Art Attack Central

Fixing stuff, myself included…

Geekbench Scores

Geekbench sees my 2009 Mac Pro as a 2010, because of the firmware hack. More than satisfied with this machine as it stands now.

CPU Replace = Success!

So… how did it go?

Not too scary. The new/refurbished 6-Core processor arrived yesterday, and I put it in the Mac Pro today.  The Northbridge heatsink is under the the giant processor heatsink, and the plastic rivets on it the were holding fine. The sink was; however, full of dust; a good blow out with compressed air has the Northbridge Chip running 10C cooler! With not much going on the chip reads 53c instead of 63c.

What about the Geekbench results on the cpu?

The multi-core score did almost double and the single-core rose somewhat. I’ll post the particulars tomorrow.

Stuck…

Yes, I’m stuck trying to implement a jQuery toggle for comments. Unless you want to leave a comment, you shouldn’t have to see that form under every post! Had plumbers in the house all day; spent a lot of time trying to figure out comments.

So did you get it done?

Plumbing work got done, but I gave up, after fiddling for hours with various scripts for making comments act the way I wanted them to. Removed the numerous changes I made in several files, and now have no comments. That’s fine.

Whew… lots of WORK to do
Broken links, irrelevant links, linked blogs that have disappeared, software that is way outdated, missing flash files. Where the hell are they?

Ha I knew you couldn’t resist asking a question.

So where do we go from here?

Waiting for New/Old Refurbished 6-Core CPU

So which one did you get? 

I got an Intel Xeon W3680

6-Core

Hex Core 3.33GHz LGA1366 Processor on Ebay for $77.00. Already have a long hex screw driver for removing the heatsink, from working on the Northbridge sink in my 2008  Mac Pro (MP)3,1. Previously I noticed via Hardware Monitor, the Northbridge Chip in the 2009 MP5,1 seemed to be running hotter (68c) than it should at an ambient temp in low to med 20s Celsius. So I was planning on removing the processor heatsink anyway, to check on the plastic clips that hold the Northbridge heatsink which is under the processor heatsink. If I am removing the processor heatsink, I figured I might as well go for the processor replacement at the same time.

Hmmm, that’s some gobbledegook if you ask me? 

Nobody’s asking you! Remember you’re the one who asks questions, not the one who answers. The “gobbledegook” is for my record, of what I hopefully can accomplish without any mistakes.

Geekbench scores before the switch: 

single-core = 2513 and multi-core = 8601 and openCL = 16147

The big difference should come on the multi-core score; it should nearly double. Little to no difference will occur  on the single-core or the openCL score, because it still testing one core for single, and the video card, which is the openCL score will be the same (ATI Radeon HD 5870 1 GB) Won’t have any results till next week when I make the switch. Fingers crossed!

By the way if you click on the cpu photo, you can see the metal casing/lid I was referring to in the February 8th post. De-lidding is the removal of the casing via heat to reveal the naked processor.

Upgrading the Processor

Oh no, now what? More geeky stuff?

Well yeah, that’s who I am today. I have a 2009 Mac Pro single quad-core, and I’m going to attempt to replace the processor with a faster 2010 6-core. The dual processor would be much harder to turn into a 12-core machine. Even though I thought I would wait, sell the quad-core and get a dual quad-core, I’ve decided not to.

Why not get the dual quad?

Because the replacement of processors in the dual quad, requires de-lidding the processors. And by the way, both the 4-core and 8-core 2009,  need to be flashed with the 2010 firmware. I’ve done the firmware upgrade, and it went smoothly

Whaaat? De-lidding?

There are varying descriptions of what to use and how to do it, from heat guns to household irons. All methods involve using a razor blade to “gently” open the sides of the metal case covering the cpu before heating it up. The removal of the casing  is called de-lidding. I guess if I had acquired an 8-core to begin with, I would attempt to go for the 12-core. However, after learning about the pitfalls, (many failures) of the dual quad replacement procedure, I’ll be quite content with uping my 4-core to a 6-core.