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Should I try to upgrade my Mac Pro 3.1 to 5.1/7.2 firmware? Is it worth it?

  • Try upgrading to 7.1 FW (if it’s even possible)

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    6

theodor12

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 2, 2020
20
2
Hello,
recently I bought a Mac Pro 3.1 2008. I’m not using it for something super intensive. I uust wanned to have a Mac for cheap. I’ve had in plan, to use some DosDude patchers to upgrade the Mac to macOS Big Sur. But unfortionetly, DosDude didn’t do a patcher for macOS 11. So I tried using some other patchers, even ones made exactly for Mac Pros. But they somehow didn’t work either.
So I thought, I could try upgrading the Mac Pro firmware to a newer version. But I’m wondering, Mac Pro 5.1 officialy suppors macOS Mojave. But I somehow need to go to macOS 11 or Catalina. Is there a way to upgrade my Mac Pro 3.1 firmware to Mac Pro 7.1? The currently newest chease-greater Mac Pro?
 

tsialex

Contributor
Jun 13, 2016
13,066
13,275
Seems you don't have an understanding of what a firmware is. Probably you saw that MP1,1 can be flashed to MP2,1 and MP4,1 can be cross-flashed to MP5,1 firmware and thought that the same would be possible with a MP3,1. It's not.

You can cross-flash MP1,1 to MP2,1 and MP4,1 to MP5,1 firmwares because the hardware is 99,9% the same for that models. Apple used same Nehalem X58/5500 platform from early-2009 to mid-2012. MP3,1 is a one year off that can't be flashed to anything.

Anyway, MP3,1 firmware is stored on a 16MB FWB flash memory and MP4,1/5,1 is on a 32MB SPI flash memory. Just this fact makes it impossible to do what you want.
 

Augustots

macrumors regular
Mar 23, 2021
133
15
Trieste
Seems you don't have an understanding of what a firmware is. Probably you saw that MP1,1 can be flashed to MP2,1 and MP4,1 can be cross-flashed to MP5,1 firmware and thought that the same would be possible with a MP3,1. It's not.

You can cross-flash MP1,1 to MP2,1 and MP4,1 to MP5,1 firmwares because the hardware is 99,9% the same for that models. Apple used same Nehalem X58/5500 platform from early-2009 to mid-2012. MP3,1 is a one year off that can't be flashed to anything.

Anyway, MP3,1 firmware is stored on a 16MB FWB flash memory and MP4,1/5,1 is on a 32MB SPI flash memory. Just this fact makes it impossible to do what you want.
Sorry if I intrude on this discussion, but in my mac pro 3.1 from 2008, I think I read u = in this forum some time ago that you could update the firmware to version 4.1, is it possible or do I remember correctly?
And if it were possible what advantages could I get?
thank you,
 

tsialex

Contributor
Jun 13, 2016
13,066
13,275
Sorry if I intrude on this discussion, but in my mac pro 3.1 from 2008, I think I read u = in this forum some time ago that you could update the firmware to version 4.1, is it possible or do I remember correctly?
And if it were possible what advantages could I get?
thank you,
Nope. You are mistaken MP4,1 to MP5,1.

MP3,1 can't be updated to anything - it's written on the post you quoted above, btw.
 
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