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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Can an older Mac be upgraded faster than a new nMP?

Adam Rook

Adam Rook

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I have an older Mac Pro, the silver tower kind. I'm looking at it and wondering of I can upgrade the GPU, CPU, and RAM to make it faster than nMP for considerably less cash.

I was at the Apple store yesterday trying to decide what my next computer will be. Sadly after my experience there I'm afraid I'm just going to have to switch over to PC. Apple just isn't cutting it anymore. It's a sad day for professionals that use Apple. Honestly I never thought this day would come but all, here we are.

So any advice on this? Have any of you guys done this?
 
Upgrading Older MacPro

Upgrading Older MacPro

Shared user experience: https://goo.gl/IYBrJB

Do consider:
- cost and time of sourcing parts
- upgrading agravation + troubleshooting
- machine will not be 'good as new' even after upgrade
- General hardware limits based on machine ID

The Windows/PC platform currently offers more headroom and configuration choices. The plus side of the current MacIntosh offerings has been simplified for anyone interested in a new mac - nMP, MBP or iMac.

Any upgrades to a older Mac Pro should really be considered an extending of its life span. Most current hardware will easily beat a workstation of yesteryear, from a processing standpoint. The points of consternation for new Mac hardware, will the no video card option and USB/Thunderbolt being the only point of connectivity.
 
Adam Rook said:
I have an older Mac Pro, the silver tower kind. I'm looking at it and wondering of I can upgrade the GPU, CPU, and RAM to make it faster than nMP for considerably less cash.

I was at the Apple store yesterday trying to decide what my next computer will be. Sadly after my experience there I'm afraid I'm just going to have to switch over to PC. Apple just isn't cutting it anymore. It's a sad day for professionals that use Apple. Honestly I never thought this day would come but all, here we are.

So any advice on this? Have any of you guys done this?
Click to expand...

http://liftgammagain.com/forum/index.php?threads/adventures-in-switching-to-pc-for-resolve.7592/
 
If you have an old Mac tower that you just can't seem to part with, and you have the time and are willing to spend the $$$ on upgrading it to what top of the line in 2012 would have been, then yes, you can upgrade it. Upgraded to its fullest, the CPU power is going to be close to a 12-core 2013 nMP. Assuming you go to the 3.3GHz dual 6-core configuration. In some benchmarks it will actually be a tiny bit faster for raw computational speed. However, the nMP uses faster memory and much faster internal I/O. The onboard SSD is screamin' and we gain USB 3 and Thunderbolt 2 I/O. The nMP GPUs are decent at best -- pretty much top of the line for 3 years ago, but somewhat hindered by lackluster driver support. And being AMD, we don't have CUDA support on the nMP. And that's the one area where an upgraded Mac tower can provide superior functionality. A GTX 1080 8GB is a pretty good match up for the tower as it will fit within the power envelope. The rest of the system can keep up with that GPU still and feed it just fine, it's going to be bottlenecked on the PCIe v2 interface, but for computational use, there's still enough throughput to take advantage of the card. The tower can hold two of these GPUs if supplemental power is pulled from the optical bays or an external PSU.
 
Look up your macs serial number and see what config it has exactly. if you can get it to the 12 core with a 980 in there you'll be right at where a trashcan in some ways. You'll also be using CUDA which is nice.

But if you need usb 3.0 card, ssd for raid, decklink, etc.... the price point starts to climb to near entry level trashcans. And then the form factor argument has more validity.

So if you just need your machine to playback 4k/5k media, and be able to transcode quickly, yeah the tower will do it for cheaper.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
If you have an old Mac tower that you just can't seem to part with, and you have the time and are willing to spend the $$$ on upgrading it to what top of the line in 2012 would have been, then yes, you can upgrade it. Upgraded to its fullest, the CPU power is going to be close to a 12-core 2013 nMP. Assuming you go to the 3.3GHz dual 6-core configuration. In some benchmarks it will actually be a tiny bit faster for raw computational speed. However, the nMP uses faster memory and much faster internal I/O. The onboard SSD is screamin' and we gain USB 3 and Thunderbolt 2 I/O. The nMP GPUs are decent at best -- pretty much top of the line for 3 years ago, but somewhat hindered by lackluster driver support. And being AMD, we don't have CUDA support on the nMP. And that's the one area where an upgraded Mac tower can provide superior functionality. A GTX 1080 8GB is a pretty good match up for the tower as it will fit within the power envelope. The rest of the system can keep up with that GPU still and feed it just fine, it's going to be bottlenecked on the PCIe v2 interface, but for computational use, there's still enough throughput to take advantage of the card. The tower can hold two of these GPUs if supplemental power is pulled from the optical bays or an external PSU.
Click to expand...


Would you recommend the GTX 1080 over the Titan X?
 
The new Titan X is more powerful and provides more memory, but also draws a lot more power and the system is going to have difficulty feeding it to its potential. Not only due to the PCIe 2.0 slot, but also the system RAM and CPU don't provide enough throughput. So for overall convenience and practicality, yes, the 1080 is probably what I would recommend right now. That said, I no longer have any Mac towers around here and have not done testing with the 1080 vs. the new Titan X in a Mac tower.
 
I just know I need to do something. I had purchased a new 4K monitor (and want to get a second one), but my GTX 780 is not cutting it now. Opened an After Effects project that previously had no problems is now struggling. It is just a back and forth of how I want to spend my money, new system or upgrade, try to stay with Mac or jump to Windows....
 
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