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MP 1,1-5,1 Is it time to give up on my 5.1 Mac Pro?

M

MVMNT

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 28, 2010
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I'm a little torn now between carrying on with an upgrade path via OpenCore or just getting an M1 silicon MacBook at this stage to then sell on and upgrade to a MBP when they've transitioned.

My initial updagrade path was going to the 680 GTX to a Radeon 580x for the Mojave driver support and take it from there.

However, i've lots of current need for a portable because I'm sick of moving from one machine working from home to another for tasks outside of my day to day work.

With both machines in front of you, what would you go for if presented with the option?
 
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MVMNT said:
I'm a little torn now between carrying on with an upgrade path via OpenCore or just getting an M1 silicon MacBook at this stage to then sell on and upgrade to a MBP when they've transitioned.

My initial updagrade path was going to the 680 GTX to a Radeon 580x for the Mojave driver support and take it from there.

However, i've lots of current need for a portable because I'm sick of moving from one machine working from home to another for tasks outside of my day to day work.

With both machines in front of you, what would you go for if presented with the option?
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I have a Mac Pro + rMBP combo and I use both, but I use each one totally differently.

When I sit on my Mac Pro 95% of the time I working/studying/doing research. With my rMBP it's more for answering emails, browsing the net or media consumption.

I can move my workflow to one only, but I prefer it as it is right now.
 
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I'm keeping my OpenCore Mac Pro 5,1 until I see what Silicon Mac Pro they offer in 2021-22.
 
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Exactly, I am interested in what the mini macpro is going to bring.
But most importantly the upgrade ability of the silicon mp’s.
 
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The cMP is obviously much more flexible and configurable. The M1 obviously gives you portability, efficiency and even more CPU power than a top-spec'd dual X5690 cMP, though you'll need some docks and dongles if you use a lot of external stuff. And be aware of software compatibility.

It depends entirely on how you use it really. For me, moving to an M1 MacBook Pro wouldn't affect my workflow at all, would actually increase my available computing power and give me the bonus of being able to go places with my primary computer again. Given the choice and the funds that's what I would pick.

But since I'm operating on a college budget, I'm sticking with my cMP for a while. It does everything I need and then some.
 
eicca said:
The cMP is obviously much more flexible and configurable. The M1 obviously gives you portability, efficiency and even more CPU power than a top-spec'd dual X5690 cMP, though you'll need some docks and dongles if you use a lot of external stuff. And be aware of software compatibility.

It depends entirely on how you use it really. For me, moving to an M1 MacBook Pro wouldn't affect my workflow at all, would actually increase my available computing power and give me the bonus of being able to go places with my primary computer again. Given the choice and the funds that's what I would pick.

But since I'm operating on a college budget, I'm sticking with my cMP for a while. It does everything I need and then some.
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My 2009 3.46 GHz 12-core 5,1 Mac Pro DAW running Mojave easily bested both the M1 Mac Mini and the M1 MBP on the TNM Logic Pro midi track count test.
 
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fastlanephil said:
My 2009 3.46 GHz 12-core 5,1 Mac Pro DAW running Mojave easily bested both the M1 Mac Mini and the M1 MBP on the TNM Logic Pro midi track count test.
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Interesting. By how much?

Granted, I am going by Geekbench scores. The M1 slaughters the dual-X5690 cMP in single core (no surprise) and seemed to score slightly higher in even multi core as well (average of 6800 for dual X5690s and 7500 for M1 MacBook Air).
 
DFP1989 said:
By how much?
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Interestingly, the YouTuber “Max“ scored 90 tracks with the 16 GB M1 Mac Mini but some one posted a score of 103 tracks using the 16 GB M1 MacBook Pro. My 2009 5,1 Mac Pro scored 112 although other users have scored 115 with similar configurations.

I’m sure the M1 Macs dominate using other apps but it looks like the latest versions of Logic Pro do a great job taking advantage of more cores.
 
I'll have to see what my dual E5620s score with that test. Either way, it's leaps and bounds ahead of my ancient MacBook and I have yet to get anywhere near "system overload."

And it's not like the M1 is a slouch. YouTube channel Present Day Production did their own test and got their M1 Mini to run something insane like 3 virtual drummers, 96 software instruments, over 120 audio tracks and over a thousand plugins—300 of which were Space Designer—before the M1 hit "system overload." Unless I somehow go from bedroom to big label overnight, the M1 is waaaaay more power than I'll ever need. And that's just the start of the Apple Silicon line.
 
fastlanephil said:
Interestingly, the YouTuber “Max“ scored 90 tracks with the 16 GB M1 Mac Mini but some one posted a score of 103 tracks using the 16 GB M1 MacBook Pro. My 2009 5,1 Mac Pro scored 112 although other users have scored 115 with similar configurations.

I’m sure the M1 Macs dominate using other apps but it looks like the latest versions of Logic Pro do a great job taking advantage of more cores.
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M1 is all the more impressive considering it does it with likely less than 1/10th the power consumption of your 12-core Mac Pro.
 
fastlanephil said:
My 2009 3.46 GHz 12-core 5,1 Mac Pro DAW running Mojave easily bested both the M1 Mac Mini and the M1 MBP on the TNM Logic Pro midi track count test.
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Also your metal result will obliterate any M1.
If you have hundreds of tracks open, I would think the on-chip gpu would struggle.
 
That is an insane video....:oops:
It appears any software made by Apple flies, from what he said about Resolve, not so much.

Unfortunatelly I don’t use any Apple creative apps.
 
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I think I will keep my 2010 cMP to the end of this year and see where we are with the new mac hardware...as I would to be able to run things like Dolphin and the latest mac oS without too much faff....although 850 for a 512gb M1 is tempting me today...

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I know what you mean.... 😬

The fact that the reviewer on the video said resolve wasn’t as quick, I am surprised it even worked.
System reqs are 16gb ram (32gb for fusion). So that’s interesting since it was only the 8gb model.
 
MarkC426 said:
Also your metal result will obliterate any M1.
If you have hundreds of tracks open, I would think the on-chip gpu would struggle.
Click to expand...

If you’re talking about a Mac Pro with a Radeon 580, it would probably be a draw. The 580 brings a bit more horsepower but the M1 makes up for it in sheer efficiency in the way it works. The 580 was not a great GPU.

If you’ve got a Vega 56 or a Radeon 5700 in your Mac Pro, then you’re starting to more easily beat M1. But when M1X arrives that Mac Pro is not going to look great.

And that is one thing to consider. You might be willing to keep your Mac Pro running against M1. But if M1X is twice as fast no 5,1 is going to hold out against that. In GPU or CPU.
 
goMac said:
And that is one thing to consider. You might be willing to keep your Mac Pro running against M1. But if M1X is twice as fast no 5,1 is going to hold out against that. In GPU or CPU.
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I‘ll probably be feeling better about it than someone with a $8000+ 16-Core 2019 MacPro that is seeing that M1X Mac closing in on them.
 
goMac said:
If you’re talking about a Mac Pro with a Radeon 580, it would probably be a draw. The 580 brings a bit more horsepower but the M1 makes up for it in sheer efficiency in the way it works. The 580 was not a great GPU.

If you’ve got a Vega 56 or a Radeon 5700 in your Mac Pro, then you’re starting to more easily beat M1. But when M1X arrives that Mac Pro is not going to look great.

And that is one thing to consider. You might be willing to keep your Mac Pro running against M1. But if M1X is twice as fast no 5,1 is going to hold out against that. In GPU or CPU.
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This was my general thinking. Why pump more money into a machine I’m inevitably going to give up on in less then 12 months now.

It’s a portable heater that expensively runs photoshop and Ableton rn.
 
goMac said:
If you’re talking about a Mac Pro with a Radeon 580, it would probably be a draw. The 580 brings a bit more horsepower but the M1 makes up for it in sheer efficiency in the way it works. The 580 was not a great GPU.

If you’ve got a Vega 56 or a Radeon 5700 in your Mac Pro, then you’re starting to more easily beat M1. But when M1X arrives that Mac Pro is not going to look great.

And that is one thing to consider. You might be willing to keep your Mac Pro running against M1. But if M1X is twice as fast no 5,1 is going to hold out against that. In GPU or CPU.
Click to expand...
My previous post is now defunct....... 🤪
Further to my viewing of the video review (post #13) I was blown away by Logic performance with 1000 plugins...:oops:
 
I am definitely going to hold out for the next batch of new M1 machines and see how expensive they are as my current machine is absolutely fine at the moment. I forget I paid almost 2.1k 10 years ago for a nearly new cMP 2010 and am happy to pay a good whack for a comparable machine this year....that will last me for another 5-10
 
I just don't think I could get used to the 'seperated' factor of a mini and external drives.
Have been so spoilt with being able to add/remove/replace anything.
 
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Yes I know what you mean but the cMP is huge and this isn't -

s-l1600.jpg
 
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MVMNT said:
This was my general thinking. Why pump more money into a machine I’m inevitably going to give up on in less then 12 months now.

It’s a portable heater that expensively runs photoshop and Ableton rn.
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I would support this. You write that you miss portability so that a laptop would be useful.

My recommendation is - if the budget allows to do so - to keep the MP for a moment even after you got the M1 laptop. I came the other way round, had a 2015 MBP and got a M1 mini now - it is nice for me to have a desktop and a laptop as well, and both coming from different worlds (some legacy stuff on the old machine).
 
For me migrating require a bit more time. Despite a bunch of required fiddling, Big Sur is running well with openCore. I also still have Mojave, Catalina, and BootCamp Windows 10. The system is 12 core 3.0Ghz with a flashed RX-580 and 48GB of RAM.
I have some 40TB of disks on it with an additional 6TB NVME and SSD.
I can see easily running everything on the next gen of MacBook Pro Apple Silicon. My current M1 is close. But I also need an always on system. I also have a mid 2010 mini running as a server.
The most likely approach will be to take a well configured future M2 mini to replace desktop and mini augments by a MacBook Pro M2.
My mini also has a stack of some 30TB USB drives for TimeMachine for various systems across the house. At that time I am looking forward to consolidating all of that,
 
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