MP All Models The "I just ordered/bought/got my new/refurb Mac Pro" thread [Merged]

[840quadra]

The radeon hd 5770 that came stock with the 2012 mac pro.

For FCPX that is a good card. You can add a 2nd and FCPX will actually use both GPUs for rendering your videos. I went with the R9 as I don't know that I want to have 2 GPUs installed, taking up PCI slots for other upgrades I want to install.

Overall the system is quite quick, taking the throne away from my 2015 rMBP (AMD Graphics) with regards to FCPx speed. The only thing that is really bothering me now is the slow disk speed of the native controlller. I know it will never reach the speeds of my MBP, however, to go midway would be awesome.

 

[Philocetes]

For FCPX that is a good card. You can add a 2nd and FCPX will actually use both GPUs for rendering your videos. I went with the R9 as I don't know that I want to have 2 GPUs installed, taking up PCI slots for other upgrades I want to install.

I got to thinking it would be fun to try an upgrade card. I went to microcenter and I got a good deal on a gtx 950. It only had displayport adapters, so I bought a couple of displayport to minidisplay port cables. Well, it turns out that my apple cinema displays have a built in mini-display port cable that can't be unplugged. So, next we looked for a mini display port female to male display port--microcenter didn't have any. The mini display port is not very popular on video cards, so I ordered a couple of adapters on amazon. This way I have some flexibility when looking at cards.

Those apple cinema monitors can be a real hassle sometimes. Well, maybe a monitor upgrade is in order in the future...

 

[840quadra]

I got to thinking it would be fun to try an upgrade card. I went to microcenter and I got a good deal on a gtx 950. It only had displayport adapters, so I bought a couple of displayport to minidisplay port cables. Well, it turns out that my apple cinema displays have a built in mini-display port cable that can't be unplugged. So, next we looked for a mini display port female to male display port--microcenter didn't have any. The mini display port is not very popular on video cards, so I ordered a couple of adapters on amazon. This way I have some flexibility when looking at cards.

Those apple cinema monitors can be a real hassle sometimes. Well, maybe a monitor upgrade is in order in the future...

Be sure to head over to nVidia and download the latest MAC Cuda drivers. After this, it will offer to update the GPU drivers for you which you can chose to do or not.

I have a GTX 780, when I tried that and benchmarked it in FCPx, it wasn't much faster than the 120 that came installed.

It's awesome that the R9 can be had for about $120 on Amazon, and do so well in Apple apps. Would be nice (as others have complained in other threads) if Apple actually supported CUDA. That would be a game changer (ok only slightly) in these old cMP systems.

 

[Macinsquatch]

Got myself another 09 mac pro with dual processors. Smoking deal on it and a 23" cinema display, now for the X5690's, RAM, SSD and some new graphics card. This will make a nice plex server I think, my mini cannot transcode 4k.

 

[JLOAKS]

Tired of waiting for an update that may never come. Looking to purchase a refurbished 2013+ Mac Pro or a new one with a good deal. With Black Friday events coming up, do any particular websites have good deals on them?

B&H were selling refurbished Mac Pros back in August for $2200, haven't seen a deal that good since.

 

[Andrea171]

Hi this is Andrea from Italy,
I've just bought from an ebay UK seller a cMP 5.1 3.33 Ghz 6 core/Quadro 4000/32GB/240GB SSD/1TB HDD.
Which GPU I can buy for replacing the Quadro? I don't want to spend too much money I need also the boot screen
Thank you in advance
Andrea
P.s. sorry for my English...

 

[itdk92]

Hi this is Andrea from Italy,
I've just bought from an ebay UK seller a cMP 5.1 3.33 Ghz 6 core/Quadro 4000/32GB/240GB SSD/1TB HDD.
Which GPU I can buy for replacing the Quadro? I don't want to spend too much money I need also the boot screen
Thank you in advance
Andrea
P.s. sorry for my English...

Hi Andrea,

what are you primarily working with?

What apps do you use the most?

 

[Andrea171]

Hi Andrea,

what are you primarily working with?

What apps do you use the most?

Mainly Photoshop and illustrator..

 

[itdk92]

Mainly Photoshop and illustrator..

In this case you might be better off with an Nvidia card. Check the forum for experiences with gtx680 mac edition or the gtx970 (regular)

There is a lot of info on how to upgrade, and install the correct nvidia web drivers (for the gtx970 for example)

card-wise, I think 1 (or a couple?) of gtx970 would be just fine for your work

 

[h9826790]

Hi this is Andrea from Italy,
I've just bought from an ebay UK seller a cMP 5.1 3.33 Ghz 6 core/Quadro 4000/32GB/240GB SSD/1TB HDD.
Which GPU I can buy for replacing the Quadro? I don't want to spend too much money I need also the boot screen
Thank you in advance
Andrea
P.s. sorry for my English...

If there is nothing wrong with your Quadro, you may consider to keep that. PS and AI are not that GPU intensive. Upgrade the GPU won't do much but may be more trouble (e.g. 970 may has higher chance to have bug in professional apps due to the drive still only in beta support).

 

[Andrea171]

Thank you!

 

[TheMuffnMan]

So randomly ran GB4 again and scored 2451/17081

I'm going to take all the scores with a grain of salt. My first score was 9700 though so this would represent a 76% increase in performance over the stock setup.

I'm also kicking around picking up a graphics card to swap out the GT120 for to give it a little extra boost.

 

[AmishIndy]

I am building my brother a MP 4,1 for christmas. Found a 2.66ghz quad core on ebay for 200 bucks plus 60 bucks shipping. I am putting in a 3.46 ghz quad core xeon, 16gb of ram, a 128gb Samsung SM951 with a Lycom DT120, and a 2TB seagate barracuda. Only thing lacking is a decent graphics card. I can't wait for the parts to arrive.

 

[Nate.]

Do you guys think the refurb base model for 2.5 from Apple would be worth it?

 

[pat500000]

Do you guys think the refurb base model for 2.5 from Apple would be worth it?

Why not? There isn't any new Mac Pro announced.

 

[jetjaguar]

Do you guys think the refurb base model for 2.5 from Apple would be worth it?

I mean are you ok with having d300s ? everything else you can upgrade on it

 

[Mark72501]

So I was kind of given a Mac Pro and 23" Cinema Display the other day...a family member had it and wasn't using it and asked if I wanted it so they could "get it out of their way". I wasn't sure of the model or specs at the time (they just said "it's big, heavy, silver...has a big screen with it and stuff" and also that it hadn't been hooked up in 2 or 3 years) so I said sure.

Turns out it is, best I can tell, a Mac Pro 1,1 from 2006 or '07 or so - had 10.6.x on it when I booted it up so I did updates to get it to 10.6.8 and now to 10.7.5.

It only has 2GB of RAM in it and the 2 dual-core Intel 2.66GHz Xeon processors. Also has dual graphics cards so 4 DVI connections on the back (I don't remember the model of the cards off hand).

For what it is, it runs pretty well - but, of course, it's several versions out of date so I'm missing some of the features I've grown accustomed to in El Capitan and now Sierra.

I know I can't update to those but what is the latest I could update to? If I can update it another couple of versions or so that'd be great and I'd look at getting some additional RAM for it and see how it does.

In a brief search I ran across some sellers on eBay selling harddrives (or also SSDs) with some later OSs on them, claiming they are plug and play. Some say the graphics card(s) would have to be updated as the original isn't compatible. (?)

Though I do use my MBP quite a bit (it's a 2010 model so not new either) I'm no expert when it comes to these machines, especially doing upgrades or updates and what's compatible and what isn't, so what advice could you share. Is this thing worth spending some time and money updating/upgrading?

[On a side note, I didn't realize how freaking heavy these Mac Pros are! ]

 

[jbarley]

Add some more ram and it'll run El-Capitan or Yosemite very nicely.
Check this thread for assistance.

 

[h9826790]

Is this thing worth spending some time and money updating/upgrading?

The question before your question is "what you want to do with it?"

If you just use it for check email, Safari, office work. I even suggest you go back to 10.6.8.

If you want to use it for gaming. You can forget about it. It can game, but the performance can NEVER match any low cost gaming PC, because it's CPU single core performance is too low.

If you want to use it for some light video / photo editing. The very 1st thing you really need to upgrade is the SSD. And then add more RAM. Also, pick a nice and cheap mid range GPU (e.g. the R9 280).

If you just want to have some fun and see what's the limit of this machine. You can actually flash a 1,1 to a 2,1, install El-Capitan, 32GB RAM, a TitanX, a PCIe SSD.....

Anyway, without knowing what's your purpose, it's hard to decide what's the proper upgrade option, and if it's worth.

 

[Mark72501]

The question before your question is "what you want to do with it?"

If you just use it for check email, Safari, office work. I even suggest you go back to 10.6.8.

If you want to use it for gaming. You can forget about it. It can game, but the performance can NEVER match any low cost gaming PC, because it's CPU single core performance is too low.

If you want to use it for some light video / photo editing. The very 1st thing you really need to upgrade is the SSD. And then add more RAM. Also, pick a nice and cheap mid range GPU (e.g. the R9 280).

If you just want to have some fun and see what's the limit of this machine. You can actually flash a 1,1 to a 2,1, install El-Capitan, 32GB RAM, a TitanX, a PCIe SSD.....

Anyway, without knowing what's your purpose, it's hard to decide what's the proper upgrade option, and if it's worth.

Thanks for the response - that is helpful. I should have mentioned that in my first post and I apologize (I know better).

I won't be doing any heavy video editing but some photo editing, etc., would be nice. Some light graphics design. It probably sounds petty but one reason I'd like to upgrade is I'd like to be able to get my iMessages on it and that sort of stuff (the iOS integration stuff) if possible. I also use MS Office quite a bit so it'd be nice if it would let me install that.

Since it was given to me I have $0 in it so far. I'm not opposed to spending a little money on it if it can be brought up to a responsive machine with a later OS (it's pretty responsive right now with 10.7.5 on it but I can tell an SSD would really help as well as some additional RAM). Safari won't open some webpages (YouTube gave me an 'unsupported' error) but I put Chrome and Firefox on it (older version of Firefox). Chrome flickers and acts crazy but Firefox is running smoothly right now.

Some of what you mentioned I'm not sure what you are talking about (at least right now) as I haven't researched it and am not familiar with some of the processes. I've upgraded plenty of Windows machines but not any Macs so this is new territory. I'm sure there are some guides online with detailed instructions on how to flash to 2,1 and all that.

Maybe this additional information with help out a little more.

 

[jbarley]

As mentioned in my first reply, you can run either Yosemite or El-Capitan without flashing to 2,1 using the guide I linked to.
If you still want to do the flash, this little utility (Mac Pro 2006-2007 Firmware Tool) is the easiest method as mentioned here on this forum.
Link to the download is at the bottom of the very first post.
After flashing, rebooting twice is sometimes necessary to get both CPUs recognized.

 

[Mark72501]

As mentioned in my first reply, you can run either Yosemite or El-Capitan without flashing to 2,1 using the guide I linked to.
If you still want to do the flash, this little utility (Mac Pro 2006-2007 Firmware Tool) is the easiest method as mentioned here on this forum.
Link to the download is at the bottom of the very first post.
After flashing, rebooting twice is sometimes necessary to get both CPUs recognized.

Oh, thanks - for some reason I never saw your reply, when I checked the forums and saw a reply it took me to the one from h9826790 and I never scrolled back up... I will check those threads out as they will probably help and reduce additional questions. Thank you!

 

[Kenaz Filan]

I thought long and hard about replacing my Mac Pro 3,1 with a 5,1. It seems clear Apple has given up on the Mac Pro line: I'm likely to get stuck with a big unsupported brick, 2017's version of the Commodore Amiga. I even had a nice Dell workstation picked out and was all ready to take the Windows plunge.

Then, at the last second, I found I just couldn't do it.

And so I've got a 3.06ghz 12-core Mac Pro 5,1 (flashed from 4,1) heading my way. Even unsupported there should be several good years of computing left in it, and ipowerresale's price was more than reasonable. I may wind up regretting this next year, but I'm not yet ready to give up on OS X.

 

[bjar]

Long time reader here! Think I may have posted once before. Anyway, just replaced my 3,1 2.8 ghz 8-core with a 5,1 2.4ghz 12-core. Upgraded graphics from a gtx-660 to a 970. Next thing is to drop some x5677s in the 5,1 and call it a day. I think I need more ghz, not cores, to get better frame rates in x-plane. The only other thing I do is photo editing which I don't think will suffer that much from less cores.

 

[Mileham]

Is there a particular reseller that people favor? I've purchased a 1,1 several years ago from MacOfAllTrades, no complaints, but I see that OWC resells used MacPros, in addition to Operator Headgap and so on. Any favorites out there in terms of machine condition upon arrival? Clean, fully tested, refurbished if necessary, etc.