MP 6,1 Fairly impressed with the trashcan

[macguru9999]

I just built this late 2013 mac pro from two dead ones .... Its now a 12 core 64ram 2tb ssd. I must say i am fairly impressed. Its slightly faster than my 6 core 3.46 2012 in a compact package. A mac mini on steroids with better graphics. better but not brilliant compared with my 2012's rx580. I first tried attaching my 4k screen to the HDMI but that sucked so I found a mini dp to dp cable and that drives it just fine. Its a real pity they dont have thunderbolt 3. And the internal engineering is um, qwerky But overall it kills a mac mini (until apple silicon)

 

[richmlow]

Hello macguru9999,


Yes, I agree with your assessment.

My 2013 Mac Pro (with more modest specs; see signature below) is my mission-critical system. It is rock-solid and more stable than my experimental 2018 Mac mini (running macOS Catalina).


richmlow

I just built this late 2013 mac pro from two dead ones .... Its now a 12 core 64ram 2tb ssd. I must say i am fairly impressed. Its slightly faster than my 6 core 3.46 2012 in a compact package. A mac mini on steroids with better graphics. better but not brilliant compared with my 2012's rx580. I first tried attaching my 4k screen to the HDMI but that sucked so I found a mini dp to dp cable and that drives it just fine. Its a real pity they dont have thunderbolt 3. And the internal engineering is um, qwerky But overall it kills a mac mini (until apple silicon)

 

[EugW]

I just built this late 2013 mac pro from two dead ones .... Its now a 12 core 64ram 2tb ssd. I must say i am fairly impressed. Its slightly faster than my 6 core 3.46 2012 in a compact package. A mac mini on steroids with better graphics.

The design philosophy is actually pretty much the same as the Power Mac Cube. Basically they built it so air rises silently until it vents out the top. The Mac Pro 2013 does have a fan, but actually the Cube was also built to house a fan. It didn't actually come with a fan, but those who did Cube CPU upgrades had the benefit of easily adding one, because the case already had the fan bracket built in.

The Mac mini is a completely different design philosophy.

 

[macguru9999]

The design philosophy is actually pretty much the same as the Power Mac Cube. Basically they built it so air rises silently until it vents out the top. The Mac Pro 2013 does have a fan, but actually the Cube was also built to house a fan. It didn't actually come with a fan, but those who did Cube CPU upgrades had the benefit of easily adding one, because the case already had the fan bracket built in.

The Mac mini is a completely different design philosophy.

An apple silicon mac mini will not need a big fan, and will hopefully have powerful on chip graphics. It could be a real game changer !

 

[sanfrancisofont1984]

Mini 2018 + eGPU is competitive too: https://barefeats.com/mac-mini-2018-versus-other-macs.html

 

[Hunter5117]

I too just recently got a 6,1 MP, I found a new-old-stock at my local Microcenter on clearance so I have AppleCare+ on it as well. I loved my 2012 5,1 but I needed to keep OS compatibility with my MBP and especially my iPad Pro's and the need to continuously hack the upgrade did not appeal to me. Since I have had a Mac Pro since the 1,1 I also wanted to keep this as my main desktop. Mine is the 6-core which seems plenty quick for the things I do. Most of my growing pain has been moving from internal to external storage. I am still in the process of upgrading the drives inside my collection of external drives to have the storage and backup that I need.

 

[TrevorR90]

It can definitely hold its own. The hardware might be “outdated” but it still performs better than a lot of current tech.

 

[loby]

Yes, though the Mac pro 2013 is older technology, it still holds its own in some tasks. I still use it for video editing and recently updated it to a 12-Core. Will keep me satisfied for awhile Has 64 GB RAM, 1 TB OWC SSD, but graphics cards are D500s and not the D700s. Did the same with my 4K monitor with the DP to mini-DP and works great!

Not sure if macOS Mojave or macOS Catalina runs better for video editing on it. I have a MacBook Pro 2018 and downgraded back to macOS Mojave, but after the resent supplemental update to macOS Catalina, I installed macOS Catalina from scratch and it seems to run better (and cooler). Will try macOS Catalina one more time on the Mac Pro 2013 and if it still seems to lack on rendering (not using all of the graphics cards), It will stay on macOS Mojave.

 

[edanuff]

Still my daily driver. Wish they'd spec bumped it with TB3/DP1.4. My next desktop Mac will likely be a Mini with an eGPU if they do another Mini release before ARM. My last employer probably had thousands of these in use as their desktop Mac standard.

 

[dtelena]

Yes, though the Mac pro 2013 is older technology, it still holds its own in some tasks. I still use it for video editing and recently updated it to a 12-Core. Will keep me satisfied for awhile Has 64 GB RAM, 1 TB OWC SSD, but graphics cards are D500s and not the D700s. Did the same with my 4K monitor with the DP to mini-DP and works great!

Not sure if macOS Mojave or macOS Catalina runs better for video editing on it. I have a MacBook Pro 2018 and downgraded back to macOS Mojave, but after the resent supplemental update to macOS Catalina, I installed macOS Catalina from scratch and it seems to run better (and cooler). Will try macOS Catalina one more time on the Mac Pro 2013 and if it still seems to lack on rendering (not using all of the graphics cards), It will stay on macOS Mojave.

You mean with macOS Catalina the machine renders using only one video card but with macOS Mojave it renders using the two cards together? You sure about this? Didn't know that What software are you referring to? Final Cut Pro X ?

 

[loby]

You mean with macOS Catalina the machine renders using only one video card but with macOS Mojave it renders using the two cards together? You sure about this? Didn't know that What software are you referring to? Final Cut Pro X ?

What was happening is when I was using FCPX, rendering was taking longer than when using macOS Mojave. I opened up Active Monitor and watched the GPU history and CPU. Before in macOS Mojave the GPU graph would show usage at the highest (green to the top), but with macOS Catalina, the graph would be at 1/4 (green). CPU would use most of the Cores in macOS Mojave, but with Catalina it was lower as if throttling down. Ran cooler but slower with macOS Catalina and took longer to render. I went back to macOS Mojave and it rendered faster. It looked like throttling with Catalina.

This also happened with my MacBook Pro 2018 i9 32GB 1TB SSD. Went back to macOS Mojave, but seem to run a little hotter than before (maybe because the firmware was updated when I was using macOS Catalina before?). Anyway...

Then...with the supplemental update that recently came out for macOS Catalina a few days ago, I decided to try again (for the last time) macOS Catalina on my MacBook Pro 2018 to see if MAYBE it would run better by chance. I did a complete reinstall (option-command-R) from scratch.

Now the MacBook Pro runs cooler and it looks like FCPX is working better. I will continue to test to see if I get the same or better results than with macOS Mojave on the machine.

I am going to also try a complete reinstall on the MacPro 2013 12-Core; 64GB; 1 TB OWC SSD with the supplemental update with macOS Catalina and see if MAYBE it runs better now.

Anyone with a Mac Pro 12-Core see any differences in macOS Mojave and Catalina with FCPX? I did notice that with Catalina the single-core applications SEEM to run faster, but again I am not running any benchmarks, just observation.

Thanks for any input.