2009 Mac Pro CPU upgrade questions

[Kartoonstew]

Hi everybody,

I'm hopefully going to upgrade the CPUs in my 2009 Mac Pro. It is the ...

Early 2009 Mac Pro
2.26 Nehalem 8 Core (2 CPU)
32 Gig ram
Mavercks

I've been doing a lot of reading about potential CPU upgrades, but most threads I've found are a few years old, and most threads are then, understandably, advocating an upgrade path which is using—what would now be considered—older and slower processors. Can anyone point me in the direction of some more up-to-date information? More specifically:

Are Westmere chips my only option?

If not, could someone point to more modern chips that I could potentially use? (I realize I'd need CPUs that have 2 QPI links, even with a single CPU)

Is there a modern hexa core chip with 2 QPI links I could use? Would a modern Hexa core chip outperform my Dual quad cores? (I'm assuming yes)

I'm not in IT, or engineering, so my technical knowledge is not vast and if the above questions are stated incorrectly, then please just point me to some chips, if possible!

Thanks in advance for any advice,

-K


ps, for the record, I'm composer using very taxing music software and I'm just modernizing my computer one piece at a time.

 

[flowrider]

There are many threads on this forum that address the issue you are asking about. Do a search and you'll find them.

Short answer. You'r 4,1 Mac Pro will need to be upgraded to 5,1 firmware to utilize 6 core CPUs.

But, as I said, do a search all the answers you want are here.

Lou

 

[Fastsavage]

I've just upgraded my CPU's to X5660

Check out this thread https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1691581/

And this article http://pindelski.org/Photography/2013/07/08/mac-pro-2009-part-tbd/

Both were very helpful with info and tricks

 

[Kartoonstew]

Thank you for the replies. Apologies for a spam thread, but I didn't have any success searching. So, thank you. Still sifting through all of this info! Definitely looking like the 5650 is the value upgrade right now.