"Subject: 2006 Mac Pro Octo update & retirement :)
Aloha! You mentioned my 2006 Mac Pro a few days ago. (Mentioned in the Aug 3rd news post on another 06 Mac Pro quad-core upgrade, but this reader's post on his dual 2.66 quad-core upgrade was a CPU db report from 7/29/2009). I am the person that took the 2 x dual core Mac Pro, bought the 5355 chips from a used HP server then resold the server. So, I ended up with an 8-core 2.66 Mac Pro for about a $400 (net) upgrade.
I just thought that I would let you know that the machine has run flawlessly since the update. There are no issues with heat, stability, or anything. I have ran countless Handbrake sessions with all 8 cores maxed and have had no stability issues at all. It was a wonderful upgrade that made the machine capable, even today.
Unfortunately, the machine will now be retiring. I just purchased the 3.33Ghz Westmere Mac Pro (base quad-core $2499 system w/CTO 3.33GHz Westmere (+$1200) CPU option) with the (+ $200 option) ATI 5870 graphics card. OWC is selling 16GB of RAM (4GBx4 kit) for $719. (Apple's CTO cost for 16MB upgrade from base 3GB is $1775!) The machine was $3,559 + $719.99 for the (OWC) ram brings me to $4,278.99 for the replacement machine. Which, oddly, is about what I paid for the 2006 machine after buying 16GB of ram for it.
I just couldn't bring myself to get the 8-core 2.4Ghz processors because the single 3.33 appears to be faster than the 2 x 2.4Ghz processors on multithreaded tasks and the 3.33 will definitely be faster on single threaded things. Also, the upgraded processors on the dual processor machines were just too expensive ($1500 or $2700). I seriously considered getting the 27" i7 iMac, but I really wanted a top of the line video card and I currently have 4 drives for which I would have needed an enclosure. Ultimately, I decided that the expandability of the Mac Pro was worth the extra money.
I will run a few benchmarks when I get the new machine to see how things have changed. The CPU charts seem to show that the 3.33 will be about three timesfaster than my old 2.66 machine. Hopefully, that will be a large enough increase
to carry me for another 3-4 years :)
Overall, the upgrade was great and the machine has served me well over the past few years. After I run the tests, I will be putting the old machine on Craigslist or Ebay. Initial searches seem to indicate that the old machine is still worth about $2k, so the total cost of the upgrade won't be too much.
Oh, the other cool thing. I run three 24" monitors. The old machine requires two video cards to accomplish this feat. The new machine will run three monitors on a single video card! (Both the 5770 base card and 5870 have 2 MDP ports + a DVI port) Very cool :)
Thanks, Mark"
