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Should I wait for the new Mac Pro?
- Thread starter reidgc
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I have a question. Just what kind of performance increase are you looking for in the new Mac Pro? USB 3.0, Thunderbolt, PCIe 3.0, FSB 1600MHz, or some super duper CPU? I'm only asking because you can save a lot of money by buying a used 2009 Mac Pro and upgrading it yourself. As far as I'm concerned the only thing that will be upgraded on the new MP is the price tag
Mainly the CPU- but Thunderbolt and PCIe are also significant factors
Ahh, I see. I too was tired of waiting for a newer MP and really needed to do something because I do a lot of 3D work and Video editing and I was running on a 2006 1,1 MP (very old). I'd just like to share what I did. I picked up a used 2009 MP for $650.00 on Ebay, updated the firmware to 5,1 and dropped in a 3.33 Westmere 6 core processor. I also upgraded the RAM to 32 gigs of 1333 MHz RAM, the cost of the CPU and RAM was $800.00. I was very impressed with the performance of the upgraded MP, and I was running a ATI 5770 card, but I wanted a little more, especially since I work a lot with Adobe Premier and After Effects. I said screw it and bought a Mac Edition GTX 680 and really brought some new life to this machine. It really turned Premier and After Effects around, both programs run and render very smooth under the GPU, but to be honest, I noticed a huge increase just running from the CPU, so I'm sure it would help you out too. As far as Thunderbolt goes, I really don't have a need for it right now and besides, they'll probably make an add on PCI card for it anyway just like they do for USB 3.0. PCIe 3.0 would be nice but I'm still not sure it would be a WOW factor. I already have a Windows machine with PCIe 3.0 running a GTX 680 (mainly for gaming) and I'm not seeing an advantage over the MP. My MP has the 6 core 3.33 and my Windows machine has the i7 3770K, the MP blows the doors off the i7 in rendering from Cin 4D and other 3D programs. I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm glad I went this route, I don't regret it at all. Besides, I'd never be able to blow the asking price for a loaded 2013 MP anyway
This is just my 2 cents, and I hope your able to make a decision based on what you read here in the forum. Oh and think the Hackintosh is a very cool idea, I just didn't want to be bothered with tinkering with it and fine tuning everything. Don't get me wrong, I like doing that stuff but thats why I have a Windows machine When I'm on my Mac I just like to work and get it done. Good luck.----------
lol thats funny (smiling). I can certainly turn it into a 12 core machine no problem
This is true, but for a much cheaper price I could get away with just upgrading a couple of components to make a more powerful MP vs buying a 2012 I-mac. I do agree with you though about programming needs, but he was concerned about processing power and in my opinion it was a better option. The Mac Pro certainly does offer more as far as scalability goes and that may be what he's looking for too.
I can compose After Effects animations on my macbook air, but would be pretty limited.
It all depends on the scope of your projects. Compiling a lot of complex code can use all of the horsepower you can throw at it.
Yes, you should wait. And once it's actually released you should wait for the next one again too - it will be better after-all!
Not going to happen. PCI-e cards don't solve every problem. Thunderbolt is one of those. There several Rube Goldberg kludges to try to get around the limitations but none of them have every passed the Thunderbolt certification process. And the ones with loop-back cables and additional wires are never going to pass Apple's design criteria.
Current games are optimized for PCIe 2.0. They are never going to be demonstration drivers for what the differences are. All of the narrow width PCIe 2.0 bandwidth that games common encounter on mainstream PCs means the optimized work-around just trade off caching in a myriad of forms for bandwidth and just hide doing filling the cache with various distractions.