Should I switch from a Mac Pro?

[Codestud]

Hi all,

I've had an "entry level" 4-core 2009 Mac Pro for the last 3 years, which I've upgraded over time to 16Gb RAM. It has two SSDs and a 1TB HDD. I also run two 1920x1080 monitors with the stock NVidia 120 GT card. The machine clocks around 9,000 on Geekbench. I bought it, because, at the time, I'd owned PCs for a long time and liked the more conventional expansion options and it was faster than the Mac Minis of the day.

Heaviest tasks I generally use it for are Logic Pro with a Firewire audio card (although I am a hobbyist rather than a full time musician), and running VMWare Fusion with Windows 7 (I need this for Visual Studio developer tools). Sometimes I might have two Windows VMs running simultaneously. Have the usual MS Office, iTunes etc. I am not a hardcore PC/Mac gamer as I have separate console for this.

The MP has been a fantastic machine, which has never missed a beat, but looking at the latest 2012 Mac Mini, the 2.6 Core i7 with 16Gb RAM is getting superior performance to my MP in all areas (Geekbench of around 12,000), as well as SATA3, USB3, Thunderbolt, a much lower power consumption and footprint, and a brand new warranty.

Was wondering if it might be worth the switch?

Would get the 256Gb SSD built in but not sure what sort of external interface to buy for my other 2 drives.

Thanks in advance for your kindness!

 

[dan1eln1el5en]

I got rid of my 1st gen Mac Pro recently, and switched to the mini.

Mac Pro got 6.800 on Geekbench the mini around 9000.

The graphics card on the mini makes it hot and no CUDA support (I do videos sometimes)
It maxes at 16 GB RAM and not much expandability.
But... it's cheap to buy and to use (Electricity) and especially the electricity usage made me downgrade.
And of course it's small

My next mac will probably be a portable with a real 3D graphics card and not intel only.

 

[mcnallym]

If want a performance boost then look at doing the 4.1 to 5.1 firmware upgrade then upgrade the processor to a W3680. If your RAM isn't 1333MHz the upgrade along with the CPU.

The look at upgrading the GPU to a newer card. As you already have the Mac Pro then you have the single biggest expense of this already.

 

[philipma1957]

If want a performance boost then look at doing the 4.1 to 5.1 firmware upgrade then upgrade the processor to a W3680. If your RAM isn't 1333MHz the upgrade along with the CPU.

The look at upgrading the GPU to a newer card. As you already have the Mac Pro then you have the single biggest expense of this already.

this. if not this wait for the 2013 mini