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Pimping my Mac Pro - Xmas spending recommendations?

S

ShawnF

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 10, 2014
196
16
I am thinking of purchasing some hardware to boost my Mac Pro 5.1 (flashed) performance. Just wanted to get some suggestions on what would be a sensible buy if I had $500 to spend.

CPU

Upgrade my X5670 hexacore to X5680 hexacore?

RAM

Upgrade my triple channel 24GB to triple channel 48GB?

Upgrade my triple channel 24GB to 32GB?

Video

Upgrade my unflashed GTX660Ti to unflashed GTX970/980?

Upgrade my unflashed GTX660Ti to OSX compatible Sapphire AMD 7950?

I'm doing ok on storage and plenty happy with the 700MBs I am getting with my msata RAID 0 setup.

Thanks all!
 
Fastest CPU and GPU possible. You won't see any advantage over 24gb ram unless you are editing big video and CGI.
 
ToroidalZeus said:
Only the GTX 980 is really worth buying.
Click to expand...

100% this. You already have a hex-core 5670, the jump in performance to a 5680 would be tiny. You also have plenty of RAM and it's doubtful you'd see any difference there unless you already know for sure that you are maxing it out. Going from a 660Ti to a GTX 980 though would be a very large difference, assuming you are doing any gaming. Good luck!
 
Thanks for all the replies!

What about getting an 802.11AC + Bluetooth card like those sold by MacVidCards? Wouldn't improve performance but it would future-proof my system a bit and make it more versatile.

Any thoughts?
 
My MP stocking filler is a two part affair and is storage related.

First is the Sintech PCIe Apple SSD Blade adaptor card for $30. 25% cheaper than my original orders for these cards.

http://eshop.sintech.cn/20132014-macbook-pro-air-ssd-to-pcie-4x-adapter-p-1026.html

The second is the harder and more expensive part of sourcing a nMP 1Tb SSD 2nd gen blade with double your I/O speed at 1.4Gb/sec with native trim for a reasonable price. Having installed one in a clients system I am rather won over by having 6,1 disk performance in a cMP.
 
ShawnF said:
Thanks for all the replies!

What about getting an 802.11AC + Bluetooth card like those sold by MacVidCards? Wouldn't improve performance but it would future-proof my system a bit and make it more versatile.

Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

Yes 802.11AC + Bluetooth card would help though it's out of stock at the moment HERE I'm also planning on getting one.
 
Gav Mack said:
My MP stocking filler is a two part affair and is storage related.

First is the Sintech PCIe Apple SSD Blade adaptor card for $30. 25% cheaper than my original orders for these cards.

http://eshop.sintech.cn/20132014-macbook-pro-air-ssd-to-pcie-4x-adapter-p-1026.html

The second is the harder and more expensive part of sourcing a nMP 1Tb SSD 2nd gen blade with double your I/O speed at 1.4Gb/sec with native trim for a reasonable price. Having installed one in a clients system I am rather won over by having 6,1 disk performance in a cMP.
Click to expand...

Does it make that much of a difference? I mean my current setup gives read and write speeds above 450MBs. Wondering what will benefit most if I do get the nMP SSD blade?
 
ShawnF said:
Does it make that much of a difference? I mean my current setup gives read and write speeds above 450MBs. Wondering what will benefit most if I do get the nMP SSD blade?
Click to expand...

The benchmarks on the big NGFF thread here with the rev 2 nMP show the difference in performance. The rev 1 1Tb my client had for the Sintech was already impressive at 1.05 gig/sec, almost twice the performance of a SATA 3 SSD. The rev 2 is another 30% more than that.

Read the NGFF thread starting backwards from the last posts and you'll discover how good that chip as chips Sintech card is for a cMP, there are benchmarks and fellow users experiences there..
 
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