2009 Mac Pro w3690 upgrade worth it for casual use?

[Avenger]

I recently upgraded my 2009 Mac Pro with a SSD and also upgraded the firmware to the 2010 model. I see that the w3690 intel processors have come down in price. I still have the processor that came with the single processor base model. Is the upgrade worth it for just casual use? Ie, internet, watching videos, word processing, some photo manipulation, etc.? Will it speed everything up further?

 

[Stephen Dowling]

I recently upgraded my 2009 Mac Pro with a SSD and also upgraded the firmware to the 2010 model. I see that the w3690 intel processors have come down in price. I still have the processor that came with the single processor base model. Is the upgrade worth it for just casual use? Ie, internet, watching videos, word processing, some photo manipulation, etc.? Will it speed everything up further?

I've bought a base model 2009 Mac Pro about a year ago, and did the 4.1 -> 5.1 flash as well. I couldn't afford a W3690 at the time, so I upgraded to a W3580 (3.33 GHz, Quad-Core) mainly for gaming purposes. Overall, it did seem to make a pretty noticeable difference with the everyday stuff, and a very noticible difference with anything CPU intensive.

If the W3580 made a difference for my casual use, I'm sure the W3690 will be even more noticable.

 

[leon771]

For what your doing, then you'd barely notice any difference. SSD was the upgrade that had the biggest impact. If you're regularly encoding via handbrake or even gaming, then yes, you'd notice a difference.

I vote with just save your money until you have a task that requires a faster CPU

 

[Korican100]

I just did the exact upgrade. And if benchmark scores are any indication to you, then I'd say you will be happy to look at this:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1749282/

Here are my geekbench 3 @ 64bit scores before:

And here they are after the upgrade.

More than enough for your intents and purposes. I needed something to beef up my 4k video editing workflow.

 

[Loa]

Hello,

I just did the 2.66 to 3.33 quad upgrade, and for the casual and everyday use, it didn't make much of a difference. On paper and on benchmarks it gets 20%-25% more performance, but day to day? Not seeing much.

Of course, when I launch a big batch of encodes, the difference is much more significant.

Loa

 

[VanneDC]

not sure how 6 threads are gonna help with gaming since most games your lucky if they use 2 threads.. but hell, e-peen is important too makes you sleep better at night ;}

 

[RoastingPig]

not sure how 6 threads are gonna help with gaming since most games your lucky if they use 2 threads.. but hell, e-peen is important too makes you sleep better at night ;}

Battlefield 4 uses 6 cores and faster ram...that trend is going to take off with newer games