Original Mac Pro 2.66ghz Quad

Thinking of purchasing a budget Mac Pro for graphic design work using the Adobe Creative Suite.

Seems powerful enough and I'm expecting the performance to be very decent considering the specs... my questions are:

Is this a good price $350 shippped to my door, and are my expectations on par?

Original 2006 Mac Pro 2.66ghz Quad (2 dual core Xeon 5150's)

I plan on doing the Octo CPU switch and adding an SSD and maybe an airport card...

http://www.macofalltrades.com/Apple-Mac-Pro-2x-2-66GHz-Dual-Core-4-Cores-p/mp-266-4c-e06b.htm

jonesdesign said:

Is this a good price $350 shippped to my door, and are my expectations on par?

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That's a pretty good price. But be aware...the 2006 Mac Pro's max. OS version is 10.7.5 (newest OS is 10.9.3).

Also...make sure it comes with plenty of ram. Ram is very expensive for these 1st gen. Mac Pro's.

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

That's a pretty good price. But be aware...the 2006 Mac Pro's max. OS version is 10.7.5 (newest OS is 10.9.3).

Also...make sure it comes with plenty of ram. Ram is very expensive for these 1st gen. Mac Pro's.

- Nick

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I have found that 4gb of ram it comes with has been suitable for my uses on other macs with different specs, and I should be ok with OS 10.7.5 for a few more years... heck im still runnning 10.6 on my 3.6ghz i5 iMac at work

Thanks for your input Nick!

J

jonesdesign said:

I have found that 4gb of ram it comes with has been suitable for my uses on other macs with different specs, and I should be ok with OS 10.7.5 for a few more years... heck im still runnning 10.6 on my 3.6ghz i5 iMac at work

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I checked the link you provided. $299 is an awesome price...especially for an online retailer.

It only costs another $88 to get 8gig of ram (would be better). $22/gig extra is pretty good for ram. If you bought the ram new...it would be about double that price (about $40-$45/gig of ram). But I do understand that an extra $88 does jack-up the price pretty good...when you're starting at $299.

Also be aware...that the video card (7300 GT)...is the most basic video card that came with 2006 Mac Pro's. So keep your graphics performance expectations modest with Adobe CS.

But again for $299...can't go too wrong! Starting adding ram & a better video card...then things start looking not so good.

That 8-core upgrade...and SSD will be nice.

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

But again for $299...can't go too wrong!

That 8-core upgrade...and SSD will be nice.

- Nick

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That is what I was thinking, it just seemed really cheap compared to other online retailers.... I have been researching this Mac for weeks to learn all the pros and cons of it, seems like its still a decent machine for being 8 years old.....

One other small downside. The Mac Pro in the link above has no WiFi/bluetooth card. This is a must-have for me...so that would probably be around $50 extra.

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

One other small downside. The Mac Pro in the link above has no WiFi/bluetooth card. This is a must-have for me...so that would probably be around $50 extra.

- Nick

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I made the purchase I'll post back once I get it to describe how well it performs... its got a geekbench of 6151 as it stands....

Mac Pro (Xeon 5150 @ 2.66 GHz) - Geekbench Browser

I got the Mac Pro a day early, very pleased with the purchase, very clean machine and was packed very well for shipping. The speed is what I expected using Adobe Illustrator CS3 and Photoshop CS3. I haven't even done any upgrades yet and I am happy with the performance. I appreciate the input to the questions I had before the purchase.. this 8 year old (Stock) Mac is still a workhorse....


on a side note, I picked up this monitor and I can say its just as vivid as the iMac's display.....
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/acer-h6-series-23-ips-led-hd-monitor/4751006.p?id=1219103673253&skuId=4751006&st=categoryid$pcmcat200900050014&cp=1&lp=2

jonesdesign said:

I got the Mac Pro a day early, very pleased with the purchase, very clean machine and was packed very well for shipping. The speed is what I expected using Adobe Illustrator CS3 and Photoshop CS3.

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Congrats on getting your new "gizmo" a day early!

What do you mean by "speed is what you expected" from the CS3 apps. Is this good thing, bad thing, or otherwise?

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

Congrats on getting your new "gizmo" a day early!

What do you mean by "speed is what you expected" from the CS3 apps. Is this good thing, bad thing, or otherwise?

- Nick

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Yes Illustrator CS3 performs well. I also just installed the complete CS6 Suite and illustrator and photoshop perform very well also, did some work using it last night with a fairly complex file, panning around, zooming in and out, resizing all seemingly just as quick as my Quad i5 imac (2011) at work. This is using the 7300GT graphics card

Also startup and shutdown times are very quick, Just about any CS6 App loads in 5 seconds or less, and the OS startup and shutdowns are quick... I clocked a 25 second startup of OS 10.6 using the 7200rpm mechanical drive, have not gotten the SSD just yet....

jonesdesign said:

Yes Illustrator CS3 performs well. I also just installed the complete CS6 Suite and illustrator and photoshop perform very well also, did some work using it last night with a fairly complex file, panning around, zooming in and out, resizing all seemingly just as quick as my Quad i5 imac (2011) at work. This is using the 7300GT graphics card

Also startup and shutdown times are very quick, Just about any CS6 App loads in 5 seconds or less, and the OS startup and shutdowns are quick... I clocked a 25 second startup of OS 10.6 using the 7200rpm mechanical drive, have not gotten the SSD just yet....

Click to expand...

Sounds great. When do you plan on upgrading to 8-cores?

- Nick