Upgrade advice - looking for a stopgap MacPro
Retiring my MacPro 1,1 4-core to 4,1 or 5,1..
Doing this in part now because Lion isn't supported by security updates anymore... and that's as far as I can go with the 1,1.
Ideally, I'd get a new Cylinder 6-core 2013 MacPro with 32G and 1TB SSD.... but are looking for a stopgap MacPro until I have $5000+ to burn on that config, plus waiting for a new MacPro refresh to iron out any bugs in the initial 2013 model.
so in the $1100 - 1500 range since I'll replace it within a couple years with a new one.
My MacPro1,1 (12G with slightly newer main 1TB and time machine 3T drives from Apple in the sleds (revision 2.0) with Radeon 5770 added for compatibility.)
While I have more recent versions of CC and FCP... my highest demand is running high end IBM and SPSS analytics software under Parallels/Windows 7... so 6 or 8 cores would be best used to allocate half those cores to the Parallels VM... to allow good speed on both Mac and VM. Right now I have to give 2 cores and 6G to each.
I need to run FIleVault2 on all drives. And I'd be running Yosemite (for compatibility reasons with apps).
I'm looking at the OWC machines... 2009 or 2010... upgrading to at least 16G ram... I can move my 5770 over... and move my 3TB over for TimeMachine.
4-core, 6-core or 8-core... looks like OWC sometimes takes 4-core models and places an 6-core or 8-core single processor into them (otherwise the model numbers and Ghz don't make sense)
Is the 2010 vs 2009 really a huge performance upgrade on system architecture?
Is the DDR 1066 vs 1333 only governed by the processor (4/8 vs 6/12 cores).... or are their system bus limits on 2009 vs 2010?
Is the fact that 2009 uses 32bit or 64bit kernel, and 2010 uses 64bit kernel by default... affect compatibility going forward?
( Mac OS X v10.6: Compatibility with the 64-bit kernel - Apple Support )... although I'm going to 10.10.
As I do need to run FileVault on all drives....
...I'm concerned about adding OWD SSD's (SATA or PCIe)... and their bundles are all 240G SSDs, and I'd rather use 480G (but OWC doesn't let you upgrade the difference in bundle, you have to buy a new drive... so if even done it would be a non-SSD used bundled with SSD added).
As this is a stopgap before purchasing a "new" MacPro within a couple years... I'd think a SSD may be pushing up the price (plus power and heat) too much. Plus the filevault2 concern with a non-Apple SSD.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts...
Tony
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