Will I be able to run LION on my 2007 2.66GH Dual Core Zeon MacPro?

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Level 1

13 points

Will I be able to run LION on my 2007 2.66GH Dual Core Zeon MacPro?

Hi,

I have a 2006=6/2007 vinatge 2,66GH Intel Dual-core Zeon MacProwhich has a 32bit EFI. I was wondering if I will be able to upgrade from Leopard to Lion. At this point the only downside with SnowLeopard has been that PhotoShop ( or other 64 Bit Apps) have been limited to accessing a Maximum of 4GBs of RAM per core.. which has never caused me a problem as I only have or need 9GBs of RAM.

Wil I be able to upgrade?

MacPro 2.66, Mac OS X (10.4.10), 6 GB ram.. iLife 08 /Aperture / CS3 / LightZone

Posted on Jun 10, 2011 3:15 PM

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Answer 1

The hatter

Level 9

61,031 points

Jun 10, 2011 3:39 PM in response to hassiman

There is no such "RAM per core" ever.

If EFI32 was a deal breaker there would be far far more millions of Macs and users.

You may need to upgrade to 10.6 first, and CS5.

I'd also throw in 4 x 4GB even, an SSD boot drive, an ATI 5770 or something.

Another popular upgrade has been a pair of 53xx to go to 8-cores and even 2.33GHz are more efficient, and costs seem reasonable.

4 or 8 DIMMs work best in a 1,1 model, symmetrical balanced quad sets.

Check out the effect of RAM on CS5. CS5 is much more efficient at using all physical memory even in 32-bit kernel mode. 64-bit is needed on later models to use large amounts like 48GB (and there is now 16GB DIMMs for 48 or 96GB for 2009 and later).

Mac Performance Guide Reviews

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Answer 2

hassiman Author

Level 1

13 points

Jun 10, 2011 3:58 PM in response to hassiman

Dear hatter,

I am currently running SL along with Photoshop CS5/LR3 and 9GB of RAM... seems to run just fine... so If I get your point I should be able to run the new LION OS on this machine with no problem?

I work with large scanned TIFF files in CS5 ( 1.5GB+) but only one at a time and have had no problem.

What lkimitations does the 32bit EFI give me and why can't this model be upgraded to a 64Bit EFI?

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Answer 3

Jun 10, 2011 4:03 PM in response to hassiman

This shows the 'requirements' for upgrade from Apple:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/how-to-buy/

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Answer 4

Jun 10, 2011 4:10 PM in response to hassiman

All Mac Pro (tower) computers use XEON Processors and can run Lion, but may need 2GB RAM.

To get it, you will need the Mac App Store, which was introduced in 10.6. So you will also need to be running 10.6.

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Answer 5

Jul 14, 2011 4:01 PM in response to hassiman

I'm wondering about this too. I checked the "requirements" for upgrade from Apple's site and they say that I must have "an Intel Core 2 Duo" -- my MacPro is Dual-Core Intel Xeon (I am running 10.6.8 and have 8GB RAM).

Forgive my asking what might seem an obvious question but does this truly mean I can't upgrade to Lion on my MacPro?

Also, should I be able to upgrade to Lion, I'm assuming that I would need to buy and attach a Track Pad to my MacPro in order to be able to use its gestures features, would I not?

Thanks for any information anyone here can offer to this newbie.

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