Can you upgrade CPU's in MacPros?

ripupthehwy

ripupthehwy

Well-known member
I can't imagine that you can't but I can't find anywhere on Apple's website or any authorized dealer's where you can purchase CPU's for Mac Pro Towers. I am looking to purchase my first Mac and get into Final Cut Pro, but can only afford a single processor unit. I just want to make sure I can add a second one and/or upgrade them later. Anyone have a good website they can point me to?

This is why I prefer PC's so much more expandability.
 
(DBG)
ripupthehwy said:
I can't imagine that you can't but I can't find anywhere on Apple's website or any authorized dealer's where you can purchase CPU's for Mac Pro Towers. I am looking to purchase my first Mac and get into Final Cut Pro, but can only afford a single processor unit. I just want to make sure I can add a second one and/or upgrade them later. Anyone have a good website they can point me to?

This is why I prefer PC's so much more expandability.
Click to expand...

?

A 2.66 ghz quad core processor is more then enough for rite now and at least 1-2 years to come. And even then you can upgrade your graphics card, ram, hd and still be good for another year or two.

I am currently working with only a Dual core 2.2 and a 128 mb graphics card, a new Mac Pro in theory is twice as fast as my current system. I could only imagine the time I would save and how amazing that system is. Supposedly new Macs are coming out next week so wait until then for ANY purchase! But if you must purchase now you will be more than fine.


** To answer your question , I know of people that have changed the cpu in their MAC PROS but honestly unless your doing movies like Star Wars you will be more then fine for a couple of years with that system.
 
A 2.66 ghz quad core processor is more then enough for rite now and at least 1-2 years to come. And even then you can upgrade your graphics card, ram, hd and still be good for another year or two.
Click to expand...


I visited the Apple store in the mall here in Tampa today. I asked them about this and was told the single processor MacPro has a different, single socket motherboard than the Dual processor one. So that answers that. But he suggested the opposite and said to get the 2 processor system, even if I could only afford the cheapest/lowest CPU power one.
 
The guy in the shop wasn't wrong. It would cost a lot to add a new motherboard with dual CPUs, not to mention needing new internal parts such as the shroud that covers the motherboard, which would be quite difficult to source on its own. Better to buy even the lowest range of dual CPUs - it'll likely be just as fast as the fastest single CPU machine they offer, also.

The CPUs should be upgradeable, infact I would be surprised if apple didn't offer some kind of upgrade service in their stores.
 
Wrong wrong wrong.


First of all this "single" processor has four cores which in a sense is like having 4 brains, dual core systems have 8 cores.


A 2.66 quad core is faster than a 8 core 2.26.


Regardless though like I said buy whichever Mac and you will be fine, I have voiced my true life experience. A 2.66 quad core is faster.
 
The CPUs should be upgradeable, infact I would be surprised if apple didn't offer some kind of upgrade service in their stores.
Click to expand...

NOPE ! they don't. I asked. They checked, said no. This is confirming my thoughts as to the drawbacks to Apple computers = little expandability. You don't upgrade, you trade up (by selling your mac on ebay).
 
ripupthehwy said:
NOPE ! they don't. I asked. They checked, said no. This is confirming my thoughts as to the drawbacks to Apple computers = little expandability. You don't upgrade, you trade up (by selling your mac on ebay).
Click to expand...


You truly have no idea what you are talking about........


Yes you can upgrade ( custom modding which is very hard ), no there is no point. I can sell my 3 year old laptop MBP for about $800-1000. If it were a PC I could not even get $400 for it. So your drawback really means nothing in the world of value.

Also Macs OS runs more efficient than anything Windows has ever made. I can have the same exact spec computers and the Mac will compute faster. So for the final time please get out of your mind the way a PC world with Windows as Macs are totally different.

A quad core 2.66 will allow you to perform open heart surgery, that same spec on a PC might allow you to only stitch someones cut on a arm.....

Understand? Get it? Well I'm going from here

:laugh:
 
Cieloent said:
You truly have no idea what you are talking about........


Yes you can upgrade ( custom modding which is very hard ), no there is no point. I can sell my 3 year old laptop MBP for about $800-1000. If it were a PC I could not even get $400 for it. So your drawback really means nothing in the world of value.

Also Macs OS runs more efficient than anything Windows has ever made. I can have the same exact spec computers and the Mac will compute faster. So for the final time please get out of your mind the way a PC world with Windows as Macs are totally different.

A quad core 2.66 will allow you to perform open heart surgery, that same spec on a PC might allow you to only stitch someones cut on a arm.....

Understand? Get it? Well I'm going from here

:laugh:
Click to expand...

It is OK to like your Mac but don't be a fanboy because I can prove you wrong. :laugh:
 
Cieloent said:
..A quad core 2.66 will allow you to perform open heart surgery, that same spec on a PC might allow you to only stitch someones cut on a arm....
Click to expand...

Wow, sounds like you have't used a PC in a while. Your analogy is ridiculous. Objectivity is your friend! I have both a PC Quad and Mac Quad and they are both blazing fast. The differences are very minor. I have to admit that I love the flexibility and easy and inexpensive upgradability of the PC. Of course, the build quality and resale value of the Mac can't be beat.
 
ripupthehwy said:
This is confirming my thoughts as to the drawbacks to Apple computers = little expandability.
Click to expand...

Other than not being able to upgrade the CPUs, MacPros are expandable - change or add videos cards, RAM, optical drives, SATA drives, capture boards, eSATA, FW, accelerator boards, etc.

Not certain what you are referring to
 
David S. said:
Other than not being able to upgrade the CPUs, MacPros are expandable - change or add videos cards, RAM, optical drives, SATA drives, capture boards, eSATA, FW, accelerator boards, etc.

Not certain what you are referring to
Click to expand...


Uhh. just what I said: not being able to upgrade the CPU's. Guess I got spoiled being able to overhaul my PC's every couple of years.
 
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Folks, I couldn't believe that Apple would actually not sell a premium priced processor board addition (not talking about a faster processor, but just more processors), to a machine that has four slots for processors on it. So I called the Seattle Apple store, and talked to service. (I own a Mac Pro with two processors on it, and bought it because I believed that the two open slots would allow expansion). The answer is actually astonishing to me. No, even if you buy a machine that has four processor slots, Apple will not sell you additional processors for your machine! Not via a service upgrade or retail. Not at any price. I would go check with Apple certified dealers that aren't an Apple store in your area to see if they can order it as a service part for you.

This is really an amazing bit of news that is not well understood. Apple is building a state of the art workstation, with four slots for processors, and could easily make a lot of money selling processor upgrades, as there appears to be no reason that they couldn't do such a thing, other than they want you to upgrade your machine if you decide you run out of power.

Most manufacturers do not even build with four slots for processor upgrades. However, some do build expandable workstations.

I just took a quick look at the HP Z800 Workstation, which is functionally an equivalent to the Mac Pro. It is field upgradeable for a second processor, and you don't need to pay HP to do it for you. I assume Dell is the same way. You can also boot into either Windows or Linux on those machines.

As to speed, Apple has never put themselves in a true comparative benchmark process against other platforms and OS's that I am aware of (and I could have missed something, no doubt!). So whether something runs faster on a Mac, Windows, Linux or whatever, is totally subjective, unless someone like PCWorld has run benchmarks. While the Mac is a fine OS and piece of hardware (I own a Mac Pro, Mac Book Pro, and iPhone in addition to my HP dual quad core machine running Win7, so I have no real bias in this, they all 'scream').
It's really unacceptable that Apple builds a machine that could be upgradeable, but that Apple chooses not to, in order to simply sell more computers. That kind of behavior in the Windows/Linux world would sink a manufacturer.

The real choice here isn't Apple vs. HP. It's whether you want or need to run FCP or a Windows equivalent. It's really sort of funny that once upon a time, IT shops didn't want to go Mac because it wasn't as configurable as Windows (or DOS or UNIX) and the ease of use of the Mac was a "bad" thing. Now we have almost the opposite. Apple has a premium priced box with a massively configurable application in FCP that is as hard to learn as running an old fashioned mainframe computer OS, and the users of FCP are so bought into the Apple world (hey myself included!) that they can't see other options that are more cost effective and expandable.

This news gives me new fuel to really push out into some alternative to FCP. This, and the lack of true 64 bit support in FCP, the transcoding of AVCHD and other issues really makes me question my decision to be on this platform.

As to the question above about the guy who 'upgraded' his machine he says he had them "professionally" upgraded, but doesn't say how. Perhaps some used gear somewhere, or a dealer able to figure out the service system of Apple to order them as replacements. A good Apple Dealer who isn't apple could probably figure out how to do that. I'm not seeing it advertised on the web. Maybe under the counter transaction?
 
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I think that your great overview sort of underscores my point. Apple does not make any clear story of the capabilities (limited in this case) of these machines. Neither do any of the common reviews of the machine on any of the major Mac review sites, like MacUser, etc.

Opening my MacPro when I bought it led me to believe (and I researched the machine pretty carefully) that the extra two slots were capable of having processors added to them.

But the bottom line is that the machine works fine, I would have been very unhappy had I bought the single proc (quad core) machine to have found out it was not able to be upgraded!

Thanks for the great overview. This probably ought to be made into a stickie/FAQ. This is not easily found anywhere else on the web, since I Googled this kind of info yesterday!
 
Have you contacted Apple and asked if the CPUs are upgradeable?

Seems that would be the most efficient starting point.
 
Yes, that was the point in my call to the Apple Store in Seattle, and my discussion with them that started my posts on this, (a little earlier in the thread). Anyway, now that it's as clear as it seems it can be, at least folks can find this if they go looking in the future.
 
First let me mention that I'm apple certified and I used to (long ago) have a PC repair and upgrade bussiness.
PC's are not upgradeable. Well they are, but only in limited ways. Any pc motherboard of the current generation has either one or two sockets for cpu's ... just like the Mac.
If you buy a HP or dell or whatever, where you get a warranty then you normally get a single socket board if you buy a single cpu or a dual board if you buy a dual cpu. Btw, dual cpu is the most you can get - the rest are CORES, which for all intents is the same thing ... but not quite. So anyhow, the normal way if you buy a single cpu machine from say HP ... then you can't upgrade it. You can only change boards out - along with the CPU's .... but say goodbye to your warranty. (there are a few high price exceptions ... but I don't have the time here to explain the disadvantages)

So what people generally are saying when they say the PC is updradeable is that they have a home built rig and they bought more than they needed - a dual board with a single CPU. And that is nice, though there are many pitfalls if you are not carefull. CPU's have steppings. If you don't have matched steppings the cpu's may or may not work. Quite a chance there one takes with a $1100 Xeon. Next BOTH cpu's MUST be identical. New generations often require different sockets, different ram and often it isi a vital thing to change the power supply.

So PC's are upgradeable - but really only within each generation and you have to have the foresight to buy a very expensive dual board - when you don't plan to use it for a long while. The other part of the equation is that two years later upgrading does not make sense because new processors are so much more powerfull that it is much cost efficient to simply start again.

That is about the same with Macs. You can upgrade them in the same way ... a do it yourself job that kills any remaining warranty. I upgraded both cpu's in a friends first gen dual 2.0 gig Mac. I found two xeons running at 2.66 for a total cost of less than three hundred bucks and it took me thirty minutes to put them in. I could have used two 1.66 low voltage xeons (or were they 1.88 - can't remember) and have gotten far more power out of the box but they were more expensive so he didn't go for that.
(new cpu's can't be used because they use a different socket (on both Mac and PC of the same year) and run faster memory)

The new nethalan boxes are completely different with motherboards and layout that if you buy the single slot box ... forget about upgrading to the dual for 8 cores.

As someone mentioned, sometimes the single (four core) box can be faster at 2.66 than the eight core 2.26. It depends how well threaded the app is.
Keep in mind however that the current generation runs faster with tripled memory ... so in my mind the best reason for the eight core is that you have twice as many memory slots - because you should never put memory in the fourth slot of either cpu.

Oh ... can anyone find me a PC board that is dual channel and has 16 slots? Tough to find and expensive. In fact they have only started to ship recently, two and a half years after Apple made it possible on the Mac. (of course that much memory until recently was mostly for show ... but I digress)

I'm completely agnostic about hardware. I like Mac os better than windows of any flavor but I still do occasionally run a dedicated PC for some task. Quality for quality though - the PC's are alway costing me more money. The nonsense about Macs costing more ... is just that. The weakness in the Mac platform however imho is that they always have mediocre video cards ... so building a good PC can really shine for some things ... and that new Adobe Premier may just be the cats meow with the right ($600 dollar) video card.

last point. The smart way to get power is to have a balanced system. No serious bottlenecks. Too many guys put the most powerful cpu in their system and then don't put in a commensurate power-supply or enough hard drives for the job.

Buy a medium power system (in either camp) and put in four matched fast drives and an appropriate video card. You will run video in circles around many faster systems.

Cheers.
 
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