I have a MP mid-2010 quad 3.2 and I'm wondering what the best processor I can upgrade it to would be. Do I have to stick with the processors Apple was offering for that product line? If so, the best one would be the Xeon W3690 Hex Core 3.46GHz.
Mac Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5), Mid 2010 3.2 GHz Quad-Core Xeon
This says what is available
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/turnkey/MacPro/2009_2010_Xeon_Processor/Apple_Mac _Pro_2010_1
http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2010-mac-pro-processor-upgrade.1611439/
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/step_by_step_mac_pro_processor_upgrade
Depending upon yur uses, a six core CPU may be better
Many Mac Pro Silver Tower users are surprised to find their multiprocessor Macs are NOT Compute-bound, and upgrading processors does essentially nothing for their performance. A Mac Pro silver tower as shipped is massively I/O bound, and the steps you take to relieve that may be a better way to improve performance.
User Tip: Creating a lean, fast Boot Drive
.
Thanks! I'll check that out.
Hey Grant, thanks for the response. I'm curious as to what you mean by I/O bound and how I should take steps to relieve it. I've dropped in a USB 3 4-port, and a Titan X flashed by Macvidcards. Is there anything else you're thinking I should do that would be more beneficial than a processor upgrade?
I/O bound means reading and writing to storage.
You can install a PCle blade SSD. Very fast
Ah, gotcha, thanks. I've got a Samsung EVO 850 as my boot drive. That's been great. I don't think I have the money or the PCIe space for a PCIe SSD. I'm more looking at render times out of Premiere and Resolve. Maybe a couple internal RAIDed drives would help too?
RAIDed SSDs wouldbe fine.However, I ma not a fan of RAID since with a striped RAID, which you need for speed, if there is problem with one drive the whole RAID set is lost unless yo use RAID 5 or similar but that requires at least three disks
Well, I've always got the footage backed up and the project auto-saving to another location, so a RAID failing wouldn't be the worst thing. Slow speed would be. But I'm talking good ol' 7200 RPM spinning discs, not SSD's. Way to expensive for me on a 2TB project.
RAID only speeds things up when you are reading or writing LARGE amounts of data from exactly one file on the drive. If you move the drive head to read or write anything else, the speedup is lost.
Better performance can often be had by having one drive for Boot/Applications drive, one drive for Source, one drive for Destination, and one drive for scratch or samples, if appropriate. Then there is no "traffic jam" waiting for something else to read or write before you can proceed.
I would agree in general that a Mac Pro is mostly I/O constrained. This is partly down to it only having SATAII drive bays, so even if you stick a fast SSD in one of the bays like an EVO 850 it can be limited on speed. It is possible to fit internal SATA cards which support SATAIII and these can either be of a type on to which you directly fit a SATAIII 2.5" drive, or you can get a special kit which 'converts' the internal drive bays and then run cables to a SATAIII card.
Note: Using a PCIe SSD or PCIe SATAIII card may mean any drive attached to such a card might not be bootable in either OS X or Boot Camp, it depends on the card.
I have a 1TB SSUBX type PCIe SSD (the very fastest) and the biggest delay in booting is the POST (Power On Self Test), actually loading the operating system takes just seconds.
Other aspects to address are the amount of RAM - you want at least 16GB, more is always better, a faster video card - which you have done, USB3 ports - which you have done, and it is also possible to replace the standard WiFi/Bluetooth cards with newer faster ones which can support Yosemite's Continuity feature as well.
The beauty and curse of the classic Mac Pro is that you can keep throwing money at it to add new better components, even things like 10Gbps Ethernet.
I have done a fair few of these options already on my 2010 Mac Pro 'because I can'. I am currently considering but waiting for more choices the possibility of adding USB3.1 - there are some cards already out like the ASROCK, and a UHD Blu-Ray drive when/if they become available.
even things like 10Gbps Ethernet.
That sounds intriguing. Are there sensibly-priced cards and cables for that?
Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:
even things like 10Gbps Ethernet.
That sounds intriguing. Are there sensibly-priced cards and cables for that?
You want sensibly priced as well? 🙂
Unfortunately that does not appear possible, I found the following.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/ATTO/FFRMNS11000/
https://www.attotech.com/products/category.php?id=14&catid=14
https://www.small-tree.com/categories/10gb-ethernet-cards/
http://secure1.sonnettech.com/product_info.php?&products_id=447
Of these the Sonnet seems the cheapest. Cheapest is not always best though. They do seem to be slightly cheaper than Thunderbolt equivalents.
It is possible to run 10Gbps over RJ45 or Fibre, with RJ45 being cheaper both in terms of adapters and cables. Fibre supports longer distances though.
I would think this would help with editing Epic footage then, no? Since those files are quick large. Wouldn't I get some speed advantage over just one regular platter?
I'd love to use SSD's on projects, but since I'm editing mostly Epic and Dragon footage, the quantity of space is just not economical for an independent editor like me. I think I will get the processor upgrade so I can step my RAM up to 1333 and double it to 32GB. Hopefully that'll gain me a little speed in rendering, and possibly smoother playback in Premiere and Resolve.
The biggest payback would come with Source and Destination each on their own Drives. Then if you chose to Add RAID on top of that, it could be faster. But Striped RAID will lose all the data if a Drive fails, so now you need yet another drive on which to Archive completed jobs.
Processor upgrade options for MP 5,1
