Worth replacing 2008 Mac Pro for upgraded 2010 Mac Pro?

[basslik]

I'm stumped, any help would be greatly appreciated.



I installed the upgrade CPU X5690, prior to the swap I did update the firmware, 5,1. Starts up the bell rings, logo is showing with the activity wheel booting up, but just hangs there ?.



I tried scouring the net to try to figure what's wrong, and I could really use some help here ?, thank you.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE:
I didn't realize I moved my SSD drive and stuck it my 2008 to keep working on a session. I guess the firmware was on the SSD drive. I didn't know that the firmware was stored on the drive, and not on the logic board?, VERY INTERESTING.


Anyhow I put the SSD drive in and booted up pretty darn quick, and it shows 5,1 / 6cores.


Now I have to figure out which one I will end up keeping. 2008 (2)x dualcore 2.8 VS 2010 single core 3.46, both have 32gigs of ram.



Is there any recommendation on a program to bench test between the two ?


THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR GETTING ME TO THIS LEVEL OVER THE YEARS, GREATLY APPRECIATED / MERRY XMAS

[LDS]

Originally Posted by basslik

I'm stumped, any help would be greatly appreciated.



I installed the upgrade CPU X5690, prior to the swap I did update the firmware, 5,1. Starts up the bell rings, logo is showing with the activity wheel booting up, but just hangs there ?.



I tried scouring the net to try to figure what's wrong, and I could really use some help here ?, thank you.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE:
I didn't realize I moved my SSD drive and stuck it my 2008 to keep working on a session. I guess the firmware was on the SSD drive. I didn't know that the firmware was stored on the drive, and not on the logic board?, VERY INTERESTING.


Anyhow I put the SSD drive in and booted up pretty darn quick, and it shows 5,1 / 6cores.


Now I have to figure out which one I will end up keeping. 2008 (2)x dualcore 2.8 VS 2010 single core 3.46, both have 32gigs of ram.



Is there any recommendation on a program to bench test between the two ?


THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR GETTING ME TO THIS LEVEL OVER THE YEARS, GREATLY APPRECIATED / MERRY XMAS

The firmware does install on the logic board as far as I am aware. What it also includes is a collection of markers that indicate what hard drive is your boot drive, and other hardware related configurations. A NVRAM reset may have fixed the problem you were having. It is somewhat common on my machine when I change between the variety of boot drives I have installed in it. It seems to get confused a little easily about what it what, particularly with the combination of HFS+ and AFS file systems.

If you are happy to spend a few bucks, Geekbench might fit the bill. You can run is in single core mode for free if you want to though.

[basslik]

Thanks LDS:


Up and rolling, it had to be the markers on the SSD driver, when I put that in, it saw it right away. Yeah I'm going to geekbench both towers and see which one will yield better results. I still think my old 2x 2.8 will be faster.

[LDS]

Originally Posted by basslik

Thanks LDS:


Up and rolling, it had to be the markers on the SSD driver, when I put that in, it saw it right away. Yeah I'm going to geekbench both towers and see which one will yield better results. I still think my old 2x 2.8 will be faster.

According to Geekbench, the 6 core will still be about 30% faster than your old 2008 Mac Pro. With your CPU upgrade, your Mac Pro will now support 1333mhz ram rather than the standard 1066mhz. That may influence the benchmarks you get with geek bench, but you can check what speed your ram is running at in 'about this Mac' in OSX.

[ProtoolsLover]

Originally Posted by LDS

According to Geekbench, the 6 core will still be about 30% faster than your old 2008 Mac Pro. With your CPU upgrade, your Mac Pro will now support 1333mhz ram rather than the standard 1066mhz. That may influence the benchmarks you get with geek bench, but you can check what speed your ram is running at in 'about this Mac' in OSX.

I’ve upgraded over 10 of these systems and you will get negilble improvement with the faster RAM. Don’t waist the money.

[lucienpalmer]

Originally Posted by LDS

According to Geekbench, the 6 core will still be about 30% faster than your old 2008 Mac Pro. With your CPU upgrade, your Mac Pro will now support 1333mhz ram rather than the standard 1066mhz. That may influence the benchmarks you get with geek bench, but you can check what speed your ram is running at in 'about this Mac' in OSX.

I’ve never heard of a cpu upgrade increasing that ram speed. You are limited by the bus speed built into the machine. I’m not 100% on this, but anyone reading this should research more.

[Mixchump]

Originally Posted by ProtoolsLover

I’ve upgraded over 10 of these systems and you will get negilble improvement with the faster RAM. Don’t waist the money.

Remember, that in order to get the increased RAM speed, you have to leave one RAM slot in each bank empty (3 in one group, 3 in the other)...

[ProtoolsLover]

Originally Posted by Mixchump

Remember, that in order to get the increased RAM speed, you have to leave one RAM slot in each bank empty (3 in one group, 3 in the other)...

Correct, the faster Ram yields roughly 5 percent increase in performance, making it not worth the cost to buy newer Ram.

[ProtoolsLover]

Originally Posted by lucienpalmer

I’ve never heard of a cpu upgrade increasing that ram speed. You are limited by the bus speed built into the machine. I’m not 100% on this, but anyone reading this should research more.

I’ve done cpu upgrades to 2009 MacPro’s at least a dozen times for people. 2 of them were 6 cores tie test 12 cores. Upgrading the a 4.1 to a 5.1 enabled the computer to use the faster Ram. To me upgrading the ram is not worth the cost for a marginal increase in performance.

[LDS]

Originally Posted by lucienpalmer

I’ve never heard of a cpu upgrade increasing that ram speed. You are limited by the bus speed built into the machine. I’m not 100% on this, but anyone reading this should research more.

Misinformation takes many forms. The ram speed in 4,1 Mac Pro's is limited by the CPU, not the machine.

Originally Posted by ProtoolsLover

I’ve done cpu upgrades to 2009 MacPro’s at least a dozen times for people. 2 of them were 6 cores tie test 12 cores. Upgrading the a 4.1 to a 5.1 enabled the computer to use the faster Ram. To me upgrading the ram is not worth the cost for a marginal increase in performance.

Sure, the increases in performance weren't huge but if you are aiming for 5,1 Mac Pro benchmark scores with a 4,1 machine, you won't actually be running a 5,1 spec'ed system without upgrading the ram. That is the point I made.

It really depends on where you are upgrading from and where you are aiming to be. I paid $200AUD ($140USD) for 64 gig of 1333mhz ram for my machine. It wasn't just peanuts, it was the cheapest possible upgrade path! Unlike the 3,1 and earlier Mac Pro's, there is nothing special about 4,1 and 5,1 ram.