MP 1,1-5,1 4 core to 12 core upgrade, expectations?

[knbpixels]

The mac is a Mid 2010 (5,1), currently running Monterey. I will be doing video editing in Premiere, as well as work in Illustrator, Photoshop etc, and Fusion 360 and Blender for 3D stuff. The mac currently has 16GB, a couple of SSD drives, and a 4 core 3.2Ghz processor and an RX580 gfx card. I'm considering upgrading to a 2x2.93 Ghz 12 core setup with 64GB ram...at $250 is the upgrade worth it for my purposes? I know some of what I'm doing won't be taking advantage of 12 cores necessarily, but I feel like its a worthwhile upgrade. thoughts?

I should mention there are other differences such as bus speed, ram speed, cache speed, etc that all are higher for the 12 core setup, though I'm not sure that with a tray swap I would necessarily get all of those benefits.

 

[avro707]

You could just do 1x X5690 6 core 3.46 with 64GB 1333mhz RAM and run the OS and applications from a fast NVME drive.

This should be fast enough and will run quieter than the noisy dual CPU machines.

As a further upgrade you could consider RX6600XT 8GB GPU (need to flash it) which is faster than the RX580 and seems to run cooler as well.

 

[knbpixels]

You could just do 1x X5690 6 core 3.46 with 64GB 1333mhz RAM and run the OS and applications from a fast NVME drive.

This should be fast enough and will run quieter than the noisy dual CPU machines.

As a further upgrade you could consider RX6600XT 8GB GPU (need to flash it) which is faster than the RX580 and seems to run cooler as well.

That would require spending around $500, at which point I might as well save it for a new system...the goal is just to get me by for a couple of more years

 

[haralds]

You might want to consider 48GB of RAM, which outperforms 64GB slightly due to the bus structure.
I have that config with 12 cores @ 3.02Ghx and overclocked flashed RX-580. It is pretty solid running Monterey. Ventura is still a little flaky. I also have Mojave and BootCamp Windows 10 on an SSD. Catalina is also still installed on an old SSD, which is still working ok but qualified as too old to be safe.
I also have a Mac Studio, which does a little better. But the ol' Mac Pro was good enough that I decided to pull it out of
mothballs and upgrade the NVMe PCIe after playing with OCLP, which took away the tiresome mucking around required with pure OC. Before retirement, I had mainly used Catalina, which needed no patching apart from recognizing my updated BLE card and the bootargs="-no_compat_check" after installation.
The cMPRO is now my machine in the "man cave" paired with a Dell U3818DW. My Mac Studio is in my home office with a Mac Studio Display.

 

[h9826790]

The mac is a Mid 2010 (5,1), currently running Monterey. I will be doing video editing in Premiere, as well as work in Illustrator, Photoshop etc, and Fusion 360 and Blender for 3D stuff. The mac currently has 16GB, a couple of SSD drives, and a 4 core 3.2Ghz processor and an RX580 gfx card. I'm considering upgrading to a 2x2.93 Ghz 12 core setup with 64GB ram...at $250 is the upgrade worth it for my purposes? I know some of what I'm doing won't be taking advantage of 12 cores necessarily, but I feel like its a worthwhile upgrade. thoughts?

I should mention there are other differences such as bus speed, ram speed, cache speed, etc that all are higher for the 12 core setup, though I'm not sure that with a tray swap I would necessarily get all of those benefits.

"Upgrade from 3.2GHz to 2.93GHz Xeon may make some jobs run slower. There are more than 90% of the software are still CPU single thread speed limiting (in fact, even the GPU driver's performance is also CPU single thread limiting), this is especially true on the cMP.

I also believe a single 3.46GHz hex core Xeon + 48GB RAM should works better. Even not always faster than dual processer + 64GB RAM setup, but it should out perform the dual 2.93GHz setup most of the time. It should also cost you less.

Video editing can use a lot of CPU, but nowadays, if you setup correctly, most of the job can be done by the GPU, and CPU core count isn't that improtant. Of course, if you only use ProRes, then 12 cores definitely works better.

Photoshop is definitely CPU single thread limiting.

I am not quite sure about illustrator, I never really use this software, but I highly doublt if you can work significantly faster with 12 lower speed cores.

Blender can use AMD Radeon Pro render.

Never use Fusion 360, so no comment on that. But if it's a 3D software, I expect the RX580 can do most of the job.

If you really want to go for dual processors, and keep the cost as low as possible. You may consider dual X5677, but not dual X5670. 8x3.46GHz may be the sweet spot for you. On cMP, IMO, we should always go for the fastest CPU whenever possible. This is absolutely the biggest bottleneck on the cMP nowadays.

For single processor upgrade, not necessary go for the most expensive X5690. W3690 can also work. If you want to further lower the cost, you may even consider W3680.

 

[knbpixels]

"Upgrade from 3.2GHz to 2.93GHz Xeon may make some jobs run slower. There are more than 90% of the software are still CPU single thread speed limiting (in fact, even the GPU driver's performance is also CPU single thread limiting), this is especially true on the cMP.

I also believe a single 3.46GHz hex core Xeon + 48GB RAM should works better. Even not always faster than dual processer + 64GB RAM setup, but it should out perform the dual 2.93GHz setup most of the time. It should also cost you less.

Video editing can use a lot of CPU, but nowadays, if you setup correctly, most of the job can be done by the GPU, and CPU core count isn't that improtant. Of course, if you only use ProRes, then 12 cores definitely works better.

Photoshop is definitely CPU single thread limiting.

I am not quite sure about illustrator, I never really use this software, but I highly doublt if you can work significantly faster with 12 lower speed cores.

Blender can use AMD Radeon Pro render.

Never use Fusion 360, so no comment on that. But if it's a 3D software, I expect the RX580 can do most of the job.

If you really want to go for dual processors, and keep the cost as low as possible. You may consider dual X5677, but not dual X5670. 8x3.46GHz may be the sweet spot for you. On cMP, IMO, we should always go for the fastest CPU whenever possible. This is absolutely the biggest bottleneck on the cMP nowadays.

For single processor upgrade, not necessary go for the most expensive X5690. W3690 can also work. If you want to further lower the cost, you may even consider W3680.

Thanks, just ordered a 2x3.46Ghz with tray kit from eBay for $270...Now I just need to address the RAM. OWC claims better performance in pairs, and yet they sell kits with 3 sticks, among others...so my options are:

32GB 1333Mhz kit (8x4) $89
32GB 1333Mhz kit (8x4) + my 16GB 1033Mhz sticks (4x4) $89 = 48GB
64GB 1333Mhz kit (16x4) $119
48GB 1333Mhz kit (16x3) $92
48GB 1333Mhz kit (8x6) $129

Is it important the memory be balanced between the two sides of the processor tray?

 

[h9826790]

Thanks, just ordered a 2x3.46Ghz with tray kit from eBay for $270...Now I just need to address the RAM. OWC claims better performance in pairs, and yet they sell kits with 3 sticks, among others...so my options are:

32GB 1333Mhz kit (8x4) $89
32GB 1333Mhz kit (8x4) + my 16GB 1033Mhz sticks (4x4) $89 = 48GB
64GB 1333Mhz kit (16x4) $119
48GB 1333Mhz kit (16x3) $92
48GB 1333Mhz kit (8x6) $129

Is it important the memory be balanced between the two sides of the processor tray?

I will avoid OWC if you want to lower the upgrade cost a bit.

They just put their sticker on other brand's DIMM, and mark up the price.

There should be many server used DIMM selling at eWaste price which can works flawlessly on the cMP.

Anyway, if you want best performance, for dual processor 5,1. Either go for 8GB x6, or 16GB x6.

Ideally, you can get 16GB x6 for reasonable price.

But if you only consider the 5 options above, most likely I will go for the 16GB x4 option.

Not the best performance, but the most balanced option. Also, when you have the bugdet later, you can simply buy two more 16GB DIMM to fill up the slots.

Anyway, yes, two sides should be balanced.

 

[haralds]

Use RAM in tri-channel.
Mac Pro Memory for Models 4.1 and 5.1 (8-Core and 4-Core)

I am using 2 sets of 3x8GB for 48GB. But this was installed 10 years ago.

 

[Macsonic]

Thanks, just ordered a 2x3.46Ghz with tray kit from eBay for $270...Now I just need to address the RAM. OWC claims better performance in pairs, and yet they sell kits with 3 sticks, among others...so my options are:

32GB 1333Mhz kit (8x4) $89
32GB 1333Mhz kit (8x4) + my 16GB 1033Mhz sticks (4x4) $89 = 48GB
64GB 1333Mhz kit (16x4) $119
48GB 1333Mhz kit (16x3) $92
48GB 1333Mhz kit (8x6) $129

Is it important the memory be balanced between the two sides of the processor tray?

The 2 x 3.46 Ghz with dual cpu tray kit would be very good. Price is also a good deal. I’m using Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Illustrator, Photoshop, XD and InDesign. I’ve noticed with my 12 core cpu, dual 3.06Ghz, the transcoding is faster than a 4 core processor. Premiere Pro and After Effects seems to be multi-core apps looking at Activity Monitor. Illustrator and Photoshop are single core apps but runs ok with 12 cores. I use them together with Premiere Pro. I understand that Illustrator, Photoshop runs well on fewer cores.

I could not comment on Blender and Fusion as I don’t use these apps. My guess is they might also be multi-core. I have another Mac Pro with a dual processor, x5677, 3.46Ghz at 8 cores. This has a nice balance between processor clock speed, number of cores and pricing.

For ram, 48g or 64g would be okay but OWC rams are expensive. Check out Hynix or Samsung ram.