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MP 1,1-5,1 Why is my cMP So Slow...

CactusMel

CactusMel

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 17, 2022
26
3
Leicester. UK
Hi, Wondering why my cMP is quite slow, it's a 4.1 ungraded to a 5.1. It a dual CPU tray running at 3.46GHz, with 64GB of ram, the boot drive is an Samsung M.2 SSD on a PCI card/slot and most of the other drives are SSD's. I am running Mojave. Is it the graphics card which is quite old an ATI Radeon 5870 with 1GB of ram, on eBay I can see a MSI Navidia GTX 680 and a 780 with 2 or 3 GB ram, a Radeon 7980 with 3GB ram. I was hopping that one of these might speed things up. It takes about a minute to boot up and about 15 secs to launch say Rawtheropee? the icon seems to bounce about for ages! the ram is fairly moden being Hynix 2Rx4, PC10600-9-10-E1 I only understand the PC10600 bit? it's 8x8GB. Any help or advice very welcome, please ask questions...
 
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Have you considered getting an RX 580? That's the card Apple recommended for the cMP on Mojave back in the day. That's what I use on mine and it's still pretty snappy.
 
CactusMel said:
Is it the graphics card which is quite old an ATI Radeon 5870 with 1GB of ram
Click to expand...
A faster graphics card should not affect your bootup or application start time. There isn't demand for GPU hardware acceleration during those times.

You've already taken the best steps for improving bootup and app start times by using SSDs and having sufficient memory. I think you are just bumping up against the architecture of such an old machine and possibly a lot of software cruft built up over time. Not much you can do about the architecture, but you can see about the cruft if you try a clean install of MacOS.

It is also possible you have a hardware fault of some kind.
 
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Hi MacPoulet, looking on eBay here in the UK going price is about £200 for the RX580 (250 USD) I'm looking at something I can afford around £60-95, the GTX680 seems the best I can do. I can get a PC GTX680 cheap, I'll have to take a look at that flashing guide, someone offers the service for £25 again on eBay. Many thanks for your reply and info...
 
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I've put an RX480 in my 4,1 (Also upgraded to 5,1) and with 20GB RAM and the stock Dual Quad Core processors the machine is still quite snappy - even runs Cities: Skylines 2, which my 2019 MacBook Air baulks at.
They're in the price range you're looking for on eBay too (here's an example that isn't mine) RX 480 Example
 
Hi, ActionableMango, Thanks for your reply, perhaps I should be looking elsewhere! I can get a PC GTX680 cheap and perhaps flash it myself? thanks for the link. But will it make things faster? Never thought I could put my single 3.33CPU tray in and try that just in case, but may do a clean install and see... Will get back to you all...

​

 
Methinks the computer needs a clean install of macOS. I know Macs tend not to slow down but I've had situations where the OS was slow that were solved by a reinstall (as frustrating and time-consuming as that is).

Can you upgrade to a more modern version than Mojave? You may need the ability to run 32-bit programs of course. That applies to me and I have Mojave on a separate drive in my 3,1 to be able to run 32-bit programs (Flexcolor in my case). Mojave runs very very smoothly on mine with 32GB RAM, and Monterey via OCLP is equally smooth. I notice virtually not difference to for instance High Sierra, which I had before.
 
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CactusMel said:
Hi MacPoulet, looking on eBay here in the UK going price is about £200 for the RX580 (250 USD) I'm looking at something I can afford around £60-95, the GTX680 seems the best I can do. I can get a PC GTX680 cheap, I'll have to take a look at that flashing guide, someone offers the service for £25 again on eBay. Many thanks for your reply and info...
Click to expand...
Wow, that’s high. I bought mine brand new for $230CDN (about $190USD). Have you looked locally in your area?
 
Hi Threepwood, That RX480 seems to be a PC card, I can't see where a Mac Pro is mentioned. Shame!
 
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Hi Pullman, Yes a new reinstall wound be good, be even to reinstall Mojave it complains I don't have a metal card, so I'm doing (as I type on PC) a reinstall from Backup disk from the end of last year. A long time but I have my reasons... I am hoping to use Opencore and install windows, but that's another story... Watch out for a new post!
 
For a great Mac Pro 5,1 experience install MartinLO Opencore (will enable TRIM and shorten boot times significantly) and an RX 580 or comparable. Use macOS Mojave/Catalina/Big Sur or Monterey, they run very well.
You don't need a special Mac flashed card, actually they can be problematic.
 
Hi Benmuetsch, Installing opencore was going to be my next move, I;ll takea look at this version. So does opencore give us boot screens on normal graphics cards? in that case I'll just get a good card.
 
Hi CactusMel, yes - should have been more specific.

Using the PC version of the RX 480 did require using Open Core, and did mean I lost the 'pre-boot' screen, but everything appears once Open Core kicks in, and apart form some colour issues before macOS finishes booting, it performs as a Mac native card would.
 
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Yes there will be a boot screen, and a boot picker too, a few seconds into the boot once OCLP has loaded. This is how mine looks. My SuperDuper backup of Mojave is listed too (but oddly not the Monterey backup). I currently have an AMD Radeon WX 5100 in the computer because I wanted a slim GPU with low power consumption (no additional cable needed).

IMG_4119.jpg


CactusMel said:
Hi Benmuetsch, Installing opencore was going to be my next move, I;ll takea look at this version. So does opencore give us boot screens on normal graphics cards? in that case I'll just get a good card.
Click to expand...
 
Hi All, Many thanks to you all for your help and advice. I think I've got to make a complete change. Firstly a bigger M.2 SSD. I've read the Opencore stuff a couple of times, think I get the idea! but I will ask questions later, I am waiting for 2 x 32GB memory sticks to arrive. I had an 8GB and downloaded the windows installer (can I use Win 10 or 11?).
 
32GB DIMMs are not compatible with macOS without complex OpenCore manual config that needs to be re-done each time OC/OCLP updates. Nightmare for a end user…

forums.macrumors.com

Crazy idea. 32gb ram modules in a cMP. Anyone tried this?

I'm not in a position to test this as I don't have the ram but I am really curious if this would work. I don't need this much ram I'm just curious. With the ability to upgrade 4,1 and 5,1 cMP to use x5690 cpu's the amount of ram the CPU can handle is well over 250gb according to intel arc...
forums.macrumors.com forums.macrumors.com

Get 4x16GB 2Rx4 1333MHz.
 
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Hi, I have 8 x 8GB (64GB) ram in my cMP, would that be a problem? with opencore... Just been looking at a write-up on Martin Lo's version of Opencore seems a lot simpler!
 
tsialex said:
32GB DIMMs are not compatible with macOS without complex OpenCore manual config that needs to be re-done each time OC/OCLP updates. Nightmare for a end user…

forums.macrumors.com

Crazy idea. 32gb ram modules in a cMP. Anyone tried this?

I'm not in a position to test this as I don't have the ram but I am really curious if this would work. I don't need this much ram I'm just curious. With the ability to upgrade 4,1 and 5,1 cMP to use x5690 cpu's the amount of ram the CPU can handle is well over 250gb according to intel arc...
forums.macrumors.com forums.macrumors.com

Get 4x16GB 2Rx4 1333MHz.
Click to expand...
(Off topic) I hearsay, you might be able to help with cleaning boot roms to make upgrades possible? I'm really wanting to at least run montery on my 5,1. Thank you for any help.
 
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