Actually, I thought about that when I was falling asleep last night
It's a GTX 780 I feel silly Original post correctedLou
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CPU (and other) upgrade for MacPro 5,1
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Actually, I thought about that when I was falling asleep last night
It's a GTX 780 I feel silly Original post correctedLou
The GTX780 is an excellent card. I was lucky to snatch one at around $340 a while back off eBay and it was with a Mac EFI.
I've sold my 2010 system, but I think parts are much cheaper now. A GTX780 has a better pipeline, but I think you can get by with a GTX970. It generates less heat and eats less power. But if you see a good price on a Mac EFI GTX780 on eBay, go for it.
I've sold my 2010 system, but I think parts are much cheaper now. A GTX780 has a better pipeline, but I think you can get by with a GTX970. It generates less heat and eats less power. But if you see a good price on a Mac EFI GTX780 on eBay, go for it.
I guess I could keep one drive for Windows and another for OSX, but there are only a couple of Windows program I'm interested in (Apophysis and ZBrush)so maybe that should be a concern for later. I like painlessness, like things to just work, but sometimes you just have to deal.
Doesn't a normal normal SATA 3 card have to have a controller card to mount it on, which adds to the cost and makes the blade drive about on par with something like an 850 EVO? Maybe I'm missing something there.
Of your four options for the GPU, I could go with the first three, but the ramifications of #4 are probably above my pay grade at this point. Isn't one of MVC's flashed cards just plug and play? What work and study do you mean with #2 option?
I'm at MVC right now. They have 1 Radeon 7970, two Radeon 7950, and are sold out of the R9 280X. They have gobs more Nvidia cards - all the way from GTX Titan X 12GB for $1450 down to a GT 120. The GTX 680 is there in three versions: a 2GB, a 4GB, and a 4GB "Classified" of which I have no idea of the meaning. The Classified is more money ($80 more than the 2GB and $50 more than the 4GB) but is sold out. They're closed until the 18th anyway.
Yep, the machine is a real 5,1 according to everymac.com and the Sys Info screen.
When buying the X5690, do they have to be a matched pair, as some Ebay ads claim, or can you use any two you come across? Is Ebay the best place to get them?
Thanks for your comprehensive overview. I hope to be making some choices soon. Want to read that thread on flashing to see if I can handle it, and look around on Ebay some more.
Why did you get the blade? Somebody said that real world use was a wash between blades and 850 EVOs. Curious as to such divergent ideas about the two ways to go, since, by the time you put two EVOs on a controller card the price is approaching that of two blades, isn't it?
h9826790 said: "But it may introduce some problems, e.g. strange performance hit when using slot 2, or can't boot Windows, etc." What do you think about that idea?
Yes, eBay. There are companies that sell server refurbished CPUs on there. Don't buy from individuals with no good means of testing. IT Recovery Specialists (eBay account : westporter) have great CPU prices and sometimes let you make an offer. There are others like them.
Actually, I thought about that when I was falling asleep last night
Lou
Sorry to keep you awake.
I sold my blades and replaced them with the dual Evo 850 on the Sonnet. Look at the comparison:
Dual 500GB Evo 850 + Sonnet Tempo Pro
Total space : 1GB
Total Price : £390
Triple 256GB SM951 + 3 adapters
Total space : 768GB
Total price : £610
There was no real world speed benefit from the blades. They would be useful if you were doing multi layer 4K video edits. Unfortunately there is no suitable I/O for a Mac Pro to match the bandwidth. Prices have dropped since then. I was the first person with an official SM951 (a couple of others had an Apple version) in a Mac Pro and the first person to create a RAID from them. Bear in mind you can no longer RAID with El Capitan's Disk Utility according to user reports, not verified by me yet.
Dual 500GB Evo 850 + Sonnet Tempo Pro
Total space : 1GB
Total Price : £390
Triple 256GB SM951 + 3 adapters
Total space : 768GB
Total price : £610
There was no real world speed benefit from the blades. They would be useful if you were doing multi layer 4K video edits. Unfortunately there is no suitable I/O for a Mac Pro to match the bandwidth. Prices have dropped since then. I was the first person with an official SM951 (a couple of others had an Apple version) in a Mac Pro and the first person to create a RAID from them. Bear in mind you can no longer RAID with El Capitan's Disk Utility according to user reports, not verified by me yet.
Numbers don't lie. Thanks for the analysis. I wonder why people buy them that are not doing video?
Yeah, they won't let me in there yet. I tried.
Won't let me PM you either, so I started a "Conversation."
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Some are. Some just want the latest tech. It's like buying an old car and pimping it out with a fast engine. You won't actually drive it at 160MPH buts its fun to know there is power under the hood.
Well, I feel things I do feel a bit more snappy with the Blade. Maybe it's in my head, but I luv my new blade.
Lou
An SSD (With Sonnet or Velo X2) or a Blade will be fine. Blade is nice, but you don't have to get it. Just get a 1TB SSD and a Velo X2.
1200MB/sec vs 550MB is not that big of a deal in day to day operations.
Although if you do heavy Photoshopping or anything that needs a scratch disk, the SSD comes in handy of course if Photoshop uses up most of memory. But get something like 24GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD with Velo x2 and you're good to go. Don't spend too much money on your upgrades by the time you want to move on to something better all this tech will be obsolete anyway.
1200MB/sec vs 550MB is not that big of a deal in day to day operations.
Although if you do heavy Photoshopping or anything that needs a scratch disk, the SSD comes in handy of course if Photoshop uses up most of memory. But get something like 24GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD with Velo x2 and you're good to go. Don't spend too much money on your upgrades by the time you want to move on to something better all this tech will be obsolete anyway.
Thanks for sharing your setup, this is very inspiring!
Did you have to do something special in order to have the Samsung 512GB SM951 Blade mounted on a Lycom DT-120 working properly?
Is this the right one to buy http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-SM951...id=1442375990&sr=1-1&keywords=samsung+951+ssd ?
Also, on which drive should I install OSX?
Many thanks!
I highly recommend this combo:
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-2-5-I...e=UTF8&qid=1442436612&sr=1-1&keywords=1tb+ssd
and
http://www.amazon.com/Apricorn-Velo...F8&qid=1442436655&sr=1-1&keywords=velocity+x2
(The Velo x2 has an additional SATA III port, but you will need power. Back then I've used a power splitter from the SuperDrive bay and siphoned power and put in an additional SSD. It's a cheaper work around).
Or get a 512GB SSD and big hard drives and put them in your drive bays. Much better option.
The point of your upgrade is to squeeze as much performance as possible out of your old tech and save money as well.
The 2010 MP chipset is quite old. The CPU features are very old. It eats too much power and generates too much heat. The memory bus is limited at 1333Mhz (We're already at 1866Mhz).
Single core performance (quite important) is rather slow on the older MPs because the processors and chipsets are old.
I have a 2014 Mid rMBP running as my desktop now and it's actually quite fast in terms of performance. My upgraded 2010 cMP had more raw power, but single core stuff was slower. So the point? Save your money.
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-2-5-I...e=UTF8&qid=1442436612&sr=1-1&keywords=1tb+ssd
and
http://www.amazon.com/Apricorn-Velo...F8&qid=1442436655&sr=1-1&keywords=velocity+x2
(The Velo x2 has an additional SATA III port, but you will need power. Back then I've used a power splitter from the SuperDrive bay and siphoned power and put in an additional SSD. It's a cheaper work around).
Or get a 512GB SSD and big hard drives and put them in your drive bays. Much better option.
The point of your upgrade is to squeeze as much performance as possible out of your old tech and save money as well.
The 2010 MP chipset is quite old. The CPU features are very old. It eats too much power and generates too much heat. The memory bus is limited at 1333Mhz (We're already at 1866Mhz).
Single core performance (quite important) is rather slow on the older MPs because the processors and chipsets are old.
I have a 2014 Mid rMBP running as my desktop now and it's actually quite fast in terms of performance. My upgraded 2010 cMP had more raw power, but single core stuff was slower. So the point? Save your money.
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Yes, that's the correct blade. I bought mine from an eBay seller though for a bit cheaper. I did buy the Lycom card from Amazon.
it works just like a standard HDD or SSD. It was recognized, needed formatting and good to go. I use the blade as my boot drive.
BTW, I'm selling my Duo for less than the Solo referenced in the post just below yours.
Lou
I means buy a SATA3 SSD, buy only plug that into the native SATA2 port (without any PCIe card). That's the most painless and cheapest solution. I do have a Tempo SSD card. However, due to I installed a 2nd GPU, I have to pull the Tempo SSD out (no more slot for that card). TBO, I can't feel any difference in normal daily ops. And it seems you already got the numbers from the others, and you know even with the SATA3 card, it's still significantly cheaper than the blade.
Sorry for my fault, I mean option 3 (flash it by yourself) need more work and study. MVC card is plug and play. Some cards may even work better than the official Mac Edition card (because he fine tuned and tested it).
Classified is a specific version of the 680 from EVGA, which almost considered the best 3rd party card. Higher clock, better cooling etc.
Since there is some engineering sample out there, it is possible you buy a pair of X5690 but they are not matching each others. The chance is low, but not zero. As the others point out, go for a trustable seller on Ebay, then you can easily get a working pair of cheap X5690 which come from the servers, but not any crazy overclocker.
I don't agree that you won't notice the difference on an SSD between SATA II and SATAIII. The jump is actually huge from day to day operations. SATA II is maxed out to about 200MB/sec (roughly). That's about the speed of a spinning modern hard drive.
However, the main benefit for a SSD is the high IOPS, but not the sequential read / write speed. My machine still boot with more or less the same time. The apps still pops up with roughly the same time. I didn't time it, but even though something like Photoshop / FCPX just need few seconds for loading. I really don't think that there is any difference between 2.5s vs 3s loading time (if the difference really exist).
And since I only have one SSD. So even for copying files to other HDD, the speed will be limited by the HDD anyway. So, really no real world difference for me, even though for large files copying.
May be because I am only doing Photoshop / FCPX for fun. And I am not pushing hard enough to fully utilise the SSD. The only way I can tell the difference is by running benchmark software.
I'm all for the Blade ssubx option, best upgrade I ever did and mine is a 3,1
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/more-life-for-macpro-early-2008.1883307/#post-21426937
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/more-life-for-macpro-early-2008.1883307/#post-21426937
You will notice speed differences when you open large PSDs and save and work locally. I honestly can never go back to non SSD systems and refuse to do.
Of course I won't go back to HDD as well. There is a lot of speed gain from HDD to SSD. But my feeling is like this...
At least 95% speed gain from HDD to 840 Evo via native SATA 2 port.
And at most 5% speed gain from SATA 2 to SATA 3.
Here is talking about my feeling under my daily use, but not any benchmark or spec.
I am just doing those multimedia stuff for fun, and nothing close to professional standard. May be this is the real reason why I can't feel the difference. I will edit large JPG files, but usually no need to go for large PSD files. I will edit 4K Video, but just from my own camera, some very simple video of my kids, no multiple super high bitrate 4K video loading required.
5%? I think that's theoretical because in reality it's about 40-50% faster than SATA II. A Velo x2 is only $89, probably $60 on ebay. Why not just get it? You also get a second SATA III port.
It's pretty difficult to use the bandwidth offered by SATA3 on a regular and meaningful basis, that's why he sees only a small increase over SATA2.
Over time SSDs slow down as they become fuller regardless if it has TRIM or not. SATA III comes in handy.