One of the main reasons I choose to move from a fully loaded iMac to a Mac Pro was obviously the internal expandibilty It's nice not having a bunch of external drives cluttering up my desk etc. Yet alone... not hearing a fan spinning in front of your face during semi intense runs was a nice payoff.
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Keep 2009 MacPro or go iMac?
- Thread starter kylepro88
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As for as video editing goes, search the web to see what speed you can get from 3 HD's internal Raid 0 (free
). If you try SSD's the speed increases but not much without going 6Gb and bypassing the 3Gb bottleneck.
With my "old" 2008 I can do H.264, R3D, Alexa, P2, Canon 7D, Sony F3 etc.
If you had a Q4000 and PP6 the thought of a new MP of any kind would not even cross your mind. I downloaded the 30 day trial last summer and the combo was like wow!
This is the raid speed I get. 4 internal HD's Raid 0 with the ATTO
). If you try SSD's the speed increases but not much without going 6Gb and bypassing the 3Gb bottleneck. With my "old" 2008 I can do H.264, R3D, Alexa, P2, Canon 7D, Sony F3 etc.
If you had a Q4000 and PP6 the thought of a new MP of any kind would not even cross your mind. I downloaded the 30 day trial last summer and the combo was like wow
! This is the raid speed I get. 4 internal HD's Raid 0 with the ATTO
Attachments
Really? How about these?
http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/product/?cid=1&gid=3&sgid=1157&pid=1777&psn=&lid=1&leg=0
http://www.evga.com/products/Product.aspx?pn=02G-P4-3682-KR
The GTX 680 is pretty much twice as fast and a great deal faster than the GTX680mx laptop card in the iMac.
Aside from the supported cards you can get all manner of PC cards flashed and working. There are a ton of faster cards now.
I gave my 2006 Mac Pro 1,1 (16GB, 240GB OWC SSD, ATI 5770, etc) - Geekbench 5972 to my mom.
Bought a Late 2012 Mini 6,2 (16GB, 1.1TB Fusion, 2.6Ghz quad-core i7) - Geekbench 11699 to replace it.
I wish I could go to 32GB of RAM, and I get a little annoyed sometimes when the fan is spinning like crazy when it's working hard, and I miss the ability to natively drive 3 monitors, but otherwise it's very nice.
The old Mac Pro was always silent, but it pumped a lot of heat into the room.
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Bought a Late 2012 Mini 6,2 (16GB, 1.1TB Fusion, 2.6Ghz quad-core i7) - Geekbench 11699 to replace it.
I wish I could go to 32GB of RAM, and I get a little annoyed sometimes when the fan is spinning like crazy when it's working hard, and I miss the ability to natively drive 3 monitors, but otherwise it's very nice.
The old Mac Pro was always silent, but it pumped a lot of heat into the room.
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Definitely Keep It
You currently have the expandability, the access to internal system components for repair/cleaning, and multiple Xeons.
I wouldn't trade that for a new iMac.
You currently have the expandability, the access to internal system components for repair/cleaning, and multiple Xeons.
I wouldn't trade that for a new iMac.
Forget TB or FW800. You still have 2 HDD bays unoccupied right? So get 2 more 3TB HDD and make a 3 Drive RAID0 with them and your current 3 TB HDD. Then just get an external 4TB drive for Timemachine.
Those 4-core 2.93 Nehelem Xeons are still very good processors. I wouldn't dump them for an iMac just yet. Plus, as others have said, you can add in a much better video card than the iMac carries.
If you can spend maybe $600-700 (GTX 680 + 2x3TB HDD), you should be able to make significant speed improvements to your machine and extend its life for at least another 2 years.
8 core 2.93? With plenty of RAM? You have a nice machine, reliable and expandable. I would drop an SSD in it. I wouldn't switch (downgrade) to an iMac if I were you.
what about a GPU upgrade? you might want to add more power supply for the crazy power consumption cards.
the 2.93 is no slouch, but if you need more CPU the x5680's are slowly dropping in price for a used pair.
the 2.93 is no slouch, but if you need more CPU the x5680's are slowly dropping in price for a used pair.
I have the same 2009 system, but configured as a 2.26GHz 8-core.
I work in After Effects and Maya. My workstation is used primarily for motion graphics, compositing, and 3d.
Just completed a serious hardware upgrade. Upgraded the procs to 12-core 3.33GHz, threw in a GTX 690, updated system drive to RAID 0 using 2 Samsung 840 pro's, updated media drive to RAID 0 using the Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro combined with 2 Samsung 840 Pro's to get full 6Gb/s bandwidth, and bumped RAM to 32GB (1333GHz). The biggest performance upgrade I saw in my After Effects rendering tests was the GTX 690. Nearly a 20 fold increase in rendering performance from my previous GT 120. The updated procs probably sped things up another 15% or more. I'm curious how things will scale with an additional GTX 690, and even more curious how the Titan fares against the GTX 690 in After Effects.
I would first try updating to a new graphics card and see what that does for you.
Maybe try to weigh the pros and cons Your current Mac Pro is still good and probably just add SSD or a better videocard I used to work in a TV editing company. Management tried getting a few iMacs hoping this is a good replacement to the current Mac Pros. After a few months they decided to stick it out with Mac Pros.
All good info, but can someone point me to a really reliable place to explain how to throw a card like the 690 into my machine? The instructions online and reviews from folks are all over the map. I don't want to drop the money on a card that won't work, or make my machine unstable. Definitely open to it though.
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You mention 1333ghz ram...that'll work in my 09 mp? I thought that was the next generation's standard. Look at last post here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/978925/
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You mention 1333ghz ram...that'll work in my 09 mp? I thought that was the next generation's standard. Look at last post here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/978925/
I bought 16 GB RAM 1066 Mhz from OWC for my Mac Pro Nehalem 2009 @ 2,66 GHz. They sold me 1333 Mhz RAM instead. When I dropped a Westmere 6c 3.33 GHz in it, the RAM switched to 1333 Mhz. 1333 Mhz RAM is backwards compatible with 1066. It works in a Mac Pro 2009 without a problem and there is an advantage if you upgrade the processor.
That's good to know. A used 2009 or 2010 Mac Pro with a future six core CPU upgrade is an option for me along with the iMac with a RAID depending on what Apple comes out with for the Pro model this year.
I've installed the GTX 690, and it's running fine, so if you have any questions, ask away. Got a lot of help from the kind folks here at MacRumors.
Starting out, you'll need an external PSU to power the card. I've heard a few people claiming they were able to get the 690 running on the internal PSU with only PCIe 6-pin to 6+2 pin adapters, but my preference was to be on the safer side with the external PSU. I spent a little more effort researching how to get the card to power up/down, sleep/wake with my workstation, so now it operates exactly as if it were running on the internal Mac Pro PSU. If you want, I can help with that as well.
The second requirement is Mac OS X 10.8.3. You'll need the latest release to run graphics cards like the GTX 690 (and soon the Titan in 10.8.4). The only caveat with unsupported graphics cards on the Mac like the 690 is that you don't get boot screens.
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I use a 2011 3.4ghz (3.8ghz I believe turbo boost) i7 iMac at school with the use if motion and fcpx, And even though that machine has a much higher clock speed than your Mac Pro, that machine still will never come close to the capabilities of your machine. 16 virtual core vs 8, that's a substantial difference in performance. I own a 12-core 2.4ghz (2.67 turbo boost, and that thing halls. If you stick to video work, keep the Mac Pro.
Not to mention, your machine is prob around 4,000 points higher on geekbench than the iMac.
Not to mention, your machine is prob around 4,000 points higher on geekbench than the iMac.