Mac Po 2009 upgrades

[DenBeke]

At the moment I have a Mac Pro 2009, 8-core 2,26Ghz, 20GB ram, ATI Readon HD5870, small (old) SSD and three hdd's.
With the release of the new Mac Pro's I want to keep my Mac Pro at least 3 years longer.

What updates (good cost/benefit ratio) can I do in orde to have a machine that can compete against the new Mac Pro?

I mostly use Aperture for raw image editing.
Will a newer graphical card and raid of two new SSD's (via PCIe) give my Mac Pro a speed/feeling boost? Or is it just a waste of money?
Or should I really replace the processors?

 

[spoonie1972]

update processors rather inexpensively with used W5590's or X5570's (pairs used are very reasonably priced). If you want to spend more, X56xx series are still rather spendy.

If you're not paging out, then you have enough ram for what you're doing.

For Video, I'd consider a PC Nvidia card as long as you're running ML. I'm running a EVGA GTX570 without any problems. There are newer, faster cards but you can find one of these pretty cheap.

Best luck.

 

[pastrychef]

Will a newer graphical card and raid of two new SSD's (via PCIe) give my Mac Pro a speed/feeling boost? Or is it just a waste of money?

You will REALLY feel the SSDs. Definitely not a waste of money.

 

[DenBeke]

update processors rather inexpensively with used W5590's or X5570's (pairs used are very reasonably priced). If you want to spend more, X56xx series are still rather spendy.

Is the difference between my 2,26 and a 2,9Ghz really noticeable?

For Video, I'd consider a PC Nvidia card as long as you're running ML. I'm running a EVGA GTX570 without any problems. There are newer, faster cards but you can find one of these pretty cheap.

I'm running Mavericks. Will PC cards just run out of the box?

You will REALLY feel the SSDs. Definitely not a waste of money.

Ok, I'll go for the SSDs...
Would your recommend two Velo cards, or one double Sonnet card for making an SSD raid?

 

[deppest]

Is the difference between my 2,26 and a 2,9Ghz really noticeable?

it probably depends on what you use your MP for. I went from 2x2.26 to 2x3.33 about a year ago and for what I use the MacPro (rendering, photoshop, particle simulations, all mostly CPU-bound tasks) it definitely makes a difference.

 

[pastrychef]

I'm running Mavericks. Will PC cards just run out of the box?

This FAQ has lots of useful information regarding the use of PC video cards in Mac Pros. Video cards that work in Mountain Lion also work in Mavericks.

Would your recommend two Velo cards, or one double Sonnet card for making an SSD raid?

From what I've read, the Sonnet card is faster. But I have never personally played with one so I can not comment much about it. I do own a Velocity Solo X2 and it has been quite problem free on my 5,1.

 

[DenBeke]

Thanks!

Will I really feel another graphics card in Aperture?
Or should I just upgrade to a real SSD flash storage to last couple of years longer with this machine?

 

[spoonie1972]

Den:

The cpu upgrade certainly helped with VEP running smoother.

 

[pastrychef]

As far as I know, Aperture won't benefit much, if any, from an improved video card.

 

[DenBeke]

Den:

The cpu upgrade certainly helped with VEP running smoother.

What is VEP?

As far as I know, Aperture won't benefit much, if any, from an improved video card.

What will improve Aperture's performance?

 

[pastrychef]

I've read that defragging can help with large libraries in Aperture...

 

[spoonie1972]

Sorry - VEP = Vienne Ensemble Pro, a sample-playback and .au host. great for loading massive ram-heavy sample libraries.