MP All Models Late 2024 - What Mac Pro are you using, and how are things going?

[840quadra]

((Not an official MacRumors Poll))

Just curious what models people are using in this forum, and how things are going for them?

My Response
As a collector, I have 3 aluminum tower systems that see regular use, 2 are a Mac Pro variety, and the 3rd being a G5 Dual 2.0 (PCI-X). Until recently, my flashed 4,1 was on 24/7 but has now been placed in a more "hobby" use situation with the only exception being huge batch edits in Lightroom as the flashed 4,1 with discrete AMD card is actually faster at exports than my M4 Pro Mini!

The 3,1 is attached to my main TV, however, it is more media consumption at this point but also houses a massive collection of older media, including Apple Keynotes from the Steve Jobs era that I tend to binge on once a year (yes I am strange)

For others, how are things going with your Mac Pro devices? With devices such as the Mac mini M4 Pro, Mac Studio, etc, are you tempted to move on, or do you still enjoy the (usually) open expandability?

Personally looking into getting a 7,1 as prices go down, simply because I like the flexibility of Intel systems and ability to do more modern games that my systems lacking AVX can support.

 

[krakman]

Several 4.1>5.1 upgaded CPUs and AMD Vega 56 GPUs mostly running monterey and one test machine running Sequoia.

General use, Lighroom, email, browsing, Excel, printing large format images.

with the only exception being huge batch edits in Lightroom as the flashed 4,1 with discrete AMD card is actually faster at exports than my M4 Pro Mini!

This is interesting to know!

A few years ago I bought a M1 Pro 14 inch Macbook Pro but returned it for this very reason, the slow export of JPGs from RAW from Bridge and Lightroom.

I ended up buying a 2019 Macbook pro with i9 and AMD 5600 8GB for half the price and I'm still satisfied with the performance. Of course the M1 was superfast at every other metric but the only thing that matters to me is JPG export speed.

 

[splifingate]

I have an original 5,1 from '12

a) That Option is not available in the Poll
b) It's been powered-off for over a year

 

[840quadra]

I have an original 5,1 from '12

a) That Option is not available in the Poll
b) It's been powered-off for over a year

I have zero idea how I missed this, I thought I typed it, but switched computers after a forum auto save and didn't notice.

 

[avro707]

A 5,1 upgraded to 6 cores and RX6600XT.

A maximum spec 6,1 also.

And I have two 7,1s, both 28 core and W6800 level, one of them is 2x W6800X Duo. The other is single W6800X.

They are all working well.

One of the 7,1 machines runs a local development instance of an enterprise CMS and then when changes are done they are merged to the cloud dev environment and eventually through test and stage.

It is really fast at running that. A colleague has a newer MacBook Pro and my 7,1 is faster than that - especially starting the environment and also doing the builds.

Before someone admonishes me for that (which happened before), we have to do development on local machines, it’s not allowed to do it directly on real dev environment.

 

[splifingate]

I have zero idea how I missed this, I thought I typed it, but switched computers after a forum auto save and didn't notice.

That's OK. . . She's already sorta used to having-been put in old iRobot Stored Housing

 

[splifingate]

Before someone admonishes me for that (which happened before), we have to do development on local machines, it’s not allowed to do it directly on real dev environment.

I applaud your proper Staging

 

[840quadra]

Interesting to see the results of the Poll so far. Would love to talk to some 7,1 converts to see if it is worth the price of entry.

My concern is with the amount of future OS updates Apple will support on Intel.

That's OK. . . She's already sorta used to having-been put in old iRobot Stored Housing

Yeah that is like my 3,1 now. I actually use a 2011 Mac mini far more (watching Netflix on it now).

As it is getting to get colder here in MN, I may need to swap out the 3,1 for the extra heat load in my small den for heat LOL.

 

[bax2023]

1,1 - QCX 2.66, 16GB, 250GB SSD, Apple HD5770, Snow Leopard - for old apps and games
5,1 - 8CX 2.4 Westmere, 96GB, 500G NVMe, RX580, Monterey - for testing, backup machine
7,1 - 16c, 48GB, 1TB Apple SSD, 1TB NVMe for Win, 1TB NVMe for Time Machine, 4TB U.2 for VMs - main machine

 

[mikas]

1,1->2,1
3,1
4,1->5,1
5,1
6,1

Got 3x 6,1 in almost daily use, but not as workstations anymore. As a TV-PC, as a back-up storage, and as for email, photos and a surfing platform.

I still use one of my 5,1 with 3x Radeon VII's in it occasionally, but really just for the fun of it nowadays. Just to see if I could get by with it. And I kind of would in some cases, the GPU rendering would be doable at least in some software, like ArchiCAD + RedShift. But rarely it's in that use anymore, because of my HP Z+RTX4080.

3,1 and one 1,1->2,1 arre for my hobby and tinkering only. They are standing there and attached to quest room tv if I need to go more retro at any day.

I was very tempted to go with a 7,1 this year then those got a lot cheaper. Did not fall into it though.

(Not gonna mention my G5's and G4's here)

 

[MacPoulet]

I have an old 1,1 that I flashed to a 2,1 but its power supply is dead.

My home computer is a 4,1 flashed to a 5,1. It saw me through the pandemic when I had to work from home and was great for that. These days, it's more of a file server and I'm looking to get a new Mac Studio as a home machine.

 

[mikas]

Uh. Let's not get distracted. I have thought about ASi's, but the upgrade pricing of RAM and SSD are prohibiting to me. They are a great machines no doubt of it. But the ridiculous pricing of it, teh upgrading of RAM and SSD, though.

Anyways, unfortunately not so many Mac Pros in my daily work setup anymore. And it seems not coming in here either.

 

[SecuritySteve]

7,1 user here. I have been eyeing the performance of ASi Macs, and the M4 generation seems to be on par or better with everything my Mac Pro can do. My main two uses are work, for which I do virtualization and development, and gaming. I'm sure the CPU gains would be impressive on the new chips, as my M1 test system can compile GCC faster than my Mac Pro. I've started to notice the feature deficit in gaming, especially in AAA titles. But the relative gain between what I have and what is available still is pretty small. I think I may wait one more generation or so.

The big change for me that works in my favor is that I no longer need to do as much local virtualization, so I can get away with much less RAM. Five years ago I could easily use all of my 160 GB, today it's rare for me to get close to 64. Of course VRAM would eat into some of that on an ASi machine, but it would still be uncommon for me to ever get compressed memory at that limit.

The main thing pushing me towards upgrading is the lack of support for the machine from gaming companies. What are the odds that they have tested a machine with my off-the-shelf GPU? With the way ASi Macs are, I bet they have much less random visual bugs in gaming due to developer testing being more comprehensive.

Also no, I don't use Windows at all. 100% macOS user, even for gaming.

 

[F1Mac]

I have a 6,1 that is still perfectly capable and perfect for my needs. Also Running Sequoia like a charm on it It's my main machine so Music and normal daily use (web, email, office, etc)

Also a 5,1 still running on Mojave that I plan to play with with a more recent OS soon...

 

[KxMAP]

I have two Mac Pros.

A 4,1 flashed to 5,1. Was running OCLP with a recent version of MacOS. I have the Radeon HD 4870 card in it. The video card kept glitching, like it was going bad, so befor tossing the card in the trash, I tried Ubuntu on the 5,1 and no problems since. It's a flawless Ubuntu machine now, as buying a Radeon RX 580 for more than I paid for the entire computer is a No-Go.

The other Mac Pro is a 6,1. This is my daily driver and I love it. It is running Sequoia 15.1 with almost zero issues. Using Safari's Hide Distracting Items really does not work. At best I get a beach ball for about 30 seconds before the distracting items disappears. About 1/2 of the time however using Hide Distracting Items just hangs the computer. If I do not attempt to engage Hide Distracting Items, The Can runs flawlessly. I use my 6,1 like one might use a MacMini from 2013. Just internet and Excel.

 

[typonaut]

I have zero idea how I missed this, I thought I typed it, but switched computers after a forum auto save and didn't notice.

Aren't there really two 5,1s - 2010 and 2012?

 

[theMarble]

Aren't there really two 5,1s - 2010 and 2012?

Kind of, both the 2010 and 2012 MPs shared the same 5,1 identifier. They are identical machines, down to the exact logic board revision used AFAIK. The 2012 is a 2010 with very slight upgrades done to the configs available at launch (the 2010's second-tier configs became the 2012 base-tiers, with the base RAM being doubled to 6GB).

All parts are interchangeable without issues because of this, unlike the differences between some 2009 and 2010-2012 parts, like the CPU tray.

 

[JeffPerrin]

Mac Pro 5,1 running Monterey (via MLOC). 24 GB RAM, 4 internal Samsung SSDs, Radeon 560 4GB, (4) USB-C 10Gbps ports.

Rock solid and producing Atmos projects and editing 4K video. I do plug the external video media drive into my MacBook Pro when it comes time to export video to HEVC, however.

I might consider a Mac Studio M4 in 2025, though. We'll see how the things look. Apple really lost me with the 7,1 pricing.

 

[typonaut]

Kind of, both the 2010 and 2012 MPs shared the same 5,1 identifier. They are identical machines, down to the exact logic board revision used AFAIK. The 2012 is a 2010 with very slight upgrades done to the configs available at launch (the 2010's second-tier configs became the 2012 base-tiers, with the base RAM being doubled to 6GB).

All parts are interchangeable without issues because of this, unlike the differences between some 2009 and 2010-2012 parts, like the CPU tray.

I believe that is incorrect. At the very least the 2010 5,1 has 1066MHz RAM, where the 2012 5,1 has 1333MHz RAM. There may be other differences, I don't know.

 

[tsialex]

I believe that is incorrect. At the very least the 2010 5,1 has 1066MHz RAM, where the 2012 5,1 has 1333MHz RAM.

You are mistaken. There are also mid-2012s with 1066MHz Xeons, MD770LL (3.2GHz Quad with W3565), for example:

Processador Intel® Xeon® W3565 (Cache de 8 M, 3,20 GHz, Intel® QPI com 4,80 GT/s) - Especificações do produto | Intel

Processador Intel® Xeon® W3565 (Cache de 8 M, 3,20 GHz, Intel® QPI com 4,80 GT/s) referência rápida com especificações, recursos e tecnologias.

www.intel.com.br

There may be other differences, I don't know.

Besides slightly faster Xeons, more RAM and more storage, the only "real" diff is the 12-digits for the mid-2012s SSN instead of 11-digits of mid-2010s.

 

[TrevorR90]

Bought my 7,1 January 2020, so its almost 5 years old! Still my daily driver, although, as of the past year or so it's been running windows 99% of the time.

 

[typonaut]

You are mistaken…

Ok, there are no 2010 5,1s with 1333MHz RAM, there are some (2?) 2012 5,1s with 1066MHZ RAM - which seem to be zombie 2010s - out of around 10 x 2012 5,1 base configs.

So, not all of the components between these two series of 5,1s are interchangeable.

 

[tsialex]

So, not all of the components between these two series of 5,1s are interchangeable.

Everything between mid-2010 and mid-2012 is interchangeable.

 

[ddhhddhh2]

Can’t believe the year’s almost over already... Gotta admit, I’m feeling pretty disappointed with myself. Every time this season rolls around, I can’t help but think I’ve had yet another year of falling short. Sorry for the rambling.

I still rely on my 2010 Mac Pro 5,1 as my primary workstation, and it’s holding up remarkably well. As a full-stack developer, my workflow covers Angular, Node/Express, TypeScript/JavaScript, Python, Hugging Face, PHP, MongoDB, Docker, and more. Occasionally, I also run Adobe apps. What’s surprising is how this 13-year-old machine handles all of these tasks without major issues. Of course, Xcode isn’t ideal for the latest development work unless I commit to keeping it updated with OCLP. But I’ve decided to let this machine rest at macOS Monterey. It feels like the right place to stop.

I also have an M1 Max MBP and an i9 MBP, but when I’m at home, I almost exclusively use the Mac Pro. Yes, it’s slower—you can feel it in response times and even basic browsing—but it’s rarely an issue unless you absolutely need blazing-fast performance for everything. For most tasks, it’s more than adequate. I wouldn’t have stuck with it this long otherwise. I’ve even dabbled in RAG AI development on it, which has been a genuinely rewarding experience.

That said, there are limitations. App that require AVX or AVX2 instructions, for instance, simply won’t run. However, there’s a workaround: using Parallels Desktop to run Windows, where those instructions are emulated via software. As an example, the LINE app relies on these instructions for voice and video calls, which is frustrating given that other services—Google Meet, FaceTime, or web APIs—don’t require them and work perfectly fine.

Here’s the current configuration of my Mac Pro 5,1:

macOS Monterey
2010 Mac Pro 5,1
Dual X5690 CPUs
128GB ECC RAM
RX 6600 XT GPU
1TB M.2 SSD x1
500GB M.2 SSD x1
1TB SATA2 SSD x1
1TB SATA2 HDD x2
2TB SATA2 HDD x2
PCIe USB3 card x1
BT/Wi-Fi upgrade (BCM94360CD)
Connected to two Dell monitors and protected by a UPS

I also tend to keep the system on most of the time, letting it sleep when not in use. It’s been a reliable workhorse, and I hope everyone else’s Mac Pros continue to serve them just as well for many years to come.

Oh, and here’s an important tip: I always use Macs Fan Control to manage the fan settings. My focus is on the Northbridge chip, which I’ve kept running consistently between 64–67°C over the years. The trick is to set the CPU A fan to prioritize the Northbridge temperature as its reference point—this has the biggest impact while keeping noise levels minimal.

If you try using the intake fan to manage the Northbridge’s temperature instead, you’ll end up with much louder noise and much less benefit. This is the setup I’ve been using, and it might just be one of the reasons my Mac Pro has lasted this long. If you’re interested, feel free to give it a try—it could help extend your MP’s lifespan too, who knows?

 

[Adora]

Ok, there are no 2010 5,1s with 1333MHz RAM, there are some (2?) 2012 5,1s with 1066MHZ RAM - which seem to be zombie 2010s - out of around 10 x 2012 5,1 base configs.

So, not all of the components between these two series of 5,1s are interchangeable.

I have a 2011 17" MBP that somehow is running with 2.133 MHz RAM instead of the 1.066 or 1.333 it came with. But not with 1.867 from a 2015 5K iMac that I tried. The iMac also ran with that same 2.133 MHz RAM.