hey guys it's Lance and McVie audio and today I'm going to be doing a firmware upgrade to my
2009 Mac Pro essentially making it a 2010 Mac Pro and you say why do this well the benefit
is I will be able to install faster processors that's right upgrade my Mac Pro to a much faster
12 core computer and be able to install faster Ram so you could not do this unless you do the
firmware update so step one to making a faster a 2009 Mac Pro is to upgrade the firmware so
stand by keep your fingers crossed I have mine crossed and hope that all goes well
ok so I unzipped the firmware tool and double clicked it and little Mac Pro comes up on your
desktop with named Mac Pro firmware tool and basically all you do next is hit the upgrade
to 2010 firmware now if you upgrade it to 2010 you can also go back to the old firmware if you
need it to which is a plus but only if you have the original 2009 CPUs in there if you upgrade
the CPUs you can't downgrade the firmware so after you click upgrade a little disk image
on the right appears and then it goes through its thing and starts creating a ram disk then
those are the instructions which I'm going to print up and have it more clear as what
you're supposed to do after you shut down so now we shut down the computer here are the
instructions reboot the Mac Pro by holding down the power button until the power light starts
to flash then after a few seconds while still holding the power button you will hear a tone
we released the power button and the firmware updater will begin the update so now that the
Mac is rebooted its booting up off that disk that it created on the desktop which is the
firmware updater there we go it's booting up off it and it's starting to do the firmware
update I sped this up because it probably took about four to five minutes for it to go through
the line here and once it's done the computer automatically shuts down and reboots itself we
hope and there we go we're booting up under mountain lion ten point eight point five and
we'll see what happens so we'll go to the system profiler there we go and it says early 2009 still
so here's the original model identifier in boot round before we did the firmware update Mac Pro
for one which is the 2009 Mac Pro and you'll see the longer boot ROM version down below there and
now after the firmware update it should say Mac Pro five one and it does when you install faster
Ram you have to zap the P Ram to get the Mac to recognize it okay so now that the firmware has
been installed I can upgrade my processor which I have not purchased any etem still kind of looking
at them to pick out what the best scenario is right now I'm kind of eyeing the 5650 which is
a Westmere 12 cores for two chips six cores each if I install 256 50s giving me 12 cores I'll get
the same multi processor score as a brand new 2013 Mac Pro so I will be able to upgrade my processors
in my RAM when I'm ready and otherwise it's just going to work like it usually does it still says
it's a 2009 it didn't magically change to 2010 which makes sense but it does say now that it's
a 5-1 which is essentially a 2000 ten so that means I can put in new faster processors and
faster RAM and I will get audio out of the mini displayport which I believe didn't work before so
there you have it 2009 Mac Pro of 4:1 is now a 5:1 thanks for watching and we'll see you next time