GSX system is listed as being for a Mac Pro 2008 NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 or GeForce 7800 GT. Price was listed at around $26 CDN which I thought ludicrous for a simple 6-pin to 6-pin cable. The 7128 is apparently older and it was listed around $15 CDN if I remember correctly. However, searching online for those parts will reveal to you absolutely ridiculous markups, especially for the 8446. I think $62 USD was the highest I found. The guys at WeLoveMacs should subtitle themselves "…and markups" :rolleyes:
The ATI part number 6110024100G is the same cable as best I can tell, albeit listed as being only for the X1600 G5 card. It will apparently work in a Mac Pro though, but I've never poked around in a PCIe-enabled G5 so I'm not sure what the mobo aux power connectors look like. That said, Svideo.com has the cheapest price I could find (http://www.svideo.com/x1900.html) at about $11 USD shipped via USPS First Class Mail (plus use the coupon code "svideo" for 5% off). This is the most economical option out there in my option, but who knows if they actually follow through and ship you your stuff (plus USPS always seems epically slow to me, but I am epically impatient with shipping :D)
Finally, I guess there's always eBay. This seller (http://myworld.ebay.ca/crazyconn/) seems to have boatload of homemade-looking "Mac Pro PCIe PCI Express 6 Pin Video Card Power Cable" (also listed under "PCIe PCI-e Power Cable for Mac G5 nVidia ATI Video Card") and pretty cheap USPS international shipping.

My route to cable acquisition was slightly different though. Tonight I walked into my local Apple Authorized Service Center (Westworld Computers (http://www.westworldcanada.com/) here in Calgary) and asked their tech to check on the above Apple part numbers for me. He looked up the 8446 model, glanced at the part photo, then went into the back and emerged with the exact cable I needed. Just as I'm busting out the wallet to pony up the cash (parts in my hands now always trumps waiting for shipping in my books, unless the price is way out of whack) he aks if I just need the one, hands it to me and wishes me a good night. And as we all know free Apple parts trumps pretty much everything :)

Of course in this case it might also help that I'm in there almost every week with client systems and know most of the techs, but still, not what I was expecting at all! So the moral is: if you've got one nearby, go ask your friendly neighbourhood service center first! And thanks a lot Bernie! :D

octoMac benchmarking and temp monitoring continues in my limited spare time but as I'm sure you can imagine, doubling the system's cores has produced basically a doubling of floating point and integer performance – and power usage (:o) but not heat, so I'm assuming my Arctic Silver is doing the job. So now I'm being held back by FSB/memory limitations but I doubt there's much I can do about that short of a new Mac Pro :rolleyes:



Congrats on scoring the free cable :clap:

So you have the modified BIOS to flash for that puppy? I have it. Maybe I already gave it to you. So many posts.... :)

Just a clarification on the heat. You are indeed creating more heat but since the arctic silver is doing its job most of that heat is going into the heatsink and pouring out of the back of the system through the courtesy of those lovely heatsink fans. If it was not doing its job then the heat would not transfer as well to the heatsink and the CPU would get really hot while dumping its heat inefficiently into the inside of your case ;)

So you have the modified BIOS to flash for that puppy? I have it. Maybe I already gave it to you. So many posts.... :)
Yup, I grabbed the ROM attachments off your post on netkas and I've been absorbing that forum for all the info on dumping/flashing/tacking on the EFI portion, etc. I think I should be able to make good progress, hopefully with less hassle than my CPU upgrade adventure :D

Just a clarification on the heat. You are indeed creating more heat but since the arctic silver is doing its job most of that heat is going into the heatsink and pouring out of the back of the system through the courtesy of those lovely heatsink fans. If it was not doing its job then the heat would not transfer as well to the heatsink and the CPU would get really hot while dumping its heat inefficiently into the inside of your case ;)
Yeah, under idle with fans at minimum (~400 rpm) I'm seeing CPU1 tending to stay the exact same temp as its heatsink (right now around 41° C) while CPU 2 tends to have a slightly cooler temp vs its heatsink (41° for the CPU, 43° for the heatsink) so perhaps that's indicative of better thermal transfer (or there's more air from the fans blowing on heatsink 1, thus keeping it slightly cooler?)

Some interesting behaviour I've noticed under full 8-core load though, that maybe others can verify: The CPU temps actually drop a whole lot while the heatsink temps rise as one might expect. ie. If I start up a Handbrake encode to max out all the cores, within less than a minute I see the CU temperatures reporting that they are down in the low 20s (I think 20° is the lowest I've seen, even while ambient temp sensor is reporting in at about 19° or 20°). Meanwhile the heatsinks hit around 50° to 60° or so until the fans ramp up slightly (although still under 700 rpm) and cool them down.

My un-educated layperson's explanation for this is that the heatsinks and thermal paste are just far more efficient in the presence of an abundance of heat as created by all 8 cores blasting away, and thus do a much better job of wicking that heat away from the processors. When the system is idle the CPUs are obviously still creating heat but aren't as thermally "active" and thus the heat transfer is slower and more inefficient, causing the CPUs & heatsinks to reach almost the same temperatures.

Of course I could be way off base there, or my monitoring software is just faulty (I don't have a thermal probe to test with, alas) :o

Yup, I grabbed the ROM attachments off your post on netkas and I've been absorbing that forum for all the info on dumping/flashing/tacking on the EFI portion, etc. I think I should be able to make good progress, hopefully with less hassle than my CPU upgrade adventure :D


Yeah, under idle with fans at minimum (~400 rpm) I'm seeing CPU1 tending to stay the exact same temp as its heatsink (right now around 41° C) while CPU 2 tends to have a slightly cooler temp vs its heatsink (41° for the CPU, 43° for the heatsink) so perhaps that's indicative of better thermal transfer (or there's more air from the fans blowing on heatsink 1, thus keeping it slightly cooler?)

Some interesting behaviour I've noticed under full 8-core load though, that maybe others can verify: The CPU temps actually drop a whole lot while the heatsink temps rise as one might expect. ie. If I start up a Handbrake encode to max out all the cores, within less than a minute I see the CU temperatures reporting that they are down in the low 20s (I think 20° is the lowest I've seen, even while ambient temp sensor is reporting in at about 19° or 20°). Meanwhile the heatsinks hit around 50° to 60° or so until the fans ramp up slightly (although still under 700 rpm) and cool them down.

My un-educated layperson's explanation for this is that the heatsinks and thermal paste are just far more efficient in the presence of an abundance of heat as created by all 8 cores blasting away, and thus do a much better job of wicking that heat away from the processors. When the system is idle the CPUs are obviously still creating heat but aren't as thermally "active" and thus the heat transfer is slower and more inefficient, causing the CPUs & heatsinks to reach almost the same temperatures.

Of course I could be way off base there, or my monitoring software is just faulty (I don't have a thermal probe to test with, alas) :o

Are you using iStat Menus by any chance? If so, there is a bug that is causing them to give wrong readings on the CPU. I have reported the bug to them and "they are working on it"... but it has been a while and no update. What they are doing wrong, I believe, is that the temperatures that Intel reports on their CPU's is actually the value of the distance from Tjmax to the temperature of the cores. iStat is not doing that math and therefore CPU temps drop when under load (which is impossible). What they are reporting is the Tjmax minus Tjactual which obviously goes DOWN as Tj goes up.

So if you want to know the actual temperatures of the core there is a free utility called (of all things) "Temperature Monitor". That will give you the temps of all 8 cores.

Marcel Bresink Software-Systeme: Products (http://www.bresink.com/products.html)

Basically it is impossible for the heatsink to be hotter than the CPU's. The only source of heat is the CPU so that heat flows outwards from the cores through the IHS (Integrate Heat Spreader) to the thermal interface material to the heatsink base to the heatsink pipes to the heatsink fins to the air interface to the air. (A song about hip bones leg bones foot bones comes to mind :D

Each interface has a property called theta which is the heat transfer coefficent in degC/Watt. Lower degC per Watt = good because less temp drop across the interface = more heat going to the next step. To calculate the temp drop you take the number of watts of the source (about 60W for the quadcores) and multiply by theta.

Loooooonnnnnngggg story short... (well maybe too late for that) is that the better each interface is at transferring heat the better you are doing at keeping the CPU cores cool which is what its all about. So you arctic silver is good at getting the heat transferred from the IHS (top of the CPU) to the base of the heatsink. By the way, the best possible transfer in this case is no thermal interface material at all assuming you can get PERFECTLY Flat IHS and PERFECTLY Flat heatsink base. But this is impossible (or very very difficult) using traditional manufacturing techniques. The Thermal Interface Material (TIM) is therefore the next best thing, filling in all the air pockets that would insulate the heat transfer.

Bored yet? :D

Bored yet? :D
Not at all! That was a great read, and very well explained, thanks! It does indeed make no sense that the CPUs would be cooler than the heatsinks at any point lest the heat start flowing back into the processor… Obviously I really need to remember my second law of thermodynamics (I blame a brain addled by the ordeal of installing the processors ;))

Are you using iStat Menus by any chance? If so, there is a bug that is causing them to give wrong readings on the CPU.
Yup, that would indeed be my issue, and your explanation of why it could be calculated wrong sounds right on as well based on the readings I'm seeing in it vs. Temperature Monitor. You would think a fairly integral stat like that ought to be reported correctly :rolleyes: Off to file a bug report!

PS - At full load in Temperature Monitor I'm seeing no core temps exceeding 75° with the heatsinks lagging about 16 to 20° behind. Unless I'm again misinterpreting the numbers I'll chalk that up as a decent result I suppose :D

You would think a fairly integral stat like that ought to be reported correctly :rolleyes: Off to file a bug report!

PS - At full load in Temperature Monitor I'm seeing no core temps exceeding 75° with the heatsinks lagging about 16 to 20° behind. Unless I'm again misinterpreting the numbers I'll chalk that up as a decent result I suppose :D

The more bug reports the better I suppose. I love iStat but it is a pain to have to open another program just to check CPU temps. But I hardly ever check anymore since they run so cool.

Looks like the X5355 run a bit hotter than the E5345's. I only get in the high 40's if I run CPUTest with small FFT's (about as hot as you will ever get on the CPU cores). I assume your 75 is Celsius and not Fahrenheit ?

Can you do me a favour and when you load the CPU's have a look in iStat under the temp column and let me know what you see for power on the 2 CPU's? My 5345's get to about 60W each under load and idle at about 25W (going from memory). Would be interested to see what the power draw on the X5355's looks like.

Looks like the X5355 run a bit hotter than the E5345's. I only get in the high 40's if I run CPUTest with small FFT's (about as hot as you will ever get on the CPU cores). I assume your 75 is Celsius and not Fahrenheit ?
Yeah, that's celsius and by design they certain do seem to run hotter (and draw more power) than the E model Xeons. Looking at the specs on each, it appears that other than the slightly lower clock on the Es, the Max TDP on the X5355 (http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=28035) is a full 40W higher than the E5345 (http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=28032).

Can you do me a favour and when you load the CPU's have a look in iStat under the temp column and let me know what you see for power on the 2 CPU's? My 5345's get to about 60W each under load and idle at about 25W (going from memory). Would be interested to see what the power draw on the X5355's looks like.
I'm remoted into my home system from work, so it's not a perfect idle with VNC running, etc. but I'm seeing 26 to 36W on average.

I don't have CPUtest installed but if I fire up Handbrake (which is about as stressed as my system gets most times) it peaks each CPU at 96 to 103W.

I don't have CPUtest installed but if I fire up Handbrake (which is about as stressed as my system gets most times) it peaks each CPU at 96 to 103W.

Yikes. Well that is why you are seeing in the 70's. Basically the X5355 and X5365 are in the diminishing returns end of the CPU clock per Watt spectrum. Seen it many times from my PC overclocking days. I had a Q6600 that would run nice and cool at 3.52GHz with a low Vcore. If I wanted to get over 3.6GHz I had to pour lots of volts into it and the temperatures soared.

I am wondering what my power will look like if I use ZDNet to overclock to 2.66GHz on my E5345's and see what that does to my power. Traveling right now so I will try it when I get home.

I think Tjmax on the X series may be a little higher than the E series so you probably have some headroom there.

Congrats once again on the upgrade.

Thanks guys, as a new owner of an used old MacPro 1,1 I'm really enjoying this conversation. Exactly the reason i love Ehmac.ca especially when I'm fighting insomnia!

I'm curious, anyone know why you never see flashed graphic cards for sale, it just seams that there would be a market for them, no?

Thanks guys, as a new owner of an used old MacPro 1,1 I'm really enjoying this conversation. Exactly the reason i love Ehmac.ca especially when I'm fighting insomnia!

I'm curious, anyone know why you never see flashed graphic cards for sale, it just seams that there would be a market for them, no?

There are lots of them for sale on eBay but at insane prices. I guess the guys selling them figure their time is worth $400 an hour :)

Seriously though... it is a pretty simple process with a little bit of research and the help of any of the great mac forums around.

There are lots of them for sale on eBay but at insane prices. I guess the guys selling them figure their time is worth $400 an hour :)

Seriously though... it is a pretty simple process with a little bit of research and the help of any of the great mac forums around.
Yeah, I was considering going the eBay route as well but the price difference between getting an official Apple card and an eBay model was just nowhere near good enough to justify it. Instead over the weekend I flashed a PC Powercolor 5770 as detailed here (http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,374.msg4338.html#msg4338) (if you create an account you can download my attached before & after ROM files).

Hardest part was figuring out how to install ATIFlash (http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1963/ATIFlash-3.84.html) and save the dumped ROM file so that I had a way to go back to stock should the Mac conversion & flash fail. I messed around with editing ISOs, booting off USB keys, etc. but what I ended up doing was putting in a spare hard drive in DOS/MBR format with the ATIFlash utility copied onto it then booting off a Ultimate Boot CD (http://www.ultimatebootcd.com) and basically following these steps (http://gullycat.wordpress.com/2010/12/08/flashing-rom-on-a-non-apple-graphics-card-2006-mac-pro-11/) to get to the command line, and dump the ROM (More ATIflash commands & info (http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=57750) here should you want it). Then to make my own ROM I shut down the Mac Pro, yanked the DOS disk out and hooked it up to a spare USB enclosure attached to my MacBook where I followed the majority of these instructions (http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,692.msg3859.html#msg3859) to patch the ROM. Saved the patched ROM back to the DOS disk, slide it back into the Mac Pro and successfully went through the boot CD-command line-ATIflash dance again. Shut everything down, removed the DOS drive, put back in the disks I had to remove, then booted up and waited for the login screen to appear , which it thankfully did (on a flashed AMD/ATI evergreen GPU card there's no EFI/grey Apple boot screen until the OS loads except via a DVI-to-VGA adapter - which isnt going to happen with my cinema displays :o)

And then I went off to play Portal at a decent framerate :D

All in all, much less stressful than my processor replacements :lmao: If you've found a good deal on a PC card and you're feeling up for flashing it, just take your time, read through all the info and instructions thoroughly and think things through before pressing return at the command line ;)

Oh, but as an addendum, it looks like as of 10.7 Lion all this flashing business might not be totally necessary (http://netkas.org/?p=671) which would be totally awesome :D

Oh, but as an addendum, it looks like as of 10.7 Lion all this flashing business might not be totally necessary (http://netkas.org/?p=671) which would be totally awesome :D

Hopefully Apple leaves that in the released version of Lion. Some are speculating that it is just there in the development versions but will be stripped out in final Lion release. After all, Apple still wants to sell your their exclusive Apple cards with a significant Apple Tax. Can't see them removing that particular profit item :(

Screature - You have been a huge resource - THANKS for posting this thread. I have been waiting and waiting for a 6,1 Mac Pro configuration and now I am simply upgrading to improve performance. Apple has really gone into hibernation with the Mac Pro and I need the Pro system versus an iMac for my business needs.

Questions- Based upon owning a 2006 Mac Pro 1,1 that will soon have 2x x5365's here is what I am trying to understand:

Upgrading to a faster RAM - Will this improve speed when combined with adding 2 new Xeon 3GHz 4 Core x5365 CPU's? Currently I have DDR2 PC5300 @667MHz and would like to upgrade to 800MHz if it is possible to actually run at 800MHz and boost performance.

SSD Drive - Seeing that my system is somewhat dated SATA 3G (SATA II) what SSD Drive would give me the best performance for the $$ paid? I was considering unplugging one of my optical drives and going with a 240 or 480 SSD.

Screature - You have been a huge resource - THANKS for posting this thread. I have been waiting and waiting for a 6,1 Mac Pro configuration and now I am simply upgrading to improve performance. Apple has really gone into hibernation with the Mac Pro and I need the Pro system versus an iMac for my business needs.

Questions- Based upon owning a 2006 Mac Pro 1,1 that will soon have 2x x5365's here is what I am trying to understand:

Upgrading to a faster RAM - Will this improve speed when combined with adding 2 new Xeon 3GHz 4 Core x5365 CPU's? Currently I have DDR2 PC5300 @667MHz and would like to upgrade to 800MHz if it is possible to actually run at 800MHz and boost performance.

SSD Drive - Seeing that my system is somewhat dated SATA 3G (SATA II) what SSD Drive would give me the best performance for the $$ paid? I was considering unplugging one of my optical drives and going with a 240 or 480 SSD.

Thanks for the complement CanadaSouth but truth be told and to give credit where it is due it was Dadi_Oh (a member here) who inspired me to make the upgrade when he posted his old 1.1 CPUs up for sale when he made his upgrade.

Back to your questions. No you can't take advantage of 800MHz RAM when you upgrade your CPU, you can use 800MHz RAM but it will be throttled to 667MHz so there is no performance gain. The RAM speed is not a function of the CPU but of the motherboard and system architecture.

Re: SSDs, I am running a OWC Mercury EXTREME™ Pro 3G SSD 115GB (http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/SSDMX115/) as a boot drive and very happy with it. I get about 240 MB/s throughput. Don't bother with any 6G SSDs unless you plan to upgrade to the latest and greatest Mac Pro soon (as again the speed will be throttled to your existing SATA version) so you can take advantage of the 6G performance of the drive when you upgrade by moving it over to the new machine... only 2011 Mac Pros can take advantage of 6G SSDs, so bear this in mind.

As for the 3GHz 4 Core x5365 CPU's, unless you are finding them for an amazing price they are still bloody expensive and I would recommend either saving your cash and waiting for the latest and greatest and put it towards that or make a more modest upgrade like I did where the cost is relatively small.

Hope this helps. :)

Can't wait to be flamed on that comment! However, if Apple was a Canadian Company, I DOUBT seriously that we are waiting for configuration 6,1. More likely we're already at 7,1 working on 8,1.

I guess when you're loaded with the dough, you get kind of complacent, but to the point where an iMac can run with a PRO?

I have a local buy possibility for a decked out 2010 2.66GHz 12 Core with Nvida Quadro 4000, 8TB 7200 6G HD, 2 60GB SSD's USB 3.0 PCI Card, 32 GB of RAM for $5K, but I am hesitant to move on this because I believe Apple will introduce a Thunderbolt/ USB 3.0/ SATA 6G Mac Pro in the next weeks.

Yeah, I can built the new 6,1 system for ~$7500 the way I want it and have a more forward looking system platform to expand from versus the 5,1 which is now obsolete from an I/O prospective.

I just wish Apple could sell their Mac Pro's with NO RAM and Hard Drives as I hate paying inflated dollars for these 1 GB sticks of useless Ram and mess up a 2TB Drive arrangement.

PS. My compliments to Dadi_Oh.

Can't wait to be flamed on that comment! However, if Apple was a Canadian Company, I DOUBT seriously that we are waiting for configuration 6,1. More likely we're already at 7,1 working on 8,1.

I guess when you're loaded with the dough, you get kind of complacent, but to the point where an iMac can run with a PRO?

I have a local buy possibility for a decked out 2010 2.66GHz 12 Core with Nvida Quadro 4000, 8TB 7200 6G HD, 2 60GB SSD's USB 3.0 PCI Card, 32 GB of RAM for $5K, but I am hesitant to move on this because I believe Apple will introduce a Thunderbolt/ USB 3.0/ SATA 6G Mac Pro in the next weeks.

Yeah, I can built the new 6,1 system for ~$7500 the way I want it and have a more forward looking system platform to expand from versus the 5,1 which is now obsolete from an I/O prospective.

I just wish Apple could sell their Mac Pro's with NO RAM and Hard Drives as I hate paying inflated dollars for these 1 GB sticks of useless Ram and mess up a 2TB Drive arrangement.

PS. My compliments to Dadi_Oh.

you seem to have a lot of opinions re: how computer companies should be run for a guy who doesn't seem to have a basic understanding of how computers themselves work

Hey Screature & Dadi_Oh - Just finished the CPU upgrade thanks to the resourceful information provided by this forum that included a reference to a well produced German video that really simplified this upgrade. Got to really clean the inside of this machine as a side benefit to the CPU upgrade. After 5 years, it was time.

I used Zalman Super Thermal Grease and painted it onto the metal top surfaces of the CPU's protective cover and onto the copper underside of the 2 Heatsink assemblies. The handy applicator brush made it easy to uniformly apply this grease. However, Zalman sure is stingy on how much grease they put into the small glass bottle. I had barely enough to do both CPU's and heatsinks, but I don't think I would have enough thermal grease to re-install my original CPU's in the event the upgraded CPU chips did not boot.

During the proceedure, I actually kept the AC plug in so as to keep a hard ground on the case to prevent static as I was running in and out to blow dust off of the various parts and fan assemblies and in dry 103F Texas heat I did not want to chance a static discharge.


I removed Bay 1 and 2 to get those drives out of the way. I did magnetize the screw driver tip I used to remove the plastic fan assembly screw (same as in the German youtube video) and did not want to move this magnetic tip'd screwdriver past the hard drives to get access to the screw. So simple enough to remove them.

All went back together even easier than coming apart, I plugged it in and fired up the old 1,1 and she started up without a hitch.

CPU Temperatures are 5C- 8CF higher than with the slower dual core 3GHz Xeon chips I replaced. I am using iStat by Bjango (http://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/) which I downloaded and installed before doing this CPU upgrade. This program displays on the top frame bar that scrolls across the top of your monitor and you can see temps with a click of a mouse. This is really important information to have before and after the new CPU's are installed for obvious reasons.

I went ahead and checked my new Geekbench marks and my machine jumped from 6100 to 10300 which is impressive enough for a 2006 1,1. Looks like I will stay for a least a year. Was going to upgrade the whole system, but now I'll go with this.

Adding 2nd Screen Shot to x5365 3GHz CPU upgrade. This is what iStats looks like when you install on your system.

As for the 3GHz 4 Core x5365 CPU's, unless you are finding them for an amazing price they are still bloody expensive and I would recommend either saving your cash and waiting for the latest and greatest and put it towards that or make a more modest upgrade like I did where the cost is relatively small.

Hope this helps. :)

FYI - I paid $460 for a pair of SLAED 3.0GHz Intel x5365 Xeon Quad Cores and boosted my system from 4 Cores to an 8 Core system. I can't complain as the eBay'r had a perfect feedback profile. Got to admit it was hard buying "used" CPU chips and this is a first for me, but it boosted my system's Geekbench performance by 60%, so I am happy with the results.;)

FYI - I paid $460 for a pair of SLAED 3.0GHz Intel x5365 Xeon Quad Cores and boosted my system from 4 Cores to an 8 Core system. I can't complain as the eBay'r had a perfect feedback profile. Got to admit it was hard buying "used" CPU chips and this is a first for me, but it boosted my system's Geekbench performance by 60%, so I am happy with the results.;)

Congrats CanadaSouth! That is a terrific price for a pair of x5365s, I wish I could have found them going for that when I was upgrading, I couldn't find a pair for under $750 at the time. Glad that things went so well for you and that is a major performance bump. It is a fun little project isn't it? Nice to get to know your Mac Pro that intimately.

Are you going to get an SSD next?

Agree screature, the project got me more connected with the MP internals and a better appreciation for the quality that is built into these desktop systems.

Yeah, thats the $64K question. What's next in line to boost Geekbench numbers? Will SSD or a RAID have any effect on Geekbench numbers. For me it is about moving large files to and from hard drives. So if I go with an SSD for booting and storing large Creative Suite 5.5 programs, that won't help when it comes to storing large files, as I will most likely keep these on a Hard Drive.

I do a lot of photography with TIFF images going to 100Mb per photo. Add a 100 of these large files per folder and you can see the bottleneck I am dealing with. My other problem is that I currently have a 2TB drive dedicated to Windows XP via VM Ware, so IF I decide to go RAID 0, I can include 3 drives and or Stripe all 4 drives and then simply partition space for Windows and Mac OS and perhaps a space for a PhotoShop scratch pad. However, to do this, I would need to connect external drives via the spare SATA connection on my motherboard to insure backup protection.

So I have some choices, but they all mean getting some extra drives, doing some cloning, and then uploading to the 4 2TB Hard Drives in bays 1-4.

Have you had any success with using RAID in your MP 1,1?

Would you recommend using the SSD for anything more than a boot drive / large program storage drive? Since I only need a Sata II SSD, the cost should at least be less than the newer 6G OWC SSD's.

Agree screature, the project got me more connected with the MP internals and a better appreciation for the quality that is built into these desktop systems.

Yeah, thats the $64K question. What's next in line to boost Geekbench numbers? Will SSD or a RAID have any effect on Geekbench numbers. For me it is about moving large files to and from hard drives. So if I go with an SSD for booting and storing large Creative Suite 5.5 programs, that won't help when it comes to storing large files, as I will most likely keep these on a Hard Drive.

I do a lot of photography with TIFF images going to 100Mb per photo. Add a 100 of these large files per folder and you can see the bottleneck I am dealing with. My other problem is that I currently have a 2TB drive dedicated to Windows XP via VM Ware, so IF I decide to go RAID 0, I can include 3 drives and or Stripe all 4 drives and then simply partition space for Windows and Mac OS and perhaps a space for a PhotoShop scratch pad. However, to do this, I would need to connect external drives via the spare SATA connection on my motherboard to insure backup protection.

So I have some choices, but they all mean getting some extra drives, doing some cloning, and then uploading to the 4 2TB Hard Drives in bays 1-4.

Have you had any success with using RAID in your MP 1,1?

Would you recommend using the SSD for anything more than a boot drive / large program storage drive? Since I only need a Sata II SSD, the cost should at least be less than the newer 6G OWC SSD's.

I have used software RAID 0, in fact all my drives are RAID 0 except the SSD and back ups. (Just an FYI... I run a lot of drives, the 4 in the MP and then I have three 4 bay port multiplier eSATA towers for data and backup for a total of 16 drives.) The performance increase is not that substantial on the write side more so on the read. With 2 drives in RAID 0 I get about 140 MB/s write and 170 MBs read. Not bad but not great.

With my 115GB Mercury EXTREME Pro 3G SSD I get about 225 MB/s write and 240 MB/s read. So a big performance boost.

Personally I have never put anything on my boot drive other than the OS and programs for years and years. This goes back to my PC days where the OS would crash fairly regularly and would require a re-install of the OS and also recovery of data from backup, so to make my life easier I stopped putting data on the boot drive. This also serves to get better performance out of the OS and programs as the boot drive is then not doing double duty, running the OS and programs, and reading/writing data. I am a very firm believer in keeping your boot drive only for the OS and programs. So my advice, if you were to get an SSD, would be to use it only for the OS and programs, this also means you need a smaller SSD and thus save a lot of cash as SSDs get much more expensive the bigger you go.

Hope this helps.

I have used software RAID 0, in fact all my drives are RAID 0 except for back up. The performance increase is not that that substantial on the write side more so on the read. With 2 drives in RAID 0 I get about 140 MB/s write and 170 MBs read. Not bad but not great.

With my 115GB Mercury EXTREME Pro 3G SSD I get about 225 MB/s write and 240 MB/s read. So a big performance boost.

Personally I have never put anything on my boot drive other than the OS and programs for years and years. This goes back to my PC days where the OS would crash fairly regularly and would require a re-install of the OS and also recovery of data from backup, so to make my life easier I stopped putting data on the boot drive. This also serves to get better performance out of the OS and programs as the boot drive is then not doing double duty, running the OS and programs, and reading/writing data. I am a very firm believer in keeping your boot drive only for the OS and programs. So my advice, if you were to get an SSD, would be to use it only for the OS and programs, this also means you need a smaller SSD and thus save a lot of cash as SSDs get much more expensive the bigger you go.

Hope this helps.


A few more thoughts... if I RAID 4 TB HD's, I should imagine that will give me 8TB of actual total storage? If that is the case, then IF I want to CLONE a single Microsoft Windows backup drive, I will most likely not be able to do that seeing that the data would come from several Hard Drives to one hard drive and hence the ONE HD would not be a mirror.

Again, Windows is the platform I have to use for BUSINESS and this drive is very mission critical. It takes about 2.5 hours to clone this drive and I do this every 2-3 weeks - for the sole purpose of having a plug and play backup if my Windows/ business drive goes down. So it seems I have some logic cubes to rearrange to get the kind of redundancy I now have. I suppose I can do a RAID 0 and use 3 HD's instead of 4 and leave the 4th drive solely for Windows. You have given me some good choices to consider, and to be honest, it is fun trying to tune this muscle car to give me better performance.

About 6 months ago I lost a 2TB Western Digital GREEN drive that I had my Mac OS on. That was the first time I experienced a Hard Drive failure ever. From that point on I have been cloning my windows business drive out of fear. The local Geek that I use from Knowledgeable Nerds told me that the Green WD drives use what looks like HOT GLUE to mount the internal temperature sensor and when this delaminates, the drive becomes crippled. He said the WD Black uses a different adhesive to mout the temp sensor. He also said that when the GREEN temp sensor comes loose, that he has had occasional success pulling data from the drive by putting it in a refrigerator.

PS. Cudos to the ECC Ram. Last week I replaced a 2GB stick as I was getting errors. When I moved the stick on the riser PCB to a new location and the errors followed. So ordered a replacement from OWC and the errors are gone. So it pays to check your configuration file and see if your RAM is 100% error free. The only bummer was having to buy 2 sticks or a Pair of 2GB modules. At least I now have a spare should another stick of RAM flake out.

A few more thoughts... if I RAID 4 TB HD's, I should imagine that will give me 8TB of actual total storage? If that is the case, then IF I want to CLONE a single Microsoft Windows backup drive, I will most likely not be able to do that seeing that the data would come from several Hard Drives to one hard drive and hence the ONE HD would not be a mirror.

Again, Windows is the platform I have to use for BUSINESS and this drive is very mission critical. It takes about 2.5 hours to clone this drive and I do this every 2-3 weeks - for the sole purpose of having a plug and play backup if my Windows/ business drive goes down. So it seems I have some logic cubes to rearrange to get the kind of redundancy I now have. I suppose I can do a RAID 0 and use 3 HD's instead of 4 and leave the 4th drive solely for Windows. You have given me some good choices to consider, and to be honest, it is fun trying to tune this muscle car to give me better performance.

About 6 months ago I lost a 2TB Western Digital GREEN drive that I had my Mac OS on. That was the first time I experienced a Hard Drive failure ever. From that point on I have been cloning my windows business drive out of fear. The local Geek that I use from Knowledgeable Nerds told me that the Green WD drives use what looks like HOT GLUE to mount the internal temperature sensor and when this delaminates, the drive becomes crippled. He said the WD Black uses a different adhesive to mout the temp sensor. He also said that when the GREEN temp sensor comes loose, that he has had occasional success pulling data from the drive by putting it in a refrigerator.

PS. Cudos to the ECC Ram. Last week I replaced a 2GB stick as I was getting errors. When I moved the stick on the riser PCB to a new location and the errors followed. So ordered a replacement from OWC and the errors are gone. So it pays to check your configuration file and see if your RAM is 100% error free. The only bummer was having to buy 2 sticks or a Pair of 2GB modules. At least I now have a spare should another stick of RAM flake out.

Well your VM Windows install should be in its own folder and using Carbon Copy Cloner (http://www.bombich.com/) (donation ware so free unless you use it a lot and then choose to donate... a good idea if you like the product) you can clone just the VMware folder over to another drive and thus get just a clone of your VMware Windows installation. If I read your post correctly I think this is what you want to do.

WD Green drives are not recommended for boot drives as their spin is quite slow at 5400 RPM, they are really meant for backup and not performance.

BTW I hope you are going to sell your old 5160s as you should probably be able to get at least a couple hundred bucks for them and thus bring your upgrade cost down. I sold my old 2.66 GHz CPUs in 3 days here on ehMac in the classifieds.

This also serves to get better performance out of the OS and programs as the boot drive is then not doing double duty, running the OS and programs, and reading/writing data.

Exaggerated. The effect of "double duty" is quite minimal.

BTW I hope you are going to sell your old 5160s as you should probably be able to get at least a couple hundred bucks for them and thus bring your upgrade cost down. I sold my old 2.66 GHz CPUs in 3 days here on ehMac in the classifieds.

Not a bad idea. I am going to wait a few weeks just to make sure these 2 new Quad Core processors perform, but a great idea. I did not think about selling them.

Since swapping out the CPU's yesterday, I have noticed the CPU temps have dropped another 5c. They are almost now at the same temperatures of the dual core chips I removed.

Thanks for all your help.

Exaggerated. The effect of "double duty" is quite minimal.

Works for me and has for over a decade with notable performance benefits not to mention much faster up time in the case of drive failure. What ever floats your boat and my strategy has served me very, very well... seems Apple seems to agree with it as the latest iMacs can come with 2 drives, one for data and one for the OS....

Now here's a QUESTION about Mac Pro hard drives in the new 2010 MP 5,1 system. Even after upgrading my 2006 1,1 MP, I am still considering a local 2010 12 Core MP 5,1 system. I still think the biggest bottleneck is the I/O and not so much RAM and CPU. I guess it comes down to whether this SATA 6G work around (below) is possible before I'll shed $5K and try to catch lightning in a botle. So here goes:

I would like to buy a SATA 6G PCI / RAID card for a 2010 Mac Pro 12 core 5,1 system. I would then like to run the internal SATA cables from this new PCI Card to the 4 internal Hard Drive bays (unplug current bays 1 thru 4 SATA II cables from motherboard) and then install a 6G SSD under the upper optical drive and connect it to the new SATA 6G PCI Card as well. Is this possible? Do you know of any bus speed limitations that might be imposed by the 2010 MP Motherboard that would tend to negate the benefit of upgrading to this type of Hard Drive I/O scheme?

Most likely I will RAID the 4 internal drives and split into 3 partitions - one will be for Parallels.

Then I want to buy an external SATA 6G RAID enclosure to either CLONE my internal drives and or to be able to restore a failed internal RAID drive or recover from a complete RAID drive failure. I need bullet proof fast restore redundancy in case of a hard primary RAID failure for my business. Speaking of RAID, will enterprise drives buy me any additional data security?

What do I need to buy? Or is this type of upgrade NOT advisable with the current 5,1 build platform? Will waiting for the MP 6,1 be a better decision and how much of this idea could be implemented in a 2006 MP 1,1? And how much of a scientist will I need to be to get this working bug free?

Now here's a QUESTION about Mac Pro hard drives in the new 2010 MP 5,1 system. Even after upgrading my 2006 1,1 MP, I am still considering a local 2010 12 Core MP 5,1 system. I still think the biggest bottleneck is the I/O and not so much RAM and CPU. I guess it comes down to whether this SATA 6G work around (below) is possible before I'll shed $5K and try to catch lightning in a botle. So here goes:

I would like to buy a SATA 6G PCI / RAID card for a 2010 Mac Pro 12 core 5,1 system. I would then like to run the internal SATA cables from this new PCI Card to the 4 internal Hard Drive bays (unplug current bays 1 thru 4 SATA II cables from motherboard) and then install a 6G SSD under the upper optical drive and connect it to the new SATA 6G PCI Card as well. Is this possible? Do you know of any bus speed limitations that might be imposed by the 2010 MP Motherboard that would tend to negate the benefit of upgrading to this type of Hard Drive I/O scheme?

Most likely I will RAID the 4 internal drives and split into 3 partitions - one will be for Parallels.

Then I want to buy an external SATA 6G RAID enclosure to either CLONE my internal drives and or to be able to restore a failed internal RAID drive or recover from a complete RAID drive failure. I need bullet proof fast restore redundancy in case of a hard primary RAID failure for my business. Speaking of RAID, will enterprise drives buy me any additional data security?

What do I need to buy? Or is this type of upgrade NOT advisable with the current 5,1 build platform? Will waiting for the MP 6,1 be a better decision and how much of this idea could be implemented in a 2006 MP 1,1? And how much of a scientist will I need to be to get this working bug free?

Might be possible, I really don't know for sure, you will need to do your homework on this one. But one thing is for sure it would void any warranty that is left on the Mac Pro.

I don't think you could do any of it on a MP 1.1 as it is PCIe version one and would not be fast enough to support 6G.

I don't think you could do any of it on a MP 1.1 as it is PCIe version one and would not be fast enough to support 6G.

Maybe the better questions would be what is the best way to RAID the 4 bays in the MP 1,1. I have not played with RAID. I don't know if the Motherboard / Mac OS software provides a way to achieve this or if I need a PCI card.

The SATA standard is Sata II so getting 300mb per second is the upper end and maybe faster in a RAID. I would be happy just getting near 300mb. Also if I get the SATA II SSD, perhaps a Corsair drive for my OS and major Adobe Suite Programs, then maybe the combination of the RAID and SSD will finally get my machine at its best performance.

I have a 4 new drives coming in and an SSD. I will remove my 4 HD's in my machine, hook up a thermolake dock and see if I can't build a RAID.

This is where things start to get interesting

Maybe the better questions would be what is the best way to RAID the 4 bays in the MP 1,1. I have not played with RAID. I don't know if the Motherboard / Mac OS software provides a way to achieve this or if I need a PCI card.

The SATA standard is Sata II so getting 300mb per second is the upper end and maybe faster in a RAID. I would be happy just getting near 300mb. Also if I get the SATA II SSD, perhaps a Corsair drive for my OS and major Adobe Suite Programs, then maybe the combination of the RAID and SSD will finally get my machine at its best performance.

I have a 4 new drives coming in and an SSD. I will remove my 4 HD's in my machine, hook up a thermolake dock and see if I can't build a RAID.

This is where things start to get interesting

You would have to buy an Apple RAID card (almost $900) to get hardware RAID for the internal drives of a MP. Otherwise you use the disk utility built into the OS to make a software RAID. You can do this for 2-4 drives in the MP.

You can buy a PCIe card (many are available, check OWC) for hardware RAID but the HDs will have to go in an external tower enclosure. Port multiplier eSATA is the way to go on this front IMO if that is what you choose to do.

If anybody's interested in going the MacPro1,1 CPU upgrade route your should know there are a matched pair of Xeon X5365 (3.00GHz SLAED stepping) on eBay (http://cgi.ebay.ca/Pair-Intel-X5365-Quad-Core-Xeon-3-00GHz-SLAED-CPU-s-/200632338154) just posted yesterday for a decent price ($450 CDN Buy It Now). Seller is Canadian too and shipping is cheap-ish (for eBay)

The seller previously had two matched pairs but I just bought one because I'm apparently insane :rolleyes:

So yeah. I might have a matched pair of X5355 2.66 GHz quad cores up for sale shortly if anybody's interested in that either :)

If anybody's interested in going the MacPro1,1 CPU upgrade route your should know there are a matched pair of Xeon X5365 (3.00GHz SLAED stepping) on eBay (http://cgi.ebay.ca/Pair-Intel-X5365-Quad-Core-Xeon-3-00GHz-SLAED-CPU-s-/200632338154) just posted yesterday for a decent price ($450 CDN Buy It Now). Seller is Canadian too and shipping is cheap-ish (for eBay)

The seller previously had two matched pairs but I just bought one because I'm apparently insane :rolleyes:

So yeah. I might have a matched pair of X5355 2.66 GHz quad cores up for sale shortly if anybody's interested in that either :)

Yep that is a good price... Hmmm if I sell my Xeon 5160s that I got in the spring for a couple of hundred that would mean I could get these for around $250...

Only thing, why is the guy adding taxes to the sale?

Things that make you Hmmm...

Yep that is a good price... Hmmm if I sell my Xeon 5160s that I got in the spring for a couple of hundred that would mean I could get these for around $250...

Only thing, why is the guy adding taxes to the sale?

Things that make you Hmmm...

If it's a business he has to add tax, doesn't matter if he sells on a website or in person. Just make sure he has a valid GST/HST number if you're concerned that the tax portion of things is a scam.

BTW I have a Radeon X1900XT 512M Ram that I just pulled from my MP 1,1 and 2 Xeon 5160 3GHz processors that were pulled last weekend. Don't know the complexities of mailing north of the border.

If it's a business he has to add tax, doesn't matter if he sells on a website or in person. Just make sure he has a valid GST/HST number if you're concerned that the tax portion of things is a scam.

Agreed. So long as he is claiming the sale in his revenue/income to CRA... I am suspicious of this on an eBay sale as I never been asked to pay taxes before.

Agreed. So long as he is claiming the sale in his revenue/income to CRA... I am suspicious of this on an eBay sale as I never been asked to pay taxes before.
No way to confirm if he's actually paying anything to the government I'd imagine (short of working for the CRA I suppose...)

I do seem to recall paying tax on an eBay sale before, again only with a Canadian seller though. I certainly don't think he's pocketing it but maybe I am inclined to be too trusting of people on the internet :o
His eBay store (http://stores.ebay.ca/ANK-Server-Store) looks like just an extension of his physical store, and that plus his perfect eBay feedback seems alright to me.

Anybody in Markham want to pop by and say hi to him? :D

Say not to take this conversation in a different direction, but has anyone tried to connect an OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD via a NewerTechnology eSATA 6G PCIe 2.0 Controller Card? I understand this may get slightly better performance than a 300mb/s SATA II SSD and the card is $50US at OWC? I want to connect the external cable to an internally mounted SSD drive that I will place under the upper optical drive. This is the next logical step to gain higher performance from a Mac Pro 1,1, and perhaps one of the last things I can think of that will make a positive difference with this old MP. I have read that the PCIe bus can be configured to 8 lane, 4 lane, 2 Lane etc and I don't know if this has anything to do with how fast the 6G eSATA controller can operate.

I want to buy the 6G SSD, because if I get a new system, this will obviously go to the new MP.

Here are the parts- NewerTech MXPCIE6GS2 MAXPower 6G PCIe eSATA Controller in stock at OWC (http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/MXPCIE6GS2/)
Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD 2.5" Serial-ATA 9.5mm 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Mercury_Extreme_Pro_6G/)

Say not to take this conversation in a different direction, but has anyone tried to connect an OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD via a NewerTechnology eSATA 6G PCIe 2.0 Controller Card? I understand this may get slightly better performance than a 300mb/s SATA II SSD and the card is $50US at OWC? I want to connect the external cable to an internally mounted SSD drive that I will place under the upper optical drive. This is the next logical step to gain higher performance from a Mac Pro 1,1, and perhaps one of the last things I can think of that will make a positive difference with this old MP. I have read that the PCIe bus can be configured to 8 lane, 4 lane, 2 Lane etc and I don't know if this has anything to do with how fast the 6G eSATA controller can operate.

I want to buy the 6G SSD, because if I get a new system, this will obviously go to the new MP.

Here are the parts- NewerTech MXPCIE6GS2 MAXPower 6G PCIe eSATA Controller in stock at OWC (http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/MXPCIE6GS2/)
Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD 2.5" Serial-ATA 9.5mm 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Mercury_Extreme_Pro_6G/)

I'm pretty sure I mentioned this to you before CS but anyway...

You can put in a NewerTech 6G PCIe eSATA card but you will not get any performance gain as the PCIe card with be throttled to PCIe 1.0 and the 6G SSD will be throttled to 3G SATA. There is no advantage at all going this route. If you want to buy the OWC 6G SSD for a future release of a Mac that will support 6G SATA you can do that (but I question this strategy as the price of 6G SSDs will almost certainly drop in the interim) and you can still put it in your MP1.1 but it will be throttled to 3G.

Again, there is absolutely no point in buying the NewerTech 6G PCIe eSATA card as it will gain you nothing in terms of performance at all.

Sorry, did not pick up on your previous answer and that can most likely be attributed to what seems to have been a 1000 Google searhes trying to find the needle in the haystack that could get me at least one drive operating on the 6G protocol. From my searches it does appear that there are no PCIe 1.0 cards, regardless as to the number of configurable lanes available, that can deliver 6G SSD speeds. I would suppose that would also apply to USB 3.0 PCIe cards? Looks like I can now finish the project with a Sata II SSD drive connected to a spare SATA jack on the Motherboard. Looks like Corsair, Crucial or Intel 3G might be a more stable SSD choice. Generally speaking is there a concensus as to what SSD manufacturer is best suited for the MP 1,1?

I guess now I am at the maximum service altitude for the MP 1,1 and is so, then perhaps a 3G RAID solution might be the last frontier to explore to help boost I/O performance. Still if I can boot from an SSD reliably, and launch my major apps from the SSD, then I should notice a nice bump in performance.

Thanks screature!

Sorry, did not pick up on your previous answer and that can most likely be attributed to what seems to have been a 1000 Google searhes trying to find the needle in the haystack that could get me at least one drive operating on the 6G protocol. From my searches it does appear that there are no PCIe 1.0 cards, regardless as to the number of configurable lanes available, that can deliver 6G SSD speeds. I would suppose that would also apply to USB 3.0 PCIe cards? Looks like I can now finish the project with a Sata II SSD drive connected to a spare SATA jack on the Motherboard. Looks like Corsair, Crucial or Intel 3G might be a more stable SSD choice. Generally speaking is there a concensus as to what SSD manufacturer is best suited for the MP 1,1?

I guess now I am at the maximum service altitude for the MP 1,1 and is so, then perhaps a 3G RAID solution might be the last frontier to explore to help boost I/O performance. Still if I can boot from an SSD reliably, and launch my major apps from the SSD, then I should notice a nice bump in performance.

Thanks screature!

No worries CS. OWC SSDs are some of the best out there, they use over provisioning and Sandforce to keep the drive stable and from performance degradation over time, but just go with a 3G version and use it as a boot drive (not data, just OS and programs) and then RAID your main data drives for better performance. This setup works very well for me and I only have a quad core system. You with your recent upgrade to an octo core system will be getting the most that you can hope for in terms of performance out of a MP 1.1

Screature - are you using Apple's Disk Utility software RAID? I have 3 new 2TB WD Black drives that I can RAID and store my photo data. I don't know if a 3 drive set up as a RAID 0 will help performance compared to a single dirve storage solution, or if I need all 4 to make a noticeable difference? I was hoping to keep one drive as my Wndows drive and then use the external docking station for Mac OS /Windows backup.

So if the SSD is the boot drive, and I mount this under the upper optical drive and connect to the Motherboard, then to build the "Mac Data RAID" I would simply copy from the single hard drive to the RAID drive like I would from single drive to single drive? Sorry for the seemingly newbie question, but I did not know if there were any special considerations I needed to understand before attempting to load the RAID with Gigs of photo/ video files.

You know, this will force me to really use the Mac OS side of this computer! Christ, I own a Mac Pro, Mac Book Pro, iMac 2010 and use WINDOWS that I loaded via VM Ware Fusion! Still, I now have all the latest Creative Suite programs for Mac and Windows, and now it is TIME to stretch this old Mac's legs.

And to think all these questions were the result of getting hung up on the near purchase of a $5500 Mac Pro 12 Core that was used to produce a new sci-fi movie here in the DFW Metroplex- and then that purchase got hung up on native SATA 6G - USB 3.0 NOT being part of 5,1 platform which has caused me to wear out my keister trying to find work arounds only to land back where I started, but with a better appreciation for what this old CPU can do.

PS. Read this morning that the Mac Pro is about 1% of Apple's revenue. Now it makes sense why it takes so long to get the next rev level introduced. Macintosh Performance Guide: Latest News (http://macperformanceguide.com/)

Screature - are you using Apple's Disk Utility software RAID? I have 3 new 2TB WD Black drives that I can RAID and store my photo data. I don't know if a 3 drive set up as a RAID 0 will help performance compared to a single dirve storage solution, or if I need all 4 to make a noticeable difference? I was hoping to keep one drive as my Wndows drive and then use the external docking station for Mac OS /Windows backup.

So if the SSD is the boot drive, and I mount this under the upper optical drive and connect to the Motherboard, then to build the "Mac Data RAID" I would simply copy from the single hard drive to the RAID drive like I would from single drive to single drive? Sorry for the seemingly newbie question, but I did not know if there were any special considerations I needed to understand before attempting to load the RAID with Gigs of photo/ video files.

You know, this will force me to really use the Mac OS side of this computer! Christ, I own a Mac Pro, Mac Book Pro, iMac 2010 and use WINDOWS that I loaded via VM Ware Fusion! Still, I now have all the latest Creative Suite programs for Mac and Windows, and now it is TIME to stretch this old Mac's legs.

And to think all these questions were the result of getting hung up on the near purchase of a $5500 Mac Pro 12 Core that was used to produce a new sci-fi movie here in the DFW Metroplex- and then that purchase got hung up on native SATA 6G - USB 3.0 NOT being part of 5,1 platform which has caused me to wear out my keister trying to find work arounds only to land back where I started, but with a better appreciation for what this old CPU can do.

PS. Read this morning that the Mac Pro is about 1% of Apple's revenue. Now it makes sense why it takes so long to get the next rev level introduced. Macintosh Performance Guide: Latest News (http://macperformanceguide.com/)

Yes software RAID with Apple's Disk Utility is your only option without an Apple RAID card, about $900. Yes that is what I use. You get a small bump in performance on the write side and a bigger bump on the read side with 2 drives in RAID 0 and you should get a proportional bump with 3 drives and then with 4. Bear in mind the more drives in a RAID 0 array the greater the risk for failure, i.e. every drive added to a RAID 0 array increases your risk off failure because of the additional drive and its inherent nature to eventually fail.

So what ever you do just make sure you have a solid backup strategy in place.

Thanks! I bought a copy of Drive Genius 3, so if I am going to use a new drive in a RAID, then I would think it would need to be fully formated and tested to insure bad sectors are identified and isolated? This weekend is going to get interesting. Also after searching for a SATA II drive I have not found much of a difference in price, so I am going to get a 256GB Crucial M4 SATA 6G - $439 locally at Micro Center ( Micro Center Products: Computer Parts: Hard Drives & Data Storage: Solid State Drives (SSD): 150GB to 250GB (http://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.phtml?N=4294945779+124&) ) also Tiger Direct had an OCZ AGILITY 3 6G 240GB for $399 with a $30 Rebate ( OCZ AGT3-25SAT3-240G Agility 3 Series 2.5 Solid State Drive - 240GB, SATA III, 6Gbps at TigerDirect.com (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=557373&sku=O261-8202) )

Thanks! I bought a copy of Drive Genius 3, so if I am going to use a new drive in a RAID, then I would think it would need to be fully formated and tested to insure bad sectors are identified and isolated? This weekend is going to get interesting. Also after searching for a SATA II drive I have not found much of a difference in price, so I am going to get a 256GB Crucial M4 SATA 6G - $439 locally at Micro Center ( Micro Center Products: Computer Parts: Hard Drives & Data Storage: Solid State Drives (SSD): 150GB to 250GB (http://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.phtml?N=4294945779+124&) ) also Tiger Direct had an OCZ AGILITY 3 6G 240GB for $399 with a $30 Rebate ( OCZ AGT3-25SAT3-240G Agility 3 Series 2.5 Solid State Drive - 240GB, SATA III, 6Gbps at TigerDirect.com (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=557373&sku=O261-8202) )

No harm in doing that aside from the time involved... the process of bad block allocation takes a long time, just so you are aware.

I still think you are better off buying a 3G SSD for now as the 6G SSDs will almost certainly have come down in price whenever Apple releases a Mac Pro with 6G SATA compatibility... but that is your call. Good luck and have fun. :)

Right-T-O and since it is Friday, enjoy the weekend! We're in our 22nd day of 100F (37C) or higher temperatures and at night it is only dropping to 28C or 29C. The next 4 days are forecasted to get even hotter!

Cheers!

Same to you CS, have a great week-end. It's been hot up here as well for the last two weeks, but not that hot... here we deal with humidity... yesterday it was 37C (98.6 F) straight temp and 47C with the humidex... or 116.6 F. XX)

Luckily our evenings are cooling down to around 20C... plus we have air conditioning. :) Ahhh...

With the way climate change has been going, I might not be able to say "Great White North" in the not so distant future. Well, I did get the crucial 256Gb M4 6G drive. Prices have dropped and well time is getting to be more important, so I am trying to get the last pieces for this wonderful MP 1,1 computer.

One I get my "adapter" frame for the drive and cables, I will connect right under the upper optical drive. Currently have 2 optical drives, so I wil disconnect one and install the SSD drive. Looks like my spare parts pile is growing! The adapter will allow 2 SSD drives to be mounted and so I am even MORE tempted to add another SSD drive.

Once this is done, then it is 3G SATA II Internal RAID time. This is where I bypass the the cables for the 4 drives, and connect them to a RAID CARD. Software RAID's are most likely OK, but I would rather have a slightly better error tolerance, hence the idea of the RAID Card. Plus the RAID will reduce processor overhead.

So nothing fancy, nothing USB 3.0 or SATA 6G, just using what is native to the MP 1,1 to give max I/O performance possible.

I must admit, I would have gladly traded $5500 or more for the 12 Core 2010 IF the bloody 2010 Mac Pro had all the native I/O enhancments. Most likely, the second I am done, the 6,1 will be announced.....

If anybody's interested in going the MacPro1,1 CPU upgrade route your should know there are a matched pair of Xeon X5365 (3.00GHz SLAED stepping) on eBay (http://cgi.ebay.ca/Pair-Intel-X5365-Quad-Core-Xeon-3-00GHz-SLAED-CPU-s-/200632338154) just posted yesterday for a decent price ($450 CDN Buy It Now). Seller is Canadian too and shipping is cheap-ish (for eBay)

The seller previously had two matched pairs but I just bought one because I'm apparently insane :rolleyes:

So yeah. I might have a matched pair of X5355 2.66 GHz quad cores up for sale shortly if anybody's interested in that either :)
Th-Th-Th-Thread Revival!

Got the new X5365s in today, very professionally packed, chips look brand new. Would have had them on Friday too but I was out of town for the long weekend.

Anyways, dropped them in the good ol' Mac Pro (which I can now have stripped down to the bare motherboard in under 15 minutes, probably with my eyes closed) and…

Yowza! (http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/455168)

So yeah, that ought to hold me for a bit I think :heybaby:

As mentioned previously, I'll be putting a matched pair of X5355 (quad-core 2.66GHz) CPUs up for sale soonish I'd imagine. Just doing some burn-in testing with these bad boys, but thus far they're running very nicely (and slightly cooler too… I think I'm getting better with the thermal paste every time :D)

...Yowza! (http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/455168)

So yeah, that ought to hold me for a bit I think :heybaby:



Wow that's damned good! What are you running as your boot drive Mr.CB?

Wow that's damned good! What are you running as your boot drive Mr.CB?
It's an OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 3G (120GB) for apps, boot, and some user files.

To be fair that was the peak result I got while logged in under the root user account with absolutely nothing else running other than the basic system daemons. Across five runs I got from 11353 to 11620, so naturally I chose to submit the highest score :D

It's an OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 3G (120GB) for apps, boot, and some user files.

To be fair that was the peak result I got while logged in under the root user account with absolutely nothing else running other than the basic system daemons. Across five runs I got from 11353 to 11620, so naturally I chose to submit the highest score :D

That's the same boot drive I run... I would expect nothing less than for you to post the highest score.

here's a stupid question-firstly, I didn't know it was possible to upgrade the CPU of a Mac pro 1,1
so... I have a Quad Core 2.8 Intel Xeon, Mac Pro 3,1 ....yeah, you can see where I'm going with this, at least for now....could I upgrade it to an 8 core machine, and....would it be worth the expense, work and effort to do so??
thanks

JB

The early 2008 Mac Pro is that last of the Mac Pros that the CPUs are user upgradeable (article here (http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/faq/mac-pro-how-to-upgrade-processors.html)) so yes it it possible for you to do so. Whether or not it is worth it, that would be up to you to decide based on the cost of the CPUs that you were upgrading to and the performance gain. If you like tinkering and have some experience around the guts of a computer (Mac or not) it is worth the effort. If you don't like tinkering, have no experience and it would be a big stress fest for you then I would say it is probably not worth it. If the latter is you and you want to upgrade you are probably better off selling your quad 2.8 and using that money in conjunction with what you would be spending on the CPU and probably a bit more and buy a 5.1 Mac Pro either new or refurb or talk trade-in with MacDoc.


You could upgrade it to an Octo 2.8, 2x quadcore Xeon E5462 (you should buy two matched pairs as opposed to just buying a 2nd one to add to your existing 2.8) or an Octo 3.0, 2x quadcore Xeon E5472 or an Octo 3.2, 2x quadcore Xeon X5482.

ebay is the place to go to look at pricing on these CPUs. Pricing varies HUGELY so don't be discouraged if you don't see what you are looking for right away for a price that you are willing to pay. Just keep checking back every couple of days or so before you make up your mind that you can't afford it. Remember you want to buy a matched set and not one from here and one from there.

Just wanna give a short report, today I upgraded my MP 1,1 with two used E5345 SL9YL (ebay around 150 USD + shipping), after installing "AboutThisMac.pkg" they are shown in the info.

They are working perfectly, no problems during upgrade, when you follow the instructions carefully.

Just wanna give a short report, today I upgraded my MP 1,1 with two used E5345 SL9YL (ebay around 150 USD + shipping), after installing "AboutThisMac.pkg" they are shown in the info.

They are working perfectly, no problems during upgrade, when you follow the instructions carefully.

Congrats noblejeanz. :clap:

Took the plunge and swapped out the 5150's for 5355's. Almost painless. Haven't done much on it yet but it would appear to have almost doubled the benchmarks.

Was questioning going with used CPUs but that's probably the only way to make it economically feasible.


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- Sent from my iPhone

Took the plunge and swapped out the 5150's for 5355's. Almost painless. Haven't done much on it yet but it would appear to have almost doubled the benchmarks.

Was questioning going with used CPUs but that's probably the only way to make it economically feasible.


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- Sent from my iPhone

Good for you... it provides for cheap thrills. :D

I have bought and sold used CPUs... never any issues if any kind, I think CPUs are one of the most risk free used computer purchases you can make... so long as there is a DOA warranty.

Just bought a MacPro 1,1 from the classifieds here, and a pair x5355 2.66 quads should be coming in next week. Cant wait to do the mod! :D

Congrats! Report back on how it goes for you.

Congrats! Report back on how it goes for you.

thanks will do!

Btw what method of applying thermal paste did you apply? I've seen 3 different methods from different videos and how to's: a dot in the centre, a vertical line and a horizontal line...

So i hopped over the border to pick up my CPU's today. Didn't get home till just past midnight and couldn't wait to put it on.

The only thing that held me back is that I left my long exchangable head screwdriver at the office so I settled for just a small allen key. Taking it off was easy enough as it took a few turns then used my fingers to get the heat sink off. It wasn't too bad as I'm used to wrenching on cars and doing small 1/4 turns all the time. Just need patience.

Putting them back on was a lot tougher tho. Because of the springs I couldn't put enough pressure to get 1 full turn to get the thread started. So I hacked up something really bad where I took one of my thin screw drivers and taped on one of the hex heads and just wrapped it like crazy. I think that alone took close to 45 mins to an hour to get the heat sinks back on - but well worth it lol!

Anyways - here are my before and after geek bench scores @ 5391 -> 9109!
Show : Geekbench Result Browser (http://browse.geekbench.ca/user/alpha1r/profile)

Ill most likely be posting my old 5150's (2x 2.66 Dual Cores) for sale if anyone is interested. Just got keep an eye on my temps and see how she holds up for the week!

Patience is indeed a virtue.

Sweet performance bump... congrats once again.

so does anyone else have rebooting issues after the upgrade?

I pulled out a pair of 5150's on my Pro 1,1. Put in a pair of 5345's (or 35's 2.33's can't remember the number) did the FSB mod. Now I can't reboot. I also have only once gotten the cpu injector to work.

I kept futzing with the box just trying to get it into 10.7, have since given up on that.

My box specs:
MP 1,1
Nvidia 7300, Nvidia 9800gts, 16 or 32 gb 5300r dell ram, 4x750gb WD Re drives, raided/not raided doesn't matter, was adual dual with 5150's 2.0's (Though I coulda swore it said 2.66 in ->ABout)

I'm not sure if this behavior is ram related or cpu's as I did both at the same time. My reboot issue is... I can't.. I can shut down, but not restart, unless it's a restart for a software update.

History is I made a Timemachine copy of the drive at some point. I tried installing Lion 3 or 4 times and gave up after it wouldn't complete the install without errors (prior to the CPU swap) I used Timemachine to roll back to 10.6.7 a couple times. Repaired permissions, etc, nothing really would allow me to install Lion without "An error" Good thing my bootcamp wasn't hosed as well.

So now if I go to restart the machine never powers off, but it does a hot reset and clicks. The 'stock' Super drive appears to be making a "csshht" sound. It'll just keep doing that until powered off. Sleep mode is somewhat questionable so I skip that and havn't tried it.

This "cssshht" noise confuses me. I havn't spent much time trying to debug via yanking hardware but my second Nvida card draws it's power from the super drive. It's injected via Netkas, but I think now that is broken, or natively supported, it might have also been the reason the lion install failed. For now I am good on 10.6 due to Final Cut X having all my crap and actually working currently I'm afraid to mess with it. If I could pin down this reboot issue that's be great. I have PR reset it a handful of times. And I also noticed that my 9800's fan stays on full blast when it's trying to reboot. Netkas injection unloads the controls when starting /restarting so i know the netkas injection has let go of the card as it's spun up fully.

Aside from pulling the chips back out and undoing the fsb mod any other ideas? I have pulled the 9800 card fully out and tried to reboot with the same issues, so it's either software or something else.

I have an SSd on the way that I was going to go with a fully fresh install on but wont have that for a few days.

Cshhht, ccchhhssstt
cssshhhttt :)

Are you using the Apple 6-pin to motherboard power connector?

Looks like this:

Mac/Apple 6 pin Power Cable 7800 GT/GTX 8800GT GTX 285 | eBay (http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mac-Apple-6-pin-Power-Cable-7800-GT-GTX-8800GT-GTX-285-/280414703219)

I am not sure about the FSB mod you are doing, but I do know in the PC world you need to lock the PCI-E at 100 when you overclock the cpu bus. Not sure if your mod does that... otherwise you may be overclocking the PCI-E bus aswell.. and causing issue


Ed

so does anyone else have rebooting issues after the upgrade?

I pulled out a pair of 5150's on my Pro 1,1. Put in a pair of 5345's (or 35's 2.33's can't remember the number) did the FSB mod. Now I can't reboot. I also have only once gotten the cpu injector to work.

I kept futzing with the box just trying to get it into 10.7, have since given up on that.

My box specs:
MP 1,1
Nvidia 7300, Nvidia 9800gts, 16 or 32 gb 5300r dell ram, 4x750gb WD Re drives, raided/not raided doesn't matter, was adual dual with 5150's 2.0's (Though I coulda swore it said 2.66 in ->ABout)

I'm not sure if this behavior is ram related or cpu's as I did both at the same time. My reboot issue is... I can't.. I can shut down, but not restart, unless it's a restart for a software update.

History is I made a Timemachine copy of the drive at some point. I tried installing Lion 3 or 4 times and gave up after it wouldn't complete the install without errors (prior to the CPU swap) I used Timemachine to roll back to 10.6.7 a couple times. Repaired permissions, etc, nothing really would allow me to install Lion without "An error" Good thing my bootcamp wasn't hosed as well.

So now if I go to restart the machine never powers off, but it does a hot reset and clicks. The 'stock' Super drive appears to be making a "csshht" sound. It'll just keep doing that until powered off. Sleep mode is somewhat questionable so I skip that and havn't tried it.

This "cssshht" noise confuses me. I havn't spent much time trying to debug via yanking hardware but my second Nvida card draws it's power from the super drive. It's injected via Netkas, but I think now that is broken, or natively supported, it might have also been the reason the lion install failed. For now I am good on 10.6 due to Final Cut X having all my crap and actually working currently I'm afraid to mess with it. If I could pin down this reboot issue that's be great. I have PR reset it a handful of times. And I also noticed that my 9800's fan stays on full blast when it's trying to reboot. Netkas injection unloads the controls when starting /restarting so i know the netkas injection has let go of the card as it's spun up fully.

Aside from pulling the chips back out and undoing the fsb mod any other ideas? I have pulled the 9800 card fully out and tried to reboot with the same issues, so it's either software or something else.

I have an SSd on the way that I was going to go with a fully fresh install on but wont have that for a few days.

Cshhht, ccchhhssstt
cssshhhttt :)


Don't know what you are referring to about the "FSB mod" I didn't have to do it and have never read anything about having to do so. Don't know what you mean by CPU injector or Netkas injection either so sorry I wish I could help but some of what you are saying is Greek to me and I never had to jump through any of the hoops that you appear to be jumping through.

I believe the FSB mod (or tape mod) is for the e5320(1,86 Ghz) and 5310(1.6 Ghz) as the FSB Speed is only 1066Mz. Taping one of the pins forces the chip tho run at 1333 Mhz. The e5345's already run at at that speed - so no need for it.

For those that want to bump up the FSB speed see o0o.it :: Mac Pro Xeon Upgrade And Overclock Guide (http://www.o0o.it/pro/) and scroll down to the part where insulator tape is placed one of the pins.

Tape huh? Funny how these sorts of things get easier over time ... I remember modding my LC475 for higher bus speed but that required unsoldering and re-soldering teeeeeeny little pad resistors. Not for the faint of heart or someone with a shaky hand or not comfortable with delicate soldering jobs!

well removing the tape fixed it. the uppity'ness of the machine seems to have improved as well. Not sure what blocking that pin on a 5345 does but it was seeming to work fine minus the reboot issue. All appears well now. Gota donate the 5150's that came out of it. Is there a way I could give it to ehmac or someone in need?

well removing the tape fixed it. the uppity'ness of the machine seems to have improved as well. Not sure what blocking that pin on a 5345 does but it was seeming to work fine minus the reboot issue. All appears well now. Gota donate the 5150's that came out of it. Is there a way I could give it to ehmac or someone in need?

Glad to hear you got it sorted out.

At least you didn't bust the cable that controls the speed of the fans for the CPU when you swapped your chips. Thankfully I was working at an Apple Dealer and I got a replacement heat sink/cable for dealer cost.

Where did people find the required long hex driver required to remove the CPU heat sinks? I looked in Canadian Tire, Home Hardware, Walmart, Parts Source and a surplus store. (Forest City Surplus) No one has a tool even close to what's needed.

Where can you buy this tool in Canada?

Check at a specialty fastener/tools store. I picked one up in Ottawa at Ottawa Fastener & Supply. Not sure if fastenal would carry it but they have lots of locations. Or potentially Princess Auto.

Check at fastenal in london. They claim to have something on their website.

These guys tend to have a lot of the specialty tools available online as well.

EfstonScience – The Science SuperStore eScience.ca (http://www.escience.ca)

Where did people find the required long hex driver required to remove the CPU heat sinks? I looked in Canadian Tire, Home Hardware, Walmart, Parts Source and a surplus store. (Forest City Surplus) No one has a tool even close to what's needed.

Where can you buy this tool in Canada?

I had one ordered online and it was taking so long that I lost patience and made my own. I took a short hex driver bit out of a screwdriver kit that I had. I then used the cutting disk on my dremel tool to cut a slot in the end. I inserted a long flay head screwdriver into the slot and ran some duct tape around it to keep it from slipping out. Voila.... Long hex tool.

I've been able to remove the screws holding the heat sinks using simple hex wrench keys and a #1 Robertson screwdriver that just happened to fit the hex head. (Only one screwdriver in my kit works, other #1 drivers don't.) This was a lot of work and I'm not going to do it again to re-install the heat sinks.

I removed one of the screws from the heat sink and took it to a hardware store, hoping to find a match with a Phillips or Robertson head (like the Apple engineer SHOULD HAVE spec'd when he / she designed the Mac Pro heat sink!) The screw thread appears to be something as equally bizarre as the hex head - nothing on the shelf matched just right.

I've swapped CPUs and heat sinks on many computers. The Mac Pro is certainly the most difficult and most frustrating to date, especially considering that I have parts bins full of computer screws, none of which match this goofy heat sink screw!

I'll need to ponder if I want to solve the long hex driver problem or the goofy Apple engineer screw size choice problem before putting the Mac Pro back together.

The Mac Pro is now re-assembled. Thanks to Dadi_oh for his home-made hex driver solution. I didn't do that specifically, but some tape wrapped around a long Robertson #1 driver made it fat enough to grab the hex screws. (I have a short Robertson #1 that will turn the screws, but, being short, it doesn't reach all the heat sink corners.

I left the Mac Pro running overnight with it's new-to-me, twin Xeon X5355 2.66 GHz quad cores and all seems well. This is an upgrade from the factory-stock twin Xeon X5150 2.66 GHz dual cores.

Although it wasn't designed to be, I'm certainly pleased that my 2006 Mac Pro can receive drop-in Intel CPU replacements. It's certainly cheaper than specialized CPU upgrades I've purchased for past Macs. On the other hand, the strange hex screws holding the CPU heat sinks and their difficult location made this upgrade a big challenge. It would have been simple if a long hex driver was easily available, as I've read some people in the USA found at simple hardware stores. I wouldn't attempt this again without such a tool in hand.

I've been able to remove the screws holding the heat sinks using simple hex wrench keys and a #1 Robertson screwdriver that just happened to fit the hex head. (Only one screwdriver in my kit works, other #1 drivers don't.) This was a lot of work and I'm not going to do it again to re-install the heat sinks.

I removed one of the screws from the heat sink and took it to a hardware store, hoping to find a match with a Phillips or Robertson head (like the Apple engineer SHOULD HAVE spec'd when he / she designed the Mac Pro heat sink!) The screw thread appears to be something as equally bizarre as the hex head - nothing on the shelf matched just right.

I've swapped CPUs and heat sinks on many computers. The Mac Pro is certainly the most difficult and most frustrating to date, especially considering that I have parts bins full of computer screws, none of which match this goofy heat sink screw!

I'll need to ponder if I want to solve the long hex driver problem or the goofy Apple engineer screw size choice problem before putting the Mac Pro back together.

Personally I didn't find it that difficult by using a couple of extenders joined together connected to an electric screw driver. But the height of the heatsinks definitely does present a unique hurdle to overcome relative to other CPU upgrades I have done in the past.

Personally I didn't find it that difficult by using a couple of extenders joined together connected to an electric screw driver. But the height of the heatsinks definitely does present a unique hurdle to overcome relative to other CPU upgrades I have done in the past.
Indeed; I originally thought I was going to do exactly that. Sadly, I was thwarted when the knuckles of the extension rods were too fat to fit!

An extra note to add for anyone else doing this: visually check that the front fans spin when the Mac is started. They're normally so quiet that you won't notice if they're not running at all. When I first re-installed the fan assembly the connectors didn't mate right. If I hadn't purposefully looked to see if the fans were not running, I might not have known until the CPUs overheated. Fortunately, the fan assembly slides in on guides, so getting it correct isn't hard.

Indeed; I originally thought I was going to do exactly that. Sadly, I was thwarted when the knuckles of the extension rods were too fat to fit!

An extra note to add for anyone else doing this: visually check that the front fans spin when the Mac is started. They're normally so quiet that you won't notice if they're not running at all. When I first re-installed the fan assembly the connectors didn't mate right. If I hadn't purposefully looked to see if the fans were not running, I might not have known until the CPUs overheated. Fortunately, the fan assembly slides in on guides, so getting it correct isn't hard.

I hear ya, one of the extenders I used had a collar that just barley fit, it was very close, less than 1mm to spare, and when removing them out of the notch in the heat-sink the extenders pulled apart a couple times and I couldn't tape them together because there would be no room for them to clear with the tape on so I learned to be very careful and physically hold them together with my hand as I pulled them out.

This aspect of the upgrade is definitely the most challenging part... with a proper extra long hex wrench it would be easy peasy though.

Just to Add, you can get a pair of 5320's on ebay right now for about $90 shipped out of the US.

Just to Add, you can get a pair of 5320's on ebay right now for about $90 shipped out of the US.

But at 1.86 GHz that is slower than the lowest clock speed of the most most basic Mac Pro 1.1 which has a clock speed of 2.0GHz, so why would anyone be interested? You can't take advantage of the faster RAM so there is absolutely nothing to be gained.

But at 1.86 GHz that is slower than the lowest clock speed of the most most basic Mac Pro 1.1 which has a clock speed of 2.0GHz, so why would anyone be interested? You can't take advantage of the faster RAM so there is absolutely nothing to be gained.
Maybe? The 5320 is a quad-core CPU with 8 MB cache compared to, say, a stock 5150 dual-core with 4 MB cache. If a person spent a lot of time in applications that made use of multi-cores maybe the 1.86 GHz 5320 would out perform the stock 2.0 or 2.66 GHz 5150 CPUs?

Maybe? The 5320 is a quad-core CPU with 8 MB cache compared to, say, a stock 5150 dual-core with 4 MB cache. If a person spent a lot of time in applications that made use of multi-cores maybe the 1.86 GHz 5320 would out perform the stock 2.0 or 2.66 GHz 5150 CPUs?

Highly doubt it even up against the 2.0 and definitely not against the 2.66 where the difference is 800 MHz which is huge. Even if it did against the 2.0 it would be negligible and basically unnoticeable to the user, not worth the time or money.

The cache size is a minor player in this scenario compared to CPU clock speed, being that the bus speed and RAM speed remains unchanged.

The E5320 is quad core, using the BSEL mod running at 2.33Ghz, and 1333mhz bus. runs cool, and a cheap upgrade from quad 2.66Ghz to octo 2.33Ghz. Right now you can get a pair of E5345 2.33Ghz 1333Mhz bus quad cores for about $150 shipped. No BSEL mod necessary.

sudo rm -rf /

Took the plunge and ordered a pair of X5355 on ebay for $179.48 CAD shipped. Should arrive 2nd week of June. I really need more cores for the Mac Pro 1,1 Quad since I'm using more and more VM's. There are 4 more pairs available from the same seller (US $134.99 plus shipping) if anyone is interested.

Holy crap matched pairs for that price??? Wow, finally the prices are starting to fall. Good deal.

sudo rm -rf /

So did you benchmark it to see the performance increase?

Thanks for the link to the place where you got the extra long hex drivers.

sudo rm -rf /

Yes I did and I'm happy with the results. It might let me squeeze out another couple of years from the system for my needs.

Geekbench 2.3.1 x86 (32-bit) Score Results:

Pre Upgrade: 5529 - Mac Pro - Geekbench Browser (http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/696893)

Post Upgrade: 9211 - MacPro1,1 - Geekbench Browser (http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/713224)

Hey for not even a couple of hundred bucks that's a nice jump... now for added thrills if you already haven't toss in an SSD as a boot drive and can you say Zoom Zoom. ;)