Mac Pro old vs new

[supersonic]

Hi everyone

I hope I am not being redundant here. I searched a little about this but found no certain answers.

I looking in to the possibility of swapping my 2011 MacBook Pro 17" for a faster machine.
I see two options given my budget:

1. New Mac Pro 6-core
2. Old Mac pro 12 core with money to spare to spec it out for the price of the new one

The only thing I would need to sacrifice in the process is going back to using my Apollo in FireWire mode instead of the Thunderbolt one. I can put all my SSDs from the Thunderbolt enclosures into the 12 core.

What do you think?

[apanacci]

I have a 8 core and run a basement studio with a 828MKIII FW. I have 24 gig on board of ram and 4 internal hd,s. 1 is a ssd drive. Runs great! Nothing wrong with getting an older one.

[supersonic]

How does it handle VIs? I have EASTWEST Hollywood, Lass, Komplete Ultimate, Spectrasonics, BFD3 among others. I have them on SSD so they load fast and my system disc is also an SSD so the MacBook is quite swift but playing Hollywood stuff at buffer 256 is a bit challenging.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

If the older machine is in good shape you'll get much more bang for your buck upgrading it, IMO.

[mikehalloran]

If the older machine is in good shape you'll get much more bang for your buck upgrading it, IMO.

There are lots of threads on that. There are plenty of years left in the Mac Pro 3.1/4.1/5.1.

I am trying to justify the nMP but I'll be the first to admit that I don't really need it for anything that I do. It's a rocket ship designed for the HD video editor (I still want one...).

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I want one too, but even buying an iPad MINI for my wife costs like $850 after the retina display, 32 GB, Cellular, a case, and Applecare (and that's after the CA production tax discount. By the time I buy a new MP I'd be looking at about $7500 easy. My 3,1 is very sturdy and runs fine. It thinks faster than I do so as long as the essentially "no wait" state continues and nothing breaks down, I don't see a new desktop on my further for quite a while. A laptop, well, that's always on my radar.

[supersonic]

So a maxed out MP 5,1 could be an option. Interesting. What I am looking for is low latency Vi usage while composing. Will I be able to get that? Say buffer 128 running EW libraries app, BFD etc?

[HCMarkus]

This: h[url]ttp://www.macofalltrades.com/Mac-Pro-2x-2-4GH ... c-m10a.htm[/url]

Plus two of These: http://www.ebay.com/itm/INTEL-XEON-SIX- ... 27e7fa9ef4

Total Cost: $2,585 + thermal paste
Geekbench 64 BIt Multi-Core Score: 27k+
If you are brave, you could try to upgrade a $1,000 2009 Octo, for the same GB result at a total cost (after GPU upgrade) of about $2,000

$3,500 Mac Pro 6,1 Hex
Geekbench 64 BIt Multi-Core Score: 20k+

$5,000 Mac Pro 6,1 Octo
Geekbench 64 BIt Multi-Core Score: 25k+

[supersonic]

My biggest beef is to be able to track with my VIs with a low buffer setting and not get glitches which I am getting on my MBP despite SSD being used for system and libraries.

[mikehalloran]

My biggest beef is to be able to track with my VIs with a low buffer setting and not get glitches which I am getting on my MBP despite SSD being used for system and libraries.

The most tricked out 2011 MBP will attain GeekBench scores of 10400 - 11000. My iMac is around 13,500.

(upgraded MP 4.1) Total Cost: $2,585 + thermal paste
Geekbench 64 BIt Multi-Core Score: 27k+
If you are brave, you could try to upgrade a $1,000 2009 Octo, for the same GB result at a total cost (after GPU upgrade) of about $2,000

$3,500 Mac Pro 6,1 Hex
Geekbench 64 BIt Multi-Core Score: 20k+

$5,000 Mac Pro 6,1 Octo
Geekbench 64 BIt Multi-Core Score: 25k+

Personally, I'm looking at the $3,500 Mac Pro 6,1 Hex. I can get it set up for my needs at around $7.5K including three Apple monitors (I only need two for DP but I use lots of screen real estate in my day job, typically 60-80 tabs open at a time so three will be nice).

[HCMarkus]

You go Mike!

OP, on my (formerly quad 4,1) hex 3.33 5,1 (Geeekbench 15k+) I can run at 128 buffer all day. With three monitors. I don't bother to change buffer for mixing unless the project is very large. Your 2011 MB Pro scores about the same on GB as my G5 Quad Power Mac. It worked great, but bouncing and buffer shifting were imperative.

Today, anyone (with one OR two left hands) can build my MP from a $700 Quad 4,1 plus $300 W3680 Xeon, plus GPU of choice, very easily. I paid more to build mine, but I have enjoyed two years of solid use already.

[Avishai]

Please explain why you still have to use FireWire?
I own an Apollo too.


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[jloeb]

Please explain why you still have to use FireWire?
I own an Apollo too.


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Old Mac Pro towers don't have TBolt.

[SixStringGeek]

This: h[url]ttp://www.macofalltrades.com/Mac-Pro-2x-2-4GH ... c-m10a.htm[/url]

Plus two of These: http://www.ebay.com/itm/INTEL-XEON-SIX- ... 27e7fa9ef4

Total Cost: $2,585 + thermal paste
Geekbench 64 BIt Multi-Core Score: 27k+

You have me thinking hard about this path. It really seems to be the sweet spot for now.

Is it really as easy as getting in the box, pulling the processor drawers and plugging in new chips (I read the chip replacement tutorial - seems doable)? I assume I can more more less just move the 4 internal drives from my MacPro2,1.

[Avishai]

If I were in your shoes I would wait and not go backward in time.
I run a MacBook Pro mid 2011 that does not support tbolt and I run my Apollo quad via FireWire
I am also very enthusiastic to upgrade my mac but frankly the mbp line is out of date and I rather wait for an update from Apple.

Beside if you need lots of CPU power I'll consider Mac Pro. For the price you pay it is a good deal.
These are top of the line components that would last you for years of upgrades.


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