Advice for upgrades to my Mac Pro 5,1

[Jigga Beef]

I have a 2012 Mac Pro 5,1 that I absolutely love. But I am stuck on what to make my next upgrade


1) GPU

2) PCIE SSD Boot Drive


I’d like to make some kind of upgrade (sort of a hobby more than necessity)


Right now, the set-up is as follows


3.46, 12 cores so I am all set from a processor stand point.


For a GPU I have a ASUS GTX 700 GeForce GTX 750 Ti


I am connecting 3 Samsun 28 inch 4K monitors video display ports.


I love the monitors but I think I could get a better resolution with an upgraded Video Card


I am considering but have not done too much research in


GTX Titan 12 GB (Costly)

GTX 980 6 GB



My PCIE slots are taken as follows

Slot 1 /2 – GTX GPU

Slot 3 – ESATA card

Slot 4 – USB 3.0 card (4 ports)

Slot 5 – USB – C Card.



I have been thinking of trying to upgrade my current SSD to an SSD PCIE seems like I would see a bump in performance. But as of right now I don’t have an open PCIE slot.


I think I have seen PCIE SSD cards with ESATA ports so that could solve the issue.


Or a PCIE card with 3 X USB 3.0 and at least 1 USB C could work as well.


Which upgrade would you recommend, I don’t necessary NEED either of the upgrades but I like using my machine and have a pretty decent size budget for this project.

 

[kkinto]

I am in a similar position. Would love a bootable NVMe but $ too little at the moment to do it properly. I bought a Radeon RX580 and thats the best thing ever since I added an SSD a while back. I use Final Cut Pro and it is just a huge pleasure at the moment. Totally loving it. Acceleration in other areas is win-lose (eg Adobe apps) as some funtionality use the card and many others not. Having gonbe through 3 months of indecision about the graphics and doing so much reading I would recommend avoiding Nvidia right now. It doesn't seem that Apple is going that route (at least for us cMP owners). But don't take my word for it! Other than more RAM or more SSDs (even Sata) I think my cMP is pretty maxed out but feels really new and slick again.