MacPro Late 2012-Is it worth upgrading the Video Card?

[MARVINBASS]

I have a Late 2012 MacPro 8Core. Is it worth investing into a $450 video card just to go to Mojave? Is there any benefits to a HDX system with current ProTools Ultimate? I am on the fence on this. I would like to hear from someone who's has done this. Thank You in advance.

[Darryl Ramm]

You give lots of info *except* what macOS you are running now... so kinda impossible for anybody to comment.

Are you already running NVMe drives? Booting from them? Running APFS? Want to? Do you want to keep both your Macs at the same macOS/software level?

[MARVINBASS]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

You give lots of info *except* what macOS you are running now... so kinda impossible for anybody to comment.

Are you already running NVMe drives? Booting from them? Running APFS? Want to? Do you want to keep both your Macs at the same macOS/software level?

Ok do you have this MacPro???
The last OS X that you can use without going to a metal Video Card is 10.8.3
The current video card is a ATI Radeon HD 5870.
No it's not formatted APFS.

Moving all the way up to Big Sur OS X 11.2.2 is not my intention.

I hope that is enough info. Thank You for responding.

[Darryl Ramm]

No I no longer have a Mac Pro. I've mostly stayed in touch with upgrades for NVMe support reasons. That to me is one of the most impressive reason to update these systems. Heck I almost purchased one again when this became possible. Do you want faster M.2 based storage?. Do you have free (16x or 8x?) PCIe slot(s) to put a switch based/lane aggregating M.2 adapter card into? You need to be on High Sierra or later for this, and might as well be on Catalina.

There is another threads running now on upgrades https://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=414344), and as pointed out there by other recently this is a great resource (which you might already know about): https://forums.macrumors.com/threads...thread.2142418.

I've written on DUC lots about how a switch based/lane aggregation PCIe adapter cards give you PCIe 3 speeds on the PCIe 2 bus on these old Cheesegraters. Like this adapter card https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HYZY7P2 And I've written a lot about how I like the Samsung M.2 drives' like currently the 970 Evo or 980 Pro, but he market is improving with more vendors doing well now with M.2 drives.

And if going to NVMe drives you will be (and will want to be) on APFS.

Other reason to upgrade are going to be compatibility with recent macOS, and while I now run everything on Big Sur, I realize that's too far ahead for many folks relying on Pro Tools for work and hacking that on a Mac Pro Classic Cheesegrater may be a step to far for most people. Same with hacking to get Thunderbolt running... and if you wanted to do that I'd assume you'd not be asking here.

[MARVINBASS]

Well Darryl, I am not going to do any hacking. I was hoping that someone has the same MacPro currently and could just give me a yes or no answer. I found out now that my Waves plugins stops at version 11. Version 12 only supports Metal Video Cards. So I have to get the Video Card if I want to keep current.
Cheers!

[Darryl Ramm]

Ah Waves, v12, yes well... it was not clear why you were asking. If you don't have a reason to need to upgrade, and especially if technology cautions the answer is "no". But if you need v12...

If you search DUC you will see discussions about the metal GPU upgrade, including for Waves V12. Remember DUC site search is awful, much better to just use Google search with a site:duc.avid.com qualifier. Some starters:

https://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=405504
https://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=412330&page=3

and many more... but if nothing else that gets you some Metal card recommendations there or specific folks to ask for more help.

[Farhoof]

I'm running a (then) 150,- euro RX570 pc card with a single power connection in my 5.1 mac pro (hdx2) without issues. I upgraded to High Sierra first with the mandatory firmware upgrade (built into the HS installer or available as a separate update). I'd recommend to use the old gpu for this as the pc card doesn't show the startup options. Other than that it is working without issues. I haven't upgraded to Mojave, and not going to unless there is a reason for it (PT 2021?), but it's good to know I'm all set for it.

We have 6 cheesgraters still running and I'm not paying $450 each just to see the apple logo, hence the much cheaper pc card (also the single power connection saves me the hassle of splitters and such for the hdx cards)

[JFreak]

Just food for thought.. if your machine runs Mojave it most likely also runs Catalina, which works much better for PT. If it was me, I would do the upgrade and clean install Catalina -- now that it does not get any more updates, you can get a very stable and snappy system.

I have 2009 "Nehalem" 4,1 model and the reason I have not done it (and the 5,1 flash with CPU upgrade) is it holds HD3 cards and cannot go past 10.9.5 in any case, and the current GPU is good enough.

[Hugh-H]

Hello,
We still have some MacPro 5,1 2012 machines, some with Metal and Mojave. Here are some notes and opinions many of which you may know -

The last MacOS Apple supports on those MP5,1s is Mojave, Catalina won't install without some hacking. So you may decide it's not worth it, up to you.

You don't need to spend $450 on a Metal card, they are available for less. Ours have Mac-flashed RX580s, there are less expensive ones. If you don't need the boot screen you can get a non-Mac Metal compatible card for yet less, we need the boot screen for the boot manager with backup drives on our production machines.

The last OS X that you can use without going to a metal Video Card is 10.8.3

Not sure what you mean, the last OS not REQUIRING a Metal card is High Sierra.

As mentioned above you need to update to High Sierra first with your old graphics card which will update the MP firmware, going directly to Mojave from something older (not sure what you're using) isn't officially supported and may give you issues. Attempting to update to High Sierra for the firmware update with your new video card often is not supported depending on the model and you'll probably have video issues.

If you're still using spinning drives you'll want to change that if installing a recent OS like Mojave, spinners will be a significant bottleneck. Spinners using APFS will give you a significant performance hit and are not a good idea, SSDs are good with APFS. You can, for instance, put sata ssd drives in the MP bays for moderate speeds adequate for boot/apps and many PT projects, and put in an NVMe card with drives in the second x16 slot for the fastest speed. The sata ports and the pcie slots in those MPs are slower than modern standards but both are adequate for many projects. Not everyone needs NVMe speeds but SSDs are a good idea.

Another consideration is hardware improvements in the intervening years. The MPs are nice machines but certain things slow them down. Sata ports, pcie slots, and memory speed are "half" the speed or less than current interfaces (approximated for discussion). Additionally the Intel cpu architecture has gotten more efficient over the years. While the MP does things well, these cumulative limitations can cause recent Macs like the maxed Intel Mac mini to outperform the MP5,1. Not on everything but significant. The reason I mention this is at some point you have to decide if upgrading your MP with graphics card and ssd drives is worth it. Only you can answer that.

Good luck, feel free to ask any more questions,
Hugh

[MARVINBASS]

Thank You everyone for your posts!
I have decided not to upgrade the video card. Just to be able to move up one OS X version doesn't make sense to me. I will start using SSD drives for Recording/Playback though. My bootup drive is already SSD. This rig is meant to be my mixing rig and I keep getting those damn buffer errors. A good friend told me that going to internal SSD drives for Recording/Playback will take care of that problem. I hope he's right.
Also I just dropped a UA PCIe OCTO Card in to add DSP for mixing.
I am hoping I can get another year out of this. I am waiting for new iMacs with Apple's own chips to be released or a Maxed out Mini?

If there is a cheap "Flashed" Metal Video Cards out there, by all means share/give me a link so I can check it out.

Again, Thank You for your Responses!!
Cheers!