Upgrading 2010 Mac Pro 5,1 for Logic

I have a 2010 Mac Pro 5,1 12-core 2.93 GHz. 24 GB

 

I use it mostly to run Logic Pro with very large virtual instrument templates.

 

Will I gain a significant increase by upgrading the processors to 3.44 and increasing to 128 G ram?

 

 

Also, I'm currently using a SATA SSD for the main drive and 2TB SATA drives for the libraries and audio. Would I gain significantly by switching to NVMe SSD for either the main drive or the library/audio drives?

Yea you will notice difference. 64gb ram is probably plenty though. You won’t notice a difference moving to NVMe

I have a 2010 Mac Pro 5,1 12-core 2.93 GHz. 24 GB

 

What OS and Logic version are you running? I don't think your signature is up to date.

I have a 2010 Mac Pro 5,1 12-core 2.93 GHz. 24 GB

 

What OS and Logic version are you running? I don't think your signature is up to date.

Thank you! You're right - it wasn't up to date. I've updated it now so my sig has my current setup.

 

I plan to update to Logic 10.5. But I have to upgrade my video card to metal support first so I can go to Mojave. That will be part of my upgrade.

 

Open to recommendation on a graphics card. I'm not into gaming, so I only need what will be sufficient for Logic.

Open to recommendation on a graphics card. I'm not into gaming, so I only need what will be sufficient for Logic.

 

Here's an example. Make sure it has the ports you need for your screen:

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/AMD-Radeon-HD-7970-3GB-Gigabyte-3-Fan-Version-for-Apple-Mac-Pro-7950-680/262964949638?_trkparms=aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20160908105057%26meid%3Dec29ebd017c04ec3b37fee52187f883e%26pid%3D100675%26rk%3D5%26rkt%3D13%26mehot%3Dpp%26sd%3D352555127962%26itm%3D262964949638%26pmt%3D0%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2380057%26brand%3DGIGABYTE&_trksid=p2380057.c100675.m4236&_trkparms=pageci%3A45a59135-c3a5-11ea-8d6d-aa33957dd1ba%7Cparentrq%3A3f29039e1730a0f2cc151d7affea77ac%7Ciid%3A1

Sapphire RX580 Pulse is the graphics card you want. There are reports of some other variants working, but Apple officially documented support for that one, which I have and works great. Check the MacRumors forum for lots of reports of other variants that will also work, there is an RX590 now also, which might work also.

I use this one with mini display ports:

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Radeon-R9-280-3GB-Graphics-Video-Card-for-Apple-Mac-Pro-5770-5870-7950/264734495502?hash=item3da367d30e:g:M20AAOSwVuZe9BhP

Here is one list of supported cards and more info: http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/archives/feb18/RadeonRX-580_MacPro.html

 

Apple has an official document they posted a while back but I can't find it right now.

here's from Apple: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208898

MSI Gaming Radeon RX 560 128-bit 4GB GDRR5 I have just upgraded to Mojave using this one, perfectly adequate if you are not into gaming

Thanks to all for the input!

Yea you will notice difference. 64gb ram is probably plenty though. You won’t notice a difference moving to NVMe

 

Dewdman42, you are probably wrong with the last part of this statement. How could you not feel the difference between 500 MB/s and, say, 2000 MB/s given the same PCIe port?

No I’m probably right

 

Do more research. You can try to waste money on it like I did and find out it makes no measurable difference in how long it takes to boot up, how long it takes to load sample heavy projects, nor overall performance in any way whatsoever, notwithstanding the fact that a disk benchmarking tool will tell you how much faster the actual storage is.

 

There are many posts on the internet about this, dig deeper. There are other bottlenecks that prevent this kind of upgrade from making any real world difference other than in isolated benchmark tests.

 

If you play a lot of games it might be able to load a game faster if it has a lot of very large files to read into memory.

No I’m probably right

 

Do more research. You can try to waste money on it like I did and find out it makes no measurable difference in how long it takes to boot up, how long it takes to load sample heavy projects, nor overall performance in any way whatsoever, notwithstanding the fact that a disk benchmarking tool will tell you how much faster the actual storage is.

 

There are many posts on the internet about this, dig deeper. There are other bottlenecks that prevent this kind of upgrade from making any real world difference other than in isolated benchmark tests.

 

If you play a lot of games it might be able to load a game faster if it has a lot of very large files to read into memory.

 

I am glad to read it, because I've been thinking the same way (no experience at all). I have a little dylema here, I'm trying to optimise my computer and I'm wondering if I could put everything, system, Logic, its projects and sound libraries on the same SSD drive (maybe it would be better on NVMe M.2 drive) and not worry about a drop in efficiency. So far I am satisfied with the speed of the SSD drive even on SATA 2 (about 250 MB/s) where I've got my DAW, plugins, projects, libraries etc. But if the modern laptops can operate with just one (but large) NVMe M.2 drive one question still troubles me: is it really that NVMe drive better in performance than classic SATA SSD?

...fwiw...maybe take a look at "Dancetech," he's done several builds with video on just this sort of thing using DosDude to get the job done. For the longest time I upgraded my 2011mbp to the latest/etc, and all worked as expected, but had to drop back for client project...hth.../s~

Time to resurrect this post! I did not get around to upgrading anything, so I'm still on 2010 12-core. The highest MacOS I can upgrade to now is Mojave (assuming I upgrade video to metal support).

 

My current dilemma: do I now throw a several hundred bucks at my current MacPro and be stuck at Mojave, or should I bite the bullet and get a new Mac Pro so I'm totally current on MacOS as well as Logic? Again - I do full time music production with really large orchestral templates.

 

Would welcome anyone's thoughts on this. Thanks!!

I'm still running a 2010 MacPro, currently at Catalina, which is easy to do if you're interested, look into DosDude's Catalina setup. I have been able to run Monterey on it also and plan to use that eventually. That is not as easy to setup, but not terrible either. DosDude has said he is going to make a Monterey patcher, but we shall see.

 

But I still have some important software that doesn't like Monterey, so I don't really want to move beyond Catalina just yet. I intend to run this 2010 MacPro on Catalina, Monterey or perhaps even what is still yet to come out; until probably 2025 at the rate it is going.

 

I have thousands of dollars of add one hardware on this MacPro that would have to be replaced. Very expensive Lynx PCI audio card, 6 sata3 SSD's, lots of ram. Just replacing all of that on a new Mac will be costly...it will have to be done eventually but for me its yet another 2-3 years away.

 

I personally think there will be a lot of ARM choices in a couple of years from now and also there will be more momententum for everything running on M1 and most people using M1, etc.. I'm waiting...

Pretty much exactly the same as Dewdman here.

So has your experience with the DosDude patcher been good? I'm not terribly savvy on deeper software knowledge, so I don't want to get in over my head.