Hello,
I want to upgrade the CPU to my MacPro mid 2010 (MacPro5,1)
It currently has 2 x 2,66 GHz 6-core Xeon.
I'm pushing it near its limits all the time because it is used for audio production.
What is the fastest CPU I can upgrade to ?
Thanks
Alex
The fastest CPUs you can upgrade to are 2 x 3.46GHz 6-core chips. The definitive list of compatible CPU upgrades is here - Mac Pro CPU Compatibility List | MacRumors Forums
Having previously upgraded my own MacPro 2010 from 2 x 2.66GHz 4-core chips to 2 x 3.06GHz 6-core chips I can tell you that you will get a couple of additional bonuses. First if you have RAM that supports 1333MHz your Mac will start using the RAM at that speed instead of your current 1066MHz, secondly the inter CPU connection speed will also increase to 6.4GHz.
The fastest SSD you can use with a MacPro5,1 is an AHCI PCI based SSD and would reach nearly 1500MBps. You cannot boot from newer NVMe type SSD drives but could potentially use one as a data drive. An alternative is to use multiple AHCI SSD drives in a RAID0 (stripe) array to get even more performance. See - http://barefeats.com/hard210.html
PS. Another way of getting a small speed boost is to ensure your RAM is configured in triple banks, that is 3 x 8 or 6 x 8 is faster than 4 x 8 or 8 x 8.
The fastest CPUs you can upgrade to are 2 x 3.46GHz 6-core chips. The definitive list of compatible CPU upgrades is here - Mac Pro CPU Compatibility List | MacRumors Forums
Having previously upgraded my own MacPro 2010 from 2 x 2.66GHz 4-core chips to 2 x 3.06GHz 6-core chips I can tell you that you will get a couple of additional bonuses. First if you have RAM that supports 1333MHz your Mac will start using the RAM at that speed instead of your current 1066MHz, secondly the inter CPU connection speed will also increase to 6.4GHz.
The fastest SSD you can use with a MacPro5,1 is an AHCI PCI based SSD and would reach nearly 1500MBps. You cannot boot from newer NVMe type SSD drives but could potentially use one as a data drive. An alternative is to use multiple AHCI SSD drives in a RAID0 (stripe) array to get even more performance. See - http://barefeats.com/hard210.html
PS. Another way of getting a small speed boost is to ensure your RAM is configured in triple banks, that is 3 x 8 or 6 x 8 is faster than 4 x 8 or 8 x 8.
Are you certain that is the case? Have you confirmed that with Activity Monitor?
Most of these machines have lots of extra CPU power, but are I/O bound. Not nearly enough drives with different purposes: one for System, one for Source files, one for samples/libraries, one for Destination files.
an SSD for the boot/system drive is a big speedup as well.
I cannot answer your question directly, but I can direct you to a company that can - OWC (Other World Computing). Here's the link - Apple Mac Upgrades - RAM, SSD Flash, External Drives and More
Thanks for the reply.
Yes, I am sure.
My drives are SSD. read/write up to 700mb/sec. Seperate drive for OS and audio projects. Samples loading from external nas server. I’m pretty good set up for I/O.
Audio processing, especially plugins that emulate audio hardware are cpu hungry. I can see that my cpu usage is very high from system usage in protools and activity monitor.
Alex
CPU upgrade for MacPro mid 2010
