Upgrading video card and processor on 2008 Mac Pro

B

blando3

Well-known member
I have been prolonging the purchase of a new Mac for years now, and hope to continue doing so for several more. My Mac gets the spinning beach ball and FCP Out of Memory errors quite frequently when editing large projects.
My question: Is it worth the time, effort, and money to upgrade the video cards and processors or should I just start planning/saving to get a new Mac? I already upgraded to 20GB RAM.
Thanks!
Andrew
 
I'm guessing you have a MacPro 3,1 model right? It's not a bad machine but I'm not sure it's worth throwing more money at.
First, make sure what you have is running properly. Even an original intel MacPro from 2006 should run Final Cut Pro 7 just fine. If you're running FCPx then you'd already know that it only works with certain graphics cards.
To upgrade the graphics card (even with a craigslist deal) and install an SSD and another internal for storage, how close would you be to affording a new iMac?
I upgraded a 4,1 (2009) model two years ago and it was a close call between doing that or buying an iMac. I'd imagine that two years later and with an even older model it might not be worth it to upgrade. …unless you only have a couple hundred bucks in your pocket then do what you can do to get by.
 
Thanks for the feedback. Yes it's the 3,1. It's not bad at all, and I'm running FCP 7. It just gets a lot of errors and failed exports when I'm editing long timelines with lots of JPEGs. I'll probably hang on for a while longer. So you think a new iMac would be as good as the new Mac Pro? As of now, I'm not shooting 4K, but with the Panasonic GH4, that might soon change.
 
blando3 said:
Thanks for the feedback. Yes it's the 3,1. It's not bad at all, and I'm running FCP 7. It just gets a lot of errors and failed exports when I'm editing long timelines with lots of JPEGs. I'll probably hang on for a while longer. So you think a new iMac would be as good as the new Mac Pro? As of now, I'm not shooting 4K, but with the Panasonic GH4, that might soon change.
Click to expand...

I think a new iMac would be better than an old MacPro, but not as good as a new MacPro.
If you're getting a lot of errors, then I don't think it's the speed of the machine that's the problem. It's more likely software errors. As you keep a computer, you upgrade the software here and there, add a few new programs, delete stuff, etc This can cause little conflicts as old bits of programs linger and new ones don't play nice with the old remnants. The older the machine, the more of these that happen. It might not be a bad idea to put in a new drive and install everything from scratch. A clean install. Then load in whatever data you need from your old drive.
The other thing that can cause this is moving files around while you're editing and then reconnecting them. Keep a tidy project with good naming conventions and you'll see fewer errors.
 
blando3 said:
Thanks for the feedback. Yes it's the 3,1. It's not bad at all, and I'm running FCP 7. It just gets a lot of errors and failed exports when I'm editing long timelines with lots of JPEGs. I'll probably hang on for a while longer. So you think a new iMac would be as good as the new Mac Pro? As of now, I'm not shooting 4K, but with the Panasonic GH4, that might soon change.
Click to expand...

i also have a mac pro 3, 1 (2008 8 core) and recently have run into issues with a show that had 100+ jpegs.

lots of "memory error" issues.

a true pain!

as david points out, fcp7 has a limit has to how much ram it can access so the limitation is in the software not the hardware.

that said, my issue was about several jpegs that were too large which thoroughly screwed up my timeline.

even after re-sizing, i continued getting error messages.

(fcp7 seems not to like any jpeg that is more than 4k pixels in either direction. i kept my re-sized images to 3k.)

andrius might also be correct.

i am in the process of doing a clean install up to mountain lion from 10.6.8 which would allow me access to several non-apple graphic cards.

i was hoping that last week's updated imacs would be an option but it turns out that apple offered more low-end options than higher end opportunities.

c'est la vie.

be well.

rob
smalltalk productions/nyc
 
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