Apple's Mac Pro - Upgrading CPUs, Memory & Running XP
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 12, 2006 1:51 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
The Test
With our SATA performance issues solved, we could finally evaluate the Windows XP performance of our Mac Pro compared to a similarly constructed Core 2 Extreme PC. We ran our usual suite of CPU benchmarks on the Mac Pro as well as on our Core 2 CPU testbed, to see just how close to a Core 2 PC the Mac Pro would be in running Windows XP.
We ran the Mac Pro in two configurations, one in its default four core (2 x dual core Xeon 5160) configuration and one with only two cores enabled. The latter configuration was used to compare to our dual core Core 2 test bed, eliminating any performance advantages due to the extra two cores of the Mac Pro.
All gaming tests used an ATI Radeon X1900 XTX.
| CPU: | Intel Xeon 5160 (3.0GHz/4MB) x 2 Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2.93GHz/4MB) Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.66GHz/4MB) |
| Motherboard: | Apple Mac Pro Intel 5000X Motherboard ASUS P5W DH Deluxe (LGA-775) |
| Chipset: | Intel 5000X Intel 975X |
| Chipset Drivers: | NVIDIA ForceWare 91.47 Intel 7.2.2.1007 (Intel) |
| Hard Disk: | Seagate 7200.9 300GB SATA |
| Memory: | Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800 4-4-4-12 (1GB x 2) |
| Video Card: | 2 x ATI Radeon X1900 XT CrossFire |
| Video Drivers: | ATI Catalyst 6.8 |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1280 x 1024 - 32-bit @ 60Hz (1024 x 768 for games) |
| OS: | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
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Corlissmedia - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
I've been reading through a lot of these sites that discuss upgrading a 2006 Mac Pro with dual dual-core 2.66's to dual quad-core x5355's. I'm thinking of doing this upgrade also, but in researching the cpus, I've found that none of them support ECC memory, and all Mac Pros, as far as I know, have ECC memory. So how does that work?????Spawn4ever - Tuesday, August 4, 2015 - link
I realize this is a very old post but i'm hopping someone, somewhere will still be willing to help me out. I own a great MacPro 2.1 2007 with the following specsModel Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro2,1
Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 3 GHz
Number of Processors: 2
Total Number of Cores: 8
Memory: 32 GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD 5780
I need to change the motherboard in order to install OS X 10.10 or change the system all together. The processors in this system are still quite fast to just get rid of them. Two questions:
1) Can i find motherboards today that will take these CPUs and work as a Hackintosh
2) Would you say that an Intel i7 series be faster than these almost 8 year old Xeons?
I primarily use this system for video editing and i'm starting to edit 4K footage which cannot be played back in real-time on this configuration.
Hope this post doesn't get lost in digital land and i hear back from someone at Anandtech or the internet world.
Thank you