Thread
Mac Pro... not sure if want.
So that the machines could only run Windows, and open source systems that put in the extra effort for OF on ia32? Apple would still have figured out how to make the original Mac Pro obsolete after however many software versions, and would probably still have implemented it wrong anyway.
At least as it stands, you can choose between Mac OS X, Windows, Solaris, Linux, BSD, bare-metal hypervisors, etc.
Citation needed. Microsoft specifically requires that OEMs allow secure boot to be turned off in UEFI, and never have I heard anywhere else that doing so will render Windows unable to boot.
Which insane bugs? In EFI, or in Linux? Or is it more of a driver issue with the newest generation of chipsets? I'd thought the Linux people were getting better at keeping up with Intel's new chipsets.
I had a gigabyte board I spent almost $350 on (really nice, it supported Tri SLI/CrossFire X setups) whicht he UEFI was so crappy Windows wouldn't boot when it was enabled. It bluescreened just booting off the DVD. Also, Linux would KP. The board wasn't defective, the UEFI bios was that crappy. Too bad, it was one of the highest performing boards. It could do 64GB RAM, had 5 PCI-E 16-lane Slots (3 @ 16-lane/2.0, 2 @ 8-lane) + 2 1-lane PCI-E.
SATA 6.0Gbps, and had 12 SATA ports + 4 eSATA, all the ports were USB 3.0 and the board has the 990FX chipset. I ended up giving it to a friend with my dual Radeon HD 5770 because I needed GPT support, and the board sucked so bad I couldn't do GPT since it would crash on boot.
It was a common issue. the EFI implimentation just sucked. I don't think Windows 8 would run either on it. It seems to be the buggiest board Gigabyte made. I am back running with a (from the 3rd RMA) ASRock Extreme3 board, that (knock on wood) is still going after 7 months now.
I ended up upgrading the system with an FX-8120, and with the water cooling system i received today, I proceeded to overclock to 4.4Ghz easily. It beats out a Core i7 3.4Ghz 2600 (I think it's 3.4, I will have to check). The ASRock with the new cooler/etc.. his 4.12pts on Cinebench for CPU, OpenGL is 69.31 with the Radeon HD 6850. It's better than nothing, but the gigabyte board did better than that. Also provided better voltages. (Geekbench was almost 14k points btw, 64-bit, beat some 6-core Xeons)
The one downside about EFI is some applications make you pay extra to support something that is now expected to ship on PCs (Acronis, I am looking at you. don't sell software then proceed to tell people they have to pay $50 to upgrade to a plus pack for GPT support)
Either way, yes, I have seen EFI be suckily implimented. Apple's first-gen EFI systems were that way. Especially the Mac Pro. That should've been EFI64 minimum. The EFI specs existed at the time. Apple should've used it.
That said, the Mac Pro of that vintage is nothing to scoff at. If you don't like it, sell it yourself. eBay still fetches a pretty penny for them. After that, go buy yourself a nice laptop that you would like (how about a 2010 17" MacBook Pro?)
Don't balk at free. Aka looking a gift horse in the mouth. Otherwise, give to a family member that probably runs on a Pentium 4 or P ///.
The Mac Pro would be good for Linux or Windows 7 support. I can imagine that that Mac Pro would beat my FX-8120 even overclocked. And it probably has extra power on the side.
SATA 6.0Gbps, and had 12 SATA ports + 4 eSATA, all the ports were USB 3.0 and the board has the 990FX chipset. I ended up giving it to a friend with my dual Radeon HD 5770 because I needed GPT support, and the board sucked so bad I couldn't do GPT since it would crash on boot.
It was a common issue. the EFI implimentation just sucked. I don't think Windows 8 would run either on it. It seems to be the buggiest board Gigabyte made. I am back running with a (from the 3rd RMA) ASRock Extreme3 board, that (knock on wood) is still going after 7 months now.
I ended up upgrading the system with an FX-8120, and with the water cooling system i received today, I proceeded to overclock to 4.4Ghz easily. It beats out a Core i7 3.4Ghz 2600 (I think it's 3.4, I will have to check). The ASRock with the new cooler/etc.. his 4.12pts on Cinebench for CPU, OpenGL is 69.31 with the Radeon HD 6850. It's better than nothing, but the gigabyte board did better than that. Also provided better voltages. (Geekbench was almost 14k points btw, 64-bit, beat some 6-core Xeons)
The one downside about EFI is some applications make you pay extra to support something that is now expected to ship on PCs (Acronis, I am looking at you. don't sell software then proceed to tell people they have to pay $50 to upgrade to a plus pack for GPT support)
Either way, yes, I have seen EFI be suckily implimented. Apple's first-gen EFI systems were that way. Especially the Mac Pro. That should've been EFI64 minimum. The EFI specs existed at the time. Apple should've used it.
That said, the Mac Pro of that vintage is nothing to scoff at. If you don't like it, sell it yourself. eBay still fetches a pretty penny for them. After that, go buy yourself a nice laptop that you would like (how about a 2010 17" MacBook Pro?)
Don't balk at free. Aka looking a gift horse in the mouth. Otherwise, give to a family member that probably runs on a Pentium 4 or P ///.
The Mac Pro would be good for Linux or Windows 7 support. I can imagine that that Mac Pro would beat my FX-8120 even overclocked. And it probably has extra power on the side.
ON THE TOPIC OF THERMAL PASTE / PADS:
I am going to do some basic maintenance to Galactica tonight. One of the things I want to address is the constant spooling up and down of my GPU fan. If I scroll down a webpage quickly I hear it start to spin up "WhiiiiirrrRRRRRRRR" and then very quickly spool back down. A background level of fan noise is acceptable, but this up and down, up and down, up and down spooling is driving me crazy. My Mac Pro mentor CC_333 has informed me that this sometimes is an indication that reapplication of thermal paste on the GPU is required.
Fine, I have no problem with that, I have reapplied thermal paste before. HOWEVER I was given a Thermal Pad by a friend who said it was preferable to applying thermal paste and have never tried one.
Do you geniuses have any advice on that score?
I am going to do some basic maintenance to Galactica tonight. One of the things I want to address is the constant spooling up and down of my GPU fan. If I scroll down a webpage quickly I hear it start to spin up "WhiiiiirrrRRRRRRRR" and then very quickly spool back down. A background level of fan noise is acceptable, but this up and down, up and down, up and down spooling is driving me crazy. My Mac Pro mentor CC_333 has informed me that this sometimes is an indication that reapplication of thermal paste on the GPU is required.
Fine, I have no problem with that, I have reapplied thermal paste before. HOWEVER I was given a Thermal Pad by a friend who said it was preferable to applying thermal paste and have never tried one.
Do you geniuses have any advice on that score?
I guess I'll post this in the open for all to see...
I have had little experience with thermal pads, other than removing old and/or contaminated one which can no longer serve their function.
Specifically pertaining to the Mac Pro GPU, I used thermal paste. It seems to be working just fine. You could try a pad; I don't see why it wouldn't work as well.
Just a parting tip when disassembling the heatsink: be careful! It's kind of tricky because of the way it's attached to the PCB (although that could've been due to my lack of experience).
Good luck!!
c
I have had little experience with thermal pads, other than removing old and/or contaminated one which can no longer serve their function.
Specifically pertaining to the Mac Pro GPU, I used thermal paste. It seems to be working just fine. You could try a pad; I don't see why it wouldn't work as well.
Just a parting tip when disassembling the heatsink: be careful! It's kind of tricky because of the way it's attached to the PCB (although that could've been due to my lack of experience).
Good luck!!
c
So, one ThinkCentre M92p has bad UEFI, maybe -- did the owner of it call Lenovo? If my brand new machine refused to boot any OS except by disabling an advertised feature of the machine, I would call the vendor and ask what was up.
Apple has been implementing things wrong for just-about-ever. It's one of their favorite things to do.
Ended up getting 10.4 running! (thanks to help from CC_333!)
Tried to remedy the graphics card spooling, but alas it continues. Its alright, I can deal with it.
I have it triple booting Windows, X.7, X.4. Things are great. I have a spare video card from my windows desktop. Is it possible to use it on the windows side, or even the mac side?
Tried to remedy the graphics card spooling, but alas it continues. Its alright, I can deal with it.
I have it triple booting Windows, X.7, X.4. Things are great. I have a spare video card from my windows desktop. Is it possible to use it on the windows side, or even the mac side?
Well done!
I'm still rocking my 1st-gen (2006) Mac Pro. It's a dual 2GHz system running OS 10.6.8 on a 150gb 10,000rpm Velociraptor HD. I've upped the RAM to 6gb and can go much higher if needed. My home business is graphic design, and it runs the latest Adobe CS6 software VERY well. I have Windows 7 Ultimate installed via BootCamp on a 200gb 7200rpm drive and a 1Tb WD Caviar drive installed for documents, movies, jobs, etc.
I replaced the stock GeForce 7300 with a GeForce 8800 GT. When that died last year, I replaced it with a Radeon HD 5770, which according to Apple shouldn't run in this system, but it does flawlessly.
My friends and I have LAN parties a few times per year where we play the latest multiplayer games, and my Mac Pro still performs like a brand new 2013 system.
I see no need in the near future to upgrade from this machine, even if future Adobe titles no longer support 10.6. I can run CS6 for years if I have to, since I am the one creating content for others. As far as I can tell, Lion and Mountain Lion are fairly poor releases of the Mac OS, and 10.6 suits me just fine.
I'm still rocking my 1st-gen (2006) Mac Pro. It's a dual 2GHz system running OS 10.6.8 on a 150gb 10,000rpm Velociraptor HD. I've upped the RAM to 6gb and can go much higher if needed. My home business is graphic design, and it runs the latest Adobe CS6 software VERY well. I have Windows 7 Ultimate installed via BootCamp on a 200gb 7200rpm drive and a 1Tb WD Caviar drive installed for documents, movies, jobs, etc.
I replaced the stock GeForce 7300 with a GeForce 8800 GT. When that died last year, I replaced it with a Radeon HD 5770, which according to Apple shouldn't run in this system, but it does flawlessly.
My friends and I have LAN parties a few times per year where we play the latest multiplayer games, and my Mac Pro still performs like a brand new 2013 system.
I see no need in the near future to upgrade from this machine, even if future Adobe titles no longer support 10.6. I can run CS6 for years if I have to, since I am the one creating content for others. As far as I can tell, Lion and Mountain Lion are fairly poor releases of the Mac OS, and 10.6 suits me just fine.
10.8 is pretty great if you use multiple devices with iCloud services.
Lion was one of those OSes I consider a between OS, due to the fact that it included some new feature that looked half baked when Mountain Lion came out, and included bug fixes from SL. ML is a fully fledged OS, great iCloud features, new Safari features, gestures, a bunch of stuff. Definitely a great OS. Sad part is the original Mac Pro can't run it, which is a bummer because I wanted one for video editing. It requires a supported video card and EFI64 emulation.
Open Firmware can emulate BIOS in much the same way as EFI. The OLPC, for example, uses Open Firmware with a BIOS emulator to run Windows. Linux and UNIX already work thanks to Sun (Oracle.)
I don't know much about hypervisors, but everything else on your list would run just fine with Open Firmware. I'm not talking about going gack to PowerPC, I think the switch to Intel was smart. But not sticking with Open Firmware is very annoying.
I couldn't stand the old video card anymore. Ripped it out and just for shiz and gigs I put in my gt-240 from my old dell. Black screen at startup, but I could hear it churning away. Finally it loaded up to the login screen and now everything seems great. I get about the same performance but it is WAY quieter. I'm super happy.
I wish that it gave me more info on boot though. Not being able to see the startup sequence means I can't use the drive selection feature on boot. :|
Still, WAY happier without that constant whining and wheezing when I scroll a web page.
I wish that it gave me more info on boot though. Not being able to see the startup sequence means I can't use the drive selection feature on boot. :|
Still, WAY happier without that constant whining and wheezing when I scroll a web page.
Can you flash the card?