Opinions on a used Mac Pro

[JZilla]

Hey folks. I was hoping to put off buying a new Mac Pro until the new ones were released, but my current Stone Age machine has other ideas, and is deciding to die early (prohibitory sign on startup, not booting into safe mode, needing to reinstall OS twice in a month, yelling "Get off my lawn" at the neighbourhood kids, etc.). A buddy has a 2009 Quad 2.93 GHz machine that he's willing to give me a good deal on, I just want to make sure it can handle the load. I'm really just looking for something to hold me over for a year or so until the new Macs come out and we can see how they hold up, as well as seeing how it goes for expansion options and Thunderbolt options from other manufacturers.

In my setup, I'm using DP 8.04 hosting VE Pro 5, with almost all of my VIs and samples coming from a slave PC. Generally speaking I've got 3-6 instances of VE, with as few instances of the Event Input as possible, since I'd heard that DP wasn't handling those very efficiently. I use minimal FX inside DP while tracking (a few EQs and a couple of instances of Breeze along with UAD plugs is about as crazy as I get). When using my full template I can't go any lower than a buffer of 512, even with that I'm peaking DPs CPU meter and usually getting dropouts and glitches.

My current machine is a 2006 Quad 2.66 GHz that I went and replaced with a 8-core 3.0 GHz CPU, and 16 GB of RAM. I was hoping that with a faster CPU that I'd see some big improvements in performance, but in reality it ended up being only slightly better than the stock CPU.

The "new" computer is a 2009 (4,1) Quad 2.93 GHz with 12 GB RAM. Since I'm mostly using the Mac for routing VE into DP, do you think it'll be at least as good as the old codger, or perhaps even a little better? Anyone have experience with these machines in this context?

Thanks folks.

[HCMarkus]

I bought the 2.66 Quad version of the 4,1 but never used it for DP prior to upgrading the EFI to 5,1 and the CPU to a Hex 3.33 Westmere, under which the machine has been perfect for me.

If you get a good deal on the Mac from your friend, you can try out the quad. If it doesn't have enough mojo for you, the hex processor is under $600 new. The EFI upgrade is free/donation from Netkas.org. The upgrade is very easy to do on the single CPU 4,1 Mac Pros, and the end result is equivalent (with the exception of the GPU) to the 2012 hex Mac Pro.

[donreynolds]

I bought mine refurbished from Apple. Got the whole warranty minus the fancy box. I like buying refurbished items as the defect has already manifested itself and it was inspected by hand prior to resale. Personal touch.

My experiences have been good with both my MacPRo and Macbook Pro.


They are cheaper also. I recommend it.