Mac Pro mid2012 12 or 6 core for PT2018

[SD70]

Would this be a good move for PT2018? Clock speed 2.66 or 3.33...older machine but would it make sense to invest in an older machine? I see they are Avid qualified.

[climber]

I wouldn't invest in a machine that old...

[skizzo]

I am using a early 2009 model and it does all I need it to do! Specs in my sign for reference

And that should be the question you ask yourself, does it actually meet your needs? I am more of a serious enthusiast/hobby kind of guy at this point in my life. I did this professionally for a few years when I was younger so I like having all the newest stuff but in my world as long as I am enjoying my time doing music and audio and not spending more of my time trying to fix bugs, find out what is compatible, doing hacks for upgrades, etc......I just want it to do what I want it to do. So it made sense for me to upgrade my old machine rather than buy a new one. If you need to be more prepared for future upgrades then the Mac pro mid 2012 will likely only be supported by Apple another year. Then you're looking at hacks and patches to get to latest OS and things of that nature. You will need to decide what is a better situation for yourself

If you are still interested and buying used, find one for under $500 and put in USB 3.0 PCIe card (under $50), as much ram as you can afford and fit in the machine ($200-400), likely 48 or 64 GB on single processor or double that for dual processor. Install a SSD (cost dependent on storage size) for OS, a and 2nd and or 3rd SSD for sessions and samples if that fits your needs and methods. You will need an OEM Apple GPU if you need to update firmware. 5,1 model (mid 2012's fall in that category) have that FW natively but if you want to continue updating High Sierra OS there is another new firmware version that will require an Apple GPU like the GT 120. This means if that mac pro doesn't already have latest version of HS (10.13.4) on it then you need an Mac EFI GPU to get High Sierra. There is lots of info at other sites that go into the nitty gritty of that if you need the details. Go with 3.33GHz clock speed also. The only better CPU you can put in is 3.46GHz so that investment will not yield enough of a performance boost

[lancemcv]

Tons of folks are using old mac pros, they are solid machines that can take a beating. Sure you can get a new mac but you can buy 5 old mac pros for one new
iMac pro. 12 cores is the way to go which gives you more processing and of course the faster the better. 2010 and 2012 are really easy to upgrade the processors to their max speed which is Xeon 5690s 3.46ghz.
I have a 2009 mac pro which is the cheapest way to go but upgrade is a little harder than the 2010 but only a little. You can buy a 8 core 2.26 and upgrade it to a monster 12 core 3.46. I have a Samsung SM951 M.2 PCIe SSD (must be AHCI model for boot) boots in 13 seconds. Blue Ray and DVD drives, usb 3 pcie you can now install a usb c card made by sonnet. I have a flashed 980ti but you can now install a RX 580 or even an RX Vega. So long story short the 2009 to 2012 are still great for pro tools and dirt cheap. Here are my videos on how to upgrade them if your interested. https://youtu.be/YAdgT-hJuXU
https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=01wo4uQ6x-c
https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=MuFokmEJ-ck

[skizzo]

Originally Posted by lancemcv

Tons of folks are using old mac pros, they are solid machines that can take a beating. Sure you can get a new mac but you can buy 5 old mac pros for one new
iMac pro. 12 cores is the way to go which gives you more processing and of course the faster the better. 2010 and 2012 are really easy to upgrade the processors to their max speed which is Xeon 5690s 3.46ghz.
I have a 2009 mac pro which is the cheapest way to go but upgrade is a little harder than the 2010 but only a little. You can buy a 8 core 2.26 and upgrade it to a monster 12 core 3.46. I have a Samsung SM951 M.2 PCIe SSD (must be AHCI model for boot) boots in 13 seconds. Blue Ray and DVD drives, usb 3 pcie you can now install a usb c card made by sonnet. I have a flashed 980ti but you can now install a RX 580 or even an RX Vega. So long story short the 2009 to 2012 are still great for pro tools and dirt cheap. Here are my videos on how to upgrade them if your interested. https://youtu.be/YAdgT-hJuXU
https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=01wo4uQ6x-c
https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=MuFokmEJ-ck

I actually watched your video in preparation of doing my own upgrade. Certainly was informative and educational! After looking at other videos of single processor upgrades I went from the slowest to the fastest CPU. Really glad people made these videos because that type of upgrade seemed, well, scary. I did not want to ruin my machine by creating damage or putting in an incompatible part but it was very straight forward after educating myself on the process.

The RX580 works out of the box. I put one in recently. The Sapphire Pulse 8GB OC edition. I think you need to be on High Sierra 10.13.4 though for that out of the box compatibility

[CV]

I also upgraded my 2009 Mac Pro to a 3.46 12-core.
I have to say I wasn't completely happy with the performance boost but I also work with a lot of VI's and CPU intensive plug-ins like Acustica Audio.


I'm also still on Yosemite and about to do a clean install with Sierra.
(Hopefully that may yield some performance boost)


I'm curious as to what kind of "real world" throughput you're seeing with the Sonnect USB-C card ? Is it quick enough to run an external SSD as your OS drive ?

[Meads]

Originally Posted by CV

I'm curious as to what kind of "real world" throughput you're seeing with the Sonnect USB-C card ? Is it quick enough to run an external SSD as your OS drive ?

These are the numbers I get with a SanDisk Ultra II 960GB SSD attached to the Sonnet USB-C card.

[CV]

Originally Posted by Meads

These are the numbers I get with a SanDisk Ultra II 960GB SSD attached to the Sonnet USB-C card.

Thanks!

[SigFriedChicken]

A new, non-pro, iMac Retina outperforms a 2009 Mac Pro in both single-core and multi-core performance benchmarks. I'm not sure that it makes sense to buy a nearly decade-old computer, however great it was in its day:

https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks


I'd caution that Apple hasn't updated the non-pro iMac in nearly a year, so they are probably close to updating it again. I expect a new non-pro iMac to be released by the end of the year.

[Meads]

Originally Posted by SigFriedChicken

A new, non-pro, iMac Retina outperforms a 2009 Mac Pro in both single-core and multi-core performance benchmarks. I'm not sure that it makes sense to buy a nearly decade-old computer, however great it was in its day.

Just ran a GB on my 2009 MacPro and I get a single core score of 2670 and a multicore of 30807. So while the iMac non pro has a higher single core performance this decade old computer still smokes it with multi core performance. Well - obviously, since it has 8 more cores than the iMac (which I assume is a quad core?).