MAC PRO 2010 Pro Tools 12.5?

[philip888]

Just got a MAC PRO 2010. Will be running PT 12.5.

I am coming from a Windows systems. Need advice on which version of OSX is running the best with my new setup.

Thank you.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by philip888

Just got a MAC PRO 2010. Will be running PT 12.5.

I am coming from a Windows systems. Need advice on which version of OSX is running the best with my new setup.

Thank you.

Something to keep in mind depends on the size of the system drive in that cheesegrater MP you got. If it's big enough (say 1 terabyte or larger) you could split the drive into multiple partitions and try different OSX versions to see what works best for the particular system you have. Or you can swap in and out different system drives to try different OSX's. Nice thing with OSX is you can do this without reformatting the system drive. I have two boot partitions now and used to have three (my system drive is 2 terabytes).

No matter what you do make sure you have a good clone of the system drive before you muck around with OSX versions. That way you can go back if/when things go south. What version of OSX do you have on there now?

[john1192]

10.9.5 ... is what i am using here ... i do like musician says .. i have a working partition and a test partition .. leap frogging when it gets Stable .. 12.4 still has issues .. 12.5 has more issues it seems .. if you feel like beta testing go ahead .. i ma not happy yet .. fixes are badly needed .. and the Unexpected Crashes that happens is a Joke ..

Originally Posted by philip888

Just got a MAC PRO 2010. Will be running PT 12.5.

I am coming from a Windows systems. Need advice on which version of OSX is running the best with my new setup.

Thank you.

[philip888]

Originally Posted by john1192

10.9.5 ... is what i am using here ... i do like musician says .. i have a working partition and a test partition .. leap frogging when it gets Stable .. 12.4 still has issues .. 12.5 has more issues it seems .. if you feel like beta testing go ahead .. i ma not happy yet .. fixes are badly needed .. and the Unexpected Crashes that happens is a Joke ..

Is there a consensus on a version that is best?

Mavericks

Yosemite

El Capitan

[philip888]

Originally Posted by philip888

Is there a consensus on a version that is best?

Mavericks

Yosemite

El Capitan

I am using an Antelope ORION and they suggest Yosemite. So there it is.

[Darryl Ramm]

Stay the hell away from El Capitan.

And since overall performance is so dependent on disk...

I would get a SSD. There are multiple options but the issue is the Mac Pro SATA is all SATA II.

At a minimum Y\ou can get a PCIe card that does SATA III, like https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/SSDACL6G.S I would use a Samsung 850 Pro (or Evo) SSD, not an OWC SSD.

Even more interesting now would be to go with a M.2 PCIe drive in a M.2 to PCIE slot adapter card. They will be faster than SATA anything, but the issue there is the Mac Pro PCIe slots are only PCIe 2.0 not 3.0 but an AHCI M.2 card (like a Samsung SM951 should work and be bootable). A NVMe M.2 drive (like a Samsung 950) may work but likely won't be bootable. It's obscene how much performance a modern M.2 drive can deliver for a few $100 bucks.

There have been past discussions on DUC about these and other disk options. it would be great to know who has exactly what works with the same Mac Pro you have....

Oh I lament Apple did not do a real new Mac Pro, cheesegrater chassis with PCIe slots and M.2 motherboard slots...

[nstu]

It also depends on the plugins you want to use and be sure you have the latest versions of them. Many problems comes by plugins but 10 people will give you 11 statements. Start with Yosemite and than try the next latest version when apple update El Captain. That is what i would do. i found 12.5 works a bit better than 12.4 on my Mac Pro 2008

[Darryl Ramm]

You might also want to post the full specs of your system (or parts of the system profiler text output) here and see what folks recommend for improvements/upgrades. There are some reasonable CPU upgrades available on many of these older models.

[philip888]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

You might also want to post the full specs of your system (or parts of the system profiler text output) here and see what folks recommend for improvements/upgrades. There are some reasonable CPU upgrades available on many of these older models.

Thanks I will do that.

At the moment I have WD Black Caviar Drives. I want to get up and running and then see what direction I need to go.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by philip888

Thanks I will do that.

At the moment I have WD Black Caviar Drives. I want to get up and running and then see what direction I need to go.

Good plan. If you are totally new to OS X one thing I would recommend you get right now is Carbon Copy Cloner. https://bombich.com

CCC will make it easy to clone those WD Black to an SSD later if you want to do that. More importantly CCC is also a great way to backup your boot/system volumes and maybe session and other drives (e.g. onto external drives). I would *not* rely on time machine for boot/system drive recovery.