I upgraded my 4-core 4,1 to a 6-core 5,1 a few years back, and enjoyed the experience. Now, however, I'm doing more and more video editing in 4K, and 6-core just wasn't hacking it any more. I started watching auctions on eBay, and recently scored a bare-bones dual 4-core 2.4 gHz mid-2010. I also scored a couple of X5680 chips for $75 each on eBay, and tonight I put it all together. Now I have a 12-core 3.33 gHz machine with 1.5 TB of SSD and 7TB of HD space. A 30-second video that took 4 minutes to compile in Premiere now compiles in one minute flat. Call me happy.
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Bit the bullet and did a CPU transplant
- Thread starter MassMacMan
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Good job! You created your "new" Mac Pro!
I'm officially naming your, and others like yours the:
mnMP
for:
"my new MacPro"
Slogan:
"Apple can't do it, so I did"
Dual D700? No thanks, we've moved on!
You've done a better job than Apple at creating one
I'm officially naming your, and others like yours the:
mnMP
for:
"my new MacPro"
Slogan:
"Apple can't do it, so I did"
Dual D700? No thanks, we've moved on!
You've done a better job than Apple at creating one
The value-to-performance these older Mac Pros offer is staggering, certainly beats anything that Apple is offering now. I hope that Apple will release a modular Mac Pro with the same level of expandability.
Besides the CPU change, what was the hard drive setup in your old machine? you got a nice boost in performance there. What do you think was the main performance boost the CPU or the SSD?
How many cores/CPU's does Premiere actually take advantage of?
How many cores/CPU's does Premiere actually take advantage of?
I got it for $500. That plus the 24GB of RAM and the two CPU chips cost a total of $710.
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I just moved everything from the old to the new machine, so it looks and feels the same, but faster. The CPU upgrade doubled my Geekbench score from 15000 to 30000, so most of the improvement is all CPU.
I tried out Premiere last night - when compiling video, all 24 threads were running full bore.
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Awesome, thats cool. I have the single cpu, which is fine for photoshop as photoshop doesn't really like dual cpu's. It is interesting to see what the video editing software likes.
I've checked out Photoshop with the new setup, and it feels faster than before, especially applying complex filters to large images.
I'm now running two GPUs in the machine: a GTX 970, which drives 3 monitors and does all the GPU CUDA/Open GL processing and the original GT 120 card that came in my base 2009 4,1 Mac Pro, which drives my Nr. 4 monitor. Putting this card into the machine gives me a boot screen, and if I wanted to, I could drive a total of 6 monitors with this configuration.
Awesome. I may oneday look into the 12 core upgrade.
[doublepost=1505674262][/doublepost]This is the dumb thing between real world and benchmarks. You are obviously having nice performance increases yet if you read the articles about choosing hardware for certain software they say photoshop does gain from dual cpu's or more than say 6 cores.
I guess it's just up to the results the individual gets.
I just checked out Topaz DeNoise on a very large image. It was running in 10 of 12 cores, although only one thread per core. Premiere was running full max in all 24 threads.
Awesome.
[doublepost=1505686538][/doublepost]How much gpu acceleration are you able to use?
Going back to cpu changes. I may have found a nice solution to the "over tightening" problem. I found a Mac Pro maintenance manual that has the torque specs. I am going to invest in a torque screwdriver. Small price to pay for piece of mind. I only have the torque specs for lidded cpu's but that's fine for my machine.
All of it!
J/K - I use Heaven and Valley apps to benchmark my GPUs. The GTX 970's performance was unchanged following the CPU upgrade.
I counted untwists (came to 8) and did 7.5 twists to tighten. Still didn't seem tight enough, so I very slowly tightened the four screws in a x-pattern. At some point the resistance shot up dramatically, so I stopped there. Running the Geekbench benchmark, the temperature of CPU A didn't go above 65C, and at rest (like right now) it's running at about 50C.
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Care to share those torque specs? I'm planning on upgrading a 5.1 soon too, and it would give me peace of mind knowing those details
Or maybe linking that manual, be it paid or free?
Thanks!
Care to share those torque specs? I'm planning on upgrading a 5.1 soon too, and it would give me peace of mind knowing those details
Or maybe linking that manual, be it paid or free?
Thanks!
I'll try and find the link. I found it online.
Care to share those torque specs? I'm planning on upgrading a 5.1 soon too, and it would give me peace of mind knowing those details
Or maybe linking that manual, be it paid or free?
Thanks!
Officially:
Step 1) 0.452Nm for all screw. (no more than two turns of driver per screw)
Step 2) Further tighten them to 0.904Nm (finger tight), except screw 5 in the single processor model)
Step 3) Then turn each screw 1/4 turn more
Practically:
Step 1) Reasonable finger tight for all screws, done!
That's exactly how I did it. Works fine. Right now the cpu diode temperatures are running 45 and 42 C. Working hard they get up to upper 60's as the fans kick on. This tells me that the heat sinks are properly seated atop the CPU cases.
Finally got the Geekbench score that I was looking for with the build. What worked was to put a clean install of Sierra onto an empty 1TB drive. I downloaded Geekbench 4, ran it once to connect it with my account, and then restarted the machine. On the freshly started machine I got the scores below. The multicore score puts me near the top of the 3.33 gHz X5680 machines (as soon as they update the listing), and it would be at about the top 20% of the MacPro6,1 machines. All for less than $700.
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That’s a very nice score Me I put 2 x 5690 and got only a little bit better, but not by much. I got them for a relatively good price.
https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/4464440
Me I put 2 x 5690 and got only a little bit better, but not by much. I got them for a relatively good price.https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/4464440
My Mac Pro 6,1 scored 19,380 on Geekbench 4. Aside from the hexa-core processor it's about as low end as you can get for a 6,1 (16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, dual D300). I'm not sure if a 24,484 score is all that impressive wrt a Mac Pro 6,1.
What do geek bench scores actually prove? how do they apply to really world software usage? I don't know so hoping to be educated a bit.
They prove how well a system runs Geekbench. Outside of that they prove very little. I wouldn't rely on Geekbench for anything other than how well a system runs Geekbench.
I find that it is quite predictive for compiling large movie files in Premiere. When my Geekbench scores doubled, render times fell by about half. Since I now shoot and edit video in 4K, it makes a big difference.
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Maybe not, but it's an excellent score for a MacPro5,1.
Based solely on GB score which would you prefer: 15,122 or 18,163?
Perhaps so but you were the one who compared it with the 6,1:
"...and it would be at about the top 20% of the MacPro6,1 machines."
1. Me too. Just traded in my 2010 6-Core 3.33 GHz, for 2012 12-core 3.46 My render speed is slightly more than doubled. Renders that took an hour, now cooking in 27 minutes.
2. The cool thing about the cMP is I'm still far from maxing it out. Because my CGI software can also go GPU render (with the addition of Octane as a plugin to Modo) I can add 1 or even 2 1080ti cards and triple or quadruple my render speeds yet again.
3. In 2012, a maxed out 12 core had a price tag of $12,000. I wanted it, but didn't need it. When the modular Mac Pro emerges, I will likely be in the same boat. Perhaps I will be buying the 2018 Mac pro in 2022 LOL.
4. Another giggle. When I traded in my beige G3 for the silver tower G5, I thought this might be the last computer I'd ever need. My perception of what "fast" is keeps changing!
2. The cool thing about the cMP is I'm still far from maxing it out. Because my CGI software can also go GPU render (with the addition of Octane as a plugin to Modo) I can add 1 or even 2 1080ti cards and triple or quadruple my render speeds yet again.
3. In 2012, a maxed out 12 core had a price tag of $12,000. I wanted it, but didn't need it. When the modular Mac Pro emerges, I will likely be in the same boat. Perhaps I will be buying the 2018 Mac pro in 2022 LOL.
4. Another giggle. When I traded in my beige G3 for the silver tower G5, I thought this might be the last computer I'd ever need. My perception of what "fast" is keeps changing!