I have a stock early 2007 Mac Pro (8GB RAM, 2 x NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT (256 MB). It has a RAID0 bootdrive and is running Lion. I've had it for >5years and I really love it.
However, recent attempts to do stuff, including running WebGL demos, has led to a realisation that its actually now quite an old machine. This isn't a problem for me day-to-day – its still a monster able to rip CDs, play DVDs, run a Windows VM simultaneously without breaking a sweat – but as a developer I'd like to stay abreast of current tech like WebGL and whatever other else.
I'm not prepared to spend thousands on a newer machine, mine is just fine for day-to-day purposes, but I would like to soup it up. Upgrading GPUs has been mentioned, but I was wondering if other parts of the system could be swapped out with newer ones.
Does anyone have any experience of upgrading older Mac Pros?
Best Answer
You have few options:
CPU: Now you have two two-cores XEONs. You may upgrade them to two 4-cores XEONs. Here is a crowd-sourced experience on this. AFAIK the best you can add is X5355 or even X5365. Here is a good discussion on this matter. And these are pictures.
SSD: Just put in the place reserved for second ODD(Can't remember if your model have wires in place already). Or buy 3.5" adapter like IcyDock 2.5" to 3.5" SSD & SATA Hard Drive Converter or OWC's MountPro. Yes, it is much faster for boot drive than conventional HDD, RAIDed or not.
GPU: look at this blog and forums there if you are interested in flashing cheap PC card for your Mac.
Memory: You may add as much as much as 32Gb with 240-pin PC2-5300 (667MHz) DDR2 ECC fully-buffered DIMM (FB-DIMM) (matched pairs) 4GB modules. If you need them.
Right now I would choose SSD. And then I would check if prices for those CPU are stable or keep falling and then decide on time and need for CPU upgrade.