That's all true, but a 16 core 3.2 (with 4.4 turbo) is a pretty decent upgrade from the 8 core, especially if using software that can do something useful with more than one core. That's a $3200 jump where I live, but give it a few years and it won't be so bad.
Just because the AMD chips are fast doesn't make the new Mac Pro slow: and as far as I've seen it's pretty fast, silent and doesn't ever run into thermal issues. Same goes for the PCIe standard, it's hardly holding it back. I'm sure there will be an update in a few years that has a newer PCIe standard — it's hardly going to make todays machines defunct though.
"It won't be."
And "2009 - 2017 didn't see a lot of progress in computing technology"
Hmm, I just looked up the specs on the 2009 model Mac pro. Topped out at 8 core 2.93GHZ (2 x 4), 8MB cache per processor, max (at launch) 32GB 1066 MHz DDR3 ram (which would have been very expensive. It came standard with 6GB), ATI Radeon HD 4870 with 512 MB of GDDR5 (4 x if you wanted: no PCIe slots left after that I would think). All mechanical spinner drives, Firewire 800, USB 2, SATA II. SSDs were just emerging as an option and that was only on SATA: you could spend a fortune and get a Mac RAID card and set up a RAID that wouldn't even get SATA SSD speeds. By comparison to todays model it all looks pretty pathetic but with upgrades over the years these machines are still rocking and definitely have proved to be 10 year machines. I'd still be using one if the logic board hadn't died, and if I had the time I could have easily replaced the logic board.
I don't think your logic that there wasn't much progress holds up: maybe in raw processor speed or nm, but everything else changed a lot. As more and more developers optimise their apps for multi core and GPU it only gets better for us. While we are waiting around for PCIe 5.0 to supercede our new computers why not just hold out for 6.0
And how much of that new stuff could we get into a 5,1? Not much.
In that time period we moved from PCIe 2.0 to PCIe 3.0. We have now moved from 3.0 to 4.0 in 2019, and we'll move to to 5.0 by the end of 2021. How is NVMe working out on those 5,1? You are losing a slot to boot with. TB is still a solution in search of a problem. And Francisco Franco is still dead.
In CPUs, we were stuck on 4 cores/8 threads on main stream computers - we managed dual 6 cores/12 threads from 2009 until 2017. By 2020, consoles will be 8 cores/16 threads, HEDT now starts at 16 cores/32 threads and goes to 64 cores/128 threads.
Intel's IPCs were only showing an average 5% increases in IPC in that time period. We are now seeing 10% - 15% IPC increases for each Zen generation. That isn't stopping anytime soon. TSMC is now sampling for 5nm.
I am not saying that you can't continue to use duct tape and bailing wire to keep 5,1s going. What I am saying is that I don't feel the extra work simply isn't worth it.
I am just tired of dealing with the
Does this work with my Mac Pro?
I am just tired of researching work arounds.
I just stick the hardware in, and
It Just Works.
I am doing this on a new system that draws 1/2 the power in wattage, but is about 125% more powerful. And it isn't even a HEDT chip, it is the top of AMD's consumer CPU lineup.
.
