Mac Pro 6.1 Processor Upgrade

Any upgrade is going to help, I can't tell you if it would help more than a video card upgrade would. It is of course not possible to upgrade the internal video cards in your Mac Pro.

I can say that it is possible to upgrade to a 12 core pair of CPUs in your model.

Other things that would help would be more RAM and upgrading the SSD drive inside your Mac Pro. It is now possible to get a much faster NVMe SSD and an adapter to fit it in your Mac Pro. The original SSD was an AHCI one. (Don't get the Samsung 970 Evo Pro, a WD Black SN750 might be a better choice.)

You could look for a pair of second hand CPU chips and fit them yourself to save money. You need some technical skills to do this and obviously to be very careful. I did upgrade my MacPro5,1 to a pair of 6 core CPUs - therefore totalling 12 cores. I got my chips secondhand via eBay but I did see them working in the donor computer before handing over the cash.

According to https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mac-pro-cpu-compatibility-list.1954766/ the CPU you list is compatible.

Regarding the benefits, Grant is right it depends on the software you are using a lot only use a single core in which case they would actually become slower but those that use multiple cores would then potentially be faster.

My recollection is that the CPU upgrades in the MacPro 6,1 using E5 processors are all single-chip.

If that is correct, obtaining a pair of them will not help, as there is only one socket, even for the 8, 10, and 12-core chips.

I have a 6 core 2013 Mac Pro I use to create H264 Youtube videos, so I had the same notion about upgrading to an expensive 12 core CPU for faster H264 export. My solution for the time being is to use HANDBRAKE, a free software that greatly speeds up H264 encoding. I create and share my FCPX timeline at 1080p (downsized from 4K optimized footage) using Master File ProRes 422, which transcodes faster than a Web Hosting H264 Share on FCPX. Then I load the completed ProRes 422 Master File into the Handbrake software and set it to transcode to H264 for YouTube/Vimeo. It does so up to 6 times faster than my H264 transcode in FCPX. Then I upload the Handbrake H264 video directly to my YouTube channel. The quality at 1080p looks the same, especially since most Youtube viewers watch on their smart phones at 720p or even 480p. I keep the ProRes 422 Master File to archive or burn 720p DVDs from.

That depends on the parallelism of what you are doing. Your original processor is a 3.7 GHZ processor.

Moving to a 2.7 GHz processor will not be a substantial speedup IF your work is mostly single-threaded, as most tasks are. If you were using Compressor on a daily basis, the increment would be substantial.

Would it make sense to upgrade Mac Pro 6.1 with 6 cores to 12, to see a speed increase in Aperture?

Hey John,

Thanks for the reply, I just upgraded RAM from 32 GB to 64 GB - Iwill look into a faster SSD currently have the stock  1TB.

Also am looking at the 12 Core upgrade from OWC

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

My recollection is that the CPU upgrades in the MacPro 6,1 using E5 processors are all single-chip.

If that is correct, obtaining a pair of them will not help, as there is only one socket, even for the 8, 10, and 12-core chips.

Actually now that you mention it that is what I recall as well.

I based the response on what the MacRumours article listed them as which is dual Xeon.

Note: The new Mac Pro 2019 is definitely a single CPU system but with an absurd number of cores.