Worth replacing 2008 Mac Pro for upgraded 2010 Mac Pro?

[Justin1524]

Looking for opinions...

I have:

Early 2008 Mac Pro 3,1 lntel Xeon E5642 @ 2.80 Ghz, 2 processors, 8 ores, 26 GB RAM
Geekbench 3 scores: 1672 Single-Core/11,717 Multi-Core Score
Boot drive is SSD
Est. Street Value: $500

I'm considering replacing with:

2010 Mac Pro 5,1 2x Intel Xeon Westmere 6-Core 3.46Ghz Processors, 32 GB RAM
Boot Drive will be SSD
Geekbench Score: Multi-Core around 30,000
Est. Ebay price $1,800 to $2,200


I own a Pro Tools HD Native card and 2 blue 192 interfaces. I don't want to go the Hackintosh route and I just can't stomach the price of a trash can Mac Pro.

Pros/Question: Will going from 11,000 to 30,000 multi-core score give me a performance "high" I will seriously notice when it comes to tracking with plugins natively and latency?

Cons: I'm not considering future of USB 3/Thunderbolt etc. Old machines eventually die (e.g. power supply, MB - anything could die at any time) Yet Mac Pros are built very well.

Stick with what I've got? Spend the money? Hold out for the trash can mac? Wait even longer for the Mac Pro prices to come down? What say ye oh Pro Tools HD brothers? I know this question is subjective, just looking for thoughts.

[Matt Hepworth]

The question is how close do you come to maxing your current system *regularly*?

IMO, the sweet spot is the 3.33GHz hex from 2010. I'm seeing them well in the sub $1k range and they have good power. With the 2010 you have a much faster FSB (same as 2009), faster RAM than the 2009, and a fast single processor speed, which generally equates to superior low-latency performance.

Add an SSD and you have great performance. Double the processors and you have one of the very fastest Macs available.

[GS-DK]

I went from a HD3 system and a MacPro 2008 to a MacPro with the specs as described in your post - a 2012 model. Bought an Apollo FireWire with an extra quad system and ProTools 12.4 HD. I had the same concerns as you, but I am so pleased with my new system and feel I have a lot of mileage in it. Best investment in a long time.

[29CountsNY]

I went from the same 2008 to a 2009 modded to the 2010 specs you listed and I could not be happier.
I think the cost of the 2009 machine and the cost of the upgrade put me around the asking price you mention so the prices aren't that far off.
For me it was a good purchase.

[LDS]

A geekbench score of 30,000 means it outclasses most of the newer trashcan mac range. There is only a couple of macs in existence that are more powerful than that. I do think you will be impressed.

If it were me, I would get the 2010 mac pro you have mentioned. I wouldn't put a sata SSD drive in it though. Get a Samsung SM951 m.2 drive and an PCIe m.2 adaptor. http://barefeats.com/hard200.html

[YYR123]

Originally Posted by LDS

If it were me, I would get the 2010 mac pro you have mentioned.[/url]

Agreed lots of power little investment

[Barry Johns]

I recently bought a used 2009 8 core for 350.00, upgraded it to a 5.1 12 core for an additional 300.00.

Same specs as the one you are looking at.

I would be patient and search local sales where you can get a 2009 8 core. Your average user has no idea they can upgrade it to a 12 core!

[Justin1524]

Thanks everyone. Really good tips, especially Barry. I like the idea of buying locally if possible to avoid the heavy shipping charges (let alone potential damage during shipping). I'm holding out for that sweet deal.

I'm still a bit perplexed when it comes to the value of CPU speed and associated Geekbench single/multicore scores when it comes to Pro Tools and particularly latency when tracking through plugins. Suffice it to say that every detail matters to varying degrees. For example:

1.) Interface Speed - in my case Native HD card over digilink cable to a pair of digi 192 blue interfaces. How would Firewire 800, USB3 or Thunderbolt compare? A bit of a non-starter in my case because I really like my Digi 192 blues, they're an exceptional value on the used market right now. I also have such a great mix of IO right now with them, including analog, AES, SP/DIF and ADAT. No new interfaces offer this much, yet most people probably don't care. Any thoughts?

2.) CPU speed - 2.4, 2.66, 2.8, 3.33, 3.46 - to me differences matter a bit less here but I can't speak to this totally because I only really have experimented with a 2006 mac pro and 2008 mac pro. Thoughts on how much this aspect matters?

3.) Number of Cores - 4, 6, 8, 12? - I'd say this matters a lot for Pro Tools. More cores is better. Thoughts?

4.) RAM speed/Amount of RAM - yeah fast RAM is better and more RAM is better to a point. For me if you have over 20 GB you're fine unless you use huge samples on huge sessions.

5.) Hard drive speed - SSD's are without question the way to go for boot drives - do they matter much for working drives? Also worth it to get a PCIe card M.2 SSD drive and double speeds that are already pretty fast on the normal SATA bus?

6.) Graphics card power/speed. I'm less interested in this because I only need basic graphics supporting 1920 x 1080 resolutions.

7.) Computer's chipset speed - yeah here's a fun one. This kinda cuts to the whole architecture question, trash can mac vs mac pro tower.

It all adds up to a Geekbench score. And will we see greatly improved hardware out of Apple any time soon? I would say, probably not as the market for Apple is clearly less desktops and more mobile. Will prices come down on the trash can macs - sure they will - but feels like a slow drop right now. Meanwhile your 2012 and older mac pro towers will have hardware failures at some point, for example power supplies. And you don't want that during a critical session. Still I just love mine, feels like a sherman tank.

[YYR123]

From my limited knowledge > it's always best tongs with cores over speed. M
So a 6 core at a lower speed would still be more powerful than a 4 core at a higher clock speed

[evanbenjamin]

I just did an upgrade from a 4.1 8 core Nehalem to a 5.1 12 core Westmere, with an OWC SSD for a boot drive. The Geekbench numbers went from 11000 to 30000. The difference in responsiveness is tremendous. And you get a faster computer than most of the trash cans for far less money. In every respect, it's worth the money.

I had someone from Avid tell me at AES that in their tests, Westmeres outperformed the trash cans. For a third or less of the price.