Mac advice for getting back in the saddle

[Michael Canavan]

@HCMarkus
Yeah to geek out a little on this I have the 2009 8 core 2.66 4,1 model.
It can take 1333mhz memory which I recently installed, but it reads it at 1066mhz. So if in the future I bust my CPU's limit and want a faster machine and find some Xeon's for cheap enough, upgrading the CPU and EFI will get me a 30% increase in RAM speed.

[HCMarkus]

@HCMarkus
Yeah to geek out a little on this I have the 2009 8 core 2.66 4,1 model.
It can take 1333mhz memory which I recently installed, but it reads it at 1066mhz. So if in the future I bust my CPU's limit and want a faster machine and find some Xeon's for cheap enough, upgrading the CPU and EFI will get me a 30% increase in RAM speed.

That's cool. Just read the Anandtech article on upgrading the dual processor 4,1 before you drop those new Xeons in, and go gentle on the heat sink torque. I'm digging my 2009 "5,1" hex, even though I only have the 1066 memory... but I do have 24 gigs of it.

[Michael Canavan]

Read that article. Dude fried his first Xeon replacements, nasty.
One of the reasons I'm gonna save it for when feel this machine is getting bogged down.

Bought 24GB of brand new OWC RAM off craigslist, so I'm set that way for the update.

[shankyboy]

Well folks, long story as to how I ended up with what I purchased. I got a dual quad core 3ghz with 16 gigs of ram. Waiting for my DP8 to show up. Gonna use the 828 mkII for a while until I can put together some coin for a new CPI card. Looks like I can get almost what I need by selling my X card on Ebay.