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2009 Macbook Pro CPU upgrade?

misterminibus

misterminibus

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 6, 2012
64
13
Isle of Man
Hi Guys,

I have tried a newer Mac and hated it so I have gone back to my trustee but really old MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2.53GHz, Mid 2009)
I have installed Monterey version 12.6.3 (21G419) as a fresh install it has a 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3 RAM a NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256 MB video card and a 1TB SSD and I know its old but can I upgrade the CPU to make it faster or is there perhaps another way, I seem to get the bouncy ball quite a lot?
Screenshot 2023-03-30 at 10.58.23.png
 
misterminibus said:
[...] can I upgrade the CPU to make it faster or is there perhaps another way, I seem to get the bouncy ball quite a lot?
Click to expand...
Theoretically, the CPU can be replaced with a 3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo. But that would require desoldering the old CPU and soldering in the new one. Apart from that, your system is maxed out in terms of RAM and an SSD. Is your battery working? This is important as the CPU will underclock to 1 GHz otherwise.
 
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misterminibus said:
Hi Guys,

I have tried a newer Mac and hated it so I have gone back to my trustee but really old MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2.53GHz, Mid 2009)
I have installed Monterey version 12.6.3 (21G419) as a fresh install it has a 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3 RAM a NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256 MB video card and a 1TB SSD and I know its old but can I upgrade the CPU to make it faster or is there perhaps another way, I seem to get the bouncy ball quite a lot?View attachment 2181109
Click to expand...

Another tiny bump in performance might also depend on the SSD you’re using.

Check to see whether the model you use in there has a DRAM cache — something a lot of the lower-end SSDs, even from major brands, tends to lack. The one place in which having a DRAM cache on the SSD is when your system is doing non-sequential (i.e., when a bunch of tiny files, rather than one giant file, is involved) reads and/or writes. This can sometimes be relevant as a more complex application accesses the volume to retrieve/write to its components, plug-ins, settings, etc.. Going from DRAM-less to DRAM-equipped on an SSD might make a minor improvement in certain situations, but it could help with loading times for some applications.

If you already have an SSD model with a DRAM cache, then you’re already, as @Amethyst1 noted, hitting the limits of your system hardware, and this includes whether your SATA bus has link speeds of 3Gbps or 6Gbps (System Profiler.app —> Serial-ATA/SATA tab). Sometime after the early 2008 MacBook Pros, but before the early 2011s, Apple upgraded the SATA bus in steps, from 1.5Mbps to 3Mbps, and then to 6Mbps.

Last bit: it may seen drastic and more than you’re planning for in the near-term, but if working with your trusted model and its form factor are part of your positive experience, you might want to look around for a good deal on an identical form-factor, but mid-2010 15-inch model with a 2.8GHz i7 CPU. This alone will not only bump up your processing speed by around 70 per cent, but it also can support up to 16GB of RAM.
 
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B S Magnet said:
Sometime after the early 2008 MacBook Pros, but before the early 2011s, Apple upgraded the SATA bus in steps, from 1.5Mbps to 3Mbps, and then to 6Mbps.
Click to expand...
The late 2008 (NVIDIA chipset) 15" MBP was the first to get 3Gbps SATA. 2011 Macs were the first to get 6Gbps SATA.

B S Magnet said:
[…] you might want to look around for a good deal on an identical form-factor, but mid-2010 15-inch model with a 2.8GHz i7 CPU. This alone will not only bump up your processing speed by around 70 per cent, but it also can support up to 16GB of RAM.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure* the 15”/17” 2010 Nehalem MBP "reliably" supports 16 GB RAM. The 13” does. Additionally, the Nehalem MBP is known for panicking when switching between the iGPU and the dGPU. This is automatic so you’ll probably run into this unless the defective capacitor is replaced.

The “final” 2012 15” MBP brings quad-core CPUs, guaranteed support for 16 GB RAM, 6Gbps SATA and a reliable dGPU that can theoretically do 4K60 (but the Thunderbolt controller limits it to 4K30) to the table.

*Some time ago, I came across a thread on Superuser (I can't find it right now) that said 16 GB RAM does work in the Nehalem MBPs... but only in Linux or Windows. macOS kernel panics with 16 GB.
 
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I don't fancy soldering one in it could get messy, the battery works for about an hour, it does say it needs a service. I have owned this macbook for 10 years and the battery life has reduced somewhat, here is an image of the power. So with having some life in the battery will it still be 2.53 Ghz or reduced to a measly 1Ghz?
Screenshot 2023-03-30 at 16.46.13.png
 
My SSD is a Crucial BX500 so it doesn't have Dram, would this make a big difference?
So if I decided to purchase another MBP which one is the best up gradable machine, would that be a 2010 or can yo go newer and still add Ram, ssd etc?
 
misterminibus said:
My SSD is a Crucial BX500 so it doesn't have Dram, would this make a big difference?
Click to expand...

Increasingly, it will, yah, especially as one works up into the faster SATA III and, for later systems, NVMe.

Even moving from a DRAM-less SSD to a DRAM-cached SSD on my 2011 13-inch MBP is making a difference with system-related activity. It’s fairly small, but when running a benching application like Xbench, it shows up in the uncached, non-sequential reads/writes (as the SSD’s DRAM is going to be invisible to the Mac).

misterminibus said:
So if I decided to purchase another MBP which one is the best up gradable machine, would that be a 2010 or can yo go newer and still add Ram, ssd etc?
Click to expand...

Well, you could, but with the following things to think about:

The entire line of 15- and 17-inch 2011 models have an irreparable, discrete GPU design flaw failure affecting all systems (basically a matter of time). There are ways to just disable the dGPU, though these vary from firmware tweaks to physical changes to the board itself (there are two threads in the sticky section of this forum which discuss ways to deal with those).

This leaves just the mid-2012 15-inch, non-retina model. It will definitely run beyond High Sierra without making modifications and has the added benefits of USB 3.0, Thunderbolt, and a GPU which doesn‘t self-immolate, but what you lose, if this is important, is the ability to boot into Snow Leopard. These models are relatively fewer in number, as the hype that year went to the introduction of the 15-inch retina variant. The mid-2012s will tend to be pricier overall, but it could make for a good purchase if you plan to seriously use it.
 
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misterminibus said:
So if I decided to purchase another MBP which one is the best up gradable machine, would that be a 2010 or can yo go newer and still add Ram, ssd etc?
Click to expand...
Get a 2012 15" if you still want RAM and SSD upgrades. They are Ivy Bridge (3rd gen i7) machines, support up to 16GB of RAM and have Metal-supported graphics chips that are way faster than a 2009 (HD 4000 + GT 650M).

Being Metal-capable means they will run Mojave+ much faster.

Whatever you do, avoid the 2011 15" and 17". They suffer from unavoidable graphics failure, which means you will be stuck with HD 3000 (once the failing AMD chip is disabled) and because of that all external display support is gone.
 
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theMarble said:
Don't quote me on this, but USB portable monitors were also controlled by the Radeon and possibly ExpressCard too??
Click to expand...
Not if the monitor uses DisplayLink, i.e. doesn’t connect to the GPU. A monitor that connects to the GPU (and only uses USB for power, for instance), will be affected. ExpressCard is simply one PCIe lane and USB 2.0 and has nothing to do with the GPU.

theMarble said:
Haven't seen anyone try an ExpressCard eGPU setup with a disabled GPU before so not sure whether that would work or not.
Click to expand...
ExpressCard and Thunderbolt aren’t dependent on the Radeon, neither is an eGPU. eGPU.io lists a couple of setups with 15”/17” 2011 MBPs. They're all using a supported version of macOS though, so the question is if the patches necessary for later versions — especially GPU-related ones — mess with eGPUs. I may have to test this.
 
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Amethyst1 said:
ExpressCard and Thunderbolt aren’t dependent on the Radeon, neither is an eGPU. eGPU.io lists a couple of setups with 15”/17” 2011 MBPs. They're all using a supported version of macOS though, so the question is if the patches necessary for later versions — especially GPU-related ones — mess with eGPUs. I may have to test this.
Click to expand...
Interesting. So in theory you could hook up an even faster GPU, even though the original chip died.
 
theMarble said:
Get a 2012 15" if you still want RAM and SSD upgrades. They are Ivy Bridge (3rd gen i7) machines, support up to 16GB of RAM and have Metal-supported graphics chips that are way faster than a 2009 (HD 4000 + GT 650M).

Being Metal-capable means they will run Mojave+ much faster.

Whatever you do, avoid the 2011 15" and 17". They suffer from unavoidable graphics failure, which means you will be stuck with HD 3000 (once the failing AMD chip is disabled) and because of that all external display support is gone.
Click to expand...
Would that be the A1398 model?
 
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