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MP 1,1-5,1 Will I notice the difference between 2 x Xeon X5690 and 2 x Xeon X5675 in my 5,1?

porican

porican

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 11, 2016
30
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Like the headline says, if I swap the pair of X5675’s (3.06 GHz) in my Mac Pro with a matched pair of X5690s (3.46 GHz), will I notice a difference?

It's a 12-core 2010 5,1 (2 x 3.06 GHz) with 96GB RAM and an RX580 8GB running Mojave on an SM961 NVMe drive and Windows 10 on an 850 EVO SSD. I mostly use it for vocal audio production (radio/podcasts), web production, photo editing (bridge/lightroom/photoshop), and managing my music library (iTunes/Plex). Not a whole lot of sequential computation outside of rendering photos and converting audio files.

I ultimately plan to replace it with a 7,1 when (if?) the prices come down a bit, but for now, it's serviceable and pretty responsive—only the occasional lag. beach balls are a rare occurence.

Upgrading the processors is one of the last few upgrades I can make to extend the life of the machine. Applying the thermal paste and re-mounting the coolers doesn't sound like fun, but if I'll notice the difference after the upgrade, I'm willing to do it. But will I be able to notice the 400 MHz boost in clock speed with my use cases?

Thank you!
 
Imho, no. I'm in the same boat. Imho, price premium isn't worth it. Most apps are not multithreaded anyway.
 
I just replaced my single original CPU with an X5695, speed wasn't noticeable and the upgrade and reapplication of thermal paste was easy peasy. I did get a PCIe m.2 adapter and replaced the cage SSD. That was the biggest improvement overall. I'm running Monterey using OCLP and no issues whatsoever.
 
ADDvanced said:
Imho, no. I'm in the same boat. Imho, price premium isn't worth it. Most apps are not multithreaded anyway.
Click to expand...
At today's pricing I don't consider getting a matched set of X5690 as cheap as $45.00 a price premium. However with that said, if you have X5675s in your MacPro and you're happy with the performance from them, upgrading to the X5690 will be negligible from an operator's perspective but upgrading to the X5690 won't break the bank either. YMMV

With the 5,1 DP swapping the processors is as simple as removing the heat sink from the processors, opening the retainer mechanism from the processors and swapping them out then applying fresh thermal paste to the replacement CPUs after securing them in place and then securing the heat sinks on top of them. It is actually not that hard to do.

I have done this to my 2012 5,1 MP since getting the X5690 was not expensive to do.
 
Macdctr said:
At today's pricing I don't consider getting a matched set of X5690 as cheap as $45.00 a price premium. However with that said, if you have X5675s in your MacPro and you're happy with the performance from them, upgrading to the X5690 will be negligible from an operator's perspective but upgrading to the X5690 won't break the bank either. YMMV

With the 5,1 DP swapping the processors is as simple as removing the heat sink from the processors, opening the retainer mechanism from the processors and swapping them out then applying fresh thermal paste to the replacement CPUs after securing them in place and then securing the heat sinks on top of them. It is actually not that hard to do.

I have done this to my 2012 5,1 MP since getting the X5690 was not expensive to do.
Click to expand...

Wow, price sure came down since 2 years ago. Anyway, as PDX said, the biggest performance bang for your buck is replacing the slow ass magnetic HDs with NVME/PCI slots. Looks like you already did that. Idk. I'd ride it out. I have no idea what to replace mine with either but it's getting pretty old.
 
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ADDvanced said:
Wow, price sure came down since 2 years ago. Anyway, as PDX said, the biggest performance bang for your buck is replacing the slow ass magnetic HDs with NVME/PCI slots. Looks like you already did that. Idk. I'd ride it out. I have no idea what to replace mine with either but it's getting pretty old.
Click to expand...
Exactly :) I have added PCIe card in my x16 slot to boot my NVMe M.2 drives from and use the built-in drive space for storage of apps, pictures and documents. I have upgraded everything in my MacPro with exception of the GPU. There are better solutions but until I change out my display monitors it does not make any sense for me to upgrade my GPU. I'm currently using 30-inch HD Cinema Displays with my rig.
 
The X5690 is fairly cheap to by so why not get the 3.46 processor.

The other performance improvements will be from NVME storage.
 
For most of the time, that will be the difference between 3.6GHz vs 3.33GHz (TurboBoost considered), which means, the difference is ~8%.

In general, you need something like 30% difference to feel "noticeable difference".

Even you can't overclock your Xeon, but you can use software to disable TurboBoost in Windows easily. Therefore, you can simulate that 8% difference easily in Windows.

I bet you can't feel any difference.
 
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Thanks for all the replies!

Seems like the consensus is "you probably won't notice, but it's cheap and easy so you might as well"

I'll probably end up doing it down the road if i get bored enough!
 
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