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Upgrading the 2009 Mac Pro?
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[andy patterson] “It will be interesting to see if anyone has added a Blu-ra burner or SAS RAID controller card. I don’t doubt some one has went from a quad core CPU to a six core CPU.
“Forgot to mention, I also added a Blu-Ray burner as well as going from a quad core to six core and from a 512MB graphics
card to a 6GB graphics card. It works great! I can burn Blu Ray disks directly from FCP X, or use Adobe Encore CS6.
The quality of the Blu Ray disks is amazing (footage from a FS700) on every Blu Ray player I have tested them on.
You can also use the Blu Ray disks to archive footage on…..just drag the camera native files to the disk, using Toast Titanium.Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
http://www.gforcevideo.com -
[Gabe Strong] “not sure why you are taking ‘an average of the entries in the CPU database.’ That is a little like averaging the speeds of any GPU anyone puts into the 2009 Mac Pro. “
I did NOT take an average of ‘any GPU’ (or CPU) in the GeekBench 4 database. Rather — as I described — I took an average of the fastest entries. Of the approx. 30,000 entries, I sorted those in descending order by multi-core CPU or GPU performance and took the average of roughly the fastest 10 out of those 30,000.
It is the average of the best 10 CPU or GPU entries in a database of 30,000 entries. It is not an average of those 30,000 or even an average of the first page of entries. The fastest entries in the GeekBench 4 database include the fastest upgraded or modified machines, and it automatically filters out medium and lower-end machines.
Of course it’s possible that someone with a special 2009 Mac Pro might get better performance and just not upload it to the GeekBench database. It’s also possible they ran GeekBench 3 which is less accurate and may produce misleadingly higher numbers than GeekBench 4.
Taking an average of the fastest entries — and noting the version of GeekBench — is just a standard practice to properly reflect the best achievable performance. Just listing a single number without stating the GeekBench version would risk being non-representative.
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I have a 2010 2x6core/3.33 with 64 gig Ram, SSD startup drive and a flashed Nvidia 680 GPU. I also recently bought a 2013 6core/3.5 D700 with 32 gig of ram. the 2010 is hooked up to a PCIe Raid, the 2013 to a Thunderbolt Raid, both get around 750 Gbs when half full.
In general they feel about the same to operate on Premiere – when working multicam 5 cameras, as I often do, the 2010 is a little smoother. Exports from the 2013 seem a little faster, but I haven’t done any serious testing.
for me the biggest difference is Thunderbolt i/o – you can’t get it on the 2010 and many clients are submitting Tblt drives as source material. Also Thunderbolt raids, not needing PCIe cards, are much cheaper.
My conclusions based on recent experience, is that if your just looking for a little more zip and you already have a 2009 or later Mac Pro, then upgrading will definitely get you there and will be the best bang for your buck.
If you’re looking to buy a new system and you will need to buy a new raid to work with it, then the 2013, with it’s Thunderbolt connectivity is the more flexible system and the price difference is almost nil once you take the Raid into account.
Finally, if you don’t have ProRes as a deliverable requirement, nor are you fixed on FCPX as your NLE, then get a Wintel box and find out what a truly modern computer can do for you.
My other conclusion is that if someone could come up with a PCIe-Thunderbolt card for older MacPro’s, you could sell a lot of units of both.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf -
[Herb Sevush] “In general they feel about the same to operate on Premiere – when working multicam 5 cameras, as I often do, the 2010 is a little smoother. Exports from the 2013 seem a little faster, but I haven’t done any serious testing.”
Interesting that one is better than the other for certain tasks. Thanks for the info.
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[Herb Sevush] “then get a Wintel box and find out “ … how much you’ll miss AFP. 😉
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I upgraded my 2010 Mac Pro 2.93Ghz 12-Core, 24GB memory with the following:
Slot 1: Sapphire HD 7950 Mac Edition (from OWC)
Slot 2: Inateck 4 Ports PCI-E to USB 3.0 Expansion Card for Mac Pro (from Amazon)
Slot 3: OWC 480GB Mercury Accelsior E2 PCI Express Solid State Drive (from OWC)
Slot 4: Apple RAID Card w/6TB RAID 5 (existing OEM not an upgrade)
Optical Bay: Pioneer SATA Blu-ray Burner BDR-2209 (from Newegg)Interesting to note is that the 2010 Mac Pro (maybe the 2009 as well) uses Triple Channel memory. That means the memory runs faster at 24GB than at 32GB! I’ve proven this will my Geekbench Score. I had 32GB originally in 4 pairs of 4GB each and it only ran in Dual Channel mode. I removed 1 pair of 2x 4GB modules and it switched to Triple Channel mode for the 3 remaining pairs and memory throughput was faster.
The biggest upgrade impact was the OWC 480GB Mercury Accelsior E2 PCI Express. I’m getting 651 MB/s Read and 582 MB/s Write access. That really made everything perform faster. You don’t realize how I/O bound your Mac is until you add an SSD and the Mercury Accelsior is pretty fast. The other advantage is that it adds an eSATA port on the back so I can connect my external RAIDs with eSATA and be just as fast as if they were internal.
The next biggest upgrade impact was adding the Inateck 4 Ports PCI-E to USB 3.0 Expansion Card. USB 3.0 is 10x faster than USB 2.0 and it makes a huge difference when working with external media. I have a RAID enclosure that supports both eSATA and USB 3.0 and I’ve connected it both ways and the performance is about the same. The same cannot be said for the original USB 2.0 ports. They seem unbearably slow now by comparison.
The Sapphire HD 7950 Mac Edition was an upgrade from the Apple ATI Radeon HD 5870 which was already twice as fast as the stock Radeon HD 5770 so it wasn’t that much if an improvement over the 5870 but I wanted the fastest Apple approved card I could get so the 7950 was as good as it gets. Recent Geekbench OpenCL scores puts just under the performance of a single D700.
The Apple RAID card was original equipment from Apple so it wasn’t an upgrade. I wanted to point out what was in Slot 4. Not the best card by today’s standards but it still works so why fix it.
Overall adding an fast SSD, eSATA, USB 3.0 and GPU breathed new life into the old box. I have a Geekbench 3 32-bit score of 25,028 and a Geekbench 4 64-bit score of 19,178 which comes in right under the Mac Pro 8-Core (Late 2013) score of 20,564. Considering that my score of 19,178 was well above the 16,524 score of a Mac Pro 6-Core (Late 2013) which cost $3999, I’d say I got my money’s worth out of my ~$1,000 in upgrades. When you consider that I bought my 2010 Mac Pro used on eBay for $2475, adding $1000 in upgrades, I still have a more powerful Mac at $3475 than I would have had I bought a new Mac Pro 6-Core for $3999.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com -
Very interesting post, thank you.
Reading the specs for the Inatek PCI-E to USB 3.0 card, it says: Operating System Compatibility: Mac OS 10.8.2 to 10.9.5.
What version of OS are you running?
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki -
Some interesting upgrade configurations.
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I have the Inatek USB 3 card in two systems. Works fine for me under 10.11.6. I didn’t load any drivers, so It has to be Apple’s drivers that are running it. I think there may be issues with Sleep Mode, but I have other cards that don’t do well with Sleep, so I always have it off.
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[Simon Ubsdell] “Reading the specs for the Inatek PCI-E to USB 3.0 card, it says: Operating System Compatibility: Mac OS 10.8.2 to 10.9.5. What version of OS are you running?”
I’m running macOS Sierra 10.12.3 on my 2010 Mac Pro and OS X El Capitan 10.11.6 on my 2008 Mac Pro 8-Core, both of which have this card and I’m not having any issues with either of them. I assume 10.9.5 was the latest version when that card came out. I bought two of them back in 2014 and they’ve been solid since even with several OS upgrades. USB 3.0 is a well defined standard so I don’t expect any troubles in the future either. I bought an extension USB cable from Amazon and I routed it under my Mac Pro to the front of my desk so that I have one front facing USB 3.0 port.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com
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