Considering 2010-2012 Mac Pro to Upgrade LPX Processing Power

Here's updated chart.

 

Left most bar is your MBP. Second bar is a 6 core MacPro at 3.33ghz. Third column is my 12 core at 3.46ghz. The rest of them are current mini's and the new expensive mac pro.

 

Your MBP single core performance is slightly better then the 6 core and better then my 12 core too! That is the factor related to when you are trying to play a synth plugin live with your midi keyboard..that is when that metric matters. Your full mixes use the multicore score...and as you can see the 12 core provides a lot more cpu room

 

Fascinating. Thank you for making this!

 

So, as a live, performance instrument, this MacBook Pro might be useful.

for sure yes. What specifically is prompting you to upgrade? Where are you running out of steam?

for sure yes. What specifically is prompting you to upgrade? Where are you running out of steam?

 

Hey brother. Thank you for asking. Well, essentially with everything. I need to clear some HD space, and have... but even so, I get the beach ball often. I get the error advising me to increase latency often, and LPX just does not perform well in a project with any kind of track count and third party plugins. I dream of a machine that will let me stack this stuff, and run various other programs and apps without flinching. I am glad you guys advised me on the 12 core matter. My searches on Ebay now are 12 core, SSD, and 64 GB or RAM. That should perk things up, I would hope.

If some gave me a 12 core I’d find a home for it but I can’t imagine ever spending any significant money on a 10 year old computer no matter how good. Mac Mini or iMac is what I advise. The mini is great, I love mine.

 

I think you are using false economy to justify purchasing such an old machine.

 

(I could have taken home non-12 core machines from work, wasn’t worth the effort)

Its all a matter of perspective and cost. If you can get a 12 core 3.33ghz or 3.46ghz MacPro for under $1500 I would take that any day over any of the current mini's. My multi-core performance exceeds that of the mini. My 12 core machine is also DEAD SILENT...no noisy fans come on at any time. I can handle multiple monitors at 4K. I can use a higher performance PCI sound card. I can add easily much memory, mine has 128gb. I can put storage devices, including SSD, inside the box rather then dangling outside a mini....etc.etc.. what is so bad about a 10 year old MacPro anyway other than the fact its ten years old? Nada. The iMac's and Mini's until now during that 10 year period have been sub-par compared to the 5,1 MacPro in terms of pro features that many of us need and want for audio work. I know some of you made them work for you and that's great, but still...the 5,1 MacPro should not be dismissed so easily. If you can get one for the right price, it is still relevant today..and worth every penny in my view..

 

The only exception to what I said above is that they don't have AVX, if that matters to you. And Apple has officially deprecated them, so in the future it may not be possible to keep up with OSX upgrades. So far people can run Catalina on them if they want. But I expect that situation to get worse in the future with future kext related changes coming from Apple over the next couple years.

 

Nonetheless, there are still a lot of compelling and practical reasons to value a 10 year old 5,1 macpro over a brand new latest and greatest MacMini...for those that consider those practical concerns important. And the performance difference is not worth troubling your mind over. In fact a 5,1 12 core with top cpu will out perform the fastest latest and greatest Mini in multi core mode! The mini does eat the 5,1 for lunch in single core performance.

 

Also, if you get a mini and start adding on memory, storage, etc.. it can add up quick to double the price of a 10 year old 12 core 5,1....so... again...it comes down to cost value. I think mini might make sense if you are invested in thunderbolt3 hardware already. On the other hand if you are invested in non-apple-branded hardware and particularly PCI based solutions and internal storage, etc.. a 12 core 5,1 is still a beast!

That's exactly how I see it. My plan at this point, unless something changes, is to Make Offer to several Ebay sellers with 100% good feedback and get the lowest price I can on a 3.3 + 12 core machine with 64GB RAM and a SSD. Thanks to you guys and your kind advice, I think I'm pretty well informed at this point. Then I will clear out my MB Pro and use it as a live synth / performance machine. That will be fun too. I need to replace the keyboard, by the way. ASDF keys don't work.

Yea my 2010 MBP is still here, I kept it around, but frankly its seeing its last legs. The track pad needs replacing...its flakey at best. It still has that annoying capacitor design flaw that would cost me a couple hundred bucks to replace...and the battery keeps complaining that it needs to be replaced, even though it appears to mostly work fine. Its not worth anything, so I'll keep it, but honestly it sits in its bag almost all the time unless I fly somewhere on a trip, and I might get an iPadPro to cover that duty too.

Hello my friends. So I bought a Mac Pro: 2010 12 CORE Mac Pro 3.33GHz + 64GB RAM + 4TB HD + 1TB SSD + USB 3.0 #323940008048.

 

However, I discovered after opening it that I cannot upgrade to higher than High Sierra, I'm stuck on that and can't install Mojave, because it doesn't have a graphics card with Metal installed.

 

That's another nearly 300. dollars if I want to do that. My question to you guys, does this pretty much make me obsolete?

 

What if I want to install this new, exciting version of Logic, with Sampler, etc? Can that run on High Sierra?

 

It was around 1200. dollars. Should I return it? Thank you so much for any response.

What if I want to install this new, exciting version of Logic, with Sampler, etc? Can that run on High Sierra?

 

You need Mojave for Logic 10.5

 

High Sierra goes up to 10.4.8

 

The interesting thing that happened when I upgraded my Mac Pro with a metal capable graphics card to update to Mojave, the CPU benchmark increased from 21000 to 24000 on multicore in Geekbench 4.

So the combination of Mojave and the Metal graphics card gave my 2009 mac pro more power!

What if I want to install this new, exciting version of Logic, with Sampler, etc? Can that run on High Sierra?

 

You need Mojave for Logic 10.5

 

High Sierra goes up to 10.4.8

 

The interesting thing that happened when I upgraded my Mac Pro with a metal capable graphics card to update to Mojave, the CPU benchmark increased from 21000 to 24000 on multicore in Geekbench 4.

So the combination of Mojave and the Metal graphics card gave my 2009 mac pro more power!

 

Interesting. Thank you for sharing that. I was surprised, because i thought it was a really good video card he'd sold it with. Can you tell me what graphics card you got? I would like to check on prices. Thank you.

Can you tell me what graphics card you got?

 

This one:

 

https://www.amazon.com/Express-Graphics-outperforms-Sapphire-Gigabyte/dp/B01010EE0U