MP 1,1-5,1 Upgrade my Mac Pro 5,1 to 12 core Dual processor or get a MP 7,1 or newer Mac?

[quadra605]

I have a 2012 Mac Pro 5,1 3.33GHz 6-Core Xeon with 48GB & an RX 580 8GB GPU running macOS 10.13.6. I work daily with Pro Tools and weekly with FCP X.
Would upgrading to a 12 core Dual processor (and the ability to increase my RAM) give me much of a performance boost or should I be looking at a newer Mac? I've never been a fan of the form factor of the "garbage can" Mac Pro (all my internal drive bays are in use on the 5,1) and the newest MP is pricey.

The dual core upgrade isn't cheap either, and I'm wondering if the perfomance boost makes the the upgrade worth it, or if the money would be better spent being put toward a new(er) machine?

Thanks!

 

[tsialex]

I have a 2012 Mac Pro 5,1 3.33GHz 6-Core Xeon with 48GB & an RX 580 8GB GPU running macOS 10.13.6. I work daily with Pro Tools and weekly with FCP X.
Would upgrading to a 12 core Dual processor (and the ability to increase my RAM) give me much of a performance boost or should I be looking at a newer Mac? I've never been a fan of the form factor of the "garbage can" Mac Pro (all my internal drive bays are in use on the 5,1) and the newest MP is pricey.

The dual core upgrade isn't cheap either, and I'm wondering if the perfomance boost makes the the upgrade worth it, or if the money would be better spent being put toward a new(er) machine?

Thanks!

Anything you do will be a considerable investment. Maybe you need to look at what on your workflow takes the most time to complete and optimize for that.

ProTools will benefit from a mix of upgrades: more RAM, more cores and faster storage.

FCP X can be optimized with more CPU cores and faster storage, but most performance gains will probably come with a GPU upgrade (VEGA 64/Radeon VII), since a lot of time is spent on video decompression/compression/conversion/colour grading that can be greatly improved with VideoToolBox hardware acceleration.

MP6,1 probably won't be a good fit for you, since you will have storage problems and won't have any VideoToolBox hardware acceleration for FCP X without an eGPU.

 

[Sharky II]

It depends where the bottleneck is in your workflow.

These two options are also so completely different in terms of cost.

 

[quadra605]

Anything you do will be a considerable investment. Maybe you need to look at what on your workflow takes the most time to complete and optimize for that.

ProTools will benefit from a mix of upgrades: more RAM, more cores and faster storage.

FCP X can be optimized with more CPU cores and faster storage, but most performance gains will probably come with a GPU upgrade (VEGA 64/Radeon VII), since a lot of time is spent on video decompression/compression/conversion/colour grading that can be greatly improved with VideoToolBox hardware acceleration.

MP6,1 probably won't be a good fit for you, since you will have storage problems and won't have any VideoToolBox hardware acceleration for FCP X without an eGPU.

Thank you so much for the advice. Pro Tools is not the bottleneck so much as performance in FCP X (and Motion). Are you saying that even with the 8GB Radeon RX 580, there is still room for better performance with a faster GPU? Is there a thread on this with some more insight into what's available?

 

[quadra605]

It depends where the bottleneck is in your workflow.

These two options are also so completely different in terms of cost.

Thanks. The bottleneck comes more from FCP X than anything else. Pro Tools is pretty much problem-free (thank goodness!)

 

[tsialex]

Thank you so much for the advice. Pro Tools is not the bottleneck so much as performance in FCP X (and Motion). Are you saying that even with the 8GB Radeon RX 580, there is still room for better performance with a faster GPU? Is there a thread on this with some more insight into what's available?

FCP X performance can be greatly improved with VideoToolBox hardware assistance (what is called here AMD hardware acceleration).

If you enable it and install a better GPU, Radeon VII is the best GPU that you can have on a MacPro5,1 for compute jobs, you will optimize the time spent on video decompression/compression/conversion/colour grading greatly. Don't forget that if your storage is suboptimal, upgrading the GPU alone won't solve your bottleneck problems. FCP X is where hardware assistance shines, when enabled.

I suppose you already enabled it for your RX 580? If not this is the thread:

Activate AMD hardware acceleration

[For existing OpenCore users, you can always download my latest OpenCore package at post #1314 for update] Full HWAccel achieved now! Everything is covered in the OpenCore thread. The step by step tutorial to enable AMD hardware acceleration is now at here, but I strongly recommend you go...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[quadra605]

deleted

 

[quadra605]

FCP X performance can be greatly improved with VideoToolBox hardware assistance (what is called here AMD hardware acceleration).

If you enable it and install a better GPU, Radeon VII is the best GPU that you can have on a MacPro5,1 for compute jobs, you will optimize the time spent on video decompression/compression/conversion/colour grading greatly. Don't forget that if your storage is suboptimal, upgrading the GPU alone won't solve your bottleneck problems. FCP X is where hardware assistance shines, when enabled.

I suppose you already enabled it for your RX 580? If not this is the thread:

Activate AMD hardware acceleration

[For existing OpenCore users, you can always download my latest OpenCore package at post #1314 for update] Full HWAccel achieved now! Everything is covered in the OpenCore thread. The step by step tutorial to enable AMD hardware acceleration is now at here, but I strongly recommend you go...

forums.macrumors.com

No, I haven't enabled hardware acceleration on the RX580 and, looking through the link you posted, with OpenCore it looks like the kind of project I would need to set a weekend aside to install--and perhaps test on my back-up 5,1 first! Also I'm still running macOS 10.13.6 and the link seemed to indicate I should be runinning 10.14.

As to the issue of storage, I have 10TB of internal storage for video & audio (multiple disks, no RAID), and altho my system drive is SSD, everything else are regular SATA drives--I'm guessing they can also slow things down?

I will also look at the Radeon VII you mentioned, I was not aware was something better than the RX 580 out there

 

[tsialex]

No, I haven't enabled hardware acceleration on the RX580 and, looking through the link you posted, with OpenCore it looks like the kind of project I would need to set a weekend aside to install--and perhaps test on my back-up 5,1 first! Also I'm still running macOS 10.13.6 and the link seemed to indicate I should be runinning 10.14.

As to the issue of storage, I have 10TB of internal storage for video & audio, and altho my system drive is SSD, everything else are regular SATA drives.

I will also look at the Radeon VII you mentioned, I was not aware was something better than the RX 580 out there

Radeon VII performance improvements with video decompression/compression/conversion/colour grading are usually around 100 to 120% over a Radeon Pulse RX 580, when hardware acceleration is enabled for both GPUs.

For other compute jobs the improvements are even greater, it's the best GPU for compute jobs that can be installed on a MacPro5,1 by far, the problems are the high cost (extremely sought after GPU with limited availability now) and the need to be powered by a Pixla's mod.

 

[tsialex]

I have 10TB of internal storage for video & audio (multiple disks, no RAID), and altho my system drive is SSD, everything else are regular SATA drives--I'm guessing they can also slow things down?

When you already have a good compute GPU, the high throughput and latency of fast NVMe storage is a must for video. Hard disks can't keep with the throughput and latency needs at the same time, a fast scratch NVMe is practically a requirement for removing bottlenecks with video editing.

 

[krakman]

macOS 10.13.6

any reason you are using this?

you can upgrade to Mojave without trouble and Catalina works with a little bit of hacking. So then you can use the latest FCPX with the latest gpu drivers in Mac OS

 

[quadra605]

any reason you are using this?

you can upgrade to Mojave without trouble and Catalina works with a little bit of hacking. So then you can use the latest FCPX with the latest gpu drivers in Mac OS

Fair question. I used to upgrade my Macs like clockwork, but I use Pro Tools on a daily basis, and having a stable system is paramount. Nowadays I only upgrade to the next OS when there is a real need.

So, youre saying there's an advantage to installing Mojave? I have 10.14 running on a back-up 4,1 (with firmware upgraded to 5,1) that's sort of my back-up/testing machine.

 

[flygbuss]

Since even the latest ProTools version performs quite well with 10.13.6 on a 5,1, I would keep 10.13.6 for your audio setup and start looking into OC + a newer macOS for your work with FCPX on a different drive.
It means you’d have two different startup disks but that way you’d avoid unwanted trouble or incompatibilities affecting your ProTools workflow.

Edit: I know about the importance of a reliable ProTools system

 

[quadra605]

Since even the latest ProTools version performs quite well with 10.13.6 on a 5,1, I would keep 10.13.6 for your audio setup and start looking into OC + a newer macOS for your work with FCPX on a different drive.
It means you’d have two different startup disks but that way you’d avoid unwanted trouble or incompatibilities affecting your ProTools workflow.

Edit: I know about the importance of a reliable ProTools system

Thanks. As mentioned, I do have 10.14 installed on a 2009 Mac Pro with a 5,1 firmware upgrade. I may install OpenCore there and see how it goes. Being able to do everythig on the same machine would be optimal, as many of my FCP X projects use audio I have recorded in PT first.

 

[quadra605]

When you already have a good compute GPU, the high throughput and latency of fast NVMe storage is a must for video. Hard disks can't keep with the throughput and latency needs at the same time, a fast scratch NVMe is practically a requirement for removing bottlenecks with video editing.

It's probably time to look at NVMe more seriously--altho I think I'm starting to run out of PCI slots!

 

[flygbuss]

Thanks. As mentioned, I do have 10.14 installed on a 2009 Mac Pro with a 5,1 firmware upgrade. I may install OpenCore there and see how it goes. Being able to do everythig on the same machine would be optimal, as many of my FCP X projects use audio I have recorded in PT first.

That would still be possible. I guess you have your sessions on a separate disk, so even if you boot with OC and a different macOS you’d still be able to access your audio files and sessions. You could even try out having ProTools on that OC partition and see how that goes. As soon as you run into issues you boot with High Sierra and have your working and reliable PT system at hands.
So: One and the same machine but two macOS systems with all your work accessible across those systems. Just stay clear of Big Sur for now until the issues with macOS 11 and the cMP are solved.

 

[randy85]

I think you would be very pleased with a 7.1 if you can make that work. You don't have to go crazy - the 12c or 16c model with a W6800X and aftermarket ram will do the job just fine.

My 7.1 is so stable and I never put any thought into which version of OS I'm using. I just update it automatically and everything works.

The only thing I'd consider is waiting for the next Mac event to see what comes out.

 

[KeesMacPro]

It's probably time to look at NVMe more seriously--altho I think I'm starting to run out of PCI slots!

You could also make a combination of advantages that come with certain setups.
OC doesnt necessarily mean you have to install Catalina or newer.
You could install an NVMe (or multiple) blade and install OC on it running Mojave.
This will give you a very stable OS with very fast storage and Hardware Acceleration.
I'm running this on one of my MP4,1>5,1 and it works excellent.
This approach to install OC makes it easy to choose all options you prefer to apply:

OpenCore on the Mac Pro

This guide explains how to use the excellent OpenCore boot loader to install, run, and update the latest version of macOS on the MacPro5,1, resulting in a clean, unaltered operating system just like on a supported Mac.

forums.macrumors.com

Note that max I/O speed is only achieved with a switch card e.g. HighPoint .
Another point is that you could use this hardware too in a MP7,1 somewhere in the future, so the investment is not limited to this device.

PCIe SSDs - NVMe & AHCI

This is a general info thread for blade SSDs that can be used in the Mac Pro. This is a WikiPost so anyone with the proper credentials may edit it. NVMe SSDs can be used as a boot drive in the MP5,1 and MP6,1 with the latest firmware installed (beginning with version 140.0.0.0.0 for MP5,1 and...

forums.macrumors.com

BTW: Logic definitely benefits a lot from more CPU cores (dual CPU vs single), I'm convinced PT does the same.
On the other hand, a dual CPU tray is a considerable investment...

XRG is a very handy tool to get an idea of the usage of CPU, GPU, RAM etc etc

 

[avro707]

I have a 2012 Mac Pro 5,1 3.33GHz 6-Core Xeon with 48GB & an RX 580 8GB GPU running macOS 10.13.6. I work daily with Pro Tools and weekly with FCP X.
Would upgrading to a 12 core Dual processor (and the ability to increase my RAM) give me much of a performance boost or should I be looking at a newer Mac? I've never been a fan of the form factor of the "garbage can" Mac Pro (all my internal drive bays are in use on the 5,1) and the newest MP is pricey.

The dual core upgrade isn't cheap either, and I'm wondering if the perfomance boost makes the the upgrade worth it, or if the money would be better spent being put toward a new(er) machine?

Thanks!

I'm about to do the 12 core upgrade to my 5,1 Mac Pro (as a dual Xeon 3.46ghz X5690) and I have the RX580 just as you do. I'm running Big Sur 11.2.3 on a 2.5" Samsung 1TB SSD. I could re-install everything from scratch as a clean install and kept my old Mojave install on the old HDD.

I also have a very maxxed out Mac Pro 6,1 trash-can which I picked up second hand (in the original box) that is 1TB, 64GB 1866mhz and 12 core Xeon E5 2965V2 (2.4ghz) and soon to add the 2.7ghz to it (the processor is here). I don't think that's a good fit. They run a lot warmer and they just don't have the easy upgrade options. The graphics cards on them are bespoke as well. It's a beautiful machine. But the old cheesegrater is more flexible.

I second the idea of finding a Radeon VII 16GB and doing as suggested before. But the Radeon VII is now extremely expensive second hand. And most of them I see appear to have been "mined" so they are probably burned out.

On that note, maybe a 7,1 would be the easier option.

 

[arche3]

Mac pro 51 has limited use even upgraded etc... for video work. It just is not stable under load with modern gpus for video. It is more trouble than it's worth.

 

[fuchsdh]

At this point I think you're much better off putting the money you'd put into upgrades into a fund to get a modern Mac Pro than sinking them into a better-part-of-ten-years-old machine.

If you were going with a new Mac in the meantime, an eGPU-equipped Mac mini would still have the drawbacks of external expansion as the 6,1 but would likely be cheaper and faster on everything except heavy multicore loads.

 

[quadra605]

That would still be possible. I guess you have your sessions on a separate disk, so even if you boot with OC and a different macOS you’d still be able to access your audio files and sessions. You could even try out having ProTools on that OC partition and see how that goes. As soon as you run into issues you boot with High Sierra and have your working and reliable PT system at hands.
So: One and the same machine but two macOS systems with all your work accessible across those systems. Just stay clear of Big Sur for now until the issues with macOS 11 and the cMP are solved.

That seems like it should work, but my question is since I'm using a stock RX580, you don't get a boot screen with that--and I don't think OC runs on High Sierra. So it would mean swapping to my old card to boot back into Mojave. Unless there's a work-around I'm not aware of? That little stumble aside, I always like to keep a full back-up of my previous system on a separate HD "just in case"! And yes, I have my audio & video sessions stored on separate internal HD's.

 

[quadra605]

You could also make a combination of advantages that come with certain setups.
OC doesnt necessarily mean you have to install Catalina or newer.
You could install an NVMe (or multiple) blade and install OC on it running Mojave.
This will give you a very stable OS with very fast storage and Hardware Acceleration.
I'm running this on one of my MP4,1>5,1 and it works excellent.
This approach to install OC makes it easy to choose all options you prefer to apply:

OpenCore on the Mac Pro

This guide explains how to use the excellent OpenCore boot loader to install, run, and update the latest version of macOS on the MacPro5,1, resulting in a clean, unaltered operating system just like on a supported Mac.

forums.macrumors.com

Note that max I/O speed is only achieved with a switch card e.g. HighPoint .
Another point is that you could use this hardware too in a MP7,1 somewhere in the future, so the investment is not limited to this device.

PCIe SSDs - NVMe & AHCI

This is a general info thread for blade SSDs that can be used in the Mac Pro. This is a WikiPost so anyone with the proper credentials may edit it. NVMe SSDs can be used as a boot drive in the MP5,1 and MP6,1 with the latest firmware installed (beginning with version 140.0.0.0.0 for MP5,1 and...

forums.macrumors.com

BTW: Logic definitely benefits a lot from more CPU cores (dual CPU vs single), I'm convinced PT does the same.
On the other hand, a dual CPU tray is a considerable investment...

XRG is a very handy tool to get an idea of the usage of CPU, GPU, RAM etc etc

All good advice. Installing NVMe's and the upgrade to OC + Mojave seems like a good interim upgrade with minimal cost.

 

[flygbuss]

That seems like it should work, but my question is since I'm using a stock RX580, you don't get a boot screen with that--and I don't think OC runs on High Sierra. So it would mean swapping to my old card to boot back into Mojave. Unless there's a work-around I'm not aware of? That little stumble aside, I always like to keep a full back-up of my previous system on a separate HD "just in case"! And yes, I have my audio & video sessions stored on separate internal HD's.

I’m not a hundred percent sure but wouldn’t give OC you a boot screen?
So for example: You keep your existing 10.13.6 install and add an additional drive with OC and Mojave for hardware acceleration and FCPX. Maybe someone more experienced with OC can chime in?

 

[KeesMacPro]

I’m not a hundred percent sure but wouldn’t give OC you a boot screen?

Yes, OC provides a boot screen.

So for example: You keep your existing 10.13.6 install and add an additional drive with OC and Mojave for hardware acceleration and FCPX. Maybe someone more experienced with OC can chime in?

Yes, this is very well possible.
OC will also give you a boot picker at startup to choose an OS , and the possibility to set an OS as default to boot from after e.g. 10 seconds without manual interference.