# MacPro 5,1 Relic: what to do with it.....



## Dewdman42

Title says it all. What to do with the still currently viable 5,1 MacPros that many of us have and are still using, but have been deprecated by Apple, not only for OSX, but as of yesterday, also for LogicPro.

If possible I'd like this thread to remain constructive, rather than a pity party about how Apple sucks or the opposing view, which will get us nowhere. Rather I'd like to see practical information about what to do with this hardware, which is still in my opinion quite usable and valuable for the foreseeable future.

*Catalina*

I am typing this message from a 5,1 that has Catalina installed via the DosDude patcher. So I will comment first about that.

It works. LogicPro 10.6 works.


Catalina is not 100% perfect. The fonts are blurry compared to Mojave. I think this is probably a hardware acceleration issue that if I figure out I will post here on this thread. Supposedly this patched version cannot run future updates of Catalina, but I was just able to run a security update just fine...so we shall see. Supposedly HVEC and some other hardware accelerated video formats are not supported with this patch, but there might be some hacks to make that work, I will update this thread if I figure it out.
*Open Core*

6 months ago, the information about running Catalina on 5,1 was that DosDude was the man. But since then some Apple updates came out that apparently gave those users some grief with updating, and problems with HVEC and hardware acceleration were discovered. Since then people have been migrating to Open Core for this, which appears to be the best way, but about 100x more complicated to setup, and frankly I think most people on this forum will not want to go that route.

*Big Sur*

There are some people running BigSur on the 5,1, also using OpenCore, but allegedly this has more issues then Catalina and I want to hear a lot more info about this over the coming months. I expect it will have issues, and the whole ARM transition is going to multiply that situation to be worse and worse.

*Alternatives*

So there are several alternatives for what to do with this hardware.


Leave it on Mojave, use whatever you can until it doesn't serve your needs anymore. This is my #1 choice right now because this will be the most stable and reliable situation and will not involve any hacking whatsoever. Things will work as they were intended. Most DAW's and plugins are still compatible on Mojave and will be for the foreseeable future, at least a couple more years, though the ARM transition might force some of them to draw a line in the sand and force their future updates to be only Big Sur and newer at some point. We shall see.

For the moment, this is only an issue if you care about the latest features and bug-fixes of LogicPro/Mainstage.


DosDude Patched Catalina. This will kind of work and get you to LogicPro 10.6, however as noted there are drawbacks. Also DosDude has stated that BigSur has many more complications than Catalina in terms of patching it and it may be a while, if ever, that older machines will be able to run a patched version of BigSur. I also think that Apple is going to move LogicPro on to the BigSur architecture as soon as possible and they are going to push for ARM everywhere. In the long run that will be cool, but for our 5,1's, we will be ultimately shut out completely at some point. In other words, its quite likely that if you upgrade to Catalina you'll get LPX 10.6 but probably not the next version of LogicPro after that. So is it worth it? I think probably not.


Open Core Catalina. this will work better then DosDude's. This is not a terrible idea, if you have the skills to do it. Its not for the faint of heart. Read about how to do it here:









OpenCore on the Mac Pro


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




forums.macrumors.com





Theoretically, I haven't tried it yet, this seems to make 5,1 work extremely well with Catalina, including hardware acceleration, HVEC support, standard updates from the Apple updater, etc. So.. that might be able to get you one more up-to-date-year out of the MP5,1, possibly very cleanly, but I can't promise anything until I try it, which I am not inclined to do until I have completely used up my patience with option#1 (mojave forever).


Open Core Big Sur (and beyond). We shall see. I think probably people will get Big Sur working, at least initially. However I expect an onslaught of ARM-motivated changes coming from Apple over the next 2 years which will hit BigSur and the next OSX very hard...rendering it increasingly difficult to keep the MP5,1 as well as other Hackintosh computers completely up to date or working reliably. We shall see how it all shakes out, but just want to point out...this is not something we can really plan on being able to do yet.


Open Core Windows 10. its not out of the question, at some point, to covert the MP5,1 over to a 12 core Windows 10 box. For me this will be last resort, probably not unless/until Apple comes out with a new piece of hardware that I am willing to buy. Then I will probably convert my MP5,1 into a windows box. Or I might do it anyway if I get fed up with the ARM transition, because I feel that its a matter of time until Steinberg, PreSonus and everyone else will draw a line in the sand and will move on to new versions of their software that require the very last ARM-ready version of OSX... (ie, at least BigSur)...and at some point Intel will be entirely left in the dust on the Mac Platform. But this box can still function as a very quite decent Windows10 machine, but using OpenCore to set it up. So Cubase13 on Windows10 running on a cMP.....totally doable and not out of the question. It would probably make a pretty decent VePro server also.


Dual Boot. With Open Core its also possible to setup dual boot situations, so that you can boot into the ancient Mojave, or Windows10, or Catalina or whatever...and by the way if you have a Metal GPU and no boot screen, Open Core gives you a boot screen too! So that is definitely the techie way to keep using this hardware for years to come, but Open Core is currently not even remotely easy to setup. So there is that.
That's all I have for now. I will look forward to hearing other ideas about what to do with this hardware. Myself I'm going to stay with Mojave for the time being...and at least for now, LogicPro hasn't added any new features I can't live without, though it looks like they may have fixed that disappearing articulation set bug in LPX10.6, which means the only way to lose that bug will be to buy a new computer (or try open core Catalina I guess), if I want to keep using LogicPro.


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## IFM

Why not turn it into a VEP slave? Throw W10 on there or just leave it with the last OSX possible to run VEP and go for it. Get a Mini as the main machine?


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## Dewdman42

Follow up to the blurry fonts I got when I installed DosDude patched Catalina, its fixed with the following:

https://gist.github.com/hookydev/6a88c5f1d5edd697b7f47f787a66afe1 (Font fix)


namely doing this:



Code:


defaults write -g CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled -bool NO
defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 1


This is possibly only a problem, as well as a valid fix; for people using HiDPI, non-apple-branded Retina monitors.

_EDIT:.. hmm, well maybe. I initially felt like maybe it cleaned up my fonts, but the Mail app fonts still look crappy and fuzzy compared to Mojave...so...maybe not quite solved yet.. This might be related to lack of proper hardware acceleration also (OpenCore would that)_


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## jononotbono

IFM said:


> Why not turn it into a VEP slave? Throw W10 on there or just leave it with the last OSX possible to run VEP and go for it. Get a Mini as the main machine?



This.


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## Dewdman42

Was one of the options I included in the first post. Certainly a good way to put it to use as a windows Box. I do not have confidence that VePro will continue to run well in the future on Mojave. At some point they will be forced to follow the ARM train also.


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## Dewdman42

In my case, I am not able to make this transition now because I have invested thousands of dollars on other midi and audio hardware that will not work on any current apple Mac except for the 2019 MP, price out of the question..and actually my MOTU midi hardware is reportedly unstable according to MOTU tech support, so I'd have to replace that too. So for me...I'm more interested to keep the MP5,1 going a few more years as my primary DAW until apple releases a mid tier pro solution on arm.

Eventually.... I will move to a new primary computer..then the MP5,1 could become a VePro server. That's a few years away for me and personally I think its too soon to relegate this hardware to only that purpose just yet. We need a true replacement from Apple first that doesn't cost as much as a car.


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## jononotbono

Dewdman42 said:


> In my case, I am not able to make this transition now because I have invested thousands of dollars on other midi and audio hardware that will not work on any current apple Mac except for the 2019 MP, price out of the question..and actually my MOTU midi hardware is reportedly unstable according to MOTU tech support, so I'd have to replace that too. So for me...I'm more interested to keep the MP5,1 going a few more years as my primary DAW until apple releases a mid tier pro solution on arm.
> 
> Eventually.... I will move to a new primary computer..then the MP5,1 could become a VePro server. That's a few years away for me and personally I think its too soon to relegate this hardware to only that purpose just yet. We need a true replacement from Apple first that doesn't cost as much as a car.



What MOTU midi interface are you using that’s unstable with latest Mac Pro?


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## Dewdman42

Unstable with catalina, according to motu, which would include the new mp. 

Several mtpav’s


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## Vik

Dewdman42 said:


> In other words, its quite likely that if you upgrade to Catalina you'll get LPX 10.6 but probably not the next version of LogicPro after that.


At some point in the future, maybe in two years from now, all Macs will be based on Apple silicon – and some time after that (5 years??), Logic will probably require an ARM based Mac. The OS will also require an ARM Mac at some point. So, for people like us, who'll gladly (?) use our Macs 10 years if possible, it's worth considering that long perspective also. Personally, I'll wait a while and see what happens, and even consider selling my 5,1 Mac to someone who mainly deal with audio recordings and not VIs – and spend whatever I get for it towards a temporary solution before going all ARM. That could be a fast iMac, one of the Intel Macs that aren't released yet. 

I would also consider using a powerful 5.1 Mac for a few more years – even if there would be some blurry fonts here and there – and combine this with using a Mini, MBP for mail and everything other than Logic. 

Maybe it's easier to switch to another MIDI interface than diving into Open Core or getting a new Mac?


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## Dewdman42

Yea, the point i was trying to make above is that I think the next version of LogicPro after 10.6, will require Big Sur. And right now I have serious mis givings about that ever being generally useful on the MP5,1. So what I'm trying to say is that it may (or may not) make sense to jump through hoops to upgrade an MP5,1 to OpenCore, etc..if all it will buy you is one more year of using LogicPro 10.6 and then you'll be quite likely blocked from there.

I agree what you're saying about ARM, I think its too soon to jump on that ship also, that's why we are kind of stuck in the middle for a couple years since Apple is deprecating hard now the MP5,1 ,but doesn't have a reasonable replacement solution (yet). 

The Midi Interface works totally fine with Mojave by the way. What I'm trying to say is that if I upgrade my computer because I don't want to be stuck on Mojave anymore, I will have to buy thousands of dollars worth of replacement audio and midi gear to go along with it.

If I Open Core it to Catalina, then I can get my audio gear to last another year or so, but the midi gear might not work, according to MOTU tech support, I won't know for sure until I try it. That is approx $1k worth of new midi gear I'd need there.

Most likely the path I am going to follow is:


Stay on Mojave for now, experiment with Catalina on the side if and when I have time. Stay with LPX 10.5 for now


If I figure out OpenCore, maybe I will upgrade the machine to Catalina, which will get me one more year on LPX 10.6. But I might have to buy new midi gear.


I don't have any confidence about reliably running Big Sur on this box, based on everything I have read, but never know, if they figure it out, I'll try it sure why not.


After that I will wait until either Apple releases a new machine I love, absolutely must be on ARM; ideally with PCI slots. Or... I will slug along with whatever version of LPX and everything else I am using until I am tired of being left behind...then I will likely turn the MP5,1 into a windows box to run whatever and I'll decide at that time which DAW and platform I want to use for my main workstation.


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## Dewdman42

and PS, I will be following Cubase the whole time. It might be time to switch back to PCWindows running Cubase.


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## Michael Antrum

Well, I'm in a similar boat to you, except that I use Cubase. I plan to keep the old faithful going for the next year or so until the new Mac Pro Mini, or whatever it's going to be called, is here.

At that point I'll either buy one of those, or I may even move to a PC desktop if Apple disappoints.

To be honest, I was ready to buy a new Macbbok Pro this week, but not one with 16gb RAM. 

I am hopeful though that Apple will come thorugh with the serious horsepower next year.....


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## Dewdman42

I think you're in good shape Michael. If I were you I would not even think of going past Mojave yet on the MP5,1. I still think box has a lot of life left in it, but it may be running Windows eventually.


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## Shad0wLandsUK

> *Open Core*
> 
> 6 months ago, the information about running Catalina on 5,1 was that DosDude was the man. But since then some Apple updates came out that apparently gave those users some grief with updating, and problems with HVEC and hardware acceleration were discovered. Since then people have been migrating to Open Core for this, which appears to be the best way, but about 100x more complicated to setup, and frankly I think most people on this forum will not want to go that route.


I do have this working on my Mac Pro (2012) running 10.15.7
I initially tried it so I could run Windows in UEFI without the issue faced using the native Mac Pro approach

Smooth running so far as well
I did not find this too hard, I believe (coming from a hackintosh user 8 years ago), the process has got a lot simpler
With the guidance being very comprehensive (unlike all those DSDT and AML edits back then) gosh 

I see a bright future, even if short, for my Mac Pro
Failing all use for Music I will turn it into an ESXi system for running Virtual machines for IT Infrastructure

But, right now it hosts my VE Pro with Kontakt libraries nicely


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## Michael Antrum

My Pro is on Mojave, and to be honest, I can't see any reason why I'd want to go to the trouble of getting Catalina wokring, rather than just sticking with Mojave....


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## Nick Batzdorf

This is the first thing I've wanted to run that I can't.

Fuck.


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## Dewdman42

Shad0wLandsUK said:


> I do have this working on my Mac Pro (2012) running 10.15.7
> I initially tried it so I could run Windows in UEFI without the issue faced using the native Mac Pro approach



Any and all insights about what you did to get this working would be appreciated here, ideally whittled down in a way that is easier to follow then the MacRumors threads, which are often ridiculously verbose and left brained to the point of giving me a headache...


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## Dewdman42

Nick Batzdorf said:


> This is the first thing I've wanted to run that I can't.



Its pretty much the ONLY program I was worried about becoming Catalina-only earlier then necessary...and actually I still thought we might have yet another year before even hitting this wall.


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## Nick Batzdorf

Yeah, I get frustrated every time I read about it, and say the same thing every time.

And Apple doesn't have a machine that's suitable for moving Logic to yet.


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## Dewdman42

Nick Batzdorf said:


> And Apple doesn't have a machine that's suitable for moving Logic to yet.



That's really the biggest problem in my view

Looking at it historically... The MP cheese graters came out...and they were Apple's pro machine. PCI slots, lots of cpu, internal expandability..you know the list. They kept upgrading it more and more powerful. But sometime after about 2010 they decided to stop doing that. The 2012 was not really any better then 2010, they were just continuing to sell it. They did that 2013 trashcan thing, which was arguably a huge mistake. After that lots of prosumers still wanted that power, but all Apple did from then until now is release one after another mini and iMac...which some prosumers made work, but many prosumers were not content with that...particularly if they had invested in custom displays, PCI cards, internal storage, etc. There was all this chaos of change that whole time about Firewire, thunderbolt, thunderbolt3, etc.. Many people found it much more advantageous to keep their cheesegrater and even upgrade the CPU's in them too, because all things considered...still the best solution. 

Finally they came out with the 2019MP but for way too much money. It went too far. Very select few pros can justify the price of that one, a lot of small time operators and semi-pro, can't even remotely justify the price of it. So still we wait..

Then they say less then a year later...oh wait, we're going to move "everything" to ARM within two years.

So who in their right mind would buy one of those expensive 2019MP's now? I sure wouldn't. I actually would not buy any new intel mac from Apple at this point. I think many people will be very reluctant to. As soon as Apple realizes that they are REALLY going to put down the pedal in trying to get the entire MacOS industry to move to ARM. But honestly..I think we're still at least two years out from having something that can truly replace our Cheesegraters.

So..we're in limbo now. At this point...everything we do will be short term transitionary solutions....which very well might included buying a used-market intel lessor solution that can at least run Catalina. I'd really like in this thread to explore the details and information about keeping our MP5,1's operating as long as possible so we can get through that two years and move on to ARM after that.


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## kabinboy

Dewdman42 said:


> Yea, the point i was trying to make above is that I think the next version of LogicPro after 10.6, will require Big Sur. And right now I have serious mis givings about that ever being generally useful on the MP5,1. So what I'm trying to say is that it may (or may not) make sense to jump through hoops to upgrade an MP5,1 to OpenCore, etc..if all it will buy you is one more year of using LogicPro 10.6 and then you'll be quite likely blocked from there.
> 
> I agree what you're saying about ARM, I think its too soon to jump on that ship also, that's why we are kind of stuck in the middle for a couple years since Apple is deprecating hard now the MP5,1 ,but doesn't have a reasonable replacement solution (yet).
> 
> The Midi Interface works totally fine with Mojave by the way. What I'm trying to say is that if I upgrade my computer because I don't want to be stuck on Mojave anymore, I will have to buy thousands of dollars worth of replacement audio and midi gear to go along with it.
> 
> If I Open Core it to Catalina, then I can get my audio gear to last another year or so, but the midi gear might not work, according to MOTU tech support, I won't know for sure until I try it. That is approx $1k worth of new midi gear I'd need there.
> 
> Most likely the path I am going to follow is:
> 
> 
> Stay on Mojave for now, experiment with Catalina on the side if and when I have time. Stay with LPX 10.5 for now
> 
> 
> If I figure out OpenCore, maybe I will upgrade the machine to Catalina, which will get me one more year on LPX 10.6. But I might have to buy new midi gear.
> 
> 
> I don't have any confidence about reliably running Big Sur on this box, based on everything I have read, but never know, if they figure it out, I'll try it sure why not.
> 
> 
> After that I will wait until either Apple releases a new machine I love, absolutely must be on ARM; ideally with PCI slots. Or... I will slug along with whatever version of LPX and everything else I am using until I am tired of being left behind...then I will likely turn the MP5,1 into a windows box to run whatever and I'll decide at that time which DAW and platform I want to use for my main workstation.



I thnk you've got it figured out. This sounds like a good plan. If you can get by with Mojave and the compatible version of Logic for a year or more, that should give time enough to Apple to release a more suitable ARM mac for you, and then Logic will really rock.

I too am a 5,1 holdout from 2009. I just finished my 6th season of cartoon music scoring on High Sierra and Cubase 9. The secret weapon for me has been a VePro slave built by Heavy Digital Audio. It has kept my 2.66gHz 4 core mac on life support 

Good luck!


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## Dewdman42

Last night undecided to go for it and attempt open core catalina on a second drive for test purposes. Seems to be working. Much smoother running then the dosdude patch. But I also installed catalina fresh this time instead of upgrading, so maybe that’s why.

i intend to run this in parallel with mojave for a while, see how it goes.

i will eventually set up a windows 10 boot volume and Big Sur too once the kinks are worked out. Some guys are already running Big Sur on the cheese grater allegedly problem free, so I’m hopeful

long live the cheesegrater! I think we should rename it frankintosh now though.


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## Nate Johnson

Curious - what exactly are the expensive pieces of hardware that are tying you to this [physical format] computer? I assume its just a couple of fancy PCI cards?


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## Dewdman42

Yes, Lynx card, connected via AES50 to other digital equipment in the studio including X32 as primary audio input device.

The other card is SSD related and easily solvable another way if it came down to it, but I also like having 5 drives inside the box rather then tethered outside...


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## Nate Johnson

Dewdman42 said:


> Yes, Lynx card, connected via AES50 to other digital equipment in the studio including X32 as primary audio input device.
> 
> The other card is SSD related and easily solvable another way if it came down to it, but I also like having 5 drives inside the box rather then tethered outside...



ah gotcha, fair enough. So what would you swap your front end for if you had to (on a computer without card slots)?


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## Dewdman42

Good question. I don't plan to give up this setup so I haven't really researched. I have thousands into this and it would cost thousands more to do something based on Dante, or MADI or possibly MOTU AVB; which would give me all the ins/outs, low latency and general workflow ease of use. There are different ways to go and there might be some TB3 solution that could have latency not much worse then PCI, but it would cost a lot for sure and I don't really want to mess with that. 

I would literally rather switch over to WinBlows then to have to do that.

Just to make a clearer picture, the X32 is the front end, it has SD8's connected to it also so that different parts of the studio don't have audio cables running all over the place, just ethernet. So if I were to give up the X32, its not just the X32 I'd be giving up its also that routing around the studio with simplified cabling and SD8 boxes.. So how do I replace that? Something else instead of X32, more cables, patch bays or other ways to route the sound...it starts to add up quick. All because Apple won't put a damn PCI card in their Macs. Reminds me of the Steve Jobs movie where Woz is arguing with him about why Apple computers need PCI slots and Steve Jobs wanted a cute little cube instead. Here we are decades later and they still don't get it.

Anyway I'd rather not have to rip out all that stuff and figure all that out. I would literally rather run Mojave for 10 more years or switch to a WinBlows PC then have to do that. 

While there are a few TB3 solutions out there, its definitely not how its mostly done, primarily because PC's have always been PCI. A lot of stuff is USB too...becuase that is the lowest common denominator that both Mac and PC can do, but USB latency basically sucks in my view...some worse then others. PCI is so much better...and if you have it, so is TB3. 

Dante, MADI, AVB...etc..those are other ways to get the audio around..sometimes with pretty low latency as well....but they tend to be very expensive solutions that I can't justify.


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## Lindon

Dewdman42 said:


> and PS, I will be following Cubase the whole time. It might be time to switch back to PCWindows running Cubase.


well - from an outsiders point of view (Im a developer so I have to run all sorts of OS and DAWs), it looks like the thing that is limiting you is not the OS but the DAW (Logic), something you seem to be alluding to here. If I were to pick only one DAW (the most reliable, flexible and bang for buck) it would be Reaper... you might want to consider it...esp. as its cross-platform and you can install it on your 5.1 and jump ship (to windows if you wish) at some point in the future. (Also true of Cubase too)


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## Dewdman42

I actually had the same thought the other day because of a variety of reasons, not the least of which is Rearticulate. ......and cranked up Reaper for 5 minutes to consider that proposition, immediately had awful taste in my mouth that did not go away after 10 minutes, and that is that. No thanks on Reaper, the GUI is just not there and never will be. I don't use linux as my primary desktop either, for the same damn reason.


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## Dewdman42

There are several cross platform DAW's worth consider.. Cubase, S1 are top of the list... Ok Reaper for some people, not me. DP technically has Windows version too, though I'm not sure how well it actually works on Windows, but its there. Sonar is free on Windows.

Really LogicPro is the only one that as drawn a line in the sand about OSX versions. But because of ARM, all of the others..will have to draw a line in the sand too in the next 12-24 months. Apple is just the first to do it with LogicPro. The main problem with LogicPro is that you don't have the option at all to switch to MS Windows...you have to go along with Apple's heavy handed approach..whatever it happens to be over time.


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## Michael Antrum




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## Dewdman42

I actually am starting to convert my LogicPro Scripter scripts over to PlugNScript form so that I can commit more to Cubase. Logic is great, but so is Cubase. There is a very good chance that in a year I will just be Cubase all the time and no looking back...with the option to flee to Windows if Apple mishandles the ARM transition to my dissatisfaction.


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## Michael Antrum

I'm a Mac person, who happens to use Cubase.

Last year I needed to replace my laptop, but there was no way I was spending 3.6k on a 15" Macbook Pro that had thermal issues that meant the CPU was throttled under load, and a keyboard so unreliable that they had a replacement program on a product they were still shipping.

So I went to PC Laptop, but I am hoping to get back on a Macbook Pro when the new Apple Silicon is in some of the higher end (or at least higher RAM) machines.


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## JEPA

Hey guys! What do you think about this upgrade for my Mac 5.1, will it work well?

my specs:
- macOS High Sierra 10.13.6
- Mac Pro 5.1 flashed from 4.1 (early 2009)
- 2x 3,33GHz 6Core Intel Xeon
- RAM 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
- Start Volume: SystemSSD

with:

- 2x of these: 


- 1x of this:


- a pack of these:








6x 16GB 96GB 1333 Mhz Apple Mac Pro 5,1 ECC RAM Speicher DDR3 MacPro Dual Rank | eBay


Entdecken Sie 6x 16GB 96GB 1333 Mhz Apple Mac Pro 5,1 ECC RAM Speicher DDR3 MacPro Dual Rank in der großen Auswahl bei eBay. Kostenlose Lieferung für viele Artikel!



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## Michael Antrum

I take it you have already got a GPU that supports Metal ?

I'm assuming the nvme is for sample libraries;

Honestly, if it were me, I wouldnt bother with an nvme drive and the Sonnet card. It's expensive, and with the tests on samples I've seen, there's not a really massive difference in real world performance to jsutify the price.

I'd get a regular 4tb SATA 3 SSD, like the QVO, and a Dual SATA 3 card which would cost somewhere around 450 for the lot. 

(Last BF I got a 4TB Samsung from Amazon for 320 !)

The beloved cheesgrater is a wonderful machine, and it's longevity has been unparalleled, but I do see the end of the road for this magnificent piece of kit. I'll be sad to see it go, but spending that kind of money on it now ? - well if I had to buy now I'd get a 2020 iMac, but if you can wait, the next few produce releases from Apple are going to be very interesting indeed.....

If you do decide to go this way, I put a Sabrent 2tb SSD in my Razer blade 15" and I bought it new from amazon for under 200 in a sale last year.....


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## Dewdman42

I think the cheese grater will still be good for 2 more years. After that...dead for running any Mac software you care about.

I agree about SATA2 being perfectly fine for this machine. I bought a SATA3 card and while it benchmarked faster, it made no difference whatsoever in real world performance. Save your money. The only advantage of buying NVME would be so that you can move them to a new computer later that supports NVME directly. But we have no idea what Apple is going to do with new hardware in the future...so.. I say get the best BF deal you can get on SATA3 SSD. The 4TB Samsung 840 Evo is on sale fore $499 lately.

Personally I wouldn't spend too much on this box though. I am running mine on OpenCore Catalina now, so far so good..and will use it a couple more years...but I expect it to be out of the Mac world by two years from now...and on to something new...but we'll see. It might stick around in some capacity, like.a VePro server or something.


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## JEPA

Michael Antrum said:


> Dual SATA 3 card


which one would you recommend?


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## JEPA

Dewdman42 said:


> I think the cheese grater will still be good for 2 more years. After that...dead for running any Mac software you care about.
> 
> I agree about SATA2 being perfectly fine for this machine. I bought a SATA3 card and while it benchmarked faster, it made no difference whatsoever in real world performance. Save your money. The only advantage of buying NVME would be so that you can move them to a new computer later that supports NVME directly. But we have no idea what Apple is going to do with new hardware in the future...so.. I say get the best BF deal you can get on SATA3 SSD. The 4TB Samsung 840 Evo is on sale fore $499 lately.
> 
> Personally I wouldn't spend too much on this box though. I am running mine on OpenCore Catalina now, so far so good..and will use it a couple more years...but I expect it to be out of the Mac world by two years from now...and on to something new...but we'll see. It might stick around in some capacity, like.a VePro server or something.


What do you think about the intel iMacs right now? worth to have one till porting to M1 or better waiting with the old 5.1


----------



## JohnG

Dewdman42 said:


> What to do with the still currently viable 5,1 MacPros



There's a guy in Santa Monica (Los Angeles) who refurbishes computers. He updates them with new CPUs, more RAM and all that. So if you are interested you can PM me. I'm still using a 5,1 he redid maybe five years ago (?) with 12 cores, fast CPU clock etc. Although I admit I'm thinking of updating.


----------



## Dewdman42

JEPA said:


> What do you think about the intel iMacs right now? worth to have one till porting to M1 or better waiting with the old 5.1



I personally would not spend one penny on a new Intel Mac right now. If you can nurse along a cheese grater for another year or two, the entire landscape is about to change. The Cheesegrater is still great. You might fall slightly behind on software for a year or two, but so what? Anyway, bleeding edge is always going to be less stability..there is a lot of wisdom in sticking with the old platform and just make some music with what you have for the next year or two. Wait to see what Apple does. The M1 is extremely impressive, people are falling all over themselves praising it, and the first gen aren't even power systems. I think the $$ value of Intel Macs is going to plummet over the next year. Anyone sitting on a newer Intel Mac is well advised to sell it ASAP!


----------



## Dewdman42

JEPA said:


> which one would you recommend?



Sonnet Tempo. I have the one that supports two SSD drives. Works fine. But like I said, you won't get any performance bump over the built in SATA2 bays...other then in benchmark tools they will show you how much faster the drives are...but none of your DAW software will notice any difference.


----------



## Michael Antrum

JEPA said:


> which one would you recommend?



I bought one off ebay, and the other from amazon. I'm stuck in a hotel in London just now, but I'll check the box for it when I get home tomorrow evening. (I only bought the cards as my bays were full of spinning disks). They were quite inexpensive - about £ 35 IIRC



JEPA said:


> What do you think about the intel iMacs right now? worth to have one till porting to M1 or better waiting with the old 5.1



If you can, I'd wait until we got some more product announcements from Apple. I'd fully expect to see some more announcements in Q2/3 next year.

Even if nothing really suitable rocks up for us with our unusual requirements, I can see a lot of really nice 2nd user Intel Apple hardware being sold at attractive prices as people switch to the new silicon.


----------



## JEPA

Sigh! What for a situation right now for us...


----------



## Michael Antrum

JEPA said:


> Sigh! What for a situation right now for us...





​


----------



## JEPA

ugh... haha


----------



## Michael Antrum

JEPA said:


> ugh... haha



Sorry, I keep forgetting VIC is an international board. Swiss Tony is character in a UK comedy show.....he is quite revolting, but pretty funny...


----------



## Mike Fox

I'm also using a Mac pro 5,1, and ya know what? I LOVE it!

Seriously, Apple overbuilt these machines back then, and they're solid as fu$%!

I use it as my main computer, and have ZERO issues.

12 cores, 4 SSD drives, dual Xeon processors, and 64gb of ram. Spent about $700 for it. What's not to love?


----------



## Michael Antrum

Mike Fox said:


> I'm also using a Mac pro 5,1, and ya know what? I LOVE it!
> 
> Seriously, Apple overbuilt these machines back then, and they're solid as fu$%!
> 
> I use it as my main computer, and have ZERO issues.
> 
> 12 cores, 4 SSD drives, dual Xeon processors, and 64gb of ram. Spent about $700 for it. What's not to love?



It's the best computer I've ever owned, and I used to have an IT company, so I've owned a fair few over the years. I remember collecting it from the Apple store in Sheffield, and having to wait for someone to fit the optional Bluetooth module....

I recently retired the 30" cinema display, and replaced it with a 4k 32" Samsung panel, and it really feels quite modern now. The cinema display is fine - gave it to my daughter - absolutely nothing has ever gone wrong with that machine in all the days I've owned it.

If only Apple would keep supporting it with the OS - I'll bet they could if they wanted to, and it's not as if they need the money....

But no matter how good it is, spending the thick end of 2k on upgrading it now is not a great idea....

I'll tell you what though, no matter how good a machine it is, i'd be really pissed if I'd just bought the new Mac Pro.....


----------



## JEPA

Michael Antrum said:


> i'd be really pissed if I'd just bought the new Mac Pro.....


because of the M1 isn't it?


----------



## JEPA

well, I don't know how far will macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 will last, but if it gets difficult to work with it next year I will HAVE to upgrade my system. I hope it last one complete year more...


----------



## Michael Antrum

I think it's very likely that in the space of a year or two, all software development for the Mac will have switched over to the new CPU family, and the Intel code branch will be left by many developers to wither on the vine.

Not all. Some of the high end apps particualrly high end video will support it for some time to come, but I just dont see it having the same longevity as the good old cheesgrater....

But I suppose it will depend on how long Apple take to flesh out their range with the new architecture. 

They have promised that they will have fully transitioned their whole Mac range to ARM withing two years. It would not surprise me at all if they beat the deadline.....


----------



## Dewdman42

Michael Antrum said:


> It's the best computer I've ever owned, and I used to have an IT company, so I've owned a fair few over the years. I remember collecting it from the Apple store in Sheffield, and having to wait for someone to fit the optional Bluetooth module....
> 
> I recently retired the 30" cinema display, and replaced it with a 4k 32" Samsung panel, and it really feels quite modern now. The cinema display is fine - gave it to my daughter - absolutely nothing has ever gon wrong with that machine in all the days I've owned it.
> 
> If only Apple would keep supporting it with the OS - I'll bet they could if they wanted to, and it's not as if they need the money....
> 
> But no matter how good it is, spending the think end of 2k on upgrading it now is not a great idea....
> 
> I'll tell you what though, no matter how good a machine it is, i'd be really pissed if I'd just bought the new Mac Pro.....



I agree. Best computer I ever had. They made it too nice, not good for apple revenue in the long run. They won't make that mistake again.

They could have supported it easily if they wanted. A few hackers on the internet have managed to keep it going through BigSur so far....and they are only basically coding around very minor things which could have easily been supported by Apple. The fact that they chose not to speaks volumes IMHO. In the case of Catalina, it works completely on the cheese grater, but the only thing is that Apple put a little check into the installer to block it from being installed. (unless you get a patched installer from DosDude of course). In my view, that is beyond lame...

Its one reason I'm still not sure if I will buy another Mac, but we'll see, ARM is looking promising.


----------



## Michael Antrum

Actually, I think all us Mac Pro 5,1 guys are actually perfectly placed for moving to the new platform, when a suitable machine is unveiled.

Our machines have got a good year or so left in them before the software becomes a real problem, and we'll have screwed so much value of the thing, that we won't mind (too much) paying the Apple tax for the new one.

What we need is a Mac Pro Mini, with 4 PCI slots and 4 nvme sockets, in a compact desktop case for less than the gross national product of Lithuania. (we're not going to get that though, obvs.)


----------



## Dewdman42

completely agree. Maybe more than one more year. I'm running Catalina on mine now. working fine. Will probably be able to run Big Sur too. Not sure after that. I think we have a couple more years, or if Apple comes out with a replacement before then, great.

What you are describing is more or less what the 2019 MacPro is...which unfortunately cost too much for me. If they make a true mid tier machine, with PCI slots, etc.. I'll get one. If they just keep putting out minis and iMacs, I'm out...


----------



## JEPA

I have thought of these NVMe as an alternative to swtich to a modern cheese grater and not losing the investment or also for switching to Windows in case of...



JEPA said:


> - 2x of these:
> 
> - 1x of this:
> 
> - a pack of these:


----------



## nolotrippen

Dewdman42 said:


> Title says it all. What to do with the still currently viable 5,1 MacPros that many of us have and are still using, but have been deprecated by Apple, not only for OSX, but as of yesterday, also for LogicPro.



Frankly, I see nothing worthwhile to upgrade the OS for. Mojave is stable and will undoubtedly work with the software you have for many moons. There just wasn't anything shiny enough for me in newer OSes. Just my two bits (slightly higher in Canada).


----------



## mat1

Dewdman42 said:


> There are different ways to go and there might be some TB3 solution that could have latency not much worse then PCI, but it would cost a lot for sure and I don't really want to mess with that.



Couldn't you just buy a $300 PCIe enclosure for the Lynx? You could buy the cheapest M1 mini, it'll be miles faster than what you have and you can move it on in a couple of years if you want more. You won't lose much money if you go low end.

I personally don't see Apple reintroducing PCI for anything under the Mac Pro so it's probably a good idea to that card into an enclosure now.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Michael Antrum said:


> ​



This analogy doesn't work well for me.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Michael Antrum said:


> I recently retired the 30" cinema display, and replaced it with a 4k 32" Samsung panel, and it really feels quite modern now. The cinema display is fine - gave it to my daughter - absolutely nothing has ever gone wrong with that machine in all the days I've owned it.



How does the Samsung compare to the 30" Cinema Display, just out of interest?

I have the same setup (12 x 3.46 5,1 w/30" Cinema Display) and don't to replace this monitor if I can help it, but I'm just curious to hear the comparison from someone who switched. Everything about the Cinema Display is just right, as far as I'm concerned, and it's a lot more than the specs.

(I bought the Cinema Display 14-1/2 years ago.)


----------



## JohnG

Michael Antrum said:


> Swiss Tony is character in a UK comedy



looks hilarious -- which show?


----------



## Michael Antrum

There was an sale on Amazon, and for £ 269 I got a 4K 32 curved monitor - which I though was a bargain.

It uses way less electricity, and I am running at 4K via HDMI. There is also a display port connection so I can connect my laptop to it without unplugging anything.

For me, it almost feels like I have a new Mac, and although the Samsung has a bigger screen, it feels way less imposing on my desk - almost as if I've got more desk space back. It kind of feels like moving from a 17" screen to a 21" screen did back in the day. 

I'd recommend it.


----------



## Michael Antrum

JohnG said:


> looks hilarious -- which show?



It was called The Fast Show. Here are some of Swiss Tony's best bits...


----------



## JohnG

looks funny


----------



## Michael Antrum

JohnG said:


> looks funny



It was a bit of a British Institution - one of those sketch shows that got quoted a lot....


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Michael Antrum said:


> There was an sale on Amazon, and for £ 269 I got a 4K 32 curved monitor - which I though was a bargain.
> 
> It uses way less electricity, and I am running at 4K via HDMI. There is also a display port connection so I can connect my laptop to it without unplugging anything.
> 
> For me, it almost feels like I have a new Mac, and although the Samsung has a bigger screen, it feels way less imposing on my desk - almost as if I've got more desk space back. It kind of feels like moving from a 17" screen to a 21" screen did back in the day.
> 
> I'd recommend it.




I have it floating above my desktop on an arm, with the stand removed (I had to buy the VESA adapter, if I remember right). It's hard to say whether it's imposing, but if so that's no an issue. 

But it's good to know that there are high quality monitors to replace it if it ever breaks. The screens today are a lot less expensive, but at the same time the Cinema Display was $2500 when I bought it, and that buys more than just specs.


----------



## JohnG

Michael Antrum said:


> It was a bit of a British Institution - one of those sketch shows that got quoted a lot....



"You see, Michael; writing a cue is very much like making love to a beautiful woman..."


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Michael Antrum said:


> It was a bit of a British Institution - one of those sketch shows that got quoted a lot....



Then I have to watch it! Thanks.

(I'm still quoting Withnail and I, Fawlty Towers, and even Monty Python.)


----------



## Michael Antrum

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I have it floating above my desktop on an arm, with the stand removed (I had to buy the VESA adapter, if I remember right). It's hard to say whether it's imposing, but if so that's no an issue.
> 
> But it's good to know that there are high quality monitors to replace it if it ever breaks. The screens today are a lot less expensive, but at the same time the Cinema Display was $2500 when I bought it, and that buys more than just specs.



I really liked my 30" Cinema display - couldn't fault it, but I wouldn't go back. The extra resolution makes a big difference, especially with the mixer view in Cubase....


----------



## Michael Antrum

JohnG said:


> "You see, Michael; writing a cue is very much like making love to a beautiful woman..."



We'll have to make you a honary Brit now...


----------



## Michael Antrum

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Then I have to watch it! Thanks.
> 
> (I'm still quoting Withnail and I, Fawlty Towers, and even Monty Python.)



I remember quite a few years ago, a business colleague from South Africa came over to attend a trade show we were exhibiting at in Harrogate. We'd usually meet up in Germany, or Hong Kong, so this was his first real visit to the U.K. The first night in the hotel he wanted to relax in his room after a long journey. 

The next morning we met for breakfast, he told me that he'd crashed out and woken up about 3am, and being a bit bored, he put on a satellite channel on the TV. It was showing back to back episodes of another legendary British sketch show, called Little Britain which was made in the early 2000's. (It certainly wouldn't get made today, at least not by the BBC.)

I'm pretty certain that this show traumatised him slightly, and he's been slightly dubious of the British ever since..... and probably rightly so.

You should check it out, if you haven't already come across it.....it's very quotable too....


----------



## JohnG

Michael Antrum said:


> We'll have to make you a honary Brit now...



hey! I took A-levels! that was agony enough


----------



## Dewdman42

nolotrippen said:


> Frankly, I see nothing worthwhile to upgrade the OS for. Mojave is stable and will undoubtedly work with the software you have for many moons. There just wasn't anything shiny enough for me in newer OSes. Just my two bits (slightly higher in Canada).



Normally I agree, but LogicPro (latest version) now requires Catalina. I've been using it a few days...aside from losing a couple old 32bit programs, its working very well.


----------



## Dewdman42

mat1 said:


> Couldn't you just buy a $300 PCIe enclosure for the Lynx?



Lynx tells me this adds a small amount of latency, so don't want to, not to mention I don't want another box. No I will wait. I want a Mac with PCI slots, I'm drawing a line in the sand on that. If they don't make it, the its cubase on the PC for me, but we'll see how it plays out.

regarding the rest of the M1, its also only 16gb of Ram and no internal storage, I have 9TB of SSD inside my cheese grater. 

No thanks I'll stay with what I have for now its working great.


----------



## Dewdman42

Nick Batzdorf said:


> How does the Samsung compare to the 30" Cinema Display, just out of interest?
> 
> I have the same setup (12 x 3.46 5,1 w/30" Cinema Display) and don't to replace this monitor if I can help it, but I'm just curious to hear the comparison from someone who switched. Everything about the Cinema Display is just right, as far as I'm concerned, and it's a lot more than the specs.
> 
> (I bought the Cinema Display 14-1/2 years ago.)



I have a 32" Samsung and absolutely love it. I run it at 2880x1620 in HiDPI...looks gorgeous.


----------



## Easy Pickens

At first I was reeling; all my plans upended. I'd intended to sell my 5,1 while it was still worth something to somebody and building another Hackintosh. I managed to maintain a couple as my daily driver back when that was a lot trickier, so hoped it'd be dead easy now. No-brainer. 

As I put together the parts list, of course costs ballooned from ~$1500 to >$2000; still way less than a comparable Mac, but now anything Intel has a definite shelf life. Even if that shelf life is 5-7 years, it's a new consideration that didn't exist when I started concocting this scheme.

Interesting to hear about OpenCore success stories. DosDude sounded sketchy enough that I decided to be content on Mojave for the time being. None of the Logic Pro 10.6 features I've heard about really apply to me. 

Is it crazy to invest even $2k in an Intel Mac (assuming making it work will be one day of swearing and crying and then it'll Just Work) in light of the Apple Silicon timeline? I'm pretty well maxed out at 12x 3.66GHz, although I could always add RAM, the other things I use it for could really use a CPU upgrade. I don't know how long I can make this last, waiting for Apple to bring out exactly what I need, which is not a thing they seem to do anymore.


----------



## Easy Pickens

JEPA said:


> Hey guys! What do you think about this upgrade for my Mac 5.1, will it work well?
> 
> my specs:
> - macOS High Sierra 10.13.6
> - Mac Pro 5.1 flashed from 4.1 (early 2009)
> - 2x 3,33GHz 6Core Intel Xeon
> - RAM 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
> - Start Volume: SystemSSD
> 
> with:
> 
> - 2x of these:
> 
> 
> - 1x of this:




I added this to my setup (almost the same as yours) and it made a big difference for a lot less money than what you linked: 




it was worth it to me just for how much faster projects load now.


----------



## Dewdman42

About DosDude and OpenCore....

Despite his interesting nick name, DosDude is very well respected for what he has done. You can trust that source. Many thousands of people are using his stuff and other knowledgeable people in the Hackintosh community are always cross-referencing and cross-checking each other...there is nothing nefarious going on there with DosDude, nor the team behind OpenCore. 

That being said... DosDude's patch for Catalina used to be the best way to install Catalina on a 5,1 and it arguably still is the easiest way to do it, but now that OpenCore has come of age...most people are moving to that. Its about 100x easier to install DosDude's patcher and that is what I would recommend for most people for Catalina. The only thing it really patches is the installer itself, so that it won't block the 5,1 from being an accepted machine to install on. I think it might add a very slight tweak to wifi also... Otherwise..its all vanilla OSX Catalina. Apple eventually changed something in the Software Update utility such that DosDude's Catalina would not work for updating OSX through Software Update, due to machine ID. There were work arounds, but it became a little bit more of a hassle. However, I suspect we have already seen the last Catalina major update, so it should be pretty easy to install DosDude Catalina and just use it. Seriously, its very easy to install. If you get to the point that you just really wish you could get Catalina instead of Mojave on the 5,1, that is the easiest way to get there. Anyone with very very low technical skills can install Catalina using his tools. The 5,1 with a metal card already has the right hardware to work very well with Catalina in a vanilla way and DosDude's installer is the easiest way to get there.



OpenCore is more open. Its used not only for the 5,1, but most PC Hackintosh builds are based on it now, its the "next generation" Hackintosh. Yes the 5,1 is now a Hackintosh. I'm actually nicknaming mine "Frankentosh"

It works with SoftwareUpdate.. well sorta. You still have to do a little hack stuff. I think if Catalina were going to be the end of the line for me, I would use DosDude's patcher and be done with it. However if you think you may eventually go on to BigSur with the 5,1...then Dos Dude is likely to not get there (he has already said there are some big ch_allenges to cross_). Also..if you ever want to turn your 5,1 into a Windows PC, then likely you'll want to end up doing it with OpenCore. 

So for me, I decide to try OpenCore, with an eye to the future of BigSur and Windows on this machine...... and its working fine as of today.



But.. With OpenCore it is definitely possible to completely screw up your machine, perhaps even brick the firmware ROM! Yes I'm not kidding. So part of the procedure is to backup your ROM before you do anything just in case. And even then its possible to brick it to the point that you won't even be able to restore the ROM without using special hardware tools, that most of us don't have.,

So..bottom line...using OpenCore is getting into a whole new level of risk and you have to know what you're doing to avoid accidentally screwing it up. It has progressed to the point, and there are enough people doing this with their 5,1's now that they have worked out most of the details and we shouldn't have to worry TOO MUCH about messing up the ROM, but from what I have been reading..it still happens. So.. What I'm saying is....OpenCore is not for the weak of heart...you have to be careful and you have to be prepared for the possibility you might mess up your Mac and require a lot of effort to get it cleared up and working again using low level software tools.

In fact the general philosophy of the OpenCore authors is that they don't want to make it too easy because they want only knowledgeable people to use. Reading the manual is a requirement and I don't understand half of what is in the manual honestly. But their viewpoint is that nobody should install OpenCore unless they read the manual.. in other words, you have to take hacker responsibility for your machine, whatever happens. If you aren't prepared to do that, then you probably should not use OpenCore!


Meanwhile...DosDude's patcher is much much safer because you aren't messing around with OpenCore..its much less risky to install that one...and for Catalina, it will work totally fine. Thousands of people are using it. Just run the installer and its done. Nothing to screw up.

That is what I would recommend for now. In the future BigSur might become more relevant...then we can talk again... I'm on OpenCore only because I wanted to give it a try and I felt technical enough to try it... and I was very very careful..I did a lot of reading before I did anything and I backed up my firmware bootROM.


----------



## Shad0wLandsUK

Dewdman42 said:


> I actually am starting to convert my LogicPro Scripter scripts over to PlugNScript form so that I can commit more to Cubase. Logic is great, but so is Cubase. There is a very good chance that in a year I will just be Cubase all the time and no looking back...with the option to flee to Windows if Apple mishandles the ARM transition to my dissatisfaction.


I purchased Cubase for this very reason myself, back at version 9
So far, Cubase 11 is very stable too

But I cannot deny Logic Pro seems more stable with 10.6
Though I have not run it through proper sessions with templates yet (building one now though)

UPDATE: I will get you a walkthrough for Catalina install of Windows 10 on the Mac Pro... just need to think it through clearly and trace my steps again


----------



## Shad0wLandsUK

Dewdman42 said:


> About DosDude and OpenCore....
> 
> Despite his interesting nick name, DosDude is very well respected for what he has done. You can trust that source. Many thousands of people are using his stuff and other knowledgeable people in the Hackintosh community are always cross-referencing and cross-checking each other...there is nothing nefarious going on there with DosDude, nor the team behind OpenCore.
> 
> That being said... DosDude's patch for Catalina used to be the best way to install Catalina on a 5,1 and it arguably still is the easiest way to do it, but now that OpenCore has come of age...most people are moving to that. Its about 100x easier to install DosDude's patcher and that is what I would recommend for most people for Catalina. The only thing it really patches is the installer itself, so that it won't block the 5,1 from being an accepted machine to install on. I think it might add a very slight tweak to wifi also... Otherwise..its all vanilla OSX Catalina. Apple eventually changed something in the Software Update utility such that DosDude's Catalina would not work for updating OSX through Software Update, due to machine ID. There were work arounds, but it became a little bit more of a hassle. However, I suspect we have already seen the last Catalina major update, so it should be pretty easy to install DosDude Catalina and just use it. Seriously, its very easy to install. If you get to the point that you just really wish you could get Catalina instead of Mojave on the 5,1, that is the easiest way to get there. Anyone with very very low technical skills can install Catalina using his tools. The 5,1 with a metal card already has the right hardware to work very well with Catalina in a vanilla way and DosDude's installer is the easiest way to get there.
> 
> 
> 
> OpenCore is more open. Its used not only for the 5,1, but most PC Hackintosh builds are based on it now, its the "next generation" Hackintosh. Yes the 5,1 is now a Hackintosh. I'm actually nicknaming mine "Frankentosh"
> 
> It works with SoftwareUpdate.. well sorta. You still have to do a little hack stuff. I think if Catalina were going to be the end of the line for me, I would use DosDude's patcher and be done with it. However if you think you may eventually go on to BigSur with the 5,1...then Dos Dude is likely to not get there (he has already said there are some big ch_allenges to cross_). Also..if you ever want to turn your 5,1 into a Windows PC, then likely you'll want to end up doing it with OpenCore.
> 
> So for me, I decide to try OpenCore, with an eye to the future of BigSur and Windows on this machine...... and its working fine as of today.
> 
> 
> 
> But.. With OpenCore it is definitely possible to completely screw up your machine, perhaps even brick the firmware ROM! Yes I'm not kidding. So part of the procedure is to backup your ROM before you do anything just in case. And even then its possible to brick it to the point that you won't even be able to restore the ROM without using special hardware tools, that most of us don't have.,
> 
> So..bottom line...using OpenCore is getting into a whole new level of risk and you have to know what you're doing to avoid accidentally screwing it up. It has progressed to the point, and there are enough people doing this with their 5,1's now that they have worked out most of the details and we shouldn't have to worry TOO MUCH about messing up the ROM, but from what I have been reading..it still happens. So.. What I'm saying is....OpenCore is not for the weak of heart...you have to be careful and you have to be prepared for the possibility you might mess up your Mac and require a lot of effort to get it cleared up and working again using low level software tools.
> 
> In fact the general philosophy of the OpenCore authors is that they don't want to make it too easy because they want only knowledgeable people to use. Reading the manual is a requirement and I don't understand half of what is in the manual honestly. But their viewpoint is that nobody should install OpenCore unless they read the manual.. in other words, you have to take hacker responsibility for your machine, whatever happens. If you aren't prepared to do that, then you probably should not use OpenCore!
> 
> 
> Meanwhile...DosDude's patcher is much much safer because you aren't messing around with OpenCore..its much less risky to install that one...and for Catalina, it will work totally fine. Thousands of people are using it. Just run the installer and its done. Nothing to screw up.
> 
> That is what I would recommend for now. In the future BigSur might become more relevant...then we can talk again... I'm on OpenCore only because I wanted to give it a try and I felt technical enough to try it... and I was very very careful..I did a lot of reading before I did anything and I backed up my firmware bootROM.


Sheesh! You wrote that much text in 11 minutes?

You should volunteer to write release notes and manual amendments for the OpenCore team


----------



## Dewdman42

being able to type fast is a curse...


----------



## Easy Pickens

Dewdman42 said:


> About DosDude and OpenCore....
> 
> Despite his interesting nick name, DosDude is very well respected for what he has done. You can trust that source. Many thousands of people are using his stuff and other knowledgeable people in the Hackintosh community are always cross-referencing and cross-checking each other...there is nothing nefarious going on there with DosDude, nor the team behind OpenCore.



It wasn't his character I found sketchy, just reports of drawbacks inherent to using the patch. In any case, Catalina/Big Sur isn't enough of a draw to me (yet) to overcome even slight hesitation. As for OpenCore, my curiosity is piqued, that's all. I'm less excited about building an Intel based Mac than I was last week, but haven't ruled it out, and in that case, I might as well keep the 5,1 on Mojave indefinitely.

The numbers still add up for me, assuming that i9 is supported for at least 5 more years, but I just wonder if there's something I'm missing, some important consideration that's hovering in my blind spot.


----------



## Dewdman42

I also don't think there is anything at all wrong with staying on Mojave for quite a while as we wait to see the ARM thing roll out.


----------



## Nathanael Iversen

VEP Sample server. My 2010 8 core has been that way for 6 years at least. When the trashcan was announced, I switched to Cubase on OSX, got comfortable, then switched to Cubase on PC and never looked back. It has been an outstanding orchestral sample server. Zero complaints - version doesn't matter so long as you have VEP for it. And I have no need for latest, cutting edge VEP. I leave it alone for years at a time.


----------



## AlexRuger

I've got my 2010 5,1 up for sale cheap, but if I can't sell it I'm just going to upgrade the GPU and install Mojave (it's currently running El Cap). Mojave seems to be the new "Snow Leopard" of sorts, and it's always useful to have a solid reliable Mac. Since I'm on Cubase/PC, I've just kept it around as a Pro Tools machine and run Video Slave with it, so it might just hang around until it dies.

The Windows 10/VEP host idea isn't bad, but it's important to remember that these machines use SATA 2 and DDR2 RAM. They aren't particularly useful in their ability to run sample libraries when measured against how much power they suck. 

However, I've considered using it as a Mainstage VEP-ish server so I can run Alchemy...love that synth and am still angry at Apple for ruining the fun.


----------



## mat1

Dewdman42 said:


> Lynx tells me this adds a small amount of latency, so don't want to, not to mention I don't want another box. No I will wait. I want a Mac with PCI slots, I'm drawing a line in the sand on that. If they don't make it, the its cubase on the PC for me, but we'll see how it plays out.
> 
> regarding the rest of the M1, its also only 16gb of Ram and no internal storage, I have 9TB of SSD inside my cheese grater.
> 
> No thanks I'll stay with what I have for now its working great.



Fair enough. Sounds like PC is your only choice then. No chance Apple is adding PCI slots back into mid priced machines. I guess if you start making the transition to cubase early you won't notice the downtime of learning a new DAW or the cost of Cubase too much. 

I wouldn't want to miss out on whats happening with Apple silicon myself. The fact we have a base mini that is within spitting distance of the iMac Pro in some tasks and soundly beating even the nMP in others is amazing. With zero fan noise.


----------



## Dewdman42

mat1 said:


> Fair enough. Sounds like PC is your only choice then. No chance Apple is adding PCI slots back into mid priced machines.



no way you know that unless you have a crystal ball. They just put them into the MacPro. Its not like they don't see the need.



> I guess if you start making the transition to cubase early you won't notice the downtime of learning a new DAW or the cost of Cubase too much.



already transitioning, but could go either way yet.


----------



## JEPA

Michael Antrum said:


> I take it you have already got a GPU that supports Metal ?


not already! I am on macOS High Sierra. Which GPU do you recommend guys if I want to go Mojave?


----------



## Michael Antrum

I bought an AMD RX580.


----------



## JEPA

Michael Antrum said:


> I bought an AMD RX580.



is it too noisy, may I ask?


----------



## Michael Antrum

It doesn’t break a sweat - but I use Cubase so I’m hardly stressing it....


----------



## JEPA

Michael Antrum said:


> It doesn’t break a sweat - but I use Cubase so I’m hardly stressing it....


thank you for all your infos and recommendations!


----------



## Shad0wLandsUK

What thoroughly irritates me about Apple's App Store platform, is that you cannot install the App that is supported on your version of macOS, once it is updated in the Store

Plenty of other developers offer you a link or locatin to install the latest (supported) version
Not Apple

So now I cannot have GarageBand at all, unless I move to macOS BigSur...

I moved to Catalina for Apple TV App, better Dark mode integration and to leave behind the 32-bit world (had nothing that needed it anymore)

My system is stable, with some occassional crashes, though to be honest the last time I remember macOS being stable and fast it was not macOS, but Mac OS X and that was Mountain Lion/Yosemite!
Back when it used 4GB of RAM on idle, now it uses 13GB (no thanks Apple as I only have 32GB in the machine)


----------



## Michael Antrum

JEPA said:


> thank you for all your infos and recommendations!



I totally forgot to mention - If you do get one of those graphics cards, you also need an additional power cable. It plugs on the Mac Pro's main board and supplies additional power....as the PCI slot alone cannot provide enough juice...


----------



## mat1

Dewdman42 said:


> no way you know that unless you have a crystal ball. They just put them into the MacPro. Its not like they don't see the need.



Can you see them making the mini 10x bigger to fit full size GPUs when the base units appear to be amazing for video editing already (a much bigger market than us)? 

We'll never be able to upgrade the ram and storage can live happily outside of the box so then we're talking about niche use cases and legacy peripherals (Mac Pro territory). I'd love to be able to pimp out a base but those days are gone.

Stranger things have happened but I just don't see it. IMO.


By the time they've updated the rest of the line there will be MBPs more powerful than most Mac Pros today.


----------



## topaz

Can you please tell us if this shows the boot screen (Mojave) without any patching on a 5.1 ?

Cheers 



Michael Antrum said:


> I bought an AMD RX580.


----------



## JEPA

Guys could you recommend please if to buy before Monday (Black Friday week) or to wait till Black Friday? It's reported that gear is going out of stock right now at Black Friday PRE-sale...!!


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Dewdman42 said:


> Lynx tells me this adds a small amount of latency, so don't want to, not to mention I don't want another box



Not wanting another box, understood. But the latency increase is likely to be measurable in 10^-32% of the speed of light.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Michael Antrum said:


> I remember quite a few years ago, a business colleague from South Africa came over to attend a trade show we were exhibiting at in Harrogate. We'd usually meet up in Germany, or Hong Kong, so this was his first real visit to the U.K. The first night in the hotel he wanted to relax in his room after a long journey.
> 
> The next morning we met for breakfast, he told me that he'd crashed out and woken up about 3am, and being a bit bored, he put on a satellite channel on the TV. It was showing back to back episodes of another legendary British sketch show, called Little Britain which was made in the early 2000's. (It certainly wouldn't get made today, at least not by the BBC.)
> 
> I'm pretty certain that this show traumatised him slightly, and he's been slightly dubious of the British ever since..... and probably rightly so.
> 
> You should check it out, if you haven't already come across it.....it's very quotable too....



Will do. Thanks.

By the way, I was born in Halifax, a mile away from Harrogate.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

topaz said:


> Can you please tell us if this shows the boot screen (Mojave) without any patching on a 5.1 ?
> 
> Cheers



Other than saving time if you switch frequently to Boot Camp/Windows or other operating systems, I've never heard a good reason to care about the boot screen.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Michael Antrum said:


> I totally forgot to mention - If you do get one of those graphics cards, you also need an additional power cable. It plugs on the Mac Pro's main board and supplies additional power....as the PCI slot alone cannot provide enough juice...




The RX560 doesn't require additional power, for what it's worth.

But I don't think they sell it anymore.


----------



## Dewdman42

topaz said:


> Can you please tell us if this shows the boot screen (Mojave) without any patching on a 5.1 ?
> 
> Cheers



No the rx580 does not have a boot screen but it can be patched by a service or you can buy them pre patched if you really need that

But you don’t really need it


----------



## Dewdman42

mat1 said:


> Can you see them making the mini 10x bigger to fit full size GPUs when the base units appear to be amazing for video editing already (a much bigger market than us)?
> 
> We'll never be able to upgrade the ram and storage can live happily outside of the box so then we're talking about niche use cases and legacy peripherals (Mac Pro territory). I'd love to be able to pimp out a base but those days are gone.
> 
> Stranger things have happened but I just don't see it. IMO.
> 
> 
> By the time they've updated the rest of the line there will be MBPs more powerful than most Mac Pros today.



the mini will probably continue to look very much like it does now for years to come as will the iMac. Based on what they have done we should expect an arm based macpro as well. Probably too expensive for me but we shall see. If they make it too expensive then I’ll wait and buy a used one a few years later. Plenty of Mac users still need pci slots, that’s why they included thst tech in 2019. I see no reason they would abandon that forever now with ARM. A new macpro in arm will still use integrated gpu because of the new arm architecture. Integrated ram too, but a macpro based on ARM will need to be able to support AT LEAST 64gb ram. So we shall see what apple will do.

let me remind you please the point of this thread is not to pontificate endlessly about what we think apple is going to do. It’s to discuss how to make use of our cheesegraters through the transition.


----------



## Dewdman42

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Not wanting another box, understood. But the latency increase is likely to be measurable in 10^-32% of the speed of light.



It’s not just the speed of electricity, there is an extra buss to go through which introduces wait times, etc. It’s probably just a couple ms, but still.... Lynx didn't give me an actual number, they just said said PCIe is "sligghhhtttly" (those exact words) faster then TBT and is still recommended when possible. hehe.

I still think we have a few more years with the cheese grater to think about it.


----------



## Michael Antrum

topaz said:


> Can you please tell us if this shows the boot screen (Mojave) without any patching on a 5.1 ?
> 
> Cheers



Nope. No boot screen. I was really worried about not having a boot screen before I upgraded to Mojave, but it's never been an issue.


----------



## JohnG

Nick Batzdorf said:


> By the way, I was born in Halifax, a mile away from Harrogate.



So there go your dreams of being President.


----------



## Michael Antrum

JohnG said:


> So there go your dreams of being President.



Oh I don't know. I remember hearing about one time you had a Prsident born in Kenya.


----------



## Michael Antrum

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Will do. Thanks.
> 
> By the way, I was born in Halifax, a mile away from Harrogate.



I must have been a while ago, because they've moved Harrogate since then.....it's now about an hours drive away .....


----------



## Dewdman42

Michael Antrum said:


> Nope. No boot screen. I was really worried about not having a boot screen before I upgraded to Mojave, but it's never been an issue.



you can get it flashed here fro $125: http://www.macvidcards.com/store/p82/AMD_480/580_Flashing_Services.html

You don't really need it though. BootCamp is the one thing that can benefit because if you go back and forth between OSX and Windows using Bootcamp (NOT OpenCore)...then when you're in windows there is no way to specify that you want to boot up in OSX again. Normally you go through the boot screen and choose the volume to boot to. So with the RX580 you lose that boot screen. You can still get back, but you have to go to recovery mode, then specify startup disk and reboot again...in order to switch back to OSX.. If you switch back and forth often, that would be a PITA. But if you aren't even using BootCamp, there is little to no value in the GPU boot screen...definitely not worth $125 spent on this machine at this point.

Also...with OpenCore....and I'm now discovering about rEFInd, which takes to to an even better level, you can get a boot screen...even with the stock un-patched rx580. That is the direction I am headed anyway, so now there REALLY is no point to get the GPU patched up with a boot screen.


----------



## Ray Toler

My plan is to freeze my two 5,1s on Mojave until at least the 2nd generation (and more likely 3rd) ARM machines are out, hopefully with something that addresses the needs of the small-biz / prosumer demographic. Even after that, I'll probably try to keep the cheese graters going as VEP seats for as long as they're able.


----------



## Michael Antrum

Ray Toler said:


> My plan is to freeze my two 5,1s on Mojave until at least the 2nd generation (and more likely 3rd) ARM machines are out, hopefully with something that addresses the needs of the small-biz / prosumer demographic. Even after that, I'll probably try to keep the cheese graters going as VEP seats for as long as they're able.



That does sound very much like the best option to me. I hope Apple pull their finger out and give us the good news soon....some people are saying there's an Apple event coming up in the spring of next year...


----------



## Dewdman42

Shad0wLandsUK said:


> What thoroughly irritates me about Apple's App Store platform, is that you cannot install the App that is supported on your version of macOS, once it is updated in the Store
> 
> Plenty of other developers offer you a link or locatin to install the latest (supported) version
> Not Apple
> 
> So now I cannot have GarageBand at all, unless I move to macOS BigSur...



Yea they might have that true for GarageBand now, I'm not sure if that is an oversight. people are complaining that they can't upgrade to LogicPro 10.5.1 from Mojave either...only 10.6...event if their Mac doesn't support 10.6 

I don't personally think that was the intention by Apple..I think its some bugs in the App Store with the Big Sur rollout. But who knows... On Catalina I now have to stare at the BigSur update notification and no way to disable it. Apple is really trying hard to push people to stay with their newest thing, but its really unreasonable to block people from getting older OSX or older app version as are needed to run on their older hardware. As far as I'm concerned, as of today we should be able to download for the Cheesegrater, Mojave, LogicPro 10.5.1, and GarageBand whatever that runs on it. For them to say "oops sorry you can't download it anymore" to me...seems like an oversight that will need to be fixed, make sure to contact Apple about it.


----------



## JEPA

The Fall of Apple, again... (without Steve Jobs..)


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Michael Antrum said:


> I must have been a while ago, because they've moved Harrogate since then.....it's now about an hours drive away .....



We moved to London when I was still an infant - I wasn't driving then.

It wasn't very long ago at all...


----------



## Shad0wLandsUK

topaz said:


> Can you please tell us if this shows the boot screen (Mojave) without any patching on a 5.1 ?
> 
> Cheers


If you use OpenCore you will get the bootscreen as it supports GOP (UEFI firmware on modern cards) graphics cards. 

My AMD 7950 Mac which is an official card gives me the bootscreen


----------



## topaz

Thanks for all the repairs, @Shad0wLandsUK AMD 7950 sounds like a good option. They seem to be going for £150 used.

nice know it’s supported without patching


----------



## mat1

Dewdman42 said:


> the mini will probably continue to look very much like it does now for years to come as will the iMac. Based on what they have done we should expect an arm based macpro as well. Probably too expensive for me but we shall see. If they make it too expensive then I’ll wait and buy a used one a few years later. Plenty of Mac users still need pci slots, that’s why they included thst tech in 2019. I see no reason they would abandon that forever now with ARM.



It won't be abandoned. It'll live on in some variation of the Mac Pro which *currently* starts at $6000 and 32gb of ram is $400 a pop. 

I hope people don't miss too many tasty Logic updates waiting for the return of reasonably priced towers.


----------



## Dewdman42

I’m running catalina in my 5,1 now and so far not missing anything. Looks like I’ll be able to run Big Sur also once I’m ready.


----------



## Dewdman42

I agree the 2019 MP was made too expensive. I mean a thousand bucks for the monitor stand? Come on. Apple can do better then that and hopefully they will but only time will tell. As I said before if they never release an ARM tower that all configured with ram and storage is in the $5000 range or less, then I will be out. Or maybe I will buy a used one eventually. In the meantime I plan to goose this 5,1 along for as long as possible. Can’t make any other plans until the future unfolds.

for now the cheesegrater keeps living!


----------



## JohnG

Dewdman42 said:


> I’m running catalina in my 5,1 now and so far not missing anything. Looks like I’ll be able to run Big Sur also once I’m ready.



I am mulling an upgrade from my 5,1 in part because I thought Sierra was the last viable OS version.
Did Catalina require any sleuthing or tricks to work?


----------



## Dewdman42

Yes it did require some hacking. I’m trying out today a method that might be easy enough to recommend but still I can’t emphasize enough that moving past mojave will require you to treat the 5,1 like a hackintosh and be able to dive deep into various low level hacking if needed. If you take the right precautions and keep a vanilla mojave drive around to roll back to if you have to then it should be fine. But going past mojave is most definitely not a typical app store experience of click a button and enjoy a new version of OS X. This journey will require me to take more ownership of the hardware and self responsibility for setting things up just right. In my view this is not something that all people should consider doing. 

I don’t reccomend hackintoshing for everyone either. But if you’re the kind of person that is ok with a hackintosh adventure then I think this may be a good way to go. There is also a highly motivated group of hackintosh gurus now that are very motivated to keep the 5,1 alive and figure out the precise hacks needed to do so.

I will try to keep this thread updated with whatever I learn in that regard.

but as I said, if the thought of hackintosh info generally frightens or annoys you in any way at all, then you may be better off sticking with mojave for the next year or two even without the latest “tasty” logicpro updates, or consider an interim solution that involves getting a second hand iMac or mini to get through the transition.


----------



## Dewdman42

And John if you do plan to ride mojave fir a few years, which is probably what i would reccomend for you as a dp and pro tools user I see no reason to rush to catalina. But I would definitely buy a $100 metal gpu and upgrade to mojave. Stay in that until at least 2023 and decide after that what to do on ARM.


----------



## JohnG

thanks @Dewdman42 

But you're thinking get a new GPU and go for Mojave? Interesting. Not sure I remember what a metal GPU is but no doubt it's searchable.

I'm really wondering, for the DP machine, whether it would be advantageous to just get a new (but used) machine that's more up to date. Min'es pretty good -- 12 core 3.46 and 64 GB RAM, I think. But I would consider going for 128 on a more recent box (this one has been upgraded but is Early 2009 5,1).

I have a separate iMac that is on High Sierra for Pro Tools Ultimate 2018 (not upgrading PT any time soon -- maybe another five years). I will watch Avid to see what they say regarding OS but that is a separate deal.


----------



## Dewdman42

I can say with certainty that my cheesgrater runs better with mojave then Sierra, and metal makes a difference. Vepro7 definitely likes mojave better. I really reccomend that if you’re going to keep the 5,1 a few more years. The gpu I like is the sapphire pulse Radeon rx580. There are a few other close cousins to that one which will work fine, search the forum for posts about the rx580. Nick had a slightly cheaper rx560 thst would also work fine. This gpu I mentioned, the sapphire pulse, was specifically mentioned by apple in documents as supported. That’s why I chose it. There are other gpus that can work fine also. But the rx580 is very commonly used in the 5,1 and OS X still supports it without requiring anything special to be done.


----------



## Michael Antrum

Just don't forget to order the additional power cable you'll need for the 580 - they don't normally come with the card....


----------



## Dewdman42

In my mind I would upgrade your 5,1 to mojave with the rx580, and if you have iMacs bring them all up to mojave also. 

the gpu upgrade is required to run high Sierra or mojave on the cheesegrater


----------



## JEPA

Dewdman42 said:


> In my mind I would upgrade your 5,1 to mojave with the rx580, and if you have iMacs bring them all up to mojave also.
> 
> the gpu upgrade is required to run high Sierra or mojave on the cheesegrater


does the Saphire Pulse rx580 boots on Mojave like normal or not?


----------



## Dewdman42

Yes sapphire pulse boots mojave normal no hacking needed. That is officially supported by apple. But if you want the low level boot screen you will want to get the rx580 flashed for an extra $125. That is really not necessary though.


----------



## JEPA

Dewdman42 said:


> Yes sapphire pulse boots mojave normal no hacking needed. That is officially supported by apple. But if you want the low level boot screen you will want to get the rx580 flashed for an extra $125. That is really not necessary though.


Thanks a lot!


----------



## JohnG

Dewdman42 said:


> In my mind I would upgrade your 5,1 to mojave with the rx580, and if you have iMacs bring them all up to mojave also.



The version of PT I have stops with High Sierra, so I'm stuck there for the indefinite future on the iMac. 

However, I will try to get my 5,1 up to Mojave with the new GPU.

Thanks very much @Dewdman42 and others.


----------



## Saxer

I went the Hackintosh route. Wanted more power than my 2013 Trash Can and din't want to get broke by a MP2019. Especially as it's again an Apple typical transition time. The new M1s are not compatible to most plugins now and doesn't have enough RAM. And the current running systems are probably not supported in a near future. I got a MacHack 12core i9 with 128 GB RAM this week for about 3500€. That's about 11000 less(!) than a comparable MP. It's not as good looking and will probably make problems when trying to update the OS. Now it runs Catalina. I don't think it will ever run Big Sur. But I think for the next few years I'm fine. After that it will be a nice VEP slave (if necessary) and the Apple Silicons will be available as an established system with a complete product palette to choose from.


----------



## Dewdman42

I think with openCore you should be able to run Big Sur. But that is outside the scope of this thread, which is to discuss how to use our 5,1's until hell freezes over.


----------



## Dewdman42

JohnG said:


> The version of PT I have stops with High Sierra, so I'm stuck there for the indefinite future on the iMac.



makes sense. There is no rush.



> However, I will try to get my 5,1 up to Mojave with the new GPU.



One other thing worth pointing out now, since this is the 5,1-forever thread... the last, and probably the very last, firmware update for the 5,1 is embedded in the Mojave installer. I believe the main thing that firmware added, aside from bug fixes, was the ability to boot from NVMe. A lot of us don't care about that anyway, but I just wanted to mention it.

Mojave is generally better then High Sierra in terms of performance because it really committed to "Metal". For example VePro7 will definitely run better on Mojave. 

But if ProTools can't go past High Sierra, then by no means, don't...


----------



## JohnG

Couldn't get either the High Sierra or Mojave combo updates to work.

Oh well.


----------



## Dewdman42

what do you mean when you say you couldn't get them to work? what happened?

This thread might help: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/high-sierra-firmware-fails-to-install.2090884/


----------



## Easy Pickens

JohnG said:


> Couldn't get either the High Sierra or Mojave combo updates to work.
> 
> Oh well.



Use the links on this page to get installers for older versions of MacOS https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211683 

Because of the Pro Tools thing maybe it's best to stick to High Sierra. That way you don't need to upgrade video either. 

One caveat about High Sierra, if I recall correctly that's the first one that used the new (APFS) file system, and that irreversibly alters your boot drive. Make sure you have a backup; if you need to roll back to Sierra for some reason, that'll be a bit of a hurdle. Still, I remember it being a more solid OS than Sierra.


----------



## Dewdman42

The biggest problem with the high Sierra updater is that it includes a built in firmware update which requires a gpu with boot screen. Like the original Radeon 5770 or perhaps an nVidia if it was the one that apple actually shipped with the cheesgrater.

It’s the firmware updater that is most likely not working fir John’s, since he says he had metal in it I don’t think it’s the original apple nvidia card, it’s a later one with no boot screen


----------



## Easy Pickens

Dewdman42 said:


> The biggest problem with the high Sierra updater is that it includes a built in firmware update which requires a gpu with boot screen. Like the original Radeon 5770 or perhaps an nVidia if it was the one that apple actually shipped with the cheesgrater.
> 
> It’s the firmware updater that is most likely not working fir John’s, since he says he had metal in it I don’t think it’s the original apple nvidia card, it’s a later one with no boot screen



I understood that he had not changed his GPU yet, and was only considering it if he decides to go with Mojave.


----------



## Dewdman42

We have communicated in PM and he told me his GPU supports metal, that's why he attempted it. Unfortunately if his GPU supports metal, it probably doesn't have a boot screen, which is why it can't run the High Sierra Firmware updater that is built into the High Sierra installer.


----------



## JohnG

Hi guys,

Thank you both very much @Dewdman42 and @Easy Pickens 

I am going to investigate further. The whole computer I bought second hand from a refurbisher, so I am going to investigate, if I can, by searching the specific specs of the GPU I have to try to confirm whether it has the boot screen. Probably not, is my guess, since I tried updating to High Sierra and got a message that the computer has to have OS 10.13 installed (which is High Sierra) to use the combo installer.

might have to buy another card to get it there so that is a possibility.


----------



## Dewdman42

Oh make sure you first try to install High Sierra before attempting to install Mojave.


----------



## Dewdman42

PS - its not the combo updater you need. You need to actually get the full High Sierra installer. In the past you would have used AppStore to upgrade to High Sierra. and it would either work or not depending on if your GPU has a boot screen.

I'm not sure if you can get High Sierra installer from the App Store. If not I have another way, but let's start there... the combo updater you are referring to is in order to apply updates to a given OS...but to actually upgrade the OS version you need the full High Sierra installer.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Dewdman42 said:


> But if ProTools can't go past High Sierra, then by no means, don't...



If it's Pro Tools 10, the version I have, it runs on Mojave - with two issues.

1. You have to trash your prefs and restart maybe one out of three times (may be specific to my system/use, but I get assertion errors).

2. The drop-down menus for inserting plug-ins require you to mouse over them to become visible.

But it works fine for my uses, which consist of limited audio editing knick-knacks. (I use Logic for sequencing.)


----------



## Easy Pickens

@JohnG @Dewdman42 

it was the "combo" reference that caught my eye originally. Full installers for previous versions of MacOS are available at the link in my other post.

Here it is again: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211683


----------



## Dewdman42

A lot of people have trouble downloading OSX installers through the App Store (which is what that link directs them to), if they haven't previously downloaded that particular version of OSX in the past at least once already. I much more reliable and easy way to get it is by following the instructions here:









Where to find Catalina


With 10.6 coming out today I guess it's time for me to update to Catalina from Mojave. Problem is I am only able to see Big Sur as an upgrade option and I'm about 110% sure that I don't want to go there yet. Where can I find older OS versions, namely Catalina. Thank you




www.logicprohelp.com





Except for JohnG this time, download the newest version of High Sierra that you find there.


----------



## JohnG

Easy Pickens said:


> @JohnG @Dewdman42
> 
> it was the "combo" reference that caught my eye originally. Full installers for previous versions of MacOS are available at the link in my other post.
> 
> Here it is again: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211683



nice one, @Easy Pickens

You were spot on; the combo downloaders apparently don't include the firmware update procedure automatically, which may explain why they didn't work. Using your link, however, did work.

Mojave seems to work "real good" as they say where I grew up.

Thanks again,

John


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Nick Batzdorf said:


> If it's Pro Tools 10, the version I have, it runs on Mojave - with two issues.
> 
> 1. You have to trash your prefs and restart maybe one out of three times (may be specific to my system/use, but I get assertion errors).
> 
> 2. The drop-down menus for inserting plug-ins require you to mouse over them to become visible.
> 
> But it works fine for my uses, which consist of limited audio editing knick-knacks. (I use Logic for sequencing.)




By the way, the same issues apply to earlier macOS and OS X versions too. I believe Mountain Lion is the last officially supported one, but maybe I'm wrong.


----------



## JohnG

Nick Batzdorf said:


> If it's Pro Tools 10



Hi Nick,

It's Pro Tools Ultimate 2018.12.0

On AVID's site it says High Sierra is the last supported OS for that version of PT. I realise that sometimes (often, actually) you can go further along with OS than the "official" last gasp, but I don't think I have any reason to do that. That computer really only is there for PT, so I'm not missing out (afaik) on anything fun.

And thanks to @Easy Pickens providing the link, my "main" Mac is now up to Mojave.

Not really even sure what the advantages are except that my iPhone won't talk to any of them. I use my laptop for that, which is cumbersome but oh well.


----------



## noxtenebrae17

I'll be attempting the OpenCore upgrade to my 2009 4,1->5,1 Mac Pro tonight. I've bought this thing new in 2009 and replaced pretty much every internal part possible. Mainly doing this since I'm a Logic user and I'd like to keep getting updates (though I think I'll start with Catalina first though).

I'll report back once I've got it up and running (fingers crossed).


----------



## JEPA

Guys, which of these two is better? 






the WD blue 4TB deal is dead... (it was €309 and suddenly €449)


----------



## Michael Antrum

JEPA said:


> the WD blue 4TB deal is dead... (it was €309 and suddenly €449)



I bought one of those on the first day of the black Friday offers, and was really impressed with it.

Anyway, in the early hours of this morning, the deal came back again, and I decided to get another.

I wouldn't be surprised if they pop up again over the weekend or on Monday. Amazon have form for this. 

I'd check first thing in the morning when you get up, and last thing before yout turn in....


----------



## noxtenebrae17

Quick update:

Installed Catalina via OpenCore on my 4,1->5,1 Mac Pro a couple days ago and I've had zero issues so far. Surprisingly, Catalina feels considerably more stable than Mojave did. I've especially noticed how much better everyday apps (mail, Safari, etc) feel compared to Mojave.

Still going to wait on Big Sur until I know things a perfectly stable there. Plus I have a new M1 MacBook coming in the mail next month so I'll have plenty of time to test that out in comparison to my relic!


----------



## Dewdman42

I have also felt like catalina feels more stable then mojave on my 5,1. I miss a couple 32 bit things but otherwise it all seems to work and numerous things do seem smoother. Plugin scanning was faster and less crashing in apps that tend to crash a lot while scanning all plugins, for example.

I’m also waiting at least six months before Big Sur. There is no rush! The open core community is still working out the kinks. Plus half your audio software still says to wait.

if you haven’t already, make sure to check out rEFInd ( or rather something called RefindPlus) to use in combination with OpenCore. This makes it a little more straightforward to set up a multi boot system with different OpenCore configuration for each one. So should be possible to test out Big Sur before giving up Catalina. Easy to add windows boot option as well.


----------



## jononotbono

I thought I’d take one for the team. I’ve installed opencore and actually got Big Sur working.
However, I can only get one screen working via hdmi and the other two will not work. The other two are dvi and even when I plug just one dvi connected screen (the GFX card is an RX580 Sapphire), the screen doesn’t work.

More head scratching before I feel volcanic rage as I know I should have tried Catalina first but hopefully I can figure this out.

If it works then I will buy a Titan Ridge PCIe card and then fingers crossed I can get Thinderbolt 3 working which means I can then use an Apollo Twin X with this 5,1

So close yet so far at the minute 😂


----------



## Dewdman42

They really haven't worked out OpenCore BigSur 100% on the 5,1 MacPro, there are a few users saying they have it working but when you get into multi monitors, hardware acceleration, etc..that's when there are still some little issues that some people have. Catalina is working 100% and I recommend you use that at this time.


----------



## jononotbono

Dewdman42 said:


> They really haven't worked out OpenCore BigSur 100% on the 5,1 MacPro, there are a few users saying they have it working but when you get into multi monitors, hardware acceleration, etc..that's when there are still some little issues that some people have. Catalina is working 100% and I recommend you use that at this time.


I’m gonna have to restart using a high Sierra drive and update from that. It was a bold move trying Big Sur!

Here’s some advice based on real time experience as I type this...

DON’T FUCKING DO IT 😂


----------



## Dewdman42

did you also upgrade to Mojave first? You should not be running Catalina nor Big Sur without the firmware update that comes with Mojave. Don't skip. Go from High Sierra to Mojave, get the firmware updates, which is Boot Rom 144.0.0.0. After that you can install Catalina cleanly. I am using Catalina on my 5,1 ,works completely. I can point you at the best guide for setting that up if you want to try. I will not try BigSur until the people that wrote that guide have completely worked out all issues with BigSur, which will probably involve a few new kext overrides.


----------



## kgdrum

jononotbono said:


> I’m gonna have to restart using a high Sierra drive and update from that. It was a bold move trying Big Sur!
> 
> Here’s some advice based on real time experience as I type this...
> 
> DON’T FUCKING DO IT 😂


You guys are OS daredevils,I’m still on High Sierra and will probably move to Mojave when I finally upgrade my graphics card.
I was trying to do this to change my DAW to Logic but since Apple abandoned Mojave and Cheesegraters and made 5,1 obsolete re: Logic I haven’t had the incentive or 💰 to even make it worth bothering with.


----------



## Dewdman42

Its not really risky to try it out, just backup first. 

I think you will notice an improvement just moving to Mojave with a metal card. I would highly recommend that if you are going to keep using the 5,1 for at least another year. That is officially supported by Apple and works better the High Sierra, better performance too.

Doing OpenCore is not for everyone, but I can say its working extremely well for me with Catalina, I think it runs smoother then Mojave... I'm very happy. I did lose 32bit stuff, but I am already over it.

I'm pretty sure I will be able to run Big Sur before the end of 2021, but I'm not in any rush anyway until all the music software steps in line.

The most recent Catalina security update did introduce a little snag, but I was able to restore from backup and work around it..but again...running a 5,1 on Catalina is pretty much the same as running a hackintosh, you gotta be ready to roll with the punches. But other people are working out the details of running Catalina on the 5,1 so basically you can just follow the guide and it works. The recent security update involved firmware updates for other Mac models. I have mine semi-spoofed as an iMacPro, so the updater won't run properly when it gets to the part where its supposed to do a firmware update. There is a way to get around this, so I did and all is fine now, but it was something I had to be aware of and handle properly, and I had my system totally backed up too. 

What I get for this is that I can run the latest LogicPro... And I do think Catalina is smoother then Mojave. That's about it though, I could care less about any other Catalina features...nothing in BigSur that I need either, but I expect that later this year Apple will release a new LogicPro that requires BigSur...I should be ready by then.


----------



## kgdrum

Oh yeah I will definitely go to Mojave without hesitation,I realized the metal card and Mojave will be great on the 5,1 but my main motivation was to move to Logic so it’s really not as much of a priority at this moment.

I don’t think I’d have the patience or necessary skill-set to keep up with the required hacks if a user goes past Mojave on the 5,1 but Mojave I’m looking forward to.

👍


----------



## jononotbono

OS Daredevils! 😂 
I’m on the Gin now to numb the pain. No I didn’t back up first. So it’s actually a massive ballache!

And yeah, if you’re on one of these machines you should be using an ATI card, an RX580 is metal capable and works with Mojave like a charm. 

However, the only reason anyone should do this upgrade is to have Thunderbolt and therefore be able to use Thunderbolt Audio interfaces. 

Time for another


----------



## jononotbono

Ok, I’ve ordered a Titan Ridge card. I’ve got till Monday to get Catalina installed on the 5,1 and then all music software reinstalled. If I get the Apollo Twin X working with this machine it will be an amazing thing!


----------



## kgdrum

So am I understanding correctly, updating to Catalina and installing a card will give you Thunderbolt capability with a 5,1 Cheesegrater?

wtf I’ve always been under the impression that Thunderbolt isn’t possible with our ancient Mac relics.......

I guess I have to get out more.

*edit*
OK I just read this: 








Thunderbolt 3 On Mac Pro 5,1 Cheese-grater - Now You Can Have It But It's Not For The Faint-Hearted | Production Expert


Back in late February 2020, we heard that there a solution has been found, which enables MacPro Cheese-grater owners to install a Titan Ridge Thunderbolt 3 card into a Mac Pro 5,1 and to be able to use Thunderbolt 3 in macOS. It is turning out to be a challenge to implement, but we continue to updat




www.pro-tools-expert.com





@jononotbono 

I take it back you’re not a OS daredevil, after reading this article I think you have to be a OS PSYCHOPATH! lol 
Have you thought of picking up a normal hobby like drugs?


----------



## jononotbono

Well here we go again. This time with Catalina. Ground Hog Day in full swing! I can feel my facial hair growing with the excitement of having to install everything from scratch again 😂


----------



## jononotbono

There we have it. Catalina working on a 5,1 and multiple screens working. It also has a boot screen, can also now have GPu acceleration which means you aren’t limited with what GFX card you can use. Next step install all my software and come Monday, fit the Titan Ridge card and see if the Apollo Twin X connects via Thunderbolt 3.


----------



## tmhuud

Yes! Yas!! Thunderbolt! No, Thunderbolt AND Lightning. No, not really, just Thunderbolt. Lol


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Bring back ADB and Apple serial cables!

They're vintage. Worth a lot of money.


----------



## Ray Toler

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Bring back ADB and Apple serial cables!
> 
> They're vintage. Worth a lot of money.


They also sound warmer.


----------



## AlexRuger

@jononotbono I'm impressed with your dedication, but...why? I'm under the impression that Mojave is the highest recommended OS for audio usage, regardless of which Mac you're using.

Typing this while installing Mojave on my old 2010 5,1 by the way


----------



## jononotbono

AlexRuger said:


> @jononotbono I'm impressed with your dedication, but...why? I'm under the impression that Mojave is the highest recommended OS for audio usage, regardless of which Mac you're using.
> 
> Typing this while installing Mojave on my old 2010 5,1 by the way


To cut a long story short. Came back from
NY with my SSDs. However I have to use my old Mac Pro 5,1s and they don’t support Catalina so all my bootable OS X drives are useless. So I installed Mojave.

Then I stare at my Apollo Twin X with the UAD everything bundle and learn TB can be a possibility with Titan Ridge. Like an idiot I went guns blazing with Big Sur. Doesn’t work properly. Now reinstalling Mojave and got Catalina working with OpenCore and currently reinstalling my software: and Monday the Titan Idge arrives and with any luck I can use my Apollo and just in time for a Punk album have to write of which I would like the Apollo and front end it offers for Guitar and Bass.

It’s a journey 😂


----------



## kgdrum

jononotbono said:


> To cut a long story short. Came back from
> NY with my SSDs. However I have to use my old Mac Pro 5,1s and they don’t support Catalina so all my bootable OS X drives are useless. So I installed Mojave.
> 
> Then I stare at my Apollo Twin X with the UAD everything bundle and learn TB can be a possibility with Titan Ridge. Like an idiot I went guns blazing with Big Sur. Doesn’t work properly. Now reinstalling Mojave and got Catalina working with OpenCore and currently reinstalling my software: and Monday the Titan Idge arrives and with any luck I can use my Apollo and just in time for a Punk album have to write of which I would like the Apollo and front end it offers for Guitar and Bass.
> 
> It’s a journey 😂


You’re a brave man 👍 I don’t have the tech expertise or confidence & certainly wouldn’t have the patience in dealing with Open Core from what I’ve read and the little bit I actually understand 😊
I’d love to migrate to Logic which requires this but I just can’t deal with venturing into the hacking territory this requires.
Congratulations! and I hope this works out for you.


----------



## Dewdman42

OpenCore is pretty cool. I gather the only way to use that Titan is by virtue of OpenCore also.

But OC is not for the faint of heart to be clear. Just as an example, a few weeks ago Apple pushed out a security Update for Catalina. I read that it includes firmware update, but not for the discontinued 5,1 of course. Since my machine is spoofing an iMacPro in order to get full and complete hardware acceleration, I had to be careful not to run the updater and have it do something undesirable at the firmware step. 

So I followed some instructions from some knowledgeable OC users to get the security update manually, hack it with a script to block the firmware update and then ran it...and lo and behold...it completely destroyed my Catalina volume. I had to reinstall from scratch, using a newer version of OpenCore...and then restore from TImeMachine, which luckily I had. A few hours later I was back in business, and then I had to tweak my Open Core settings so that in the future I can put OpenCore into a special mode whereby it will be able to run updates from the App Store without having to worry about firmware updates (basically temporarily disable the iMac Pro spoofing). All of which was not plainly explained anywhere, I had to figure it out.

Alright...even just reading what I just wrote..I'm sure at least half of you will immediately see that OpenCore and Catalina is not for you...and I agree. I always say the same thing about hackintoshing. Not everyone should do it. You know who you are.

But for those willing and able to get their hands dirty, it can work great and brings a few more years of life out of this hardware until we can get the right solution from Apple on ARM.


----------



## kgdrum

@Dewdman42 
@jononotbono

the two of you are inspirational while simultaneously also somewhat terrifying,lol 😱


----------



## sherief83

Great thread! 

I put Dosdude Catalina on a 3,1 mac pro here with 32gb of ram and a RX580-4GB. Booting the OS from PCIx and its working great and Logic 10.6 installed just fine lol

I'm going to do that soon for my 5,1 with 2x 3.46ghz / 96gb nvmi 512 boot from pcix soon.

I honestly am working with Logic 10.5 and Mojave on my 5,1 and they're just fine, I don't have the urge to upgrade immediately.


----------



## gzapper

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Bring back ADB and Apple serial cables!
> 
> They're vintage. Worth a lot of money.


I'll sell you mine....
Along with my scsi cables, firewire 400 drives and a complimentary titanium macbook pro


----------



## jononotbono

The plot thickens. The Titan Ridge card isn’t working. So I have ordered a flashing kit and now I'm about to learn how to flash the firmware on the Titan Ridge. Then input some code via terminal and then fingers crossed, will have thunderbolt working on the 5,1

The party never ends! Now, how does this thing go together?! Probably best I stay sober for this part. 😂


----------



## jononotbono

Well shit the bed and spit out my dinner! IT WORKS! Mac Pro 5,1 with Thunderbolt 3 and UA Apollo Twin X!







Well that was a journey. Hopefully this helps with giving someone another option other than just using them as VEPro machines.

Time to get writing an album!


----------



## kgdrum

@jononotbono

Congratulations!

I’m still not sure if you’re brave or crazy 😜

or maybe both! 👍


----------



## jononotbono

kgdrum said:


> @jononotbono
> 
> Congratulations!
> 
> I’m still not sure if you’re brave or crazy 😜
> 
> or maybe both! 👍


Just an OSX Psychopath. Apparently! 😂


----------



## kgdrum

Although this is just a rumor it looks rather interesting to me:









Apple Working on Two New Mac Pro Desktops, One of Which Will Be Reminiscent of Power Mac G4 Cube


Apple is developing two versions of the Mac Pro to succeed the Mac Pro that was first released in December 2019, according to a new report from...




www.macrumors.com


----------



## jononotbono

kgdrum said:


> Although this is just a rumor it looks rather interesting to me:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Apple Working on Two New Mac Pro Desktops, One of Which Will Be Reminiscent of Power Mac G4 Cube
> 
> 
> Apple is developing two versions of the Mac Pro to succeed the Mac Pro that was first released in December 2019, according to a new report from...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.macrumors.com


It says the first successor will be using Intel CPUs. Sorry but that is not exciting. The Mac Pro line up from 2019 are total disasters and I feel like I’m the only person that ever speaks honestly about them in public. I have been using the 28 core and the 16 core for about 10 months.

They are not the machines people expected. Man, they don’t even have PCIe 4. They released a machine with yesteryears tech. They knew ATI and Nvidia were now on PCIe 4 and yet knowingly charged through the roof for a machine with dead technology inside it. They knew they were leaving Intel and using their own CPUs but still have the gall to charge $14k for a computer that can be floored by their new MacBook Pro’s with the M1. It’s pretty sick. But hey, I guess people can keep up the mirage and keep saying “how powerful these “rigs” are!” 😂 Only two USB 3 sockets. 2!!! So you need more docks, more external drive bays. Can’t even remove the cover without having to unplug every cable because of the stupid case design. You can’t even plug a 2.5” Sata SSD into the tower without having to buy a PCIe solution. If you want to buy a bigger internal storage solution then Apple charge $2500 for a 32tb Raid 5 storage solution that consists of 4 HDDs! Who the fuck wants HDDs in their machine? And at that price!! It’s offensive. I remember having to buy a 2tb HDD a few months ago to replace one in a LaCie backup unit and it cost $80, and Apple promote this “modular” bullshit consisting of 4 HDDs inside a plastic case that locks into the tower so you can have 24tb of usable HDD storage for $2500.
!?! I could go on but I have said enough on these machines. The reason why most people that have bought these machines are not vocal about how much of a let down they are, is because they don’t want to admit how completely and totally fucking ripped off they got. No I’m not excited by anything if they are going to “update” it sticking with Intel. Slow computers that cost the earth.

An M1 Mac Pro. like it says will be their second Mac Pro update. That would get me interested in giving a shit again but at what cost!

For audio, I have not noticed any actual real world speed difference between the Mac Pro 5,1 when comparing to the Trash Can Mac Pro. And comparing the Trash Can to the 7,1 Mac Pro... couldn’t tell any noticeable real world difference.

If someone put all three (now I have thunderbolt 3 working on a 5,1) Mac Pro’s in a machine room and I did a blind test with the same cubase project, same OSX version, same audio interface, I guarantee I couldn’t tell you which one is perceivably faster. Intel just haven’t progressed over the past 10years. Just offering slithers of performance gains over the years and ensuring everyone gets ripped off wo th every upgrade. Thank goodness AMD have shaken things up because they have put Intel in the toilet at the moment (and dare I say Apple with their new M1 but man, I hate to think how much they are gonna charge for a 28core and beyond M1!). I mean look how much the Intel 10980XE was before the Ryzen 3950X got released! It was £3k. And then Ryzen 3950X came out and Intel slashed their prices to about £1k! That’s how much these people bend everyone over a barrel. It’s disgusting.

Anyway, I’ll get my coat. Would hate to offend any sensitive folk on VI-C. 😂


----------



## kgdrum

@jononotbono

I certainly agree with you on the Intel Mac Pro but if Apple develops a hybrid M1 based Mac Mini-Pro lets say a 16 core with enough expandability and enough connectivity for our needs at a somewhat reasonable price by Apple's standards we might have a new path going forward.
Who knows it still just rumors but there might be something there that might fill the void between the full blown 2020 Mac Pro and the iMac/ Mac-mini.
I’m sure Apple sees in the sales numbers that they have a void of sales that they’re missing,they hear the gripes,see the forums etc......
With the M1 chip and it’s inherent advantages there might now be possibilities that didn’t exist a year or two ago.


----------



## jononotbono

kgdrum said:


> @jononotbono
> 
> I certainly agree with you on the Intel Mac Pro but if Apple develops a hybrid M1 based Mac Mini-Pro lets say a 16 core with enough expandability and enough connectivity for our needs at a somewhat reasonable price by Apple's standards we might have a new path going forward.
> Who knows it still just rumors but there might be something there that might fill the void between the full blown 2020 Mac Pro and the iMac/ Mac-mini.
> I’m sure Apple sees in the sales numbers that they have a void of sales that they’re missing,they hear the gripes,see the forums etc......
> With the M1 chip and it’s inherent advantages there might now be possibilities that didn’t exist a year or two ago.


The M1 chip is definitely the most exciting part. We’ll have to see what happens.


----------



## Dewdman42

This thread is meant to be dedicated to the 5,1...there are other threads focusing on the M1. I will comment briefly as relates to the 5,1 as many of us are juicing our 5,1's along while we wait for next gen whatever is going to be.

The M1 situation is a paradox and we shall see. The fact that Apple is contemplating another Intel macPro only solidifies my POV on the matter. I say the main and primary reason that M1 is showing such incredible performance is mainly to do the consolidated architecture...memory and cpu on the same chip, sharing memory, rather then shoveling data between main Ram and GPU ram constantly as is the case with everything else we've been using until now.

This is an exciting change...but the _Achilles Heel_ of this architecture is that it will be very difficult to scale it, both in terms of more cores and more ram. I'm sure they are trying to do exactly that right now as we speak, but rumors about another generation of Intel MacPro indicate to me, that they are still quite a ways from the finish line...and frankly, I'll believe it when I see it.

One very possible future scenario is that Apple will crank out millions of consumer level devices with M1 power, maybe slightly faster...with enough ram for that type of buyer.... the architecture is really ideal for that sort of thing. But they may continue to ship Intel machines in the MacPros..perhaps for years to come....in order to provide higher performance. And until I see an actual high performance, high ram, Mac tower running on ARM....I will not even assume for sure that it will happen. Its also entirely possible Apple will phase out of even delivering to that market at some point. Anything is possible. And _some_ things, no matter how well imagined, envisioned and dreamt about...are not possible. Great minds do not always deliver. Just sayin'

I concur with jononotbono about the 2019 MP. Its good to hear from someone who is actually using them and being honest about it, thank you! @jononotbono

Back to the 5,1.....

I'm also stoked that we are still able to run Catalina on our 5,1!, which as far as I'm concerned is still the best computer I have ever owned! It continues to impress me every day I use it I get a smile. And I'm confident that in about a month we will be able to run BigSur, though VSL says to wait on BigSur, so I won't be updating to BigSur anytime soon anyway. But at least I know that at some point I will be able to. Apple truly made maybe their best computer when they designed this thing. People were able to upgrade their CPU's, their memory, GPU's, etc..over time in a way that it kept up with technology quite well..for yes, even 10 years... CPU clock speeds advanced relatively slowly during that time frame. There are still a few things we are missing with our 5,1's that do need to be acknowledged:


no USB3, unless you buy PCI card, so you can always do that I guess, but anyway..just sayin'. I don't have any slots left, so I have to live without USB3, not that I care because I don't need any external USB storage or anything that would benefit from USB3.


Memory is slow by today's standards, and yes it can make a difference. on the positive end, its pretty cheap to upgrade to 64gb or 128gb of ram...and again...aside from load times..most people would not notice much difference between this ram and newer/faster ram. It does make a difference, but we're talking about small differences that cost a lot.


PCI buss is too slow to accommodate full bandwidth TB3. (_glad to hear you got that working though functionally and for a lot of people I'm sure its plenty of bandwidth not withstanding_)


No AVX support, which means mainly that we can't use MassiveX and Modo Drums as of 2021. Some plugins that provide optional AVX may grind the cpu that wouldn't on a newer Mac.


Single Core performance is factually pretty low compared to modern Macs. This translates to difficultly with whatever live instrument you're trying to play at low latency if and when its an instrument or channel strip plugin that uses a lot of cpu. But if you use higher latencies and/or during mix down and most other activities...I agree, you won't notice any real world difference, the machine has plenty of juice (with fully upgraded CPU's) to operate very smoothly, just as smoothly as any modern Mac.


SATA2 storage bays, rather then SATA3. In benchmarking, the limits are there. In real world use, most people will not notice the difference between an SSD running on sata2 and an SSD running on SATA3. 


Bluetooth is old tech. It can be upgraded though for ~$200 to BT 4.2 with BLE, etc.. and works fine if done right.


Wifi is old tech. It can also be upgraded as part of the Bluetooth upgrade. But who really uses wifi on this machine anyway? (shrug)


It has 1GB ethernet compared to 10GB on lots of modern stuff. This is actually significant for some people, not for me. Running VSL servers with 10GB networking end to end, would probably improved VSL slave usage, for example.

That's all I can think of right now. These things do need to be acknowledged, but I tend to agree with jononotbono here, that basically...I am not having any performance problems or frustrations whatsoever. It does everything I want to do with music production, so far anyway. maybe some really cpu hungry stuff will come out that pushes it to the limit, we shall see. Its definitely possible to load up a live instrument channel and start getting drop outs in live mode. That would be the case with any Mac, but it happens sooner with this one. But honestly, I rarely have that come up and its not a big deal to drop a couple plugins while doing that or go into a bigger buffer or whatever.. I am talking like maybe a couple times a year at most I might hit that situation and its solved immediately through workflow adjustments...not a big deal. 

The 5,1 is still viable in 2021 as far as I'm concerned, even with the listed issues above, I will continue using it a few more years.... We have plenty of time to see what Apple is going to do with ARM or not.


----------



## Dewdman42

though admittedly...I feel for those of you not up for the task of Opencore on the 5,1 because people stuck on Mojave are going to start feeling software compatibility problems in a year I suppose. So there is that....


----------



## jononotbono

Dewdman42 said:


> This thread is meant to be dedicated to the 5,1...there are other threads focusing on the M1. I will comment briefly as relates to the 5,1 as many of us are juicing our 5,1's along while we wait for next gen whatever is going to be.
> 
> The M1 situation is a paradox and we shall see. The fact that Apple is contemplating another Intel macPro only solidifies my POV on the matter. I say the main and primary reason that M1 is showing such incredible performance is mainly to do the consolidated architecture...memory and cpu on the same chip, sharing memory, rather then shoveling data between main Ram and GPU ram constantly as is the case with everything else we've been using until now.
> 
> This is an exciting change...but the _Achilles Heel_ of this architecture is that it will be very difficult to scale it, both in terms of more cores and more ram. I'm sure they are trying to do exactly that right now as we speak, but rumors about another generation of Intel MacPro indicate to me, that they are still quite a ways from the finish line...and frankly, I'll believe it when I see it.
> 
> One very possible future scenario is that Apple will crank out millions of consumer level devices with M1 power, maybe slightly faster...with enough ram for that type of buyer.... the architecture is really ideal for that sort of thing. But they may continue to ship Intel machines in the MacPros..perhaps for years to come....in order to provide higher performance. And until I see an actual high performance, high ram, Mac tower running on ARM....I will not even assume for sure that it will happen. Its also entirely possible Apple will phase out of even delivering to that market at some point. Anything is possible. And _some_ things, no matter how well imagined, envisioned and dreamt about...are not possible. Great minds do not always deliver. Just sayin'
> 
> I concur with jononotbono about the 2019 MP. Its good to hear from someone who is actually using them and being honest about it, thank you! @jononotbono
> 
> Back to the 5,1.....
> 
> I'm also stoked that we are still able to run Catalina on our 5,1!, which as far as I'm concerned is still the best computer I have ever owned! It continues to impress me every day I use it I get a smile. And I'm confident that in about a month we will be able to run BigSur, though VSL says to wait on BigSur, so I won't be updating to BigSur anytime soon anyway. But at least I know that at some point I will be able to. Apple truly made maybe their best computer when they designed this thing. People were able to upgrade their CPU's, their memory, GPU's, etc..over time in a way that it kept up with technology quite well..for yes, even 10 years... CPU clock speeds advanced relatively slowly during that time frame. There are still a few things we are missing with our 5,1's that do need to be acknowledged:
> 
> 
> no USB3, unless you buy PCI card, so you can always do that I guess, but anyway..just sayin'. I don't have any slots left, so I have to live without USB3, not that I care because I don't need any external USB storage or anything that would benefit from USB3.
> 
> 
> Memory is slow by today's standards, and yes it can make a difference. on the positive end, its pretty cheap to upgrade to 64gb or 128gb of ram...and again...aside from load times..most people would not notice much difference between this ram and newer/faster ram. It does make a difference, but we're talking about small differences that cost a lot.
> 
> 
> PCI buss is too slow to accommodate full bandwidth TB3. (_glad to hear you got that working though functionally and for a lot of people I'm sure its plenty of bandwidth not withstanding_)
> 
> 
> No AVX support, which means mainly that we can't use MassiveX and Modo Drums as of 2021. Some plugins that provide optional AVX may grind the cpu that wouldn't on a newer Mac.
> 
> 
> Single Core performance is factually pretty low compared to modern Macs. This translates to difficultly with whatever live instrument you're trying to play at low latency if and when its an instrument or channel strip plugin that uses a lot of cpu. But if you use higher latencies and/or during mix down and most other activities...I agree, you won't notice any real world difference, the machine has plenty of juice (with fully upgraded CPU's) to operate very smoothly, just as smoothly as any modern Mac.
> 
> 
> SATA2 storage bays, rather then SATA3. In benchmarking, the limits are there. In real world use, most people will not notice the difference between an SSD running on sata2 and an SSD running on SATA3.
> 
> 
> Bluetooth is old tech. It can be upgraded though for ~$200 to BT 4.2 with BLE, etc.. and works fine if done right.
> 
> 
> Wifi is old tech. It can also be upgraded as part of the Bluetooth upgrade. But who really uses wifi on this machine anyway? (shrug)
> 
> 
> It has 1GB ethernet compared to 10GB on lots of modern stuff. This is actually significant for some people, not for me. Running VSL servers with 10GB networking end to end, would probably improved VSL slave usage, for example.
> That's all I can think of right now. These things do need to be acknowledged, but I tend to agree with jononotbono here, that basically...I am not having any performance problems or frustrations whatsoever. It does everything I want to do with music production, so far anyway. maybe some really cpu hungry stuff will come out that pushes it to the limit, we shall see. Its definitely possible to load up a live instrument channel and start getting drop outs in live mode. That would be the case with any Mac, but it happens sooner with this one. But honestly, I rarely have that come up and its not a big deal to drop a couple plugins while doing that or go into a bigger buffer or whatever.. I am talking like maybe a couple times a year at most I might hit that situation and its solved immediately through workflow adjustments...not a big deal.
> 
> The 5,1 is still viable in 2021 as far as I'm concerned, even with the listed issues above, I will continue using it a few more years.... We have plenty of time to see what Apple is going to do with ARM or not.


1) Yeah the best card to use is the Sonnet USB 3 is the best card for the 5,1. If you have space for it. And if you plan on this Thunderbolt Titan Ridge update then people need to bear in mind that PCIe slot 4 needs to be left for the Titan Ridge. And depending on your GFX card, this may mean slot 2 becomes in usable. However? If you do upgrade to Titan Ridge then it’s likely you will be doing so to use a Thunderbolt audio interface so you don’t need an additional PCIe slot anyway.

2) True. For me it’s not an issue for music at the moment

3) I haven’t done a speed test yet through the Titan Ridge as I only Sata3 SSDs and don’t have any TB or flash storage drives to do a proper speed test. When I do, I’ll share my findings. A friend has a load so I’ll borrow them when I have a beer with him next.

4) Yeah. Omnisphere and U-He is basically all I need so I couldn’t care less about this at the moment

5) For anything live performance, I’m using my Apollo with the unity preamps which is all I need at the moment. It’s a joy having no perceivable latency. Midi latency is another thing but my MOTU 128 Express is USB and was designed when the 5,1 was “new”. I have no problems with any latency. But this is just my own experience and I generally keep my sample buffers at 512. I would love it less but I work with whatever I have.

6) ok so this definitely a total slag. Not to be confused with the word Slut as per other internet posts 😂 Sata 2 sucks. If you put a Samsung 860 Pro in one then you will get 250mbs. Unless you unplug the DVD burner which will give a max speed of 320mbs. Still way off the SSDs Mac speed of 550mb. You can use a Sonnet PCIe card that can have two SSDs, or one for M.2 and raid them, and people have even used flash storage and got 2000mbs read and write speeds plugged directly into motherboard. However, with Thunderbolt 3 now in the equation... this could get exciting. Basically buy a Black Magic Dock or an OCW Thunderbay and then this could be the saving grace of the Sata 2 problem. Yes, unlikely to get 40gbs but if it’s at least the speed of a Sata3 SSD then I can hear Charlie Sheen saying the word “winning”! 😂 

7) Blu Tooth is Dogs Brown. Always has been. Always will be. In a studio context.

8) I never have wifi on whilst running g audio gear. However, having airdrop is really useful. So, are there any Thunderbolt Wifi solutions? That would be excellent. Remember. Titan Ridge allows 12 TB3 devices to be daisy chained so if there’s something that could add Wifi, I’d like that personally

9) 10gb would be nice but it means everything has to be 10gb and let’s face it, the world was spinning long before 10gb was available commercially.

10) I’ll be making a video on how to upgrade the 5,1 soon. With Covid here I’m sure many people would like to save money and repurpose their old machines. Or not and forget about this stuff.

I’m starting to think I need to get out more. 😂


----------



## sbarrettmusic

Thanks for all the great info on this thread. I've been going down the rabbit hole of updating the OS on my 5,1. Currently on High Sierra and interested in upgrading to Mojave or Catalina, now that I see it can be done, because I would like to keep Logic up to date and I've been experiencing some weird bugs in High Sierra, although I haven't figured out yet if those are app related or OS related.

I found out that there are issues with stuttering audio in Mojave if your 5,1 has the original dual processors, which mine does (2 x 2.93 GHz). I'm not sure if this issue exists on Catalina as well, but either way, am I a fool for sticking with the quad core processors? I haven't felt the need for more power, especially since I use a VEP server for samples, but I'm not sure what I might be missing out on.

Going Open Core looks like quite a process. I am pretty tech savvy so I think I could do it, but I don't really NEED to upgrade so I am trying to figure out if it is worth the time invested and the cost of buying a new GPU, processors, and likely updating some apps.


----------



## kgdrum

@Dewdman42 

Hi I’m sorry I wasn’t intentionally trying to derail but imo Apple possibly working on a M1 Mac Pro lite might be an interesting development 1 or 2 years from now if Apple figures out how to address the issues you have pointed out.
They have to see the void in mid tier MacPro sales they’re leaving on the table and if they were to eventually come up with a solution that more people could afford(M1 Mac Mini Pro farms?) 
There might be light at the end of the tunnel.
The sad reality we do love our 5,1 Macs but eventually we are going to have to make a transition.
I know I’m not an Open Core candidate,it’s beyond my knowledge factor,skill-set and patience and I love the modularity and ease of upgrading the 5,1 has offered but I unfortunately suspect Apple will not give us a Mac that gives us this kind of forward path ever again.
I think the 5,1 Mac Pro’s will be regarded as one of Apples best designs ever.


----------



## Dewdman42

jononotbono said:


> 3) I haven’t done a speed test yet through the Titan Ridge as I only Sata3 SSDs and don’t have any TB or flash storage drives to do a proper speed test. When I do, I’ll share my findings. A friend has a load so I’ll borrow them when I have a beer with him next.



I only know I've read that the internal PCI architecture of the 5,1 is not quite fast enough to truly accommodate full TB3. Not sure if its the speed or bandwidth that would be limited. I can't remember now it was a while ago that I read about that. But that's part of why there hasn't already been a bunch of TB3 cards for it. I'm impressed that you got it working! I don't have any TB devices, so I haven't been motivated about this. But I suspect your Titan will serve you just fine and you will not even miss the the bandwidth or speed or whatever that the PCI buss is not quite fast enough to take full advantage. At least you'll be able to use TB3 gear, which will serve you well a few more years!




jononotbono said:


> 6) ok so this definitely a total slag. Not to be confused with the word Slut as per other internet posts 😂 Sata 2 sucks. If you put a Samsung 860 Pro in one then you will get 250mbs. Unless you unplug the DVD burner which will give a max speed of 320mbs. Still way off the SSDs Mac speed of 550mb. You can use a Sonnet PCIe card that can have two SSDs, or one for M.2 and raid them, and people have even used flash storage and got 2000mbs read and write speeds plugged directly into motherboard. However, with Thunderbolt 3 now in the equation... this could get exciting. Basically buy a Black Magic Dock or an OCW Thunderbay and then this could be the saving grace of the Sata 2 problem. Yes, unlikely to get 40gbs but if it’s at least the speed of a Sata3 SSD then I can hear Charlie Sheen saying the word “winning”! 😂



I bought a Sonnet card to host two SSD's as SATA3...optionally as a raid. It benchmarks way higher then when the SSD's are on the built in SATA2. But honestly I found no noticeable difference whatever while using the machine...load times didn't improve, nothing worked better at all...nothing. that was with or without raid..and the raid more than quadrupled the benchmark results. I think this is a case where we can get caught up in specs and benchmarking but in real world performance...you probably won't notice much difference, when comparing SSD's on sata2 vs SSD's on sata3.

Partly that could be other bottlenecks in the system that keep things closer to sata2 performance regardless, hard to say. But still...so it takes an extra 45 seconds to load my project compared to some guy with his super fast latest PC windows setup with expensive raid stuff.... fine.



jononotbono said:


> 7) Blu Tooth is Dogs Brown. Always has been. Always will be. In a studio context.



Bluetooth and wifi are both really only worth worrying about if you have a special need. The following card, I installed a few months back and works very well...wifi performance is greatly improved and I highly recommend this if you need either better wifi or better BT:









Mac Pro 2009 (4,1) and Mac Pro 2010-2012 (5,1) - Apple Broadcom BCM943602CDP - 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac with Bluetooth 4.2 Upgrade Kit - Limited Edition


802.11ac, BT 4.2 and Continuity & Handoff for HACKINTOSH, Mac Pro, iMac with Native Support for Apple Broadcom BCM943602CDP for PC, HACKINTOSH, Mac Pro, iMac



www.osxwifi.com





I do actually use the BT because I bought some of these new BT midi devices from CME and they work pretty darn well for some remote devices:









WIDI Master - Wireless MIDI Adapter via Bluetooth by CME


WIDI Master is your virtual MIDI cable. Now you can connect all your MIDI devices - without computers - without cables - with WIDI Master!




www.cme-pro.com





That device requires BT4 and BLE, which is not included in our 5,1 built in BT. any kind of BT midi device really needs improved Bluetooth.. 

Some of the advanced BT features coming out in OSX also need newer BT devices...I haven't really been using those features though...but one of these days I want to try some of that..



jononotbono said:


> 9) 10gb would be nice but it means everything has to be 10gb and let’s face it, the world was spinning long before 10gb was available commercially.



definitely has to be end-to-end, as I said above. And not relevant for me either..but I think VePro-slave users would definitely benefit.




jononotbono said:


> 10) I’ll be making a video on how to upgrade the 5,1 soon. With Covid here I’m sure many people would like to save money and repurpose their old machines.



cool! 

I am going to post my OpenCore setup here soon also. Still I'm a little hesitant to recommend OpenCore for _everyone_. I will be posting a disclaimer that this is what works for me and if you're up for future challenges, then go for it, but don't come running back to me if something blows up down the road. Only people up for the challenge and reasonably technical should really do it. Even the gurus on MacRumors and the author of OpenCore itself, say they are kind of intentionally making it a little nerdy to do stuff, requiring you to read and understand the OpenCore manual...because basically its still not that hard to get yourself into trouble...even brick your 5,1 if you're not careful about it. I'm totally stoked we can do it at all...and its not THAT technical, but I know plenty of musicians that it would be too technical...and they should not do it unless they are able to pay someone to manage future issues for them or have a friend with lots of time on their hands to bail them out of a future problem.

I say exactly the same advice about hackintoshing in general.


----------



## jononotbono

sbarrettmusic said:


> Thanks for all the great info on this thread. I've been going down the rabbit hole of updating the OS on my 5,1. Currently on High Sierra and interested in upgrading to Mojave or Catalina, now that I see it can be done, because I would like to keep Logic up to date and I've been experiencing some weird bugs in High Sierra, although I haven't figured out yet if those are app related or OS related.
> 
> I found out that there are issues with stuttering audio in Mojave if your 5,1 has the original dual processors, which mine does (2 x 2.93 GHz). I'm not sure if this issue exists on Catalina as well, but either way, am I a fool for sticking with the quad core processors? I haven't felt the need for more power, especially since I use a VEP server for samples, but I'm not sure what I might be missing out on.
> 
> Going Open Core looks like quite a process. I am pretty tech savvy so I think I could do it, but I don't really NEED to upgrade so I am trying to figure out if it is worth the time invested and the cost of buying a new GPU, processors, and likely updating some apps.


Your first best upgrade (that’s good English) would be by buying a pair of 5690 Xeons. Then it would be a 12 core and at 3.46ghz. You would have to flash the firmware to make sure this upgrade can work. It will also raise the max speed of the ram. It’s been a while since I did that so I don’t want to be too specific in this post but that’s what I would want to do first regarding a hardware upgrade.

You should also upgrade to Mojave. It’s rock solid. That won’t cost anything.


----------



## Ray Toler

Dewdman42 said:


> though admittedly...I feel for those of you not up for the task of Opencore on the 5,1 because people stuck on Mojave are going to start feeling software compatibility problems in a year I suppose. So there is that....


I suppose I'm "up for the task" with Opencore and might try it out just to play, but in all likelihood my two 5,1s will be frozen on Mojave and I'll stop upgrading everything on it, just as I did with my Mirrordoor tuppermac and OS 9. I generally turn off all external net access for these and they just keep humming along until something breaks. The tuppermac hasn't yet, and it's nowhere near the build quality of the 5,1.

(The other benefit of freezing a system like this is that I retain use of the software that won't make the transition to the new processors. A lot of things I like will become abandonware, either because the new Apple sandbox is too restrictive or because the devs either don't want to deal with that particular product anymore or want to take the opportunity to switch to a new pricing model and use the transition as an excuse.)

I'm in good shape performance-wise with the 5,1s. Good enough, anyway, to get me through the next couple of years until the 2nd or 3rd generation of Apple Silicon machines are out, hopefully with a model aimed at prosumer / small biz needs. If I can't upgrade my SSDs or RAM on my own, I'm not interested. I'd prefer something as flexible as the 5,1, but I doubt we'll ever see that from Apple again except at the very highest price points, which are now beyond my willingness to purchase.


----------



## Dewdman42

*OpenCore Notes*

First thing I want to say, which I am putting in its own post...is that before anyone attempts to do anything related to OpenCore, they should make sure their hardware is updated to 5,1 (_if you have older than mid-2010_), and secondly, that it has the latest firmware (144.0.0.0) which you get normally by updating to Mojave. After you do all that and you're running Mojave successfully without OpenCore...and before doing anything with OpenCore....

People with older Macpro's I can't help you, but someone on MacRumors might be able to.

*YOU SHOULD BACKUP YOUR BOOT ROM.*

You do that by using DosDude's custom tool he made for this purpose, found here:

http://dosdude1.com/apps/. (note the zip password is "rom")

Once you _dump_ your BootRom to a file, zip it up and safe it in a safe place. You should not need to ever do this again, and most likely will never need it, but if you need it, then you'll be glad you did this.






During the course of that procedure you will be asked to enter the exact model ID you have, which is not exactly the same for all 5,1's. I had to open my case, get help from other people where to find it, and a magnifying glass to actually read the number from the logic-board next to the relevant chip. If you need help with any of this you should post questions at MacRumors.







*Why do this?*

When you start messing with OpenCore you will be fooling around with stuff that could potentially corrupt your NVRAM and in some cases it is actually possible, apparently, to corrupt your boot rom. This is not common, but it can happen. If you corrupt your boot rom, you will have essentially "bricked" your precious 5,1. But you can get it back if you have a backup of the BootROM, though it hasn't happened to me so I have no idea what is involved, but it was highly recommended to me to backup the BootRom just in case. In addition to having the firmware in it, the bootRom also contains things like your computer's serial number and stuff totally unique to you. So everyone should do this step before attempting OpenCore. Hopefully, and most likely; you will never need it, but this is just in case and its not hard to do once you have properly identified the exact model ID as mentioned above.

Its also possible to use another tool to kind of print out the contents of your BootRom backup image as text, using a tool called binwalk, which you can obtain using homebrew. This is not really necessary but I did it anyway and saved the text output to a file as part of my backup just in case even the BootRom backup gets weird for any reason, apparently its also possible, very painstakingly; to rebuild a BootRom from scratch if you know certain information like the serial number, etc..which comes out in the binwalk output. _Note - me personally if I end up in that situation I will probably throw out the hardware and buy a new one, but that's just me._

But in any case, this is warning to all, before doing OpenCore, backup the BootROM, *and by the way it needs to be done WITHOUT open core turned on, so if you already installed OpenCore..you need to boot without OpenCore before dumping the BootRom properly.*


----------



## JohnG

sbarrettmusic said:


> Thanks for all the great info on this thread. I've been going down the rabbit hole of updating the OS on my 5,1. Currently on High Sierra and interested in upgrading to Mojave or Catalina, now that I see it can be done


To get to Mojave, I'm told you have to use System Report and check that your graphics card is "metal" supported.


----------



## sbarrettmusic

JohnG said:


> To get to Mojave, I'm told you have to use System Report and check that your graphics card is "metal" supported.


Yeah, I have a GTX 960 which is listed as metal supported in the system information, but apparently there are no NVIDIA drivers that work in Mojave so I think I will still have to buy a new graphics card...


----------



## Dewdman42

*WTF is OpenCore?

5,1 is a hackintosh now!*

The 5,1 is really just a PC, like any other PC.. It happens to come with firmware from Apple that is tailored for booting up OSX and basically ignoring everything else, but otherwise, it is basically just a PC itself. And it needs to be a so called _hackintosh_ in order to run Catalina or newer.

For the 5,1 we probably don't have to fake out nearly as much stuff as a typical hackintosher would be doing with their PC they are trying to OpenCore-fake into OSX. But nonetheless we can call it a _hackintosh_ now if and when OpenCore is used.

*What is OpenCore*

Normally the firmware on the 5,1 looks for Apple _*boot-loaders*_, which are basically special files on bootable volumes that start the process of loading whatever OS is there. Apple's firmware basically only looks for OSX boot loaders (and boot camp too I suppose).

OpenCore essentially disguises itself as an Apple boot-loader, but then it performs different functions early on before loading the actual OS boot-loader you want to use.

It is able to read the UEFI, which is a modern equivalent of BIOS, by using programmable features of the firmware; and then is able to tweak the virtual UEFI, so to speak, so that the rest of the boot up procedure will essentially think it is seeing different hardware then it really is. That is a vastly over-simplified explanation, and I'm no guru on it, but just to get a rough idea of what OpenCore is...its essentially interjecting in the boot up process to fake out the hardware, so that later on when an operating system such as OSX is loading, it will be satisfied and will load and function as expected.

As a secondary feature, it also searches for and makes available all possible bootloaders found on your various storage devices in order to choose one to boot up, including OS's that the Apple Firmware normally ignores (ie, Windows and Linux, as well as newer versions of OSX)

Interestingly, Windows can actually run right on the 5,1 without OpenCore at all! So can Linux I believe. But the problem is that the firmware doesn't really look for those boot-loaders (except for boot camp setup).

But if you want to run a newer version of OSX, then actual hackintoshing is needed, ie...faking out the UEFI with OpenCore.

So in summary the OpenCore boot-loader provides two functions:

finds all other boot-loaders on your system, including OSX, Windows and Linux


When necessary, hacks the UEFI in order to _hackintosh_ your way to a newer version of OSX.

*Catalina*

For the 5,1, OpenCore is needed for Catalina or newer to really do it right, despite what you might read elsewhere that its possible to do without OpenCore...or perhaps use DosDude's patcher instead...the truth is, if you want to do Catalina right, you should do it on top of Opencore.

*Mojave*

It is not needed for Mojave, but Mojave can also run on top of OpenCore if you want without problems. The faking out aspect that is being done is intentionally as minimal as possible, at least with Catalina, nothing is really heavy at all. This will change over time with newer releases of OSX it will become increasingly necessary to _hackintosh_ the 5,1 into submission, using OpenCore, and in fact the authors of OpenCore may have to update it over time to support newer versions of OSX. They currently update OpenCore once a month as it is.

For all 5,1 users, if you don't want to do OpenCore, Mojave should be the last release you use and you won't have to mess with OpenCore, fully supported by Apple and I say, if you don't actually need Catalina, then don't do it, stick with native Mojave. Mojave works quite good. You will need a metal GPU, however to use Mojave or newer.

alright... That explanation behind us, I will try to explain my OpenCore setup...in coming posts.


----------



## Dewdman42

sbarrettmusic said:


> Yeah, I have a GTX 960 which is listed as metal supported in the system information, but apparently there are no NVIDIA drivers that work in Mojave so I think I will still have to buy a new graphics card...



On this point I still highly recommend you get a GPU that is reccomended from Apple. They did publish a list at one point in support of the PCI chassis, targeted for trashcan users...where they recommend half a dozen GPU's that support metal and will be natively supported by the operating system, well at least until the trashcan goes out of service, then who knows after that.

There was an older list before that was smaller actually, but I just found this list:






Graphics card compatibility for Final Cut Pro, Motion 5, and Compressor 4


Learn which built-in and aftermarket graphics cards work with Final Cut Pro, Motion 5, and Compressor 4.



support.apple.com





So basically any one of those cards SHOULD be supported at least with Mojave and I would suspect further support native in the OS, for a while after that too... but.. anyway....its not really enough to just assume that just because it has metal it will work, you want some assurance from apple that they intend to include the drivers in the OS for a while. See the above list. They said through Mojave, so there are no guarantees after that, about which GPU drivers will continue to be included in OSX, until Apple publishes a list, maybe they have for Catalina, I'm not sure.

A lot of people have zero'd in on the RX-580, but google around and check macrumors for experience, some other cards may have pros and cons too, I don't know, I chose the RX-580 and have been very happy with it so far, I think its a good choice. It is known to work through at least BigSur.


----------



## Dewdman42

*How to Setup OpenCore*

I'm not going to go into step by step instructions because there are different ways to do it, and differing opinions and the steps could change in the future, and probably will. You have to be ready to figure a lot of stuff out and roll with future changes.

But I will describe a few known paths I know to get there.

*MyBootMgr*

Probably the easiest way to setup a 5,1 with OpenCore and Catalina is to use something called _*MyBootMgr*_. If you use this option, you will be able to launch a series of AppleScript programs, which include a GUI that asks plain English questions and configures everything for you. You can literally set it all up with very little knowledge and without even touching the terminal. I personally do not use this method because I want to understand what I'm doing so that I can fix future problems. I also don't quite agree with all of the decisions he made in how _MyBootMgr_ sets up the OpenCore configuration.

But _MyBootMgr_ is being actively developed and probably will continue to be updated as OSX updates. The author is very strict about everyone reading and pretty much memorizing his guide before doing anything or asking any questions, so make sure you really read his guide entirely before running the easy applescripts.

You can find a forum thread and instructions here:









RefindPlus|OpenCore by MyBootMgr


This is a guide to setting MyBootMgr up for configuring and installing OpenCore and RefindPlus to multiboot Classic MacPros (3,1 to 5,1) as well as equivalent Xserve (2,1 and 3,1). The setup MyBootMgr creates involves chain loading Mac OS from system optimised OpenCore instances via RefindPlus...




forums.macrumors.com





Another point about _MyBootMgr_ is that he uses a combination of OpenCore and something called *RefindPlus*, which is a Mac derivative of *rEFInd*, which I really generally do recommend also. I learned about _RefindPlus_ after trying out _MyBootMgr_ and even though I chose to manually configure my setup instead of using his easy applescripts, I am also using his approach of RefindPlus+OpenCore. I will comment more about RefindPlus in a future post.

*CDF's Manual OpenCore Guide*

As a manually done alternative to using MyBootMgr, this is the guide that I highly recommend for setting up OpenCore on 5,1 manually. It is reasonably easy, and forces you to understand just a little bit about what you're doing. As it turns out I am pretty much using the complete advanced configuration from this guide to the letter, well almost.

So if you want to have OpenCore setup that is exactly like mine, just follow CDF's guide at the following link:









OpenCore on the Mac Pro


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




forums.macrumors.com





The above forum link goes back some years and has literally thousands of posts. Can't read it all, but everyone using that guide and a lot of people trying to do OpenCore Catalina on a 5,1 basically are following that guide, using that setup and they can ask questions there on that forum thread if they run into problems. The thread OP, named *cdf*, is very knowledgable and I think a few people on that thread are connected with the authors of OpenCore, for example. They are on top of it!

I actually highly recommend this approach first rather then the _MyBootMgr_, its not that hard and at least you will understand what you have done, whereas with MyBootMgr, you will paint by numbers and have no idea what you did, IMHO.

*My config.plist settings*

So after following the above CDF guide, what are my config.plist settings? He provides a starter config.plist and then some instructions for modifying it some more under *Advanced Configuration*, which enable things like hardware acceleration, which I did; all explained in CDF's guide. These things are summarized roughly as follows:


*DirectGopRendering* set to false
*VMM* flag turned off
*UIScale* set to accommodate HiDPI display for the boot picker
*Lilu* kernel injection
*WhateverGreen* kernel injection
*NightShiftEnabler* kernel injection
*AppleMCEReporterDisabler* kernel injection (need for dual processors)
*DeviceProperties* set to my specific display address
*SMBIOS Hybridization *enabled (_spoofs my machine as iMacPro for complete hardware acceleration features_)
*External Drives appear as Internal *- see CDF's guide, but I definitely did this.
All of the above is explained in CDF's guide, and as I said, I am pretty much using everything he specified in that guide, to the letter, with the exception I am not using the Graphical boot picker (the last step) and also I did not change my boot screen background color to black as defined in the guide. Otherwise, The above is the complete CDF advanced configuration.

In addition to the above, I added one further thing that CDF did not include in his guide, which is something called *RadeonBoost*, which you can find more info here:









Tired of low Geekbench scores? Use RadeonBoost!


OUTDATED. PLEASE DON'T USE THIS KEXT ON ANYTHING LATER THAN CATALINA. THIS KEXT IS NOT BEING MAINTAINED ANYMORE BECAUSE I SWITCHED TO APPLE SILICON MACS Hello everyone! Together with the help of @DSM2.Hackintosh I built a Kext aiming at removing limitations put in place by Apple for PC...




forums.macrumors.com





It is a simple kernel injection add, similar as some of the ones mentioned above. It will improve GPU performance just a bit, especially for certain GPU's. This is really entirely optional.

I can confirm that this configuration works completely. All hardware acceleration seems to work. Sleep modes work. Bluetooth handoff, etc.. everything. No complaints, very smooth.

*Updating Catalina*

You will see some comments in CDF's guide about what is involved in updating Catalina through the Apple Software Update. Turns out its not that straightforward. The above works very well, but some Apple OS updates will not be found or installed through the App Store when using the above setup. In order to get updates, you have to change two settings first, then run the updater, then switch them back again for optimal performance. The two settings in question are


*VMM* must be enabled in config.plist
*UpdateSMBIOS* must be set to false in config.plist
Then you switch them back after updating otherwise the machine will be running 25% slower.

Now that is rather a PITA honestly. That means when you need to run Catalina's latest security update, for example, you have to keep an alternate config.plist around that you swap into the EFI partition long enough to boot up that way, run the updater and then switch back the config.plist and reboot again to be back to full performance. Yuck! But that is what is required

_MyBootMgr_, mentioned above, combines RefindPlus and OpenCore as way to get around this, so that you have two boot options. *OC* or *OC_ALT*, where *OC_ALT* is the mode for updating and *OC* is the mode for high performance. I like this approach and I basically manually configured it myself without using _MyBootMgr_, I will comment in a future post about that.


----------



## Dewdman42

*RefindPlus and Updating Catalina*

As mentioned above, with the above CDF guide, it sets up a very smooth and vetted OpenCore configuration on the 5,1. I highly recommend. But one annoyance is that the Apple SoftwareUpdate won't recognize the machine and provide security and OS updates with that configuration. See previous post about why and what is involved to manually get the updates.

To get around this annoyance, MyBootMgr (Also mentioned in previous post), setups a configuration that uses not only OpenCore, but also another thing called RefindPlus, which is a derivative of rEFInd. You can google around about rEFInd and find a lot of stuff. RefindPlus has been improved for the MacPro and I highly recommend it.

Using MyBootMgr to create an initial EFI folder is a good way to setup the basic framework for combining RefindPlus with OpenCore. That is what I did. It automatically downloads the latest version of both RefindPlus and Opencore, though its initially configured in DEBUG mode, beware.

In any case, you can always download RefindPlus directly from GitHub here: 









Releases · dakanji/RefindPlus


A variant of the rEFInd boot manager. Contribute to dakanji/RefindPlus development by creating an account on GitHub.




github.com





*So what is it?*

RefindPlus is basically yet another boot-loader which can be used to find and load other boot-loaders..but it doesn't do all the fancy stuff that OpenCore does in terms of emulating UEFI. It just looks for boot-loaders, gives you a boot menu to choose one and then loads it. And OpenCore itself is basically a boot-loader, so it will see your OpenCore configurations, it will let you setup more then one OpenCore configuration and it will see each of them as a separate bootable thing, along with any other native boot-loaders on your system for Mojave, etc.. and it gives you a nice graphical boot screen.

Mine looks like this:






In the above RefindPlus boot screen, there are two round icons representing two different OpenCore configurations, and one drive icon which represents running Mojave without using OpenCore (very important).

Then the underlying configuration is setup so that the first round icon will launch Catalina with full performance (not updatable in App Store), the second round icon will launch Catalina with the flags set for proper AppStore updating at lower performance. And third icon launches Mojave without OpenCore.

This last option is really important to have because if you have any problems with OpenCore, especially while you're experimenting, then that will get you booted into Mojave (_you need to keep a small Mojave partition somewhere just in case, did I mention that?_), and from there you can edit the OpenCore config.plist to fix things or whatever.

In any case, I don't want to go into too much detail about setting that up, ask me later if you have questions or want to learn more, but I just mention this approach as a way around the annoying App Store update problem with Catalina and OpenCore.

I really like using RefindPlus and I wish CDF's guide would use it too, but I guess he was just trying to reduce complexity in his guide and doesn't favor this approach. The author of MyBootMgr does favor this approach and so I go back to, if you want the easiest method to set it all up, just use MyBootMgr exactly as is and like it..it includes this approach in order to handle the App Store update problem.


----------



## Dewdman42

*OpenCore warnings and gotchas*

There are a few things I figured out as I went along, sometimes the hard way..here I will mention them, as I can remember


you should keep a Mojave partition around somewhere in order to boot if your Catalina open core setup gets messed up for any reason, you want to be able to fallback to a non-opencore Mojave. But it doesn't need to be a full Mojave install with all your apps. Just something small and simple you can boot up, and access the OpenCore config.plist, for example in order to fix your OpenCore setup. Ideally on another physical drive then Catalina due to the following:

Its also best if this Mojave partition is on the drive in the first drive bay of your 5,1 because as a last ditch thing when all hell breaks lose with Catalina, you can pull the Catalina drive out of the computer, clear the NVRAM and it should boot Mojave from the first drive bay.


It has been recommended to keep the EFI partition with OpenCore on a completely separate drive from where any of your OS volumes are located. That statement will make more sense after you get your hands dirty with this stuff, but basically every SSD and hard drive has a hidden partition called EFI. Lots of times its basically empty. Apple will put some stuff into the EFI partition of your main boot volume. OpenCore puts ALL of its stuff into an EFI partition of your choice, and it doesn't have to be the EFI partition on your Catalina drive, it can be anywhere. It was recommended to me to use some other data drive, which has an unused EFI partition, to host your OpenCore stuff. An otherwise non-bootable drive. That way even if you have to pull out the Catalina drive, for example, you can still access that EFI partition with OpenCore on it, because it won't be on your Catalina drive, it will be on that other data drive and no need to pull out, etc. I highly recommend doing this from the start, presuming you have an extra drive to do that with.


Make sure to backup your bootROM as I described in earlier post


Follow the CDF guide forum thread for posts in the future just to see what is happening each month. Definitely check it before running any OS updates from Apple to see if there were any problems you need to be aware about.


There is a bunch of weird stuff about setting the startup disk, blessing disks, clearing the NVRAM, etc.. I still don't entirely understand all the reasons why these steps are needed, but follow those steps in the guide religiously. After a while you will start to see how these steps effect which OS will be the default one for OpenCore to load, for example.


If all of the above stuff in my posts freaked you out at all, then DON'T DO IT!


----------



## mjsalam

I was running Catalina on my 5,1 for some time without issue. Decided to see about Big Sur and surprisingly had no issues at all. Used the micro patcher. Now I don't have much by the way of extra hardware in there...I have an nVidia card and a USB-C card. My audio interface is a Fireface 400. So far I've not noticed any issues. Love this machine.


----------



## AlexRuger

jononotbono said:


> It says the first successor will be using Intel CPUs. Sorry but that is not exciting. The Mac Pro line up from 2019 are total disasters and I feel like I’m the only person that ever speaks honestly about them in public. I have been using the 28 core and the 16 core for about 10 months.
> 
> They are not the machines people expected. Man, they don’t even have PCIe 4. They released a machine with yesteryears tech. They knew ATI and Nvidia were now on PCIe 4 and yet knowingly charged through the roof for a machine with dead technology inside it. They knew they were leaving Intel and using their own CPUs but still have the gall to charge $14k for a computer that can be floored by their new MacBook Pro’s with the M1. It’s pretty sick. But hey, I guess people can keep up the mirage and keep saying “how powerful these “rigs” are!” 😂 Only two USB 3 sockets. 2!!! So you need more docks, more external drive bays. Can’t even remove the cover without having to unplug every cable because of the stupid case design. You can’t even plug a 2.5” Sata SSD into the tower without having to buy a PCIe solution. If you want to buy a bigger internal storage solution then Apple charge $2500 for a 32tb Raid 5 storage solution that consists of 4 HDDs! Who the fuck wants HDDs in their machine? And at that price!! It’s offensive. I remember having to buy a 2tb HDD a few months ago to replace one in a LaCie backup unit and it cost $80, and Apple promote this “modular” bullshit consisting of 4 HDDs inside a plastic case that locks into the tower so you can have 24tb of usable HDD storage for $2500.
> !?! I could go on but I have said enough on these machines. The reason why most people that have bought these machines are not vocal about how much of a let down they are, is because they don’t want to admit how completely and totally fucking ripped off they got. No I’m not excited by anything if they are going to “update” it sticking with Intel. Slow computers that cost the earth.
> 
> An M1 Mac Pro. like it says will be their second Mac Pro update. That would get me interested in giving a shit again but at what cost!
> 
> For audio, I have not noticed any actual real world speed difference between the Mac Pro 5,1 when comparing to the Trash Can Mac Pro. And comparing the Trash Can to the 7,1 Mac Pro... couldn’t tell any noticeable real world difference.
> 
> If someone put all three (now I have thunderbolt 3 working on a 5,1) Mac Pro’s in a machine room and I did a blind test with the same cubase project, same OSX version, same audio interface, I guarantee I couldn’t tell you which one is perceivably faster. Intel just haven’t progressed over the past 10years. Just offering slithers of performance gains over the years and ensuring everyone gets ripped off wo th every upgrade. Thank goodness AMD have shaken things up because they have put Intel in the toilet at the moment (and dare I say Apple with their new M1 but man, I hate to think how much they are gonna charge for a 28core and beyond M1!). I mean look how much the Intel 10980XE was before the Ryzen 3950X got released! It was £3k. And then Ryzen 3950X came out and Intel slashed their prices to about £1k! That’s how much these people bend everyone over a barrel. It’s disgusting.
> 
> Anyway, I’ll get my coat. Would hate to offend any sensitive folk on VI-C. 😂


Totally agree. I've used the new Mac Pros in various studios and they really, really do not perform up to snuff. Not at all what I expected. Like you said, it's hard to tell the difference between it and a maxed-out 5,1 in most real-world scenarios. Offline/multi-core work is faster but honestly the last thing I'm worried about is faster bounces.

That said, I love love love macOS and if they really do make a smaller, M-powered tower...color me interested. The problems with the hardware/"modular" ecosystem that you noted will still be prevalent, though, -- namely, the fact that all additional drives require PCIe solutions -- so I don't know. But it's the one form factor I've desired from them for years, and I know I'm not alone in that.


----------



## Dewdman42

so just wanted to report in that I have been using OpenCore for a few months now. I have been keeping up with the updates, currently running OpenCore 0.6.7. I'm also using RefindPlus as my boot manager, which has turned out to be a very good way to work, highly recommend. I can't remember if I mentioned that in earlier posts. So the boot sequence is a chain loaded approach where it first loads RefindPlus to present a boot picker...from there I can choose to boot directly to Mojave without OpenCore or through OpenCore to Catalina. It has other adsbvantages too I won't go into it now.

*Custom "Never-Booted" BootROM*

But the latest adventure I did with my 5,1, I had a Mac BootROM guru build a custom BootROM for me, which I have flashed into my logic board. Why did I do that? It was entirely optional, but I found out some info that in some cases MacPro's have a situation in their firmware where there is some memory in the bootROM that can run out if and when it hits a garbage collection hiccup. Whoa..more information can be found on this thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread....2132317/page-182?post=29647114#post-29647114

But anyway, what I found out is that my 2010 5,1 has slightly older bootROM then the newer 2012 ones, which are supposed to be identical, but it turns out that during those two years Apple made a lot of little improvements to the firmware as the 2010 had some some hardware related drivers that were a little buggy. every time they did those updates, each little upgrade to the firmware left some dead code which filled up the firmware free space. Ok.. But also, the firmware in my 2010 never really go the final hardware drivers.

Alright don't ask me what half of that means, this is what BootROM guru told me. When you start monkeying around with OpenCore and such, there is a lot of stuff that happens between the EFI, BootROM, NVRAM, etc..and its possible to eventually brick your logic board if the free space fills up due to garbage collection circular buffer design flaw. Alight. So the way to avoid ever having that happen is to have a bootROM guru build a custom bootROM image which you can then flash. It has to be custom in order to make sure you have the same serial number, etc. This flashes into the MacPro a bootROM that looks like it has never been booted before. On the first boot, it populates some registers and swings into action, but it makes sure there is no dead code using up free space for one thing, and also includes the very last 2012 hardware drivers that were in the 2012 edition of the 5,1 MacPro. So I have 2012 never-booted bootROM, reconstructed with my personal serial number and other unique numbers that shipped with the computer.

So...I did that... and its working. (shrug). I doubt it made any appreciable difference to how the machine runs, though I did benchmark it with Geekbench with the slightly highest score I've had in the past year or two, so maybe it did make a difference who knows; but at least I can sleep better at night knowing I should not run into the garbage collection problem mentioned in that thread above (a little light reading). that guy that runs the above thread is very much an Apple BootROM guru and can provide more info, but he has a lot of interesting things to say for those that are messing around with OpenCore on a 5,1; to avoid bricking them, which does happen occasionally mainly due to ROM issues.

I'm supposed to refresh it every couple months to get it reset back to "never-booted-before" state, which is not bad idea at all.


----------



## kgdrum

Yes you have earned the MADMAN title from me! 😱


----------



## Dewdman42

Long Live the 5,1 !!


----------



## kgdrum

Amen 🙏


----------



## jononotbono

5,1 and Thunderbolt 3 with my Apollo Twin X and Catalina running running like a charm still 
I'm just waiting for my LED Lights to arrive and I'm going to make a video on how to do it!


----------



## Dewdman42

Here's where my 5,1 currently is benchmarking compared to other much more current models (multi-core)






Single-core test is not as favorable no....but still....this thing can still keep up with big mixes no problem.


----------



## jononotbono

Dewdman42 said:


> Here's where my 5,1 currently is benchmarking compared to other much more current models (multi-core)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Single-core test is not as favorable no....but still....this thing can still keep up with big mixes no problem.


Forgetting all the obvious downsides to this old hardware, these computers are still amazing. The other day I wrote music for a video game and had Cubase, Unity and FMOD all running simultaneously for 3 days (few hours off in between each day) and it ran faultlessly. I'm going to get a couple of Black Magic docks soon to have all my SSDs connected via TB3 so they will at least run at 550mbs thus getting over the Sata 2 issue.


----------



## Dewdman42

The SSD improvement will likely be a diminishing return. I have a PCI raid card installed that gets sata3 speeds like that and even faster when in Raid mode (up to 1000mbs), but in honesty I saw no noticeable difference in actual performance of anything, didn't boot faster, didn't load projects faster, didn't use less CPU while streaming, nothing. Same as before. Benchmarks were impressive, but honestly... probably not worth the cost to try this particular thing. Other bottlenecks render the SSD improved performance as moot.


----------



## jononotbono

Dewdman42 said:


> The SSD improvement will likely be a diminishing return. I have a PCI raid card installed that gets sata3 speeds like that and even faster when in Raid mode (up to 1000mbs), but in honesty I saw no noticeable difference in actual performance of anything, didn't boot faster, didn't load projects faster, didn't use less CPU while streaming, nothing. Same as before. Benchmarks were impressive, but honestly... probably not worth the cost to try this particular thing. Other bottlenecks render the SSD improved performance as moot.


Having SSDs run at twice the speed going from 250mb to 500mb will not be diminishing. They will be twice the speed. Just a video game save back up takes 15minutes to copy 114gb. This will half that time. My VEPRo sample template will also load in twice the speed which is not really a deal to me but to me saving 50% of time is not demising returns.

If you had just said "Using NVMEs for loading sample libraries would result in diminishing returns for audio" then I would agree. 550mb read and write for Sata3 when you're used to sata2 is a massive return.


----------



## Dewdman42

I hear you. that's why I bought the PCI card. what I'm saying though, is that while you will be able to measure impressive disk benchmarks, you will not notice any difference in any of your software...including audio. That has been my experience. That's why its a diminishing return...extra cost and not really any real use benefit. There are other factors that seem to get in the way of it making any difference. Whether its the way that software loads things, etc. You MIGHT notice a difference while loading a game that uses extremely large file sizes..for example. It will absolutely not cut any time off your VePro or DAW load times, trust me I spent a lot of time testing that specifically.

But hey good luck...


----------



## jononotbono

Dewdman42 said:


> I hear you. that's why I bought the PCI card. what I'm saying though, is that while you will be able to measure impressive disk benchmarks, you will not notice any difference in any of your software...including audio. That has been my experience. That's why its a diminishing return...extra cost and not really any real use benefit. There are other factors that seem to get in the way of it making any difference. Whether its the way that software loads things, etc. You MIGHT notice a difference while loading a game that uses extremely large file sizes..for example. It will absolutely not cut any time off your VePro or DAW load times, trust me I spent a lot of time testing that specifically.
> 
> But hey good luck...


No, I’m learning how to make a video game. I used the file size of 114gb as an example. I have to manually copy that data everytime I make two back ups. That’s 30 mins each time. And I will do that a few times in a day. If I can cut hrs by half that is not diminishing returns. But hey you obviously have different thoughts that don’t relate to what I find important. Good luck to you too.


----------



## Dewdman42

hey relax man. Just trying to help. Sounds like your 114gb file might be worth it.


----------



## topaz

It's that time where I waver back to possible windows pc. grrrr.

I have 

Mac Pro (Mid 2010)5.1 
2 x 3.06 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon
64 GB 1333 MHz DDR3

Stuck on High Sierra, pissed that apple keep releasing a new OS every year and dumping legacy machines. :-(

So am now thinking should I just bite the bullet and build a custom windows machine or upgrade the GPU on the 5.1, love these machines. built like tanks but terrible fwd os support.

hmm..


----------



## Shad0wLandsUK

topaz said:


> It's that time where I waver back to possible windows pc. grrrr.
> 
> I have
> 
> Mac Pro (Mid 2010)5.1
> 2 x 3.06 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon
> 64 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
> 
> Stuck on High Sierra, pissed that apple keep releasing a new OS every year and dumping legacy machines. :-(
> 
> So am now thinking should I just bite the bullet and build a custom windows machine or upgrade the GPU on the 5.1, love these machines. built like tanks but terrible fwd os support.
> 
> hmm..


It makes sense in a lot of ways though.
Got to remember that the Xeon 1366 Socket (inside the Mac Pro) is now over 12 years old.

It does not have a whole plethora of newer instruction sets in the chip
Those would be benefiicial for security, performance and power management

I am going to get OpenCore on my 2010 and run Big Sur (because I really am enjoying it on my 2018 Mac Mini now)

Not sure why you are stuck on High Sierra though as they go up to macOS Mojave... unless of course you have an nVidia card in there or a GPU that does not support Metal


----------



## topaz

Shad0wLandsUK said:


> It makes sense in a lot of ways though.
> Got to remember that the Xeon 1366 Socket (inside the Mac Pro) is now over 12 years old.
> 
> It does not have a whole plethora of newer instruction sets in the chip
> Those would be benefiicial for security, performance and power management
> 
> I am going to get OpenCore on my 2010 and run Big Sur (because I really am enjoying it on my 2018 Mac Mini now)
> 
> Not sure why you are stuck on High Sierra though as they go up to macOS Mojave... unless of course you have an nVidia card in there or a GPU that does not support Metal


Yea, that’s why but I have just ordered a metal card.

The prospect of moving to windows was just too bewildering.


----------



## kgdrum

topaz said:


> Yea, that’s why but I have just ordered a metal card.
> 
> The prospect of moving to windows was just too bewildering.


Which did you order? I’m trying to get the Radeon RX 580 but it’s impossible to find and very expensive.
​


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Shad0wLandsUK said:


> Got to remember that the Xeon 1366 Socket (inside the Mac Pro) is now over 12 years old.


 
I personally don't find that particularly upsetting.

My next machine will be an ARM Mac, and I'm holding out hope that I won't need it for a while.


----------



## jononotbono

kgdrum said:


> I’m trying to get the Radeon RX 580 but it’s impossible to find


I am using an 8gb RX580. I highly recommend it for these 5,1 machines.
I also just looked on Ebay. There are a few on there.


----------



## kgdrum

jononotbono said:


> I am using an 8gb RX580. I highly recommend it for these 5,1 machines.
> I also just looked on Ebay. There are a few on there.


I actually just ordered the AMD RX Radeon 480 4gb model,it’s a bit cheaper and it is flashed for the boot screen.
I’m not heavy into anything graphic oriented (no games) so I think this will be OK for my needs.I assume besides Metal support it will be a step up from the 5770 card.
Hopefully this is a good choice.
Thanks


----------



## topaz

kgdrum said:


> Which did you order? I’m trying to get the Radeon RX 580 but it’s impossible to find and very expensive.
> ​


nVidia GTX680 2GB

fearing the worse, hoping for the best.


----------



## Dewdman42

Wow yea that’s craZy how much they have gone up in price! Regarding the rx580. Are they still in production?


----------



## kgdrum

OWC has more coming in about a month I think they’re actually new but they’re expensive.I didn’t want to wait and I wanted to save some coin.
I found a seller on eBay with good ratings,he answered all of my questions,threw in a display port —-> mini display port adapter with free shipping and states on his website to ignore eBay’s warranty as he increases the duration etc....
Some of the prices I’m seeing are bordering between delusional and criminal so I decided to try this as I don’t have much in video demands,I just need Metal compatibility and AMD seems to have less issues than Nvidia.
Hoping for the best then Mojave here I come! I anticipate I will be parked in the sacred land of Mojave for the rest of the 5,1’s use.


----------



## Dewdman42

As a test, I just installed Big Sur on my 5,1 (using OpenCore).

First the Good news... it works.

Bad news... my USB midi keyboard doesn't work on it. I still need to test my MOTU MTP AV, but I don't have good confidence.

I will be testing various software over time to see what all that I own will work on BigSur, but the legacy USB support is a big problem. Apparently a lot of people have been complaining about this with BigSur, legacy USB. I'm not sure whether this is effecting all BigSur users or just the ones trying to run it on 5,1 OpenCore. Will report back if and when there is better news, but I will be continuing to use Catalina as my primary OS for the MacPro 5,1

Also, when I GeekBenched it, the single score is about the same as it was for Catalina, but multi-core is 10% lower. I need to spend more time to see if I can do something to get the score up or figure out why it might be scoring lower with Multi-core.

I have to say also, I don't like the new Big Sur look with the rounded corners. I found many things harder to read, like the Mail app message list and many other things. The Finder windows use up a lot of wasted space with larger headers, etc. Some things seem kinda cool, but over all, I don't really like it...feels like a step back to me, they just changed things that didn't need to change, just so they could change...and its not necessarily better. 

At some point Apple will require Big Sur for LogicPro, quite possibly for version 10.7 when it comes out...that's when the rubber will hit the road I guess, but anyway...on we go with the 5,1....


----------



## Dewdman42

Today I managed to install Windows 10 into my 5,1 using the following guide:









Bare Metal Windows on cMP


PART 1 of 3 This is a guide to installing Windows 10 Bare Metal on Classic Mac Pros without Bootcamp or similar. This is one of many ways to do this but is a straightforward method. This guide is for installing Legacy Windows, as opposed to UEFI Windows, but can also be used for installing...




forums.macrumors.com





It was pretty easy and painless. Note, however, this approach requires the use of a boot manager, it is NOT meant to run through OpenCore. This is part of why I use RefindPlus, mentioned in an earlier post.

The result is legacy mode windows the boots right in the 5,1 without any OpenCore nor any concerns about EFI corruption. What’s more, I have multi boot setup so I can boot to Catalina, Mojave, windows 10 and bug sur for testing.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Dewdman42 said:


> At some point Apple will require Big Sur for LogicPro



I think you know that they require Catalina for the current versions. :(


----------



## Dewdman42

that's why I'm running Catalina on OpenCore now..which by the way is working totally great with latest version of LogicPro. Its a bit technical to get it setup, but honestly, working 100% perfectly. Big Sur only _kinda _works, so far, they're still working out the kinks....


----------



## Dewdman42

and now that I know how to install windows on this thing, that can always be a final resting place for this machine after it falls just too far behind the Apple curve to keep it on OSX. Most likely I will eventually buy a new ARM mac and relegate this machine to VePro duty


----------



## kgdrum

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I think you know that they require Catalina for the current versions. :(


I’ve wanted to try Logic for a while and was really bummed out when Apple made the Catalina/Logic requirement.This might be old news to most people here but I wasn’t aware of this possible workaround for people that are using a MP 5,1 with Mojave.
If you have another computer that can run Catalina (in my case a 2012 MacBook Pro which I updated on Friday 👍).After upgrading the MBP to Catalina you can purchase Logic 10.6 for the MBP & your other computers like in my case the 5,1 will also get the latest version of Logic the OS can handle.
So I’m trying to update my video card to a metal card so I can bring my 5,1 to Mojave then if I buy Logic for the MBP the MacPro 5,1 will have Logic 10.5.
So while it’s a pain in the ass and involves jumping over a few hurdles it’s still possible to get Logic for a Cheesegrater and from what I’ve heard Mojave and Logic 10.5 are a great combination.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

kgdrum said:


> I’ve wanted to try Logic for a while and was really bummed out when Apple made the Catalina/Logic requirement.This might be old news to most people here but I wasn’t aware of this possible workaround for people that are using a MP 5,1 with Mojave.
> If you have another computer that can run Catalina (in my case a 2012 MacBook Pro which I updated on Friday 👍).After upgrading the MBP to Catalina you can purchase Logic 10.6 for the MBP & your other computers like in my case the 5,1 will also get the latest version of Logic the OS can handle.
> So I’m trying to update my video card to a metal card so I can bring my 5,1 to Mojave then if I buy Logic for the MBP the MacPro 5,1 will have Logic 10.5.
> So while it’s a pain in the ass and involves jumping over a few hurdles it’s still possible to get Logic for a Cheesegrater and from what I’ve heard Mojave and Logic 10.5 are a great combination.



It never occurred to me that anything *past* Logic 10.5.1 would actually run on Mojave. Does it?

I do have the latest Logic 10.6.1 on my Big Sur-running laptop, but I don't use that machine for actual music - I just put Logic on it for the odd screen capture, etc. while I'm working on something away from home.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

And I just checked the prices of Radeon RX560s.

Whoa!

I paid <$100 for mine.


----------



## Dewdman42

To be clear, LogicPro 10.6 will not run on Mojave. What he's saying is that if you haven't already purchased LogicPro, and you're on a 5,1 running Mojave, there is no way to actually buy it from the AppStore. You need to get another computer with Catalina and buy it from there, as 10.6, but then you can go back to your 5,1 running Mojave and will be able to download 10.5.x as an owner of the software to run on Mojave.


----------



## kgdrum

Nick Batzdorf said:


> It never occurred to me that anything *past* Logic 10.5.1 would actually run on Mojave. Does it?
> 
> I do have the latest Logic 10.6.1 on my Big Sur-running laptop, but I don't use that machine for actual music - I just put Logic on it for the odd screen capture, etc. while I'm working on something away from home.


I’m by no means knowledgeable about Logic but from my understanding if you’re using Logic in a Mac with Mojave Logic 10.5.1 is as far as you can go.
While I’m sure Logic 10.6 will have some great new features for me being able to use Logic 10.5.1 will be for a year or two in my MP 5,1 until I see how the Apple Mac roadmap progresses will be great!
I’ve been a DP user for years and honestly I’ve never really jelled with it.
I don’t do soundtracks,I hate the small fonts and some of the DP architecture is imo clunky and outdated.Additionally Alchemy is one of my favorite all time synths so for me Logic 10.5.1 will be fine.


----------



## kgdrum

Dewdman42 said:


> To be clear, LogicPro 10.6 will not run on Mojave. What he's saying is that if you haven't already purchased LogicPro, and you're on a 5,1 running Mojave, there is no way to actually buy it from the AppStore. You need to get another computer with Catalina and buy it from there, as 10.6, but then you can go back to your 5,1 running Mojave and will be able to download 10.5.x as an owner of the software to run on Mojave.


Correct 👍


----------



## kgdrum

Nick Batzdorf said:


> And I just checked the prices of Radeon RX560s.
> 
> Whoa!
> 
> I paid <$100 for mine.


Yeah the metal cards have gone through the roof in pricing,to save money I tried a used RX480 card a week or two ago (eBay)and I couldn’t get it to work in my 5,1
Luckily I was able to return it and get a refund.
I don’t know if it was a bad graphics card,firmware issue or the power cable didn’t give the card enough power but I returned it and will try the RX580 from OWC next.
According to OWC it comes with a specialized power cable for the MacPro and I trust OWC so I’ll give that a shot.
The price is outrageous but it’s a new card with a two year warranty and PayPal credit will allow me to pay it off over 12 months interest free.
If I can get two or 3 more years out of the 5,1 with Mojave and Logic 10.5.1,
I will be thrilled!


----------



## Dewdman42

the current prices are definitely outrageous. I hope that is a temporary thing, but it might not be. The RX580 does need the extra power cable, OWC totally knows what they are doing with mac, I'm sure it will work.

Be advised, that you have to first install or upgrade to High Sierra, *with your old legacy card installed*. That will do a firmware update. You can't upgrade to Mojave without going to HS first.

After you upgrade to high sierra, swap the cards and see if the RX works in High Sierra. It should! High Sierra already has several important things in it related to APFS and Metal, etc.. So get the RX working with High Sierra first.

Now to upgrade to Mojave its required to have your Metal RX580 installed at the time you run the updater/installer. Its not strictly neccessary to have the metal card installed in order to boot up Mojave later. It will actually boot up with your old legacy card too! But at some point you might get some weirdness happen if and when Mojave is expecting a metal card.

anyway, the new metal card does not have a proper boot screen as the old legacy one does. During the Mojave install, another firmware update will happen but it happens while you have a black screen, you won't be able to see what is happening because of missing boot screen. 

So during that mojave update, just be patient. Eventually it will all work out. When I did my Mojave update, it seems like I waited forever at the black screen...and I might have even had a few reboots before it finally worked, can't remember now. But anyway, try to be patient about that process because the firmware update needs to happen and you don't want to interrupt it while its happening.

I would strongly reccomend you look on the macrumors forum for some threads or posts covering this exact scenario of updating to Mojave with metal card, etc.. You will see people that went through it and make sure you are ok.


----------



## JEPA

Nick Batzdorf said:


> And I just checked the prices of Radeon RX560s.
> 
> Whoa!
> 
> I paid <$100 for mine.


I wonder why the prices have raised? At last Black Friday they were around $200...


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

kgdrum said:


> While I’m sure Logic 10.6 will have some great new features for me being able to use Logic 10.5.1 will be for a year or two in my MP 5,1 until I see how the Apple Mac roadmap progresses will be great!


10.6 is mostly if not only bug fixes - not that 10.5.1 is buggy.


----------



## Dewdman42

ps - I see no reason the 5,1 can't continue as primary daw 2 years, probably 3, but I think some of us will be itching to get a new mac before 3 years are up.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

JEPA said:


> I wonder why the prices have raised? At last Black Friday they were around $200...


Dunno, but it always has something to do with supply and demand, either of the cards themselves or of something they need to make them.


----------



## Dewdman42

Nick Batzdorf said:


> 10.6 is mostly if not only bug fixes - not that 10.5.1 is buggy.


10.6 did add some cool stuff, but admittedly I'm not really using any of it. The live Loops, ReMix FX, Auto Sampler, mainly the Live Loops I guess, which I don't actually use...so yea...you're not missing much on 10.5


----------



## Dewdman42

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Dunno, but it always has something to do with supply and demand, either of the cards themselves or of something they need to make them.


For one thing, the RX580 might be discontinued. There is an RX590 since then. I don't know if the newer one works in our 5,1 or not.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

That's all in 10.5.


Dewdman42 said:


> 10.6 did add some cool stuff, but admittedly I'm not really using any of it. The live Loops, ReMix FX, Auto Sampler, mainly the Live Loops I guess, which I don't actually use...so yea...you're not missing much on 10.5


----------



## Dewdman42

There you go then....nothing really new...just bug fixes... why it has to require Catalina for that is anyone's guess.


----------



## Dewdman42

I do know that when it first came out, people were noticing the UI has been updated in a few places, see the threads on the logicpro forum...but like you said....these are not that compelling. I think people have felt like all the important bugs weren't fixed too. hehe


----------



## kgdrum

Dewdman42 said:


> For one thing, the RX580 might be discontinued. There is an RX590 since then. I don't know if the newer one works in our 5,1 or not.


Actually OWC are selling new cards with a 2 year warranty,they’ve been out of stock for almost two months.They’re getting a new shipment in the next few days.
The prices have definitely gone to absurd price levels but they probably have such limited use now,supply and demand is a major contributing factor.
I don’t know of anyone besides OWC selling the new cards.
@Dewdman42 
Yeah I’m already using High Sierra.
My plan is to use this for the next couple of years and hopefully in two or three years we will see how suitable the new Macs will be for DAW work and hopefully not have to rob a bank to buy or setup for a suitable rig.
My big concerns with APPLE long term is they make Macs moving forward that can use lots of ram,can be upgraded by the user and doesn’t have the boot drive soldered to the logic board.
Time will tell..........


----------



## Dewdman42

here is Cubase running on Windows....on a 5,1 MacPro... OpenCore not needed either...its actually easier to install this then it is to setup Catalina in some ways.


----------



## kgdrum

Dewdman42 said:


> here is Cubase running on Windows....on a 5,1 MacPro...


Calling your Frankenstein Mac Pro a 5,1 just doesn’t sound right to me! lol 😂


----------



## Dewdman42

kgdrum said:


> My plan is to use this for the next couple of years and hopefully in two or three years we will see how suitable the new Macs will be for DAW work and hopefully not have to rob a bank to buy or setup for a suitable rig.
> My big concerns with APPLE long term is they make Macs moving forward that can use lots of ram,can be upgraded by the user and doesn’t have the boot drive soldered to the logic board.
> Time will tell..........



I agree 100%. Well, honestly, easy 2 more years, you might even finally give Catalina a try by then...who knows. But there is always the option to run Windows on it...it runs the very latest version of Windows 10 by the way. There are numerous ways to make use of this hardware. And in fact, even when we finally do get a new hardware, this 5,1 has plenty of power to be a dedicated VePro server or something like that...either on Mojave/Catalina...or for that use, install the latest and greatest Windows 10 and keep using it for years to come. My 5,1 will be here in my office/studio for many more years to come. 

It will probably not be my primary DAW machine in 3 years from now, but like you I'm waiting to see what apple will do. I will want a powerful machine and I don't plan to spend $15,000 to have it. So it will all come down to if and when we can get a reasonable machine in the $5000ish range, with all the ram we want, all the SSD storage we want, the display we want, and works with all our midi/audio gear. I'm not gonna spend $10k, probably not $8k either. Hell, I bought my 5,1 as a used box also because I couldn't justify spending what THEY cost brand new, so I might even be waiting longer for used ones to come out. Or I might not wait if they come down off the pedastool and make something as we are spelling out.

Otherwise, I will definitely be watching the Windows PC space and will definitely consider switching to Windows 10 for a while until OSX and whatever direction they are going flushes out so we can see decent options, which might be more like 5 years out quite frankly. And for me, as long as I can do my productions on this 5,1 I'm in no rush to get rid of it, this thing still has plenty of juice. Its only Apple's obsolescence philosophy that is causing it to be less usable...and really you could run LogicPro 10.5 for many years in its current form and get a lot of music done...you might envy a few cool new features you can't have for the time being, but so what...


----------



## Dewdman42

kgdrum said:


> Calling your Frankenstein Mac Pro a 5,1 just doesn’t sound right to me! lol 😂



hehe. I keep my changes on a private GitLab page, and my name for the Gitlab project is "Frankentosh"


----------



## kclements

I picked up A used RX480 last year off eBay and it works perfectly well in my 5,1 MP. Best $100 upgrade I’ve ever done I believe,


----------



## kgdrum

kclements said:


> I picked up A used RX480 last year off eBay and it works perfectly well in my 5,1 MP. Best $100 upgrade I’ve ever done I believe,


Unfortunately a used RX480 now sells for $350 on eBay ,I couldn’t get the one I bought to work I don’t know if it was a bad card or if the power cable was not supplying enough power for the card.
So even though the price on a new card is obscene,knowing it will have the correct cable and a two year warranty makes the $100 difference more palatable.


----------



## kclements

kgdrum said:


> Unfortunately a used RX480 now sells for $350 on eBay ,I couldn’t get the one I bought to work I don’t know if it was a bad card or if the power cable was not supplying enough power for the card.
> So even though the price on a new card is obscene,knowing it will have the correct cable and a two year warranty makes the $100 difference more palatable.


Seriously? That is crazy. Maybe I should sell mine 

I did have to buy a double pin cable to make it work - from OWC. Once I used that cable, fired up perfectly. I don’t get the boot screen, which was a concern for me at first. I have never had a Mac in 20 years that didn’t have a boot screen. But honestly, this boots so fast I hardly notice it isn’t there.

I also upgraded my Bluetooth to 4.1 which is nice to have as well. But not as noticeable an upgrade as the 480

I agree With you that if you are keeping your 5,1 it is well worth it to upgrade the video card. And if they are only $100 apart, I would go with eiter a new one or one from someone reputable like OWC.


----------



## Shad0wLandsUK

Dewdman42 said:


> here is Cubase running on Windows....on a 5,1 MacPro... OpenCore not needed either...its actually easier to install this then it is to setup Catalina in some ways.


Did you install it in Legacy mode?

I always installed in UEFI mode so that I get proper AHCI performance and faster boot times


----------



## FrankieD

I just purchased a Mac Pro 7,1 and a Mac Book Pro. My Mac Pro 5,1 works but the omnisphere downloader wouldn't work. I called Apple a few time and got the same response: We are no longer supporting your ancient Mac Pro, go buy another. So I did. My new Mac Pro 7,1 has 192GB of ram and the Mac Book Pro 64GB of ram. An expert consultant, Tobias Escher, says that they should be all I need for a VePro master and slave. So if the two studios fail the the Mac Pro 5,1 will be my backup. I set it up identically to the other two. If the two main computers require a third for another VePro slave, I added an 8TB hard drive to the Mac Pro 5,1 so it can hold all my samples and I added ram to make a total of 128GB of ram.

My Mac Pro 5,1 is a TDM system and Sweetwater Music says I can list it for about 2K dollars. Others are listing theirs at that price.


----------



## Shad0wLandsUK

FrankieD said:


> I just purchased a Mac Pro 7,1 and a Mac Book Pro. My Mac Pro 5,1 works but the omnisphere downloader wouldn't work. I called Apple a few time and got the same response: We are no longer supporting your ancient Mac Pro, go buy another. So I did. My new Mac Pro 7,1 has 192GB of ram and the Mac Book Pro 64GB of ram. An expert consultant, Tobias Escher, says that they should be all I need for a VePro master and slave. So if the two studios fail the the Mac Pro 5,1 will be my backup. I set it up identically to the other two. If the two main computers require a third for another VePro slave, I added an 8TB hard drive to the Mac Pro 5,1 so it can hold all my samples and I added ram to make a total of 128GB of ram.
> 
> My Mac Pro 5,1 is a TDM system and Sweetwater Music says I can list it for about 2K dollars. Others are listing theirs at that price.


For a Studio where you are clearly making music all the time, I can understand the purchase. But even if I had the money for the Mac Pro 2019 I would not buy it. Apple have made it obsolete, bar RAM quantity.

Once they release the new Apple Silicon one (hopefully with much more RAM), I would get that.
Intel is simply overpriced to a stupid markup level now

AMD Chips are 60% cheaper than Intels Workstation class CPUs
I have a 2018 Mac mini for my DAW with 32GB of RAM and I would build a Ryzen Zen3 for my Slave

As I said though, for those who need the solution now and perhaps don't have the Technology background... I guess investing in an EoL machine is the only answer to a replacement.


----------



## Dewdman42

Shad0wLandsUK said:


> Did you install it in Legacy mode?
> 
> I always installed in UEFI mode so that I get proper AHCI performance and faster boot times



I installed legacy. Without opencore. If you install directly on the UEFI, you run the risk of corrupting your boot rom unless you absolutely make sure to always boot under opencore. Opencore has some stuff in it to block the boot rom corruption but if you accidentally boot without opencore, then the boot rom will start to get filled with windows efi crap.

So is legacy slower then opencore in some way? I kind of doubt it. Neither one has a significant impact on performance.

The main advantage of efi mode is that the drivers are more directly determined whereas in legacy mode you have to find and install the drivers provided by apple in bootcamp.


----------



## Dewdman42

I have to say also that I spent most of yesterday using windows 10 on my 5,1 and everything worked fine, but then I went back to Catalina just before bedtime and what a blast of sunshine and fresh air that was!! 

It’s good to know I can run windows and I’ll keep it here for testing and for some windows dev tasks but my focus will remain on OS X for as long as I can keep it going. Cubase or not I’d still rather be on OS X


----------



## Dewdman42

@FrankieD i can’t think of a single reason why the omnisphere downloader would not work on your 5,1 other then your OS config May be corrupt in some way. When was the last time you installed OS X from scratch on it? Which version of OS X are you running? Omni’s Downloader may require a newer version of OS X then you’re using but highly unlikely that it requires Catalina+. You should be able to get that working. Apple’s refusal to help you is typical. But if you’re willing to get into the details you can probably get it working.

With your new macpro it must now seem pointless though but the reason these relics still fetch $2k is because they are still great machines! When newer ARM macpros come out the $$ value of 5,1 will plummet, but even then it will still be a great machine, if for nothing else but to run windows 10 and use as a very capable vepro server.


----------



## kclements

If I can get $2k for my MP, I would sell it tomorrow and get a MacMini M1. Even though it may be a downgrade, it would still be enough for what I need. I may have to visit the ol Ebay and see what my 5,1 is going for. I've been in a simplify, Less is More mood lately.


----------



## Dewdman42

man, not me.

$2k for a 5,1 is a bit of a stretch honestly. That would have to be a pretty loaded one honestly. I've seen them going for half that and in between. Depends what's in it. 

I got mine several years ago, as a factory refurbished model with faster CPU...for just under $2k, not fully loaded, but pretty loaded, I think it was 64gb ram, I upgraded that later. it included a warranty. 

On EBay you can get cheaper stuff, some with older and slower CPU's, etc.. not all 5,1's are created equal.


----------



## kclements

Yeah, I figured 2K would be a stretch. Still, with Apple going to the M1 (and I have no interest in running windows or hacking this one to keep it going) Might be a good time to look at replacing it before all the value runs out of it.


----------



## Dewdman42

I think the first edition M1's are going to plummet in value also, FWIW.


----------



## JEPA

How are the M1s performing?


----------



## Dewdman42

That's a subject for another thread please.


----------



## kclements

I'm sure you're right. I never buy a computer thinking you'll be able to see it for what you paid for it - kind of like cars. Surprising that the 5,1s have held their value as well as they have. Because Apple is doing away with user interchangeable parts is the big reason. 

But I like the idea of a small Mac Mini sitting on my desk along with a small interface and get rid of the big huge cheese grater and Metric Halo interface sitting on the floor, not really being used to it's fullest.


----------



## kclements

Sorry - didn't mean to derail this thread. (there are other threads on the M1 performance).


----------



## Dewdman42

kclements said:


> Surprising that the 5,1s have held their value as well as they have. Because Apple is doing away with user interchangeable parts is the big reason.



They have held their value because they are truly like a PC, with pci slots, ram slots, storage bays, external ports and everything else you need to expand it and keep using it. Also because the motherboard was somewhat standard also, the CPU's could even be upgraded at some point and lots of refurbished 5,1's are in fact using faster CPU's that never shipped as such from Apple. Some people are using 5,1's which are more like what Apple might have done in 2014-15 had they never made the trashcan.

There was a movie about Steve Jobs a while back, I can't remember the name of it, but one of the scenes in there is a discussion between Jobs and Woz about whether a computer should have PCI slots or not. Woz wanted pci slots to make a computer that could do music and other cool stuff like that, Jobs, wanted it to be in a cool looking cube with no slot.

So here we are...


----------



## JEPA

Dewdman42 said:


> That's a subject for another thread please.


Yes and excuse me, I work with a Mac Pro 5.1 too and I thought we discuss here all related to the “what to do with it” including comparing it to the newest versions. 
“What to do with it” also falls in the category “selling it”, something that I haven’t considered till now when this theme arose. But back to the glorious 5.1...


----------



## Dewdman42

Please do not pollute this thread with back and forth debates about whether to keep this machine or move on to M1. Start your own thread or see many others. No intention here to compare 5,1 to M1, but rather the ins and outs of keeping the 5,1 going as long as possible for those of us that need/want to do so. The M1 related threads get long enough as it is with rampant speculation and all manner of different things which have nothing to do with those of us still wanting to use our cheese graters. Please assume we read those other threads and decided we want to use the cheese grater some more first.

It goes without saying, there are several modern Macs that exceed the performance of even the most hot-rodded 5,1.....that includes the M1 too. Nonetheless, for numerous other reasons, some of us are waiting to upgrade to ARM just yet...so here we are with our 5,1.... how to make the most use of it until then, or perhaps even in addition to it when we finally do buy some new ARM based solution, or any other modern Mac for that matter.


----------



## JEPA

Dewdman42 said:


> Please do not pollute this thread with back and forth debates about whether to keep this machine or move on to M1. Start your own thread or see many others. No intention here to compare 5,1 to M1, but rather the ins and outs of keeping the 5,1 going as long as possible for those of us that need/want to do so. The M1 related threads get long enough as it is with rampant speculation and all manner of different things which have nothing to do with those of us still wanting to use our cheese graters. Please assume we read those other threads and decided we want to use the cheese grater some more first.
> 
> It goes without saying, there are several modern Macs that exceed the performance of even the most hot-rodded 5,1.....that includes the M1 too. Nonetheless, for numerous other reasons, some of us are waiting to upgrade to ARM just yet...so here we are with our 5,1.... how to make the most use of it until then, or perhaps even in addition to it when we finally do buy some new ARM based solution, or any other modern Mac for that matter.


I agree with you, back to main theme! This thread has been very useful to me also; it was a simple question and I haven’t read the gazillions of threads about M1. But deducing now from your answers, it performs better. That’s all I needed to know, a simple question, 1 line, a simple answer, 1 line: “it performs better”. Thank you


----------



## Dewdman42

please do not take my words as gospel, go seek out those other threads where actual M1 owners have reported their results. I don't own an M1 and really do not know for sure what the real world performance is like. We can hope its better.


----------



## JEPA

Dewdman42 said:


> please do not take my words as gospel, go seek out those other threads where actual M1 owners have reported their results. I don't own an M1 and really do not know for sure what the real world performance is like. We can hope its better.


Thanks again! I am sticking with my MP 5.1 for now.. I bought a WD Blue 2TB at Black Friday additional to my 4TB and running without metal yet, 96GM RAM, all fine. Don't need much more. Specially when those RX580 are so expensive now..


----------



## Dewdman42

The current Rx580 pricing is a big problem for 5,1 owners, I agree. You don't have to use the RX series, there are other metal cards out there that should work. I was able to get my RX580 a couple years ago for under $200, and some people got the RX560 for closer to $100. Those days are over for the time being, but one can hope the price will go down again... Its not clear to me why they are so expensive right now. But its a ludicrous price, only truly motivated people will pay that, then the demand will go down and the price along with it.

If I was confronted with the decision right now, I'd probably just stay on High Sierra until I could find something for $250 or less with metal. $500 is a lot to spend on this box. But then again, not that long ago I spent $200 for just an upgraded bluetooth module...so...hehe. guess it depends on your motivation. Still might be worth it to goose this box along another year or two while the ARM-race fleshes itself out....


----------



## JEPA

Dewdman42 said:


> The current Rx580 pricing is a big problem for 5,1 owners, I agree. You don't have to use the RX series, there are other metal cards out there that should work. I was able to get my RX580 a couple years ago for under $200, and some people got the RX560 for closer to $100. Those days are over for the time being, but one can hope the price will go down again... Its not clear to me why they are so expensive right now. But its a ludicrous price, only truly motivated people will pay that, then the demand will go down and the price along with it.
> 
> If I was confronted with the decision right now, I'd probably just stay on High Sierra until I could find something for $250 or less with metal. $500 is a lot to spend on this box. But then again, not that long ago I spent $200 for just an upgraded bluetooth module...so...hehe. guess it depends on your motivation. Still might be worth it to goose this box along another year or two while the ARM-race fleshes itself out....


Yes, more than motivation, although motivation can come from necessity, I would buy the metal card if really needed. Until now I can manage my projects within the performance limits. I haven't made use of VEP extensively, maybe this will add to a better performance, if needed.


----------



## Dewdman42

I can tell you for certain the VePro7 runs better on Metal. When I upgraded to VePro7 originally, I was using Sierra and no metal card. my initial tests with VePro7 showed it using something like 10% more cpu compared to VePro6. I ended up in a deep PM discussion with one of the VePro developers and basically he convinced me to upgrade my card to Metal and my machine to Mojave, which I did. And VePro7 performance results then became better than VePro6 was on Sierra. 

VePro is using a third party GUI framework called Qt, and that framework makes use of Metal enough to make a significant difference. Actually my Geekbench benchmarks just generally using the OS were better on Mojave with Metal also...by like 10% as I recall. 

So its definitely an improvement.... I'm certain that LogicPro and other stuff from Apple will make more use of Metal too, etc. It is definitely an improvement...but 10% increased efficiency...how much of a difference will that REALLY be...do you really need to spend $500 for that? I wouldn't, personally.


----------



## JEPA

Dewdman42 said:


> I can tell you for certain the VePro7 runs better on Metal. When I upgraded to VePro7 originally, I was using Sierra and no metal card. my initial tests with VePro7 showed it using something like 10% more cpu compared to VePro6. I ended up in a deep PM discussion with one of the VePro developers and basically he convinced me to upgrade my card to Metal and my machine to Mojave, which I did. And VePro7 performance results then became better than VePro6 was on Sierra.
> 
> VePro is using a third party GUI framework called Qt, and that framework makes use of Metal enough to make a significant difference. Actually my Geekbench benchmarks just generally using the OS were better on Mojave with Metal also...by like 10% as I recall.
> 
> So its definitely an improvement.... I'm certain that LogicPro and other stuff from Apple will make more use of Metal too, etc. It is definitely an improvement...but 10% increased efficiency...how much of a difference will that REALLY be...do you really need to spend $500 for that? I wouldn't, personally.


Yes, d'accord, that's why I have an eye on the cards at amazon and ebay. It has been said the tech (RAM, cards, SSDs) would go down in prices at February this year or March... IT WAS A LIE!!!  They got more expensive ... :(


----------



## Dewdman42

Could all be Covid related too....new MacPros have been back ordered also due to production delays, etc..


----------



## kgdrum

@Dewdman42 @JEPA 

Yeah the RX580 is too damn expensive! My motivation is wanting to get Logic and with Mojave I will be able to get Logic 10.5.1
Otherwise I’d probably stay parked in High Sierra.........


----------



## Dewdman42

make good use out of those $500 Live Loops feature!


----------



## kgdrum

Dewdman42 said:


> make good use out of those $500 Live Loops feature!


What is that?


----------



## Dewdman42

LogicPro 10.5 added. Live Loops feature...couple others too. I'm just kidding ya...

I think $500 to put off the purchase of a new computer a few more years is totally justifiable. If that's what you need to keep it going, then I think its worth it! this year I paid $200 to upgrade my bluetooth just so I could turn my fader box into a wireless one. I just spent $50 to get a cleaner BootRom with my OpenCore shenanigans. Last year I spent some bucks on a 4TB SSD. Etc. Yes these expenditures commit me to use the 5,1 a few more years...so worth it. I suspect that around 2025 is when I will pull the trigger on something from Apple based on ARM...and a lot is going to happen between now and then so I can't really speculate much other then to say, by then something will be available that will be worth it to spend > $5000 for a new Mac.

until then, $500 for a card or odd thing here or there...its not that bad really...


----------



## kgdrum

Dewdman42 said:


> LogicPro 10.5 added. Live Loops feature...couple others too. I'm just kidding ya...
> 
> I think $500 to put off the purchase of a new computer a few more years is totally justifiable. If that's what you need to keep it going, then I think its worth it! this year I paid $200 to upgrade my bluetooth just so I could turn my fader box into a wireless one. I just spent $50 to get a cleaner BootRom with my OpenCore shenanigans. Last year I spent some bucks on a 4TB SSD. Etc. Yes these expenditures commit me to use the 5,1 a few more years...so worth it. I suspect that around 2025 is when I will pull the trigger on something from Apple based on ARM...and a lot is going to happen between now and then so I can't really speculate much other then to say, by then something will be available that will be worth it to spend > $5000 for a new Mac.
> 
> until then, $500 for a card or odd thing here or there...its not that bad really...


I couldn’t agree more! 👍
I’m also looking at about 3 more years before a move........


----------



## Dewdman42

and don't get me started about what the cost of Apple Care for the first couple years on a new Mac will be!


----------



## kgdrum

Dewdman42 said:


> and don't get me started about what the cost of Apple Care for the first couple years on a new Mac will be!


I’ve never regretted purchasing AppleCare
Many years ago I had a liquid cooled G-5 and the liquid cooling system spritzed all over the motherboard,power supply etc.......This happened one week before my Apple Care expired.
The repairs would have cost more than buying a new Mac at the time.
I ❤️ AppleCare! 😘


----------



## Dewdman42

wasn't meaning to say that. Just that its an additional cost on a new Mac that might even add up to as much as you just spent for a new GPU. Older computers might not have AppleCare anymore, but instead you have some maintenance costs..which may involve the odd new gizmo here or there. 

Just be glad that for the 5,1, these gizmos are even available. Other modern all-in-one computers are much less expandable...you don't even have the option to do that. You just buy them, pay the apple care for a couple years in case it breaks...and after that, you use it as much as you can until it has some problems or something and there are no expansion options...so you chuck it for something else new. 

We are able to keep the 5,1 going this long, precisely because it is expandable (for a cost of course)...so...that's a blessing not a curse.


----------



## kclements

I don’t know that I’d spend $500 for a RX580, but knowing what I know now, with my RX480, I’d give it considerable thought. It’s the best investment by far I’ve done to the 5,1. The SSDs are nice, but they didn’t make the “holy cow, that boots fast” feeling I get from the 480

when I was shopping around, I visited this site http://www.macvidcards.com/store/p116/Apple_EFI_AMD_RX580_4GB_and_8GB_Sapphire_Pulse_for_Mac_Pro_4,1/5,1.html

they are a bit pricey and run out of stock often. But they also flash the cards so you get a boot screen. Just FYI


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Dewdman42 said:


> There you go then....nothing really new...just bug fixes... why it has to require Catalina for that is anyone's guess.


Who knows, but big fixes are important!


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Dewdman42 said:


> and don't get me started about what the cost of Apple Care for the first couple years on a new Mac will be!


I know how much all the AppleCare I would ever, ever buy would cost:


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

Dewdman42 said:


> and don't get me started about what the cost of Apple Care for the first couple years on a new Mac will be!


The Apple Care for my new 2020 iMac is only $169 for three years.


----------



## JohnG

Having bought, reluctantly, a new Mac Pro, now I have a surplus 5,1 (upgraded to 12 core 3.46GHz) and am not sure what to do with it.

Looks like they are still valuable second-hand, so I guess I'll probably sell it so it gets some use. I've been giving older computers away to foster kids but this one I think would be too frustrating -- stuck on OS, no camera or mic, needs screen, keyboard, sound card.

So am I missing something obvious?


----------



## Dewdman42

Maybe you'll never need it again, but I'd hang on to it a bit and possibly put it to use as a VePro server or something.


----------



## JohnG

Dewdman42 said:


> Maybe you'll never need it again, but I'd hang on to it a bit and possibly put it to use as a VePro server or something.


That's a good idea, but I already have three satellite PCs with a total of about 150GB of RAM in them collectively. Between that and the Mac Pro I have way more than I could conceivably need.

At least it has a nice GPU and has been upgraded to Metal, which means it's somewhat more compatible than it otherwise would be.


----------



## Dewdman42

I have thought a bit about what I would do with my 5,1 after I get a new Mac, eventually. The fact that the case is so big, and as you said, no camera, etc.. There is a certain kind of user that will appreciate this box, but many users will just think its a "big box with no camera". Some people on this forum already think that, much less a less-technical user that just does typical consumer tasks.

So I have no idea who I could possibly give this to, who would even want it. For that reason I basically just have decided to keep it going in some capacity. For me, it will if nothing else replace my even older file server PC if it came down to it. I can find some kind of use for it for quite some time before I will give it away to someone who won't appreciate it.

I'd probably consider selling mine if I could fetch more than $1000 for it, which I don't expect I will be able to by the time I get a new Mac...so... Its possible I could pull out all the SSD storage, sell those separately, sell the extra GPU I have, etc.. I dunno. I see on ebay right some 5,1's that have sold in a range from $500-2500 depending on what's in them and so forth...I think it would be pushing it to expect to get $2k for it, but if I could sell mine for $2k and didn't need it anymore, I definitely would do that, it takes $2k off what you paid for that new one eh?


----------



## sndmarks

Dewdman42 said:


> The current Rx580 pricing is a big problem for 5,1 owners, I agree. You don't have to use the RX series, there are other metal cards out there that should work. I was able to get my RX580 a couple years ago for under $200, and some people got the RX560 for closer to $100. Those days are over for the time being, but one can hope the price will go down again... Its not clear to me why they are so expensive right now. But its a ludicrous price, only truly motivated people will pay that, then the demand will go down and the price along with it.
> 
> If I was confronted with the decision right now, I'd probably just stay on High Sierra until I could find something for $250 or less with metal. $500 is a lot to spend on this box. But then again, not that long ago I spent $200 for just an upgraded bluetooth module...so...hehe. guess it depends on your motivation. Still might be worth it to goose this box along another year or two while the ARM-race fleshes itself out....


The RX580s seem to be the budget choice for crypto-mining rigs and those guys usually run a dozen or more at a time.


----------



## kgdrum

OK! I recieved the RX580 card,it's installed and running as i'm typing. 

*Although I have one annoying issue,I can't figure out how to get the pci card retaining bar(captive screws) to line up and screw into place.*

Is this a common issue or am i just showing my drummer roots?

It might be a placebo effect but the graphics and colors look a little more detailed and sharper than they did with the 5770.


----------



## Dewdman42

Now that you mention it I vaguely recall having an issue and got rid of the apple bar across the top, I found these thumb screws to use instead....:


----------



## Dewdman42

The RX580 is an excellent card...part of why it looks better is because its using Metal now. 

The RX580 also provides a lot of HiDPI modes really well, so check that out too when you get a chance.


----------



## kgdrum

Dewdman42 said:


> Now that you mention it I vaguely recall having an issue and got rid of the apple bar across the top, I found these thumb screws to use instead....:



Thanks just ordered


----------



## synthetic

Wow, my Gigabyte RX580 8GB was $170, are people using them for Bitcoin or something? I bought it almost exactly a year ago and it's been working great with a 32" BenQ 4k monitor. Fewer CPU spikes in Cubase than with my previous Nvidia card, I think.


----------



## gsilbers

Anyone know how the Mac Pro 5,1 connected via Ethernet works fast for share screen?

I have a Mac mini intel and might get a MacBook (as) and connect via Ethernet to my Mac Pro to use as a slave.

the share screen via wireless is very slow. (And tiny).

my idea would be to have a hella long Ethernet cable with the Mac Pro very far away. wish to only have one cable and not usb/hdmi extension


----------



## Dewdman42

Ethernet will definitely work better then wireless, and I doubt the 5,1 is any worse then other Macs...the protocol used by Apple Screen Sharing (VNS) is very inefficient..it works, but it will always be a bit sluggish. You can improve it a bit by turning off all advanced graphics things on the remote side, using a plain color desktop instead of an image desktop, etc.. google around about optimization tricks for VNC...including some VNC clients are smarter then others and there are a variety of options to tweak it, etc..

The reason its sluggish is that because, in over-simplified terms, it sends all the pixel by pixel graphics...over the wire. 

Now, if you were using the 5,1 as a Windows10 box, then you can use Microsoft's Remote Desktop protocol (RDP) which is WAYYY more efficient. I can hardly stand using VNC after using RDP for years, with RDP you can barely tell its remote, especially compared to VNC.

you could also try some other third party solutions like TeamViewer and others for remote access to the Mac, but generally all of them are about the same as VNC, in a lot of cases they probably are actually using VNC under the covers.

Me personally, if I end up turning my 5,1 into a dedicated VePro Server...I will probably also convert it to a windows box in order to use RDP...but we'll see.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

synthetic said:


> Wow, my Gigabyte RX580 8GB was $170,



My 560 4GB was under $100.


----------



## kgdrum

I’m happy to say the RX580 is working well,the installation was a breeze and I updated to Mojave this morning without a problem. 👍


----------



## topaz

topaz said:


> nVidia GTX680 2GB
> 
> fearing the worse, hoping for the best.


update, card installed fine. upgraded from HS to Mojave.

working fine except for the GPU fan seems louder on start. running GLview test seems to spin the fan 
down. weird.

might re-seat the GPU.


----------



## synthetic

BRB listing all the old video cards in my garage on eBay. I thought they were worthless.


----------



## kgdrum

We all know the graphics card pricing has been crazy for quite a while but.....
The meager supply of video cards vs the demand has caused the price of graphics cards to reach unbelievable price points.
If you thought the prices for graphics cards was already ridiculous, check this out:
OWC has more RX580 graphics cards available and they are now selling for $619.99! 💰😱💰 this is beyond insane! lol
One person I talked to mentioned that there’s been limited production due to the pandemic but this is just so out of wack.






OWC Radeon RX 580 8GB Graphics Upgrade Solution (2010-2012)


Add Metal support to your 2010-2012 Mac Pro Tower and upgrade to macOS 10.14.x Mojave. See 1.5x better performance than Radeon HD 7950.




eshop.macsales.com


----------



## Dewdman42

So just an FYI, the word on the street is that the 11.3 release of Big Sur does NOT work properly on the latest version of opencore. Apple broke something related to PCIe. Allegedly the opencore devs will be trying to figure out a work around.

It partially works, but because of the pci issue it is possible to eventually corrupt the data on any pcie storage you may have, so I reccomend don’t even try it for now.

11.2.3 is stable and working for many people but I personally had issues with some usb devices like my midi controller. Was hoping 11.3 would improve the situation.

*NOTE - this issue has apparently been fixed as of Monterey v12.1. *


----------



## AshokanKid

Hi there;

BRAND new forum member here, who ONLY joined as a result of finding THIS very thread! (Apology for the long first post. I may tend to get carried away at times.)

Truth be told, I am an original PC / Linux / Sun Solaris / Netware / Hardware guy who ONLY in the past several (6 or 8) years have been able to AFFORD the "luxury" of these shiny, silver towers.

Not going to go into my feelings towards the "elitist" mentality of many typical (?) Mac owners, but I've definitely been converted. Of course, that is ONLY if I can find "donor" machines for maybe $200 - $300 bucks.

No disparaging to ANYONE who bought into new Apple hardware (hey, us used only guys have to find gear from somewhere), but there are those of us who have to make the choice of paying the mortgage, buying food, or buying that shiny silver tower.

OK, enough of that and on to the good stuff. Since I've been rebuilding Mac Pro machines for myself and others (many professionals) over the years (maybe 50? maybe 60, probably more), I've learned a lot of tricks along the way, AND most importantly, how to keep the costs super low for my friends and clients.

First I must thank the originator, Dewdman42, for this FANTASTIC thread. I was brought here while researching how, or whether to, move my 2010 / 5,1 machine forward from Mojave which I've ONLY had on my machine now for a month or so.

Early adopter is NOT me, not in the least (I'm closer to 70 than to 60, so priorities matter). I could give a ratzazz about "Dark Mode" (whatever the heck THAT is) or any other so-called "feature" of one OS over another. Give me an OS that is a STABLE, sleek and FAST platform for the applications that I want to run . . . PERIOD.

I want an OS that will wring EVERY ounce of capability out of any given hardware that I am using. New features are for bored kids. I know serious, pro studio owners (I'm in the NYC Metro area) who had been using SNOW LEOPARD (and Pro Tools) in their studios up until very, very recently. Seriously . . .

Why? because it frickin' WORKED!!! And, because it kept working AND kept making them (and their clients) money. Now THAT, to me, is THE bottom line. Not fancy "features" in the "latest" version of whatever BS came out last week.

Many of us real working people do NOT have that luxury to constantly chase the ever moving, dangled in front of us Apple . . . err . . . carrot?

Now, at the same time, I am also NOT a power user, so am also not running eight or ten 64K screens (or whatever wealthy hobbyists can afford these days) on my humble Mac Pro. I do mostly audio, and so video does NOT have to be bleeding edge. Not even close.

My personal add to this thread is a few Metal capable video cards that WILL allow you to install AND run Mojave (and probably Catalina / Big Sur, etc.) and also do NOT cost a fortune. Remember (before Mining!) when video cards were affordable?

Here is a list of KNOWN good, usable cards, which again, may not run your four monitors (huh?!?) at 24K resolution (really? you need 4K for AUDIO?!?!), but are perfectly fine and stable for most "normal" use in our Mac Pro towers.

Not a one of these cards costs anywhere near $100 bucks (even now, today, in August of 2021) and most are under $50, while I've bought a few Metal capable cards for UNDER $20 bucks each! This is PERFECT if you merely want to check out IF the Mac Pro / Mojave experience is even worth it for you.

As far as I know, there are still no specific NVIDIA drivers available for Mojave, correct me if I am wrong, but they do work fine, albeit, with no boot screen. No worry here, as my Mojave boots in about 20 seconds on my SLOWEST Mac Pro tower (8 core, Nehalem, 2.26 Ghz w/ 16 GBs RAM) via standard SATA SSD.

NVIDIA GeForce GT640
NVIDIA GeForce GT 710
NVIDIA GeForce GT 740
The above cards can be found with from 1 GB RAM up to 4 GBs, if I am not mistaken, and as long as they are "Kepler" based cards (most are) they work fine, supporting Metal in Mojave.

nvidia Quadro K600
This card is the REAL Low End Trash card of the lot. I bought 7 of these on The Bay for about $120 bucks for ALL 7, including tax.
Supports Metal just fine, both for installing Mojave, and for running day to day. Cheap, tiny power consumption (no extra cable required, all powered from PCIe) AND is super quiet!
Even brand new right now they are MAYBE $40 bucks!

With GPU pricing like these, there is NO reason why ANYONE with a Mac Pro can't upgrade their machine RIGHT NOW to Mojave (native install support, right from Apple, no "hacks"), and possibly beyond. And, NOT have to spend a fortune!

My own personal and typical updates / upgrades for clients goes something like this;
Shop & buy the fastest processors that you can afford (the 3.46 Ghz X5690 is still maybe $50 each?)
Ditto for RAM; Buy as much as you can afford, and this also depends on intended application. 64 is plenty, 128 is way cool...
Buy a good quality SSD for your OS & apps, but ALSO add other SSD's for data, music and such. Always use a separate drive for recording and storing music. Heck, even spinners are fine just for data.
Video card / GPU has to be Metal capable in order to run Mojave and beyond, BUT, there is no "need" for those fancy $400 RX-whatever cards UNLESS you have specific video needs for them.

Unless you are running crazy amounts of effects or massive amounts of plug-ins, audio is VERY forgiving and not at all needing the Bleeding Edge of machine performance. (The Beatles had WAY less back in the '60's and look what THEY did!!!)

ALL of this information is for the user who wants (or needs?) to eke the VERY utmost out of their hard earned pennies. Granted, I was never a Mac-Boi, and so have NEVER bought ANY computer for even CLOSE to $1,000, much less 2 or 3 times that!

Again, for any who can or have done that, my hat is off to you. Bless you all for giving us these wonderful (USED) Mac Pro towers that are STILL, even after 10 or more years, doing JUST fine, thank-you very much.... 

AshokanKid

P.S. Thanks again to Dewdman42 for one of the most useful threads in regard to the possibilities for Mojave & beyond on The Venerable Mac Pro.


----------



## Dewdman42

Good news, someone hacked around the Big Sur and Monterrey incompatibilities for the 5,1. Looks like it will be possible to take it to both of those versions now:









SurPlus - The Big Sur/Monterey fix you've been waiting for.


Boot hangs due to this race condition (as opposed to the other random things that occasionally happen) occur very early in the boot process. If I hadn't seen reports of data corruption related to these hangs, I'd be tempted to assume they wouldn't happen - APFS shouldn't have time to do...




forums.macrumors.com





For now it’s best handled using OpenCore but I have heard that dosdude is going to release a Monterrey Patched installer which will most likely become the easiest way to do it.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-12-monterey-on-unsupported-macs-thread.2299557/page-3?post=29984697#post-29984697

Long live the 5,1 !!

That being said I’m still sticking in Catalina myself for the foreseeable future but I may give Monterrey a go on a spare drive at some point to see how it goes. It’s still in beta anyway.

*NOTE - It looks like Apple fixed this problem in Monterey 12.1, so the above BigSurPlus hack is no longer required starting with version 12.1. Nice.*


----------



## topaz

Just ordered a spare 256gb ssd to see how far I can push my 5.1 from mojave to catalina first.

I changed my screen from a 28 inch 1080p to a 1440p 27 inch but cannot work at the native setting as the text and cubase are just too small for me. 2176 x 1224 120hz seems to work ok.


----------



## Dewdman42

Hold on to your butts.....


----------



## mjsalam

Dewdman42 said:


> Hold on to your butts.....


Nice one! Is this using the open core legacy patcher? Anything to note?


----------



## tmhuud




----------



## tmhuud

tmhuud said:


>


That’s assuming you have two.


----------



## tmhuud

Not as awesome as the iMac aquarium obviously. (We had two in our Captain Nemo themed room) And don’t forget about the hidden features inside, extra power for usb charging or tank heater/filter.


----------



## Dewdman42

mjsalam said:


> Nice one! Is this using the open core legacy patcher? Anything to note?



It is not using OCLP. Just regular old OC.

I will post More info later but so far it is running seemingly fine, installed logicpro 10.7 and got my midi controller working fine too.

Will be checking various plugins and apps and running some benchmarks this afternoon or this evening.

There was initially a problem with my usb2 midi controller until I plugged it into a usb hub and now it works fine. This leads me to believe that the problem may be related to the built in usb hub which might be fixable I have to look into that. Or else just use the external hub.

Bluetooth and wifi works for me but it should be noted that other people are having issues with the factory wifi and Bluetooth, I have already installed an upgraded Bluetooth and wifi interface. 

My understanding is there might be some issues with some nvidia gpu’s but that is fine for me since I got the rx580 when I moved to metal.

In short it mostly seems to be working fine but I intend to do a lot more testing.

Anyone else trying this at home, make sure you use the SurPlus kernel patch in OC. I’ll have exact steps listed after I test it more.


----------



## Dewdman42

So my 5,1 cMP functions nearly completely with Monterey, using a fairly standard OpenCore configuration, which is documented here:









OpenCore on the Mac Pro


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




forums.macrumors.com





The only problem I have found is that the built in USB ports on the 5,1 seem to have a problem with my midi controller, but if I plug an external hub into that port and plug the midi controller into that, works fine. all my other USB devices such as keyboard, mouse, etc.. seem to work fine with the built in USB ports. There might be an OC hack to get the built in port working I'm not sure, but using the external hub is probably easier.

So far, all other functionality has been working as expected. Dual monitors, hardware acceleration, bluetooth, wifi, sound, etc..everything. Works as expected. I should point out, however, that I do have an upgraded Bluetooth/wifi card and reports are out that in order to use the original bluetooth card that came with the 5,1 you will have to use one of the legacy patchers or do some of your own patching to make it work. Totally doable, but the information is still forming about it. Apple removed the BT drivers from Monterey that supported the older BT card that came with the 5,1

I have also heard some people having problems with Nvidia metal cards, apple apparently removed those drivers too. I don't know the details. There are a lot of people using Nvidia so I'm sure some smart people will figure out solutions. I am using RX580, which works out of the box no problem at all.

I found Monterey pleasant to work with, I like the GUI improvements, I benchmarked it with GeekBench and came up with identical results as under Catalina.

LogicPro 10.7 ran fine and I checked it out. There isn't much to get me excited in this LogicPro update, so not much to say there.

So that is the good news. The bad news, aside from the USB port thing I would need to figure out, is that Monterey in general broke some software, some of which I'm really fond of and use. There are a dozen or so broken things as of now, but the biggest one for me, which I think will take a long time to resolve is Jamstix4. Also TotalSpaces2 was something that is so ingrained into my workflow and the author says he is not going to develop or support it past BigSur...and it doesn't work at all with Monterey. He will only develop Apple Silicon version from here on out. Exponential Audio reverbs don't work yet either. Aside from that, just about everything that matters to me, runs on Monterey.

I'm sure those will get sorted out eventually, but for now I'm rolling back to Catalina. I will keep this Monterey volume around to test it out occasionally in the future. But at least I know it works, so I have the option of going to Monterey with my 5,1....long live the cheese grater! if Apple comes out with something killer in LogicPro 10.8 then I'll have that option, but for now I'm sticking with the reliability of Catalina.


----------



## Dewdman42

Regarding the USB port issue I have had with my 5,1 on Big Sur and Monterey, here is an interesting and relevant post:









OpenCore on the Mac Pro


Big Sur and Monterey removed support for Legacy USB 1.0 peripherals. They work as long as they were plugged into the USB ports at boot time and never removed. If you remove them and replug them then they are not detected. Workaround is to connected those peripherals to an external powered USB...




forums.macrumors.com







> Big Sur and Monterey removed support for Legacy USB 1.0 peripherals. They work as long as they were plugged into the USB ports at boot time and never removed. If you remove them and replug them then they are not detected.
> Workaround is to connected those peripherals to an external powered USB Hub. If you then removed and re-attached those peripherals from the USB Hub, then they work fine.
> Try connecting your KVM switch to an external USB Hub.



So that appears to be the reason my midi controller had problems with both BigSur and Monterey and may affect other devices, I have found lots of people having odd problems with various kinds of USB devices under BigSur/Monterey. I'm not sure if this is only relevant for older hardware such as the 5,1; will have to find out more, but the good news is..the fix is to simply use a powered external USB hub...and problem goes away...

So for me the only hold up on Cheesegrater Monterey will be:

More software working
Get used to using Mission Control instead of TotalSpaces2
And that's about it. Will watch the news, and give it another shot in 6 months maybe. Not that there is any rush at all, I'm totally happy with Catalina at the moment, but I do want to use this box for probably 2 more years.. At some point it will probably be expedient to do one last OS update.

_SideNote, with the Monterey release, Mojave has officially been ended from Apple, there will be no more security updates for it, if you care about security updates._


----------



## topaz

Are there actually any new 4 or 8 gb gpu’s available for 5.1 
or only overpriced used ?


----------



## Dewdman42

no idea. I got mine a long time ago for $150 which was reasonable at the time. I know they went way up in price for some reason, but I guess sooner or later you might find one for less to me that seems like a temporary situation. There is also the RX560 which might be less than the RX580. Also..there are newer models of the RX line...perhaps one of them will work? But you'll have to go hunt around on macrumors to really find out what will work and the cost involved.

I think a lot of people grabbed nVidia cards because the cost of RX580 went up so high..but now they are going to suffer since Apple pulled the nVidia drivers out of Monterey. There are a lot of people using those cards though and I suspect that some of them will figure out how to extract the video drivers and manually install them in such a fashion that they will work with Monterey again, but as earlier....get connected on MacRumors to find out the progress of such things.

I chose the RX580 specifically because that was one of the main cards specifically mentioned by name by Apple when they named cards that could work with a Trashcan+pci harness. For that reason I feel it will be supported by Apple until the Trashcan is depecrated once and for all, which is probably going to be soon, for sure...but at least for now Monterey can still drive Trashcan and the RX580... 

But that's probably part of why they cost mint now. I suspect all the people building refurbished cheese graters bought them all up.


----------



## Dewdman42

ps - There are various different pre-bulit patcher versions of BigSur floating around. I tend to avoid those, because the people making them may not do things the way I would want to do it. But they are more like a one size fits all "easy" to install solution..and in some cases they have worked around issues such as various video cards other then the RX580. DosDude said he is going to make a Monterey patcher. Haven't seen it yet. On MacRumors you can learn about a few more out there. Here is a good huge thread to read through and see what you want to do:









macOS 12 Monterey on Unsupported Macs Thread


This thread will be dedicated to the discussion of running macOS 12.0 on unsupported Macs At the time of writing, WWDC has wrapped up and Developer Seeds have been sent out. We're eagerly awaiting for all our community developers and enthusiasts to test out the new version of macOS We will...




forums.macrumors.com
 




The reality is that everyone's cheese grater or other older Mac, is slightly different in some way and so you have to do your own research and take ownership of the process if you want to keep using it on newer versions of MacOS. There are people using much older Macs, then the 5,1 actually...with enough patching... but a metal card of SOME kind is pretty much a requirement. There are cheaper alternatives then the RX580, but may involve getting into some patching or one of these pre-built patched versions, etc... Basically...this is what hackintoshing is all about and cheesegraters are really hackintoshes now. I call mine a "Frankentosh".

The "OpenCore on the MacPro" guide that I have posted above in earlier post, which is affectionately referred to as "CDF's Guide", is what I think is the best route to go for the 5,1. Because basically he is not providing any patched one size fits all solution. he gives some simple instructions for how you can setup a very simple OpenCore setup, as vanilla as possible without patching. There are only a couple of optional patches he describes...and these meet the needs of the vast majority of people. You might have to patch it a bit more if you're using something other than RX580, for example, or if you have the original factory BlueTooth card and want to use BT....etc.. That's where some of these other people have their own opinions about how is the best way to setup OpenCore for BigSur/Monterey on older Macs.. Lots of people use some of those because they don't have to understand anything they can just apply it, cross their fingers and maybe it works fine for them too.

I think DosDude's Monterey patch will be good if and when he actually delivers it, I would trust that one if and when it comes out. He did not patch BigSur at all. His Catalina patch is the easiest way to install Catalina on the 5,1

Also want to point out that a lot of these big patches are designed to accommodate a much broader mix of old Macs, including old iMacs, MBP's, mini's, etc.. Whereas the CDF Guide I mentioned is SPECIFICALLY for the 5,1 cMP. That is why I use it and I follow his thread to keep up with what is happening. But some of the other patchers you will hear mentioned can also be used with the 5,1, but you're on your own to figure out which is the best one. I just prefer to follow CDF's guide myself, make half a dozen simple decisions on a couple of options...and for me its working perfectly on my upgraded-to-the-max 5,1.


----------



## topaz

Thanks for the very compressive reply ))))


----------



## Dewdman42

There is also this:






OpenCore Legacy Patcher


Experience macOS just like before



dortania.github.io





This appears to be the way a lot of people are moving towards for setting up a legacy Mac on newer versions of macOS BigSur+.

_ I have no idea how well it works, and as long as CDF's guide is keeping my 5,1 humming along I prefer to do things manually. But anyway, the above patcher basically can probe your system, see what you have and theoretically it will configure OpenCore for you entirely...so its somewhat of an easy process perhaps...presuming it configures everything the way you would want to configure it, if and when there are more than one way to go. But a lot of effort is going into this OCLP solution and may be what everyone is using in the future. I personally don't like the automatic black box nature of it, but a lot of people will love that, when it works._

For Catalina the easiest and best solution is to use DosDude's patcher: http://dosdude1.com/catalina/

But for me, I still prefer CDF's guide for Catalina, BigSur and Monterey when the machine being updated is a 5,1. The reason is because I know exactly what I am getting, its the most vanilla possible and its not that hard to follow, so far.


----------



## Dewdman42

5,1 Relic update...

Apple fixed the issue I mentioned in early posts requiring a Patched workaround called *SurPlus*. that is no longer required as of Monterey version 12.1!!!

I'm using Monterey on my 5,1 right now...and its starting to grow on me. There are still a few things that don't work on Monterey, so I'm still kind of hesitant...namely...a lot of Exponential Audio reverbs don't work yet, but iZotope told me they will get them working eventually (knock on wood). Jamstix doesn't work yet either. TotalSpaces will not longer be supported and Mission Control from Apple is driving me nuts...but overall...its pretty smooth and working on the 5,1..no complaints...


----------



## mjsalam

Nice - I've been running it on my 5,1 as well with no major issues to report. I just installed Monterey on a Lenovo M93P SFF which I am thinking to use for my main and then use the 5,1 for VEP.


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## Dafrog

Dewdman42 said:


> 5,1 Relic update...
> 
> Apple fixed the issue I mentioned in early posts requiring a Patched workaround called *SurPlus*. that is no longer required as of Monterey version 12.1!!!
> 
> I'm using Monterey on my 5,1 right now...and its starting to grow on me. There are still a few things that don't work on Monterey, so I'm still kind of hesitant...namely...a lot of Exponential Audio reverbs don't work yet, but iZotope told me they will get them working eventually (knock on wood). Jamstix doesn't work yet either. TotalSpaces will not longer be supported and Mission Control from Apple is driving me nuts...but overall...its pretty smooth and working on the 5,1..no complaints...





Dewdman42 said:


> 5,1 Relic update...
> 
> Apple fixed the issue I mentioned in early posts requiring a Patched workaround called *SurPlus*. that is no longer required as of Monterey version 12.1!!!
> 
> I'm using Monterey on my 5,1 right now...and its starting to grow on me. There are still a few things that don't work on Monterey, so I'm still kind of hesitant...namely...a lot of Exponential Audio reverbs don't work yet, but iZotope told me they will get them working eventually (knock on wood). Jamstix doesn't work yet either. TotalSpaces will not longer be supported and Mission Control from Apple is driving me nuts...but overall...its pretty smooth and working on the 5,1..no complaints...


Hello Dewdman. Bedridden with bad cold here and got hooked on your posts. Most 5,1 related forums seem to rely on benchmarks and focus more on video, but your posts always address issues that are relevant to musicians’ situation. Thanks for being that guy. This prompts me to ask you a direct question. My upgrades have always been work motivated. The bigger the job, the more I’ve beefed up my 2012 5,1. I recently got into a situation that requires me to do lots of composing and I’m no longer thrilled about the amount of VIs I can run on my system so I have been looking to beef it up some more. I have looked at many upgrades from high point card to Titan ridge 2.0, to 10 gig ethernet, pcie chassis, and your previous posts seem to have already answered some questions, particularly about the Highpoint nvme card.
My question is actually simple, in the sense that I don’t expect any explanation for your answer.
‘Given the specs I’ll list below, can you think of any upgrade to this setup that would result in a significant REAL LIFE improvement to my workflow in terms of cpu usage? The only caveat here is that I don’t wanna go beyond Mojave because of software compatibility issues 
thanks in advance for your answer. 
2012 12 core Xeon 3.46 Mac Pro 5,1 running Mojave, 128 Gb of RAM, GTX Titan (unflashed), Sonnet tempo dual 2 tb SSD (getting about 500 mps up and down) two UAD cards Octo and Duo. I could possibly lose the duo to free up a pci slot. All libraries are on ssds. Cuba’s 11 and DP 10.5 My interface is a Motu 828 mklll hybrid connected via fw800. Commonly used VIs include Kontakt, EZdrummer, Omnisphere, Trillian, Stylus, Arturia stuff, iow you name it I use it. my projects usually include a combination of writing, pre-mixing (using plug-in alliance and UAD mostly) then fine tuning all the writing before finalizing.
The reason why I’m noticing the lagging performance this time around is because I have to go back and forth between many “in progress” compositions, so I start mixing without printing to audio first, with all the VIs running.
that’s it, if you’ve read this far and you have a suggestion, much obliged.
cheers.


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## Dewdman42

you have a nice machine. Dropping memory to 96gb will be slightly faster. If you truly need the 128gb then it may not be worth it, but the 5,1 reduces memory speed when you go over 96gb. what is your RAM spec?

I don't know much about that FW800 interface...but I think it should be fine honestly.

what kind of plugin limits are you running into? I find that with large buffer sizes I can mix quite large projects. But the bottleneck on our 5,1 will really always be the single core performance which mainly affects how much plugin you can put on a live track you are trying to record to with lower latency. Can't do anything else beyond the CPU speed (which you already maxed) and the memory speed perhaps.


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## Dafrog

Thanks man. I heard about that memory thing. I’ll try it to see if it makes a difference as I don’t think I ever use all that. I don’t understand what single core means in this context. I know the machine is a dual 6 core hence the 12 core, but I have a feeling this is not what you are referencing. As I said I’m in bed praying it’s not COVID (again) so I can’t check the ram specs. As for plug-in limits, most of them are consistent, so it varies most based on what I load in kontakt, meaning pianos are light whereas modern pad synths send the system begging for mercy. I‘m a pianist so I tend to prefer 256 buffer size and under for tracking, 512 if rhythmic Precision is not crucial, but if I start mixing and set it at 1024, god help me if I have to go and track something anew and go back to a lower buffer… All hell breaks loose. 
My only reference for gauging performance is the meter in Cubase. I do turn on the activity and Gpu monitors sometimes when something seems funky but then I quickly realize I’m not sure what I’m looking at. Are you suggesting I should do more scientific testing of the whole system?
cheers


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## Dewdman42

Well, the 5,1 is 10+ years old and the actual clock speed is rather mediocre compared to newer macs. But on the other hand, we have 12 cores...a lot of the newer macs since then have only 4 or 8 cores, albeit running faster.

What does that mean for DAW's? multiple cores can spread different tasks around to different cores that are all like seperate little mini cpu's running in parallel. Sometimes the software can be spread around in parallel and sometimes its not possible the work has to be done in a serial fashion, one thing after another. The more parallelism happening, the more the multiple cores get taken advantage of.

With a big project with many tracks, lots of parallelism can happen, which is why our 10 year old 5,1 can actually still keep up pretty well in that aspect compared to newer macs. We can run multiple programs at the same time and many tracks at the same time. All good.

However, we still have a bottleneck with the slower clock speed for things that can't be done in parallel. Different DAW's do different things to manage how the parallel cores are used, most of which is a black box to us, but generally speaking you can say that for any given channel in your DAW mixer..the DSP happening on that channel will have to funnel through a single core. Some synths are smart enough to do some parallel work on their own, which means they will work better on a machine with more cores...if you enable that feature. 

But still at some point, if a lot of work has to funnel through a single core, our 5,1 is going to cough and sputter. So when will that happen?

Typically the live channels you have record enabled are actually using the low latency setting and so if you have a big stack of plugins on a single channel you are trying to record into at low latency, that is where the 5,1 will always have a hard time keeping up with newer macs that have faster clock speeds. The non-live channels are usually using a larger buffer size under the covers anyway, its just the live channels that are generally impacted by whatever you set the buffer size to.

Cubase can be tuned for performance also, ASIOGuard, etc. I'm not that much of a cubase guru to say more about that. But that has to do with making sure the non-live tracks get a bigger buffer.

also, don't panic if you see CPU meters going to large values. The only thing that matters is when you get audio drop outs. if the CPU meters are spiking it just means you're getting good cpu utilization. Nothing wrong with that. But if you start getting audio dropouts, well that means the CPU didn't keep up with the task..and that is the bottom line.


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## Dafrog

You know, for all the blogs, and forums I’ve surveyed, nobody has ever explained it as succinctly as you just did. Sounds like I’m just gonna wait till a proper alternative to the 5,1 comes on the market because from what you’re describing, seems like performance is as expected on this one. I haven’t installed the gtx titan yet (Currently on a aging AMD 7950) I hope that the pci 3 doesn’t bottleneck the performance even more… fingers crossed. Thanks Dewdman, you input has been invaluable.


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## Dewdman42

I'm not too familiar with those two GPU models, but anyway, the main improvement will be to have metal. You should have metal already to run Mojave, so I'm not sure the change to the Titan will make any difference for DAW work. If you do a lot of video editing or gaming or something...maybe that is more relevant for that. DAW work is not particularly GPU heavy....but.. most apps and MacOS itself has been heavily optimized to use Metal. Metal GPU does make a big difference.

and Yes, I am also waiting. My 5,1 is serving just fine, probably for a few more years at the rate things are going. I don't feel any need whatsoever to buy the 2019 MacPro, too much money and the 5,1 serves me fine. 

Keep in mind you could probably build a PC for $1000 or less that could serve as a VePro slave just fine to make up for any problem you might be having with the 5,1. My 5,1 will probably live on eventually as a VePro slave itself. I find no reason to run out and buy a new mac right now, and anyway Apple hasn't really brought to market yet the right fit, IMHO. Hopefully they will eventually; most likely as ARM. I personally have a notion that around 2025 is when I will look closer at that, for now the relic lives on just fine for me!


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## Dewdman42

and by the way, I've been running monterey on my 5,1 for some time now...and quite liking it. I only lost the use of a few software products that still don't work on Monterey, but that has nothing to do with being on the 5,1


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## Jett Hitt

@Dewdman42 very nice explanation. I’m running the same system here, though mine is only the 2.93 ghz. I was planning to just slave the machine once the new iMacs come out. As long as the plugins are all running on the iMac, this should be fine, no? The Berlin Mains really bog it down, but I figure that I can just run all my strings on the slave and not overload the machine. Thoughts?


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## Dewdman42

you can run the plugins either place... will work fine. There can be advantages to using VePro's mixer for certain things. With orch work I find that once you setup the basic balanced orchestra, there is very little change required in the mixer...so I like to put all that into VePro so that its a ready to go template that works from any daw, then I just do project-specific stuff in my main DAW mixer. I usually do put synths and stuff in my DAW mixer rather then VePro. really comes down to whatever work flow you like. Having one VePro slave will make the 5,1 usable for at least 5 more years as the main host. 

In my view there is no reason whatsoever yet to give up on the 5,1. If you want to use MassiveX or ModoDrums, then you need a new mac because of the AVX requirement, but aside from that, everything I have wanted to do has worked fine on the 5,1

The argument could have been made that inability to get past Mojave would be a reason to get a new mac, because some software will eventually require a newer version of MacOs...such as LogicPro, for example. However, i am running Monterey just fine on my 5,1. So that is a moot argument in my view. The 5,1 still carries on!

But eventually software in ARM format will become so predominate that Intel mac users will be left behind more and more.. but I opersonally think that is still 5+ years away....Apple is still selling intel macs.

So..anyway, yea..there are lots of options. I personally haven't felt compelled to use a VePro slave yet, but that is what I will do if and when the 5,1 can't quite keep up.. FX plugins can be in either place depending on the work flow you like. I do use VePro on the same machine as my DAW, I am just not using it on a seperate slave. Getting a cheap PC slave will be almost the same work flow...and I'll be able to put lots of stuff on the slave and carry on.

I honestly think I will probably still be here running my 5,1 in 5 years from now..I just will wait until I am truly missing out on some things before I change.

But I also have invested in PCI audio hardware that I don't want to get away from. It will cost me thousands to replace and change my whole monitoring workflow, etc.. so for me...Apple has a lot more to bring to the table before I will even think about it.


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## Dafrog

Dewdman42 said:


> I'm not too familiar with those two GPU models, but anyway, the main improvement will be to have metal. You should have metal already to run Mojave, so I'm not sure the change to the Titan will make any difference for DAW work. If you do a lot of video editing or gaming or something...maybe that is more relevant for that. DAW work is not particularly GPU heavy....but.. most apps and MacOS itself has been heavily optimized to use Metal. Metal GPU does make a big difference.
> 
> and Yes, I am also waiting. My 5,1 is serving just fine, probably for a few more years at the rate things are going. I don't feel any need whatsoever to buy the 2019 MacPro, too much money and the 5,1 serves me fine.
> 
> Keep in mind you could probably build a PC for $1000 or less that could serve as a VePro slave just fine to make up for any problem you might be having with the 5,1. My 5,1 will probably live on eventually as a VePro slave itself. I find no reason to run out and buy a new mac right now, and anyway Apple hasn't really brought to market yet the right fit, IMHO. Hopefully they will eventually; most likely as ARM. I personally have a notion that around 2025 is when I will look closer at that, for now the relic lives on just fine for me!


Well, I do have a 2008 lying around. I could probably OC it up to Mojave and use that to take off some of the load via VEP. My Problem with VEP has always been that I never start a project with a sound template because I don’t do film or tv scores, instead I kinda freeform till inspiration kicks in. so if I stick to the same method, I have to remember to back up whatever is in the second machine and that’s more brain cells that I sometimes have available when I’m in a full “creative” swing 😀 That being said, if I went that route it might make a good case for a couple 10gig Ethernet cards wouldn’t it? But I digress.


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## Dewdman42

if and when I start any heavy VePro slave use, I will probably not be upgrading the internet card. I will just use what I have. I have spent quite a bit of money upgrading my 5,1 but I'm about at the end of that train.


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## Dewdman42

still going...


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## Jett Hitt

Dewdman42 said:


> still going...


Looks like the train ain’t ending.😂


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## Minsky

Dewdman42 said:


> I personally would not spend one penny on a new Intel Mac right now. If you can nurse along a cheese grater for another year or two, the entire landscape is about to change. The Cheesegrater is still great. You might fall slightly behind on software for a year or two, but so what? Anyway, bleeding edge is always going to be less stability..there is a lot of wisdom in sticking with the old platform and just make some music with what you have for the next year or two. Wait to see what Apple does. The M1 is extremely impressive, people are falling all over themselves praising it, and the first gen aren't even power systems. I think the $$ value of Intel Macs is going to plummet over the next year. Anyone sitting on a newer Intel Mac is well advised to sell it ASAP!


its interesting, reading this in 2022, that intel Mac prices (iMacs 27") have held well even against the newer chipped machines.


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## Dewdman42

Cubase12 requires BigSur+ now. Cheesegrater takes it in stride.. In case anyone is wondering.....


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## Markus Kohlprath

Dewdman42 said:


> Cubase12 requires BigSur+ now. Cheesegrater takes it in stride.. In case anyone is wondering.....


Does it? I'm a bit afraid it would mess up my system. Is it worth the hassle?


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## lastburai

Hi Dewdman42 and thanks for all the information you provide sorry to ask
but how are you able to get to cubase 12 did you use Open Core?

I am running on a mid 2010 5.1 2 x 3.46 6 core cpu 96GB ram RX 580 Flashed by Mac vid cards Main OSX drive is Drive Bay 2 In the Pcies I have a 256GB Kingston Drive and a Western digital NVMExpress 512Gb I have legacy Wifi card

My mixer Yamaha 01v96 which is my sound card, Dante virtual sound card connects via Ethernet using the Yamaha My16-aud version 1. To use my sound card I already have to disable SIP in OSX so I kind of know about that before hand otherwise for whatever reason my sound card does not show up in the OSX

Would updating to Big Sur make any of my hardware incompatible like disk drives WiFi or ethernet? I kind of use all those connections.

My Drive Bay 1 is my windows 10 drive and windows won't start in any other of the drive bays for some reason if I even look at the Bootcamp drive in Mojave it will cause me to not be able to start up my windows in drive bay 1. I then have to take out the NVME Drive so i can then boot into windows if I want to which is crazy and I have no idea why, then I have reinstall the NVME drive.

Is there a simple way to update. As I am asking on different forums someone mentioned that I should go straight to Monterey do you have any advice in the best way to get cubase 12 running on a 5.1 system I also don't want to really mess up the sound card via my Ethernet as I have had so many problems with the soundcard upgraded to Mojave as it still needs SIP Disabled.

I also don't have a back up-drive so I probably need that first

Any help would be greatly appreciated.


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## Dewdman42

You need at least Big Sur which means you need to dabble with open core but it’s working 100% for me it’s not messing up anything


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## Dewdman42

lastburai said:


> Hi Dewdman42 and thanks for all the information you provide sorry to ask
> but how are you able to get to cubase 12 did you use Open Core?



Yes I am using OpenCore and running Monterey. I would skip BigSur.



lastburai said:


> I am running on a mid 2010 5.1 2 x 3.46 6 core cpu 96GB ram RX 580 Flashed by Mac vid cards Main OSX drive is Drive Bay 2 In the Pcies I have a 256GB Kingston Drive and a Western digital NVMExpress 512Gb I have legacy Wifi card



should work great



lastburai said:


> My mixer Yamaha 01v96 which is my sound card, Dante virtual sound card connects via Ethernet using the Yamaha My16-aud version 1. To use my sound card I already have to disable SIP in OSX so I kind of know about that before hand otherwise for whatever reason my sound card does not show up in the OSX



You can run OpenCore with or without Sip disabled. You have to disable it just for one step during the installation process of OpenCore.




lastburai said:


> Would updating to Big Sur make any of my hardware incompatible like disk drives WiFi or ethernet? I kind of use all those connections.



I recommend skipping BigSur and make sure you go to at least version 12.1 or 12.2 of Monterey. There was a period of time for some of the last updates of Big Sur and the first 12.0 release of Monterey that the 5,1 required some special tricky handling which is possible to do, but I just recommend you skip Big Sur and go straight to Monterey and make sure you are installing 12.1 or higher...not 12.0

As to whether your stuff will keep working or not...that is something you have to figure out on your own for your exact setup. There will be no problem with drives. My ethernet is working fine, so should not be problem for you. Wifi should work, but check around I can't vouch for it because I am using an upgraded BlueTooth adapter in order to use BLE bluetooth midi. This upgraded BT adapter is where the wifi adapter resides also, so I have upgraded wifi also...and it all works fine.




lastburai said:


> My Drive Bay 1 is my windows 10 drive and windows won't start in any other of the drive bays for some reason if I even look at the Bootcamp drive in Mojave it will cause me to not be able to start up my windows in drive bay 1. I then have to take out the NVME Drive so i can then boot into windows if I want to which is crazy and I have no idea why, then I have reinstall the NVME drive.



Setting up dual boot for windows is totally possible with or without OpenCore. I used to have a setup like that, I was personally using Windows in bootcamp legacy mode without OpenCore, but its also possible to run it on OpenCore in order to use UEFI setup...but there are pros and cons you should read up about and understand. Legacy mode is safer. I also using something called ReFind, to setup dual boot so that I can boot to windows bootcamp (without open core) or to Mojave without Opencore, or to OpenCore to run Monterey.

This is definitely a more elaborate setup and need to understand what you're doing to go down the that road.



lastburai said:


> Is there a simple way to update. As I am asking on different forums someone mentioned that I should go straight to Monterey do you have any advice in the best way to get cubase 12 running on a 5.1 system I also don't want to really mess up the sound card via my Ethernet as I have had so many problems with the soundcard upgraded to Mojave as it still needs SIP Disabled.



I don't totally understand this last point. I definitely recommend going directly to Monterey 12.2 (see above). Make sure you download and install version 12.2, not 12.0

I don't know what problems you're having with sound card and internet... My sound card has drivers for macOS Monterey, so I'm good. The onboard audio on the 5,1 continues to work as expected also. 

I might have to get new midi interfaces, not sure yet, because MOTu does not support my Midi Timepiece on Monterey. It might work. I'm in a state of limbo right now and my MOTU gear is in storage until June, I will find out in June. 

I also have SSD's mounted on PCI raid card, they work fine in Monterey. The PCI audio works fine. The video works fine. Everything really works fine, except for some of the sidecar features of Monterey do not work on the 5,1 and never will.




lastburai said:


> I also don't have a back up-drive so I probably need that first



Yes absolutely have a backup first.

This thread has already near the top as much as I am likely to write, but really you should head over to the OpenCore thread on the MacRumors forum and learn what you can. The simple truth is that OpenCore is not dummy-proof. You need to learn a few things and take ownership. But honestly its not that hard, a lot of people are doing it. If you're a little bit technical you can do it and run both Monterey and Cubase12 on the 5,1

In the future it may be possible the DosDude will come out with a more dummy proof Monterey installer for the 5,1. If he does, then that will be a very easy way to run Monterey. but if you want to try to setup dual boot to Windows, etc...it can still get a little bit complicated so you need to understand what you're doing.


----------



## lastburai

Cheers for all the info Dewdman42.



Dewdman42 said:


> I don't totally understand this last point. I definitely recommend going directly to Monterey 12.2 (see above). Make sure you download and install version 12.2, not 12.0



What I meant was that I use the Dante Virtual Soundcard and ethernet port to record audio through the 01v96 mixer so if anything goes wrong with the ethernet ports like if the new OSX doesn't recognise my ethernet ports anymore when updating that would effectively mean I can’t record but maybe that would not happen.



Dewdman42 said:


> I recommend skipping BigSur and make sure you go to at least version 12.1 or 12.2 of Monterey. There was a period of time for some of the last updates of Big Sur and the first 12.0 release of Monterey that the 5,1 required some special tricky handling which is possible to do, but I just recommend you skip Big Sur and go straight to Monterey and make sure you are installing 12.1 or higher...not 12.0


I would like to skip Big Sur and go straight to Monterey if I can.



Dewdman42 said:


> As to whether your stuff will keep working or not...that is something you have to figure out on your own for your exact setup. There will be no problem with drives. My ethernet is working fine, so should not be problem for you. Wifi should work, but check around I can't vouch for it because I am using an upgraded BlueTooth adapter in order to use BLE bluetooth midi. This upgraded BT adapter is where the wifi adapter resides also, so I have upgraded wifi also...and it all works fine.



The problems I had and still have when I updated to Mojave was that my sound card (Dante Virtual Soundcard) and Yamaha Studio manager wouldn’t work for some reason with the DVS sound card not showing up in Mojave not until I disabled SIP so if I intend to use this setup still, I probably always have to have SIP disabled which seems wrong. 

Which leads me onto the Yamaha studio manger software I use, it is 32bit support only and no one works on that software anymore and it won’t work beyond Mojave so I will lose in any OS above Mojave. I also was reading on Audinate that DVS is not yet implemented for Monterey OS, so DVS only works currently up to Big Sur so that means with my current setup I can’t go to Monterey only Big Sur.

I am honestly thinking to get rid of the mixer/Soundcard setup and set up a simple focusrite 2i2 audio interface with sound card drivers for recording I would lose compression and EQ from the mixer but overall it will be a more simple setup that would work with Monterey. The mixer is really over kill for me and would be better served by someone who would want to record bands or groups.



Dewdman42 said:


> Setting up dual boot for windows is totally possible with or without OpenCore. I used to have a setup like that, I was personally using Windows in bootcamp legacy mode without OpenCore, but its also possible to run it on OpenCore in order to use UEFI setup...but there are pros and cons you should read up about and understand. Legacy mode is safer. I also using something called ReFind, to setup dual boot so that I can boot to windows bootcamp (without open core) or to Mojave without Opencore, or to OpenCore to run Monterey.
> 
> This is definitely a more elaborate setup and need to understand what you're doing to go down the that road.


Nice having windows and OSX dual boot the way you have it setup. mine though is all very weird for a start windows will only start in Drive Bay 1 and I can't seem to move it. Another weird thing is if I am in OSX Mojave and I so much as look at the Bootcamp drive in the *Location of drives in the finder window* the next time i want to log into windows it will never load only when i take out the NVME drive from the computer and log in to windows, can I then close down windows and put back the NVME and have windows working normally. It's crazy and I really have no idea why it is like that but it works so I live with it.

Mac sound solutions mentioned to me and I hope I understood him correctly that having windows 10 in drive bay 1 could potentially brick my system when updating has this happened to anyone? I think it has something to do with how the 5.1 looks for an OS when booting but I’m not sure, though I kind of take something like that on board so when I update I won’t have any drives in, other then Mojave drive (which would become my back up) and the drive I intend to install Big Sur or Monterey on.

I just needed something cleared up regarding windows 10, I am running windows 10 using a legacy mode installed via the CD ROM.

Will I be able to keep my windows 10 working which is in drive bay 1 if I update to Monterey which would be in Drive bay 2? or do I have to reinstall my windows SSD on a different SSD so it boots in say drive bay 4? I kind of don’t want to reinstall windows again and I am kind of confused why I would need to do this.

The Open Core UEFI method was mentioned to me also, that I should reinstall my windows as UEFI through open core is this correct? Could I not update or convert my legacy install to UEFI in Open core so my windows 10 drive would load in open core.

To be honest If I could leave everything like I have it but just have Big Sur/Monterey installed in say Drive Bay 2 that would be very great to me.

I will purchase an SSD at in next week or 2 and then in the weeks after plan to update to Big Sur or Monterey but I just needed some advice.

Thanks Dewdman42 for all the advice.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

My head hurts just from seeing all that text, without even reading it!

Really, the only program on the planet I want to run but can't on my Mojave 5,1 is the latest Logic versions.

If you enjoy doing this kind of mod to your computer, why not. But I'm waiting to see what Apple Silicon machines they introduce - possibly on Tuesday.


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## Nick Batzdorf

Put another way, this feels like I'd be creating an Apple-branded Hackintosh.


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## Michael Antrum

I’m leaving my 5,1 as it is, and am hoping to see something on the 8th That’s worth putting my hand in my pocket for…


----------



## Dewdman42

lastburai said:


> Cheers for all the info Dewdman42.
> 
> 
> 
> What I meant was that I use the Dante Virtual Soundcard and ethernet port to record audio through the 01v96 mixer so if anything goes wrong with the ethernet ports like if the new OSX doesn't recognise my ethernet ports anymore when updating that would effectively mean I can’t record but maybe that would not happen.



Ethernet will work fine. As to whether or not the Dante Virtual Soundcard will continue to work under Monterey, you'll have to check with them on that...



lastburai said:


> The problems I had and still have when I updated to Mojave was that my sound card (Dante Virtual Soundcard) and Yamaha Studio manager wouldn’t work for some reason with the DVS sound card not showing up in Mojave not until I disabled SIP so if I intend to use this setup still, I probably always have to have SIP disabled which seems wrong.



Some apps require access past MacOS security features, which have become increasingly strict with each new version of MacOS. Prior to now I was using a desktop manager called TotalSpaces which required SIP disabled also. That software no longer works on Monterey at all, so basically I can go back to using SIP if I want. 

Dante undoubtedly is accessing some low level stuff to get faster performance and that's why SIP has to be disabled... And it may or may not work with Monterey. Ask them!




lastburai said:


> Which leads me onto the Yamaha studio manger software I use, it is 32bit support only and no one works on that software anymore and it won’t work beyond Mojave so I will lose in any OS above Mojave. I also was reading on Audinate that DVS is not yet implemented for Monterey OS, so DVS only works currently up to Big Sur so that means with my current setup I can’t go to Monterey only Big Sur.



I do not recommend BigSur for the 5,1. Apple introduced some bugs in BigSur, I wrote about it early on this thread), which made a few of the final Big Sur updates incompatible with the 5,1, so much so that they can corrupt your boot drive! There is a way to hack around it, so as long as you do your homework to hack around it in OpenCore, then you can use Big Sur if you must. 

But...my advice is probably to find another way to handle your audio. Sooner or later you will have to.



lastburai said:


> I am honestly thinking to get rid of the mixer/Soundcard setup and set up a simple focusrite 2i2 audio interface with sound card drivers for recording I would lose compression and EQ from the mixer but overall it will be a more simple setup that would work with Monterey. The mixer is really over kill for me and would be better served by someone who would want to record bands or groups.



Not a bad idea.

I use a somewhat complex setup also, I use an X32 mixer...and connect to it using an expensive Lynx PCI card... it works very well with extremely low latency and I like having the mixer functionality, so I am good to go. Lynx is committed to supporting it and has the drivers for Monterey, so its not a concern for me yet. 

But if you don't need an external mixer you can simplify a lot by just getting a good solid USB audio card and be done with it.




lastburai said:


> Nice having windows and OSX dual boot the way you have it setup. mine though is all very weird for a start windows will only start in Drive Bay 1 and I can't seem to move it. Another weird thing is if I am in OSX Mojave and I so much as look at the Bootcamp drive in the *Location of drives in the finder window* the next time i want to log into windows it will never load only when i take out the NVME drive from the computer and log in to windows, can I then close down windows and put back the NVME and have windows working normally. It's crazy and I really have no idea why it is like that but it works so I live with it.



I have since stopped using windows dual boot. Unless you are fairly technical, I would avoid trying to setup the 5,1 as dual boot together with OpenCore. It can totally work, but I am fairly technical and I spent several weeks figuring out how to do it properly. 

There is one fairly brain dead way to setup something like that using something called "*MyBoot Mgr*": 

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mybootmgr-refindplus-opencore.2231693/ 

and https://www.dakanji.com/creations/index.html

If you back up your machine entirely, you could play around with that and see if you can get a dual boot scenario happening. It attempts to make it easy by having you fill out a little GUI questionnaire, but essentially sets up a configuration that is similar as mine using *OpenCore* and *RefindPlus*. 

There are just too many little details to explain it all now. Trying to setup a dual boot scenario is way way more complicated then just a single boot openCore Mac. If that is the route you want to go down, I recommend you check out MyBootMgr and interact with the author to find out if you have any complications related to your flashed RX580.




lastburai said:


> Mac sound solutions mentioned to me and I hope I understood him correctly that having windows 10 in drive bay 1 could potentially brick my system when updating has this happened to anyone?



that has to do with windows booting in UEFI mode instead of "Legacy" mode. definitely DO NOT put windows in UEFI mode in drive bay #1!!! If it accidentally boots without Opencore and does some Automatic windows update, it potentially could very well Brick your Mac.

Again, this is getting into an area where its kind of technical, do you want to take the chance of bricking your 5,1? Learn about windows legacy mode and figure out how to install that. The guy that makes MyBootMgr also has a tutorial on how to setup windows legacy mode on a Mac 5,1

Also you should really get your BootROM backed up, and you should look into getting a factory never-booted image created of your bootROM, there is a guy called *tsialex* over on MacRumors that can do it for a small fee. You should do that no matter what honestly, more so if you try OpenCore and especially more so if you are messing around with UEFI windows. I believe it may be possible to unbrick your 5,1 later if you somehow accidentally screwed it up with UEFI windows...




lastburai said:


> The Open Core UEFI method was mentioned to me also, that I should reinstall my windows as UEFI through open core is this correct? Could I not update or convert my legacy install to UEFI in Open core so my windows 10 drive would load in open core.



yes but see my earlier warnings about UEFI windows. I personally would avoid it. The only thing is I'm not sure if it will be possible to install and run Windows 11 in legacy mode or not. Legacy mode also depends on some older bootcamp drivers, and it worked fine for me, but moving on to Windows11 requires some hackery also...and so....might be necessary to use OpenCore for that in the future. I'm not sure.... I'm quite happy with Monterey now, I had only tried out windows 10 as kind of a fallback to see what I might do if the 5,1 can't run MacOS anymore, but as long as I'm running Monterey and perhaps whatever comes next...I'm not too worried about that...if and when I ever run windows on this machine again will be way way down the road.. How bad do you really need dual boot? its doable but complicated, that's all I'm saying.




lastburai said:


> To be honest If I could leave everything like I have it but just have Big Sur/Monterey installed in say Drive Bay 2 that would be very great to me.



Your legacy install of Windows10 should work fine. and yes you could leave it in drive bay #1, though I would not recommend that for an open core setup, but theoretically it can be there no problem. If open core ever breaks(perhaps while you're updating it or while you're changing its configuration for any reason), then basically your Mac will fall back to booting first from drive bay #1 and it should boot up that legacy bootcamp windows 10. I personally prefer to have Mojave as my fallback boot up in drive bay #1. But there is no hard and fast rule.

your asking questions that open up a lot of complicated explanations and "it depends" answers. 

roll up your sleeves, head over to the MacRumors forum and plan to spend some time figuring it out. Backup you Mac before trying anything. 

I don't want this discussion to scare others away from OpenCore, simple single-boot scenarios with OpenCore are much much easier to setup then a dual boot scenario. The dual boot scenario is barely discussed even on MacRumors, much less here. its really considerably more complicated and you must be willing to roll up your sleeves, learn some stuff and take ownership of your machine and know what you're doing.

I think the easiest approach for you would be to use MyBootMgr, check with the author about your flashed RX580 first though.


----------



## Dewdman42

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Put another way, this feels like I'd be creating an Apple-branded Hackintosh.


I call mine a "frankentosh"


----------



## Dewdman42

Michael Antrum said:


> I’m leaving my 5,1 as it is, and am hoping to see something on the 8th That’s worth putting my hand in my pocket for…



honestly, I think for the vast majority of people that frequent this forum that is the best call. I started this thread only for the adventurous that want to get the longest life out of the 5,1. Even after I buy a new M3 MacPro, when it is available, with PCI slots and all the software I use runs natively, etc.. which I expect to be a few years away just yet...but even then...I will keep using my 5,1 in some capacity, probably as a VePro server.

Its working great for me, but this is not for the faint of heart!

The people here make music and don't want to be messing around with their frankentosh! I totally get it. That mindset should not try openCore, unless they have a tech person they work with that can take care of it and continue ongoing future maintenance for them as well, in that case, no problem. Its really not THAT hard...but for a lot of musicians...it is hard. Easy to mess up. easy to get lost in the weeds with it and burn tons of hours figuring out how to get it working. I say the same thing about hackintoshing actually.

The fact that I can run Monterey and everything gives me breathing room to wait a few more years until I get a new Mac. I personally need one with PCI slots and expansion and all the benefits of our 5,1....but with Apple Silicon inside...and that's presuming all my software has been updated to native Apple Silicon also, which is far from reality just yet. There is a reason Apple is still shipping intel boxes...and I think that will continue for some time. I still think its far too soon to abandon this working killer 5,1 platform to jump onto the Apple Silicon wave just yet. If I could justify the expense I personally would buy the current MacPro model before I would buy any Apple Silicon Mac that I think we will see for at least another year or probably two years. I can't justify that expense..especially since Intel WILL eventually end....so... We are in limbo...and until then...frankentosh it is for me! And so far so good....

But....setting up OpenCore is not for the faint of heart.....and setting up a dual boot one is 10x more so not for the faint of heart.


----------



## Dewdman42

Nick Batzdorf said:


> My head hurts just from seeing all that text, without even reading it!



if you only saw all the text I ended up deleting before posting it....



Nick Batzdorf said:


> Really, the only program on the planet I want to run but can't on my Mojave 5,1 is the latest Logic versions.



the latest logic version is plagued with a lot of bugs and I can't recommend it for anyone due to that. FWIW.


----------



## Dewdman42

oh one last comment...I do actually think running DosDude's Catalina setup is extremely easy to setup and that will run better than Mojave for sure. That will get you to LogicPro 10.6.3, which in my view is less buggy then 10.7.x. I found it to be better the Mojave when I was using it a long time. It was smooth. You do lose 32bit, but so what.

Running DosDude's installer is extremely easy, no open core stuff,...it just works. I can highly recommend that for anyone that wants to at least get on the Catalina train with the 5,1


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

I'd still advise caution.

For example, trhere are reports that Canon photo printers are having problems with Catalina, including my Imageprograf Pro-1000.


----------



## Dewdman42

That's not related to the 5,1, that is a Catalina issue with a printer, regardless of whether its 5,1 or any other kind of newer Mac.......please keep that off this thread which is about keeping the 5,1 going.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Well excuse the heck out of me!

You just got through posting that Catalina runs more smoothy, that the only thing you have to lose is 32-bit programs.

I'm advising people to use caution before updating to Catalina, because there's a chance that it won't only be 32-bit programs that break. (And by the way, the answer to your rhetorical question about who needs them: me, for one.)

What exactly is your objection? To me it seems like pretty sound advice, whether you're updating a 5,1 or searching the internet for sex with pliers. I certainly didn't post it to piss you off or undermine your expertise on installing hacks!


----------



## Dewdman42

Nobody is pissed Nick...heheh

this thread is about the 5,1 and keeping it going past Mojave...which obviously you don't approve of, but nonetheless that is what this thread is about. You raised a concern having nothing to do with the 5,1. Its entirely off topic. The fact that certain printers won't work with Catalina is not anything related to the 5,1. Perhaps you can start a thread about why nobody on any Mac should upgrade past Mojave because your printer doesn't work.


----------



## Dewdman42

also, BTW, Catalina is already several years old...in fact next year it will be officially deprecated by Apple and will no longer receive Security updates, as is the case with Mojave now. When do you think it will be safe for Mac users to upgrade past Mojave?


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Dewdman42 said:


> also, BTW, Catalina is already several years old...in fact next year it will be officially deprecated by Apple and will no longer receive Security updates, as is the case with Mojave now. When do you think it will be safe for Mac users to upgrade past Mojave?


When Apple comes out with a credible Apple Silicon machine for our applications (not counting their laptops). 

Catalina was released less than 2-1/2 years ago, by the way, and it was current until less than a year and a half ago (although there have been two new macOS versions since). 20 years ago that would have been considered ancient, but these days not so much.

Also, I certainly don't disapprove of people modifying 5,1s to run the latest OS versions, I just don't see any sense in my doing it.

Does your experience of Catalina running more smoothly than Mojave have anything specifically to do with 5,1s? If not, GET IT OFF THIS THREAD RANT RANT RANT!


----------



## Dewdman42

yea that's a really confusing message.

But yes Catalina runs better on a 5,1 then Mojave. I highly recommend.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

What I do disapprove of - not really, but I find it ridiculous - is people on that 5,1 Facebook group who post about putting multi-hundred dollar video cards in 5,1s.


----------



## Dewdman42

I'm not familiar with the group, but what is wrong with that exactly? the 5,1 is still a great piece of hardware and if that gets them where they are doing what they want to do, what's the problem?


----------



## Michael Antrum

Dewdman42 said:


> I'm not familiar with the group, but what is wrong with that exactly? the 5,1 is still a great piece of hardware and if that gets them where they are doing what they want to do, what's the problem?


They regularly post things about printer drivers and expensive graphics cards……

The fiends….


----------



## mark.warman

This thread is a goldmine of information for those of us still keeping faith with the MacPro 5,1. Thank you @Dewdman42 for all your research and clarity in documenting these upgrade possibilities!


----------



## kgdrum

mark.warman said:


> This thread is a goldmine of information for those of us still keeping faith with the MacPro 5,1. Thank you @Dewdman42 for all your research and clarity in documenting these upgrade possibilities!




I couldn’t agree more! Thanks @Dewdman42 for creating such an incredibly useful and informative thread. 👍


----------



## kitekrazy

It sucks to see good hardware go to waste these days. They all still have nice specs but in the hands of developers they can turn them into something obsolete. It's not just in the DAW industry either.


----------



## Michael Antrum

My 2009 is the best computer I've ever owned. In a way I'll be sad to replace it, and If Apple weren't blocking the machine off software wise, it would still have a lot of life in it left.

However, when the new M series desktops come out, it will be time....


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Dewdman42 said:


> I'm not familiar with the group, but what is wrong with that exactly? the 5,1 is still a great piece of hardware and if that gets them where they are doing what they want to do, what's the problem?


I forget which group it is - there are a couple on Facebook.

So you're asking what the problem is with putting an $850 graphics card in a machine that - for their purposes - can be at least equaled by a $600 M1 Mac Mini?

It's no skin off my back, but to me it's not a very wise use of money.



Michael Antrum said:


> They regularly post things about printer drivers and expensive graphics cards……
> 
> The fiends….


I post things about expensive printers all the time.  The Canon Pro-1000 is just awesome, and it had better work with the yet-to-be announced Mac I'll eventually have to add!

Now don't make me use my 5,1 as a print server...



mark.warman said:


> This thread is a goldmine of information for those of us still keeping faith with the MacPro 5,1. Thank you @Dewdman42 for all your research and clarity in documenting these upgrade possibilities!


Yeah, and up yours, Nick Batzdorf! 

Seriously, of course it's useful - in my case because I see that (with mind subject to change) it's not something I want to do.


----------



## Dewdman42

Nick Batzdorf said:


> So you're asking what the problem is with putting an $850 graphics card in a machine that - for their purposes - can be at least equaled by a $600 M1 Mac Mini?



Nor would I but people may have solid reasons for doing that which are beyond my needs or yours. The 5,1 accommodates a lot of internal storage, a lot of ram, custom gpu’s which they may actually need for graphics intensive work, pci slots for other peripherals they may need. The $600 m1 mini has a nice little cpu no doubt but there are still tasks where the 5,1 would still be preferable. The only modern alternative for those situations might be a $10,000 2019 macpro.



> It's no skin off my back, but to me it's not a very wise use of money.



For some, it might be. Not for you, nor me.



> I post things about expensive printers all the time.  The Canon Pro-1000 is just awesome, and it had better work with the yet-to-be announced Mac I'll eventually have to add!



Hate to be the bearer of bad news but if it doesn’t work on Catalina or Monterey it’s not going to work with your new M1 mac either.




> Now don't make me use my 5,1 as a print server...



Probably you will. It can still double as a vepro server if you want


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Dewdman42 said:


> Hate to be the bearer of bad news but if it doesn’t work on Catalina or Monterey it’s not going to work with your new M1 mac either



You'd think, but it was just one buggy driver that it turns out only affected early versions of Catalina. They have drivers up to Big Sur (although I didn't see one for Monterey on their site yet).

To paint the picture (yuk yuk): this is a big-arse, professional, high-end photo printer that prints up to 17" x 4' - museum quality, archival, gallery, and other buzzwords. A set of ink for it costs $700 for it (which is horrible, but they're big cartridges and on a per ml basis it's actually cheaper than ink for normal office printers; also, you don't replace all 12 of them at once after the first set).

It's in their current line-up, and it's in high demand - you can't find it discounted anywhere.

They want to sell ink for it.

Actually, they still have drivers for my much older photo printer, a Pro-100, which was superseded years ago.

But thinking about it, it might actually be better to print from a separate machine anyway. I don't touch my computer while it's printing, and this would eliminate that issue.

Meanwhile, I've been using my 5,1 all day long for years. It's a great machine. The Mx machine that I'll add hasn't even been announced yet!


----------



## Michael Antrum

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I'd still advise caution.
> 
> For example, trhere are reports that Canon photo printers are having problems with Catalina, including my Imageprograf Pro-1000.


Have you thought of getting a RIP…..






PrintFab Online Shop







www.zedonet.com


----------



## lastburai

Hi thanks again Dewdman42 for all the info



Dewdman42 said:


> I do not recommend BigSur for the 5,1. Apple introduced some bugs in BigSur, I wrote about it early on this thread), which made a few of the final Big Sur updates incompatible with the 5,1, so much so that they can corrupt your boot drive! There is a way to hack around it, so as long as you do your homework to hack around it in OpenCore, then you can use Big Sur if you must.


Yeah I think now my plan is to go straight to Monterey, I am going to order a focusrite 2i2 or 4i4 using usb to record and somehow sell my mixer.




Dewdman42 said:


> I use a somewhat complex setup also, I use an X32 mixer...and connect to it using an expensive Lynx PCI card... it works very well with extremely low latency and I like having the mixer functionality, so I am good to go. Lynx is committed to supporting it and has the drivers for Monterey, so its not a concern for me yet.


That is an awesome setup way beyond me.



Dewdman42 said:


> I have since stopped using windows dual boot. Unless you are fairly technical, I would avoid trying to setup the 5,1 as dual boot together with OpenCore. It can totally work, but I am fairly technical and I spent several weeks figuring out how to do it properly.
> 
> There is one fairly brain dead way to setup something like that using something called "*MyBoot Mgr*":
> 
> https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mybootmgr-refindplus-opencore.2231693/
> 
> and https://www.dakanji.com/creations/index.html


I did check this thread out over at macrumors but very briefly it seems too complicated for me to understand at the moment. I think I am suppose to follow the instructions in post 1 under PRE-INSTALLATION and follow the guide from there.



Dewdman42 said:


> If you back up your machine entirely, you could play around with that and see if you can get a dual boot scenario happening. It attempts to make it easy by having you fill out a little GUI questionnaire, but essentially sets up a configuration that is similar as mine using *OpenCore* and *RefindPlus*.


Honestly I am not sure I want to really mess around with anything that could potentially brick the system.




Dewdman42 said:


> that has to do with windows booting in UEFI mode instead of "Legacy" mode. definitely DO NOT put windows in UEFI mode in drive bay #1!!! If it accidentally boots without Opencore and does some Automatic windows update, it potentially could very well Brick your Mac.


Now maybe i am derailing this thread but I am confused by someone over at macrumors which I recently noticed, which seems to be in the same situation as me, also had this question.

*"I have a previous Windows 10 legacy install... After OC, it won't be recognized right? Is there a way for it to show up and be viewable - bootable isn't important"*

And the reply was
*"You can convert it to UEFI with the command: mbr2gpt /convert /allowfullOS
That should allow it to show up in OC."*

Is my situation different because my Windows 10 is in DRIVE BAY1?

Honestly I don't care if my windows 10 drive does not show up in OpenCore and I also don't care if it not bootable from OpenCore. I don't care for windows UEFI in OpenCore



Dewdman42 said:


> Also you should really get your BootROM backed up, and you should look into getting a factory never-booted image created of your bootROM, there is a guy called *tsialex* over on MacRumors that can do it for a small fee. You should do that no matter what honestly, more so if you try OpenCore and especially more so if you are messing around with UEFI windows. I believe it may be possible to unbrick your 5,1 later if you somehow accidentally screwed it up with UEFI windows...


Okay thank you, that will be something I will also do I will contact tsialex when it is time to try this. I hope to not mess around with UEFI windows.




Dewdman42 said:


> Your legacy install of Windows10 should work fine. and yes you could leave it in drive bay #1, though I would not recommend that for an open core setup, but theoretically it can be there no problem. If open core ever breaks(perhaps while you're updating it or while you're changing its configuration for any reason), then basically your Mac will fall back to booting first from drive bay #1 and it should boot up that legacy bootcamp windows 10. I personally prefer to have Mojave as my fallback boot up in drive bay #1. But there is no hard and fast rule.


It seems that having windows 10 HOME 64bit in DRIVE BAY1 is not a good idea while using OpenCore. So that already is a problem.

Really my macOS Mojave should be in DRIVE BAY 1. If open core was to break anything in macOS how would I fix anything relating to mac OS from the legacy BOOTCAMP in windows? this is way complicated now.

If my OpenCore breaks for what ever reason and I have a back up drive of macOS Mojave could I put that drive back in DRIVE BAY 1 and fix the Monterey drive with OpenCore from there? or is there something fundamental that OpenCore has changed that would not allow me to?

I should further say I enter windows 10 Home 64bit *always by pressing option key* when i turn on the Mac and select windows 10 from there, also I should note that my windows 10 Home 64bit does not allow me to see any of my mac files or mac drives, I must have not of initially installed windows correctly then. Though to me I am okay with that, as I have each OS for different things macOS for music and windows for my art.

Then further need to ask something again regarding windows 10 home 64bit

how can I move my windows 10 Home 64bit drive (legacy install) that is DRIVE BAY 1 to DRIVE BAY 4 without reinstalling windows 10 Home 64bit from scratch in a different drive?

Can I ask would I be able to clone the windows drive? using the built in SYSTEM IMAGE TOOL in windows 10?

If so, would I clone it from my windows 10 Home 64bit IN DRIVE BAY1 while having the target drive in DRIVE BAY 4? is this possible?

I am kind of lost to be honest and I am sorry I ask so many questions



Dewdman42 said:


> your asking questions that open up a lot of complicated explanations and "it depends" answers.
> 
> roll up your sleeves, head over to the MacRumors forum and plan to spend some time figuring it out. Backup you Mac before trying anything.


Again sorry if I am derailing this thread I am just asking some questions before I even attempt this.



Dewdman42 said:


> I think the easiest approach for you would be to use MyBootMgr, check with the author about your flashed RX580 first though.


My Flashed RX 580 was flashed by MacVid Cards from Mac rumours. is that what you mean by author? If the author is not correct what would happen regarding MyBootMgr? is this regarding boot screens and apple logo appearing when turned on? I do get an apple logo when turning on.

The first thing I will be doing is buying a Focusrite 2i2 or 4i4 audio interface once I get that working in Mojave and I can record in cubase 11 I will purchase a SSD and try to follow the OpenCore instructions. I also saw on youtube the* OpenCore the basic way PART 5* instruction using a USB pen drive what do you think of that method? it seems very straight forward.

Again sorry if my replies don't make much sense or I am derailing the thread but I need to know 100% before I do anything.

And also thanks for all your time for the previous information I am extremely grateful.


----------



## Dewdman42

Based on your level of understand that you have presented here, I would not recommend that you create a dual boot macpro. There are a lot of moving parts and its not for the faint of heart. 

I would also recommend you do not use UEFI windows unless you really know what you're doing with Opencore. In fact if I were you i would just leave your machine setup the way it is and keep using it


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Michael Antrum said:


> Have you thought of getting a RIP…..
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> PrintFab Online Shop
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.zedonet.com


Thanks, but not for this application.

Fine art printing is very subtle, and every little change makes a difference - including the program you use to print from, i.e. you don't just use the built-in OS driver. Each kind of paper you use requires a different profile (called an ICC profile) to compensate for the way it absorbs the ink... it's a whole new level of detail - and I'm enjoying it immensely!

Canon includes a program called Pro Print and Layout that I use.

That aside, it's one more reason I don't plan to fix what isn't broken in my 5,1.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

By the way, you *can* use the built-in print driver you get from any program's Print menu, but I don't use the Pro-1000 for printing out any old thing.

The pretentious term for what I do is _giclée - _in my case Modern (capital M) art that starts out as photography but doesn't look like it when I'm done.


----------



## Michael Antrum

Actually, I'm rather a specialist on RIP's and printing. I make my living in large and grand format printing - machines that print up to 5m wide. Roland, Mimaki, AGFA, Oce, Vutek, HP, Epson, Canon etc.

This kind of stuff....






I thought you might just want a cheap rip to get a solution.

There are specialist RIP's for fine art and giclee printing that offer far more in the way of control and colour management over any manufacturer solution. In fact, I can't think of many of my clients who run commercial fine art print on printer manufacturer software, but then, most of these RIP's run on a PC and the Mac is used as a client. 

Some of the software can get expensive, but it tends to depend on the size of the output device.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Michael Antrum said:


> Actually, I'm rather a specialist on RIP's and printing. I make my living in large and grand format printing - machines that print up to 5m wide. Roland, Mimaki, AGFA, Oce, Vutek, HP, Epson, Canon etc.



Hah. Well, then you're just a little ahead of me.


----------



## Michael Antrum

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Hah. Well, then you're just a little ahead of me.


Not necessarily.....

(Sorry Nick, I re-read my last post and I rather came off looking like a bit of a jerk. I didn't mean it to sound that way.)


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Michael Antrum said:


> Not necessarily.....
> 
> (Sorry Nick, I re-read my last post and I rather came off looking like a bit of a jerk. I didn't mean it to sound that way.)


Not at all!

But while we're off the subject of 5,1s, I use Affinity Photo and then export to Canon Pro Print & Layout, so I'm not using it for any correction. And while 17" x 4' is big enough to magnify everything, issues are going to be a lot more noticeable on billboard-sized prints!


----------



## Dewdman42




----------



## Fidelity

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I forget which group it is - there are a couple on Facebook.
> 
> So you're asking what the problem is with putting an $850 graphics card in a machine that - for their purposes - can be at least equaled by a $600 M1 Mac Mini?


This is sadly becoming the norm now. Thanks cryptobros!


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Fidelity said:


> This is sadly becoming the norm now. Thanks cryptobros!


Ah, I hadn't thought about that.

You know, it really should be illegal.


----------



## Garlu

Dewdman42 said:


>


Thinking on Opencore'ing mine, to either Big Sur or Monterey. (with Martin Lo's patch). Is it running smoothly? Same upgraded processors here, 128gb ram (although I am aware of the triple channel benefit for 96gb ram), and same graphics card. 

Thanks!!


----------



## Dewdman42

Garlu said:


> Thinking on Opencore'ing mine, to either Big Sur or Monterey. (with Martin Lo's patch). Is it running smoothly? Same upgraded processors here, 128gb ram (although I am aware of the triple channel benefit for 96gb ram), and same graphics card.
> 
> Thanks!!


Running very smoothly for me.


----------



## Dewdman42

In case you haven't seen it, I highly recommend you at least read the first intro section of the first post on this thread:









OpenCore on the Mac Pro


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




forums.macrumors.com





The author, *CDF*, keeps an up to date guide on how to manually setup 5,1 with OpenCore in the most simple, cleanest, closest-to-vanilla setup. That is what I am still using and prefer that clean setup. He also gives mention to Martin's patch and a couple others worthy of mention. 

I feel that the future for 5,1 OpenCore will be probably to use the *OCLP* approach, many people participating on the above forum thread and starting to switch over to that instead of doing it manually. For people that are not too technically inclined, that is going to probably be the simplest and best approach rolling forward, IMHO.

What I don't like is that it installs a dozen or so kext patches that are really not necessary and not even sure what they all do or their impact, I prefer the vanilla approach, so for now I am just using CDF's guide and its working very well on my setup (which is similar as yours).

Mostly people turn to Martin's patch or OCLP when they have other video cards or strange hardware that doesn't quite work with vanilla setup, or perhaps they just want something more automatic that doesn't require them to edit anything or do anything manual. I got used to doing the manual steps already so I like that way.


----------



## Dewdman42

So update on 5,1 and the new soon to be released MacOS Ventura. Basically as of now, Ventura is no go on the 5,1, even with OpenCore. There are some brave souls that have kind of got it working through a convoluted process, so there is some small hope the hacker community will figure it all out, but I am not holding my breathe and the issues now are kind of serious...may not ever be solved. So in my view Monterey may be the end of the line finally for the 5,1, even with OpenCore. We can hope for more, but I personally doubt it. 

So far, here are some of the issues coming up

Apple is removing the trashcan from being supported in Ventura, and that means it is also finally getting rid of some important GPU drivers that have enabled a lot of 5,1 and 6,1 owners to keep going. That one might eventually be resolved through third party drivers, but I doubt it because I think nobody will want to waste the time with ARM on the horizon. its not clear to me yet whether my RX-580 will continue to work or not. We'll see. ironically its more likely that 5,1 users will be able to get around this issue then 6,1...unless the 6,1 owners want to spend money for an external GPU, which I suspect most would not.


They are removing numerous old drivers like bluetooth, etc..so built in BT of the 5,1 will probably not work. If you have updated Bluetooth card (as I do), then maybe it will. We'll see.


AVX2. This is the biggie. Apple is starting to put in AVX2 requirements rather liberally and the 5,1 does not have AVX2. This actually affected the Monterey 12.4 update also, but some genius hackers did figure out a workaround for that specific case, but now with Ventura its even more widespread, can't even finish the installer or boot up, and I suspect Apple is going to increasingly put in things that require AVX2 at a fundamental OS level. In my view, we will be very lucky if these genius hackers figure out a work around for this in Ventura, but if they do than most likely will be the very last MacOS to run on the 5,1; and I'm really not even betting that we will get that. I think quite likely Monterey will be the end of the line, mainly because of this one AVX2 issue, which there may end up being no real work around possible other than running MacOS on top of a VM, but that starts to be self-defeating.


Also, a lot of Macs fell off the supported list with Ventura...as recently as 2016 models and some that were still for sale even just a couple years ago. No comment about that, other then to say that it will not be long until the entire line of officially supported Apple hardware all have T2 chips. Again, that may turn out to be the end of the line for the 5,1 once we get to that, though some hackers may be able to work around that one, but its also a lot of work just to get the 5,1 past a couple more OS versions...when everyone else is shopping for a Mac Studio.


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## jononotbono

Thanks for sharing.

I'm fucking sick of it!

Not you. Having a 5,1


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## Dewdman42

hehehe. I hear you. I'm not. I love mine. I am actually not at all looking forward to various growing pains I will eventually have to go through in order to use a new ARM Mac...I am quite dependent on expensive PCI audio card for one thing..also a lot of internal storage inside my 5,1. I will definitely make that leap eventually of course, but I plan to run my 5,1 into the ground first and I reckon I can easily run Monterey for a few more years...so if that is end of the line, that's fine. It will still work great for quite a while. eventually some of my software won't be compatible with Monterey any longer and then finally I will look into my next Mac, hopefully an ARM one.

But it has been a little tedious dealing with keeping OpenCore up to date. I'm down to doing it only once a quarter now and I've gotten pretty good at it by now so its not that big of a deal. I wait until other people work out all the quirks with the latest MacOS update...so I lag behind a few months..that's fine..it really hasn't been that bad, though there was quite a learning curve to get to here, no doubt. But frankly if I end up saying for sure Monterey 12.4 is the last update, then fine, I won't have to do anymore OpenCore anything I'll just use that version of MacOS for the foreseeable future, likely for a few more years...until like I said...the stuff I care about running has moved on and won't run on Monterey.

And even then I will probably turn my 5,1 into a PC because its still a pretty darn capable machine.


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## jononotbono

Dewdman42 said:


> hehehe. I hear you. I'm not. I love mine. I am actually not at all looking forward to various growing pains I will eventually have to go through in order to use a new ARM Mac...I am quite dependent on expensive PCI audio card for one thing..also a lot of internal storage inside my 5,1. I will definitely make that leap eventually of course, but I plan to run my 5,1 into the ground first and I reckon I can easily run Monterey for a few more years...so if that is end of the line, that's fine. It will still work great for quite a while. eventually some of my software won't be compatible with Monterey any longer and then finally I will look into my next Mac, hopefully an ARM one.
> 
> But it has been a little tedious dealing with keeping OpenCore up to date. I'm down to doing it only once a quarter now and I've gotten pretty good at it by now so its not that big of a deal. I wait until other people work out all the quirks with the latest MacOS update...so I lag behind a few months..that's fine..it really hasn't been that bad, though there was quite a learning curve to get to here, no doubt. But frankly if I end up saying for sure Monterey 12.4 is the last update, then fine, I won't have to do anymore OpenCore anything I'll just use that version of MacOS for the foreseeable future, likely for a few more years...until like I said...the stuff I care about running has moved on and won't run on Monterey.
> 
> And even then I will probably turn my 5,1 into a PC because its still a pretty darn capable machine.


I just need a faster computer.


----------



## Dewdman42

yea well there is that. Right now today if I absolutely had to buy a faster computer I would probably buy the 2019 MacPro..that's how much I am not down for the current M1/M2 computers. They will come out with what I need eventually but they don't have it yet. Kinda stuck in limbo because I don't think a 2019 Mac Pro is a very good investment in terms of logevity at this point, but that's just me


----------



## jononotbono

Dewdman42 said:


> stuff I care about running has moved on and won't run on Monterey.


Oh I'm running a 5,1 on Monterey. Of course I am. SSDs. All... let's not go there

Doesn't change the fact I am FUCKING HATING IT 😂

Why? It doesn't do what I need. 

Unfortunately, I'm bowing out of this thread... but it doesn't mean I love you no less! 
You're a god! (And I'm gonna store at least 8 x 5,1s for when the shit hits the fan!

I just need faster CPUs haha x


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## Dewdman42

Still going....

Word on the street is still that Ventura is not going to be working on a lot of older Macs, even with OpenCore. They might figure out some hack arounds eventually, but I think likely that Monterey will be the last MacOS I take seriously with my 5,1. The OpenCore community is basically saying don't even bother trying Ventura until a year from now and we'll see.

Running Monterey on 5,1 has become easier to do in the past year or so due to something called *OCLP*, which is a little GUI that makes it somewhat automatic to setup OpenCore. So if anyone is wanting to try it, I recommend backing up first and give it a go. It might surprise you that you can run Monterey and latest logicPro, and not feel urgent rush to buy M1 just yet. Info here:






OpenCore Legacy Patcher


Experience macOS just like before



dortania.github.io





I am personally not using OCLP, because I learned the hard way how to set up OpenCore manually and its a cleaner setup. OCLP installs more hacks then are probably really necessary, in order to cover more cases. A lot of people are using it happily though. But my preferred way is to set OpenCore up manually. And best source for that info is here:









OpenCore on the Mac Pro


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




forums.macrumors.com





One more thing...before embarking on Opencore, I highly recommend you look for a guy on the above forum by the name of *tsialex*. Have him make you a never-booted ROM backup and keep that as a backup ROM before experimenting with OpenCore...and its even a good idea to periodically re-flash the ROM with the never-booted version.


----------



## tmhuud

jononotbono said:


> This.


Yup


----------



## Karmand

Awesome update - I too do OpenCore and run BigSur - not needed to upgrade to Monterey but I've been following the tech on this too - great job @Dewdman42 !


----------



## Minsky

jononotbono said:


> I just need a faster computer.


I feel your pain. I'm in the same place. Think I have to move now to a <Mac Studio. Think that'll be enough for now..until the new Mac Pros come out and get bedded in for a while.


----------



## jononotbono

Minsky said:


> I feel your pain. I'm in the same place. Think I have to move now to a <Mac Studio. Think that'll be enough for now..until the new Mac Pros come out and get bedded in for a while.


I've been working with a film composer that has just upgraded to the new Mac Studio (helped to transfer their old set up from PC to the Mac Studio). So far it's been an amazing machine. I think it will become the most popular choice for composers. Just purely on performance and price point. There's no way the new Mac Pro will be any less expensive than the current one. Fingers crossed its a true monster of a machine.


My next computer is going to be a PC. I want to build a computer not just for music but also for game development. I'd love to have both a new Mac and PC but that's very unlikely at the minute unless I start playing the lottery again.

Sick to death of save times being 20 seconds. Sick of waiting for a beach ball to stop turning. Utter nonsense 😂


----------



## babylonwaves

This is going to be my winter project. I have the Macs, now I need the wood


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## Dewdman42

jononotbono said:


> Sick to death of save times being 20 seconds. Sick of waiting for a beach ball to stop turning. Utter nonsense 😂


well everyone knows you're been trying to run a nuclear reactor with yours


----------



## Dewdman42

With the release of Ventura I thought I would just update this thread about 5,1 MacPro

First the good news, Monterey is alive and well on mine:








Regarding Venture: Ventura should not be attempted on the 5,1. I'll let you know if the situation changes, but the bottom line is that Apple has introduced too many changes to MacOS Ventura which can not really be fully patched on a 5,1 Mac (and many other deprecated models also). The biggest problem is that apple is depending a lot on AVX now and unless someone makes an AVX emulator, which is highly unlikely, Ventura is never going to work very well on a 5,1. Also numerous GPU's have been discontinued. There is an OCLP patcher that can allegedly make it kind of work, but its not reliable and cannot be recommended at this time.

Monterey runs fantastically and I can recommend that for end of life of this hardware, which will be supported by Apple with security updates, etc. for yet another 2 years....so in my view that is the end of the road for the 5,1. We shall see what happens in the patching community maybe they will figure out Ventura better, but I personally doubt they will. By the time they do we'll all be happily running Apple Silicon I reckon.... (or moved to windows or using our 5,1 as a mud room bench)


----------



## kgdrum

@Dewdman42 

Is the Monterey patch simpler than it was a couple of years ago and less risky in bricking the 5,1?
I would love to move past Mojave so I can use later versions of software like K7 , UADX etc…….

Thanks


----------



## Dewdman42

Short answer: Yes, try OCLP

I haven't met anyone that that has bricked their 5,1. I'm not saying it can't happen. But I think a lot of the warnings are just disclaimers, but in reality its not that common and you have low risk of doing that (here is my disclaimer, do it at your own risk hahaha). You might get your Mac to a point where it won't boot and you need help getting it to boot again, but that is not the same as "bricking" it. Bricking it means you can't boot it all no matter what you do without some hardware fixes.

Keep in mind also that 5,1's are ten+ years old...and sooner or later some of them are going to start bricking themselves...even without doing any of this stuff at all...because the board with firmware and NVRAM has a limited shelf life. They literally get worn out.

It means buying a new part for a hundred bucks or two, to get it going again, it would not be permanently bricked necessarily...ESPECIALLY if you have backed up your ROM, which everyone should as soon as possible honestly...with or without hacking it.

Second of all, there was already a very easy way to upgrade to Catalina, presuming you have a Metal GPU...using DosDude's patcher. So... if you want to at least get to Catalina...there is a good and easy path for that using DosDude's patcher... and your likelihood of bricking your Mac that way are 0.00000000000001%. You need to make sure your GPU is good to go first.

Moving beyond Catalina means using OpenCore, with a known GPU that works and you might have to deal with bluetooth/wifi (I upgraded my bluetooth/wifi card, so it just works), but the original hardware may require special patching...but can be done.

Make sure you keep a working Mojave disk somewhere, worst case you pull all the drives out and plug your Mojave drive in and you'll probably be back in business until you can figure out how to get OpenCore working again.

A couple years ago it was more difficult then now because of something today called OCLP which means its quite a bit more brainless to do. Almost anyone can try *OCLP* and probably get a working Monterey system without learning too much about what they are doing. That is the approach I would recommend for most of you and it has become quite popular in the past year.

The downside of using OCLP is that you don't have to know what you're doing and if you misconfigure your machine you could conceivably make it temporarily unbootable and probably start to freak out because you didn't even know what you were doing and so you wouldn't know how to undo it without spending some agonizing time on the internet asking for help. But that isn't really "bricked" per say. Like I said, if you keep a Mojave drive on hand, worst case you can pull out the OpenCore drives, put the Mojave drive back in and boot it up just fine.

I personally do not use OCLP, because it patches in more stuff than I really want or need, they do that in an attempt to make it work for everyone, but in my view its too much. So I prefer to use CDF's guide to setting up OpenCore myself with simple and well documented instructions. This way I'm using more of a minimally patched system, much closer to factory and I am also familiar with exactly what has been patched and how the OpenCore system kind of works so I can roll back to Mojave anytime I want very easily or when weird things are happening, I kind of understand what is going on and am able to troubleshoot it.


----------



## kgdrum

Dewdman42 said:


> Short answer: Yes, try OCLP
> 
> I haven't met anyone that that has bricked their 5,1. I'm not saying it can't happen. But I think a lot of the warnings are just disclaimers, but in reality its not that common and you have low risk of doing that (here is my disclaimer, do it at your own risk hahaha). You might get your Mac to a point where it won't boot and you need help getting it to boot again, but that is not the same as "bricking" it. Bricking it means you can't boot it all no matter what you do without some hardware fixes.
> 
> Keep in mind also that 5,1's are ten+ years old...and sooner or later some of them are going to start bricking themselves...even without doing any of this stuff at all...because the board with firmware and NVRAM has a limited shelf life. They literally get worn out.
> 
> It means buying a new part for a hundred bucks or two, to get it going again, it would not be permanently bricked necessarily...ESPECIALLY if you have backed up your ROM, which everyone should as soon as possible honestly...with or without hacking it.
> 
> Second of all, there was already a very easy way to upgrade to Catalina, presuming you have a Metal GPU...using DosDude's patcher. So... if you want to at least get to Catalina...there is a good and easy path for that using DosDude's patcher... and your likelihood of bricking your Mac that way are 0.00000000000001%. You need to make sure your GPU is good to go first.
> 
> Moving beyond Catalina means using OpenCore, with a known GPU that works and you might have to deal with bluetooth/wifi (I upgraded my bluetooth/wifi card, so it just works), but the original hardware may require special patching...but can be done.
> 
> Make sure you keep a working Mojave disk somewhere, worst case you pull all the drives out and plug your Mojave drive in and you'll probably be back in business until you can figure out how to get OpenCore working again.
> 
> A couple years ago it was more difficult then now because of something today called OCLP which means its quite a bit more brainless to do. Almost anyone can try *OCLP* and probably get a working Monterey system without learning too much about what they are doing. That is the approach I would recommend for most of you and it has become quite popular in the past year.
> 
> The downside of using OCLP is that you don't have to know what you're doing and if you misconfigure your machine you could conceivably make it temporarily unbootable and probably start to freak out because you didn't even know what you were doing and so you wouldn't know how to undo it without spending some agonizing time on the internet asking for help. But that isn't really "bricked" per say. Like I said, if you keep a Mojave drive on hand, worst case you can pull out the OpenCore drives, put the Mojave drive back in and boot it up just fine.
> 
> I personally do not use OCLP, because it patches in more stuff than I really want or need, they do that in an attempt to make it work for everyone, but in my view its too much. So I prefer to use CDF's guide to setting up OpenCore myself with simple and well documented instructions. This way I'm using more of a minimally patched system, much closer to factory and I am also familiar with exactly what has been patched and how the OpenCore system kind of works so I can roll back to Mojave anytime I want very easily or when weird things are happening, I kind of understand what is going on and am able to troubleshoot it.


As always @Dewdman42 thanks for the great info 👍
OK Catalina might make sense

This drummer must ask, how do you back up ROM? I have never even heard of this.


----------



## Dewdman42

The ROM is where your firmware and NVRAM exist.

Regarding the ROM backup, first there are a lot of people using DosDude's Catalina patcher or OCLP with BigSur or Monterey that never mess with the ROM at all...so I don't want it to sound like a hard requirement. But its just a good idea to do a ROM backup first...and even better to get a custom so called "never-booted" rom image made for you (see below).

I can dig up more info about this if you are serious to want to make ROM backup.. DosDude has a feely available tool and there are other tools too I think. A search on the MacRumors forum will find you a lot of info about how to do it properly.

But an even better thing to do is contact user *tsialex* over on the MacRumors forum and ask for his help. He can help you understand how to do the dump properly, he will inspect your ROM image dump..and tell you a few things about it if there are currently any NVRAM problems, but mainly for a small fee he can reconstruct a new ROM image which has been "cleaned". It will be in a format that is the same as what Apple installs on your computer before booting it the first time. When it boots the very first time it fills in some more stuff. So this never-booted ROM image from tsialex is a good thing to have on hand just in case your ROM dies because its getting old..if nothing else...or if you were one of the 0.000000000001% that somehow bricked it. 

But I actually re-flash this never-booted rom image back into my firmware every 6 months.... The reason is because I have come to realize that newer versions of MacOS and MS Windows cram a lot more stuff into NVRAM then these Macs were designed to handle. Newer PC's and Macs have bigger NVRAM. These older ones can end up in a situation occasionally where the NVRAM gets overrun and can't properly clean itself out. That is when you can reflash the ROM with the never-booted rom image and be back in business as if brand new. Tsialex recommends reflashing it every 3 months. its not hard to do. I am probably doing it every 6 months I guess. In retrospect, a lot of people aren't doing that and its debatable about whether you need to do this, but I have more peace of mind by having that never-booted ROM image...and I feel it was worth it. 

Some people with 5,1's that aren't even trying any of this stuff may already have a corrupted NVRAM and don't even realize it. You can attempt to totally wipe your NVRAM by holding down CMD-PR during boot and keep holding it down while waiting for the Mac to attempt to boot at least 4 times with the boot up chime, each time its clearing the NVRAM some more, but in order to fully clear the NVRAM, you have to let it do that 4 times. So that is also not a bad idea for 5,1 owners to do occasionally. The never-booted rom is basically that, but also everything about the firmware will be as if it just rolled off the factory line and was never booted before.. Talk to tsialex for more info about that if you're interested.


----------



## kgdrum

Dewdman42 said:


> The ROM is where your firmware and NVRAM exist.
> 
> Regarding the ROM backup, first there are a lot of people using DosDude's Catalina patcher or OCLP with BigSur or Monterey that never mess with the ROM at all...so I don't want it to sound like a hard requirement. But its just a good idea to do a ROM backup first...and even better to get a custom so called "never-booted" rom image made for you (see below).
> 
> I can dig up more info about this if you are serious to want to make ROM backup.. DosDude has a feely available tool and there are other tools too I think. A search on the MacRumors forum will find you a lot of info about how to do it properly.
> 
> But an even better thing to do is contact user *tsialex* over on the MacRumors forum and ask for his help. He can help you understand how to do the dump properly, he will inspect your ROM image dump..and tell you a few things about it if there are currently any NVRAM problems, but mainly for a small fee he can reconstruct a new ROM image which has been "cleaned". It will be in a format that is the same as what Apple installs on your computer before booting it the first time. When it boots the very first time it fills in some more stuff. So this never-booted ROM image from tsialex is a good thing to have on hand just in case your ROM dies because its getting old..if nothing else...or if you were one of the 0.000000000001% that somehow bricked it.
> 
> But I actually re-flash this never-booted rom image back into my firmware every 6 months.... The reason is because I have come to realize that newer versions of MacOS and MS Windows cram a lot more stuff into NVRAM then these Macs were designed to handle. Newer PC's and Macs have bigger NVRAM. These older ones can end up in a situation occasionally where the NVRAM gets overrun and can't properly clean itself out. That is when you can reflash the ROM with the never-booted rom image and be back in business as if brand new. Tsialex recommends reflashing it every 3 months. its not hard to do. I am probably doing it every 6 months I guess. In retrospect, a lot of people aren't doing that and its debatable about whether you need to do this, but I have more peace of mind by having that never-booted ROM image...and I feel it was worth it.
> 
> Some people with 5,1's that aren't even trying any of this stuff may already have a corrupted NVRAM and don't even realize it. You can attempt to totally wipe your NVRAM by holding down CMD-PR during boot and keep holding it down while waiting for the Mac to attempt to boot at least 4 times with the boot up chime, each time its clearing the NVRAM some more, but in order to fully clear the NVRAM, you have to let it do that 4 times. So that is also not a bad idea for 5,1 owners to do occasionally. The never-booted rom is basically that, but also everything about the firmware will be as if it just rolled off the factory line and was never booted before.. Talk to tsialex for more info about that if you're interested.


Thanks,I will re-read this several times to see if I comprehend what you’re trying to tell me,lol


----------



## Dewdman42

Really its pretty darn safe to just try DosDude's Catalina patcher without any of this other stuff about ROM and OCLP, etc.. at least you'll be out of Mojave. Catalina does run better then Mojave. Its very easy to do. I still recommend you do this on a new drive and keep your Mojave drive sitting on a shelf in case you need to plop it back into the computer...or at the very least make sure you have a very good backup of it.

But DosDude's Catalina patcher is extremely easy, you can be up using Catalina in an hour or two, presuming your GPU is supported.


----------



## kgdrum

Am I wrong in assuming that when I upgraded my 5,1 from a 6 core tray to a 12 core dual cpu tray a couple of years ago this would have had the ROM refreshed?

using a metal RX580 video card


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## Dewdman42

no that would not have touched your ROM. The ROM is outside of the CPU. its another chip on the motherboard


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## kgdrum

But the ROM chip is in the new tray I swapped into the 5,1 wouldn’t this have been (hopefully)clean when I installed? Or I guess there’s no way of knowing at this point.


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## Dewdman42

First, I am not sure its on that tray. If you know that it is..then ok...but that is not my recollection, but its been a while since I had the box open. But...even if you bought a new tray, it was probably not actually "new"....it came out of another Mac and there would be old data in the ROM. 

The ROM is where your serial number, etc. is stored. I don't think its on the CPU tray.


----------



## kgdrum

On a side note one thing that might get me more inclined to get the next generation of Mac Studio (next year) a friend of mine is giving me a Pegasus2 R-8 with 32tb of storage. I requires Thunderbolt so this would be an incentive to make the move.

re: ROM
Are you kidding lol,i have no idea where the ROM chip is and barely knew of it’s existence,I really knew virtually nothing about this before you just mentioned it.


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## Dewdman42

yea if you want thunderbolt...I would definitely move on. The dilemma is that as of now Apple Silicon in my view is still not great idea for audio work, that's just me. I'm not going to Apple Silicon until absolutely everything software I use is native Apple Silicon. And we are still a ways off from that. I would rather use OpenCore Intel Mac then Apple Silicon Rosetta. That is just me. 

In a year from now things will already be dramatically better then right now for AS compatibility.

Plus Apple will release new computers between now and then, so we'll see...

Even after I buy an Apple Silicon Mac, I plan to use my 5,1 in some useful capacity for quite a while because its still quite capable, but it obviously won't be running past Monterey, so for a while it will be useful as Vepro server if nothing else...but eventually when lots of software won't even run on Monterey anymore (years away)...I could install windows on it and STILL keep running it as a VePro server or whatever. There is a lot of life left in this 5,1 and I intend to use it.

But in a year from now and especially in two years from now... Apple Silicon will be more prevalent then Intel in terms of software and it will be expedient to be using Apple Silicon for primary DAW computer.. But personally I don't feel we are there yet. I still consider AS users to be early adopters in terms of audio production work.


----------



## kgdrum

Yeah I agree that’s why I’m aiming more like this time next year, I rarely jump on anything 1st generation from Apple


----------



## Dewdman42

The specs they are talking bout for next years macPro are incredible, but it sounds like it will be way too expensive for me honestly...so I don't know...may come back to getting a Mac Studio, for me though I want to see second generation MacStudio..that's probably what I am shooting for...whenever that comes..

But really I'm not even gonna think about it until all the software is running native Apple Silicon and when we hear Intel users moaning and groaning that something won't run anymore on Intel..then it will be time to finally go to AS as far as I'm concerned. 

But hey...at some point I will probably end up also with new thunderbolt audio hardware, probably MOTU, etc..and get rid of my PCI stuff and there is a lot of spending $$$ that is going to occur when I finally do it...I'm just waiting until its truly needed, right now I'm working just fine with what I have now.


----------



## kgdrum

Dewdman42 said:


> The specs they are talking bout for next years macPro are incredible, but it sounds like it will be way too expensive for me honestly...so I don't know...may come back to getting a Mac Studio, for me though I want to see second generation MacStudio..that's probably what I am shooting for...whenever that comes..
> 
> But really I'm not even gonna think about it until all the software is running native Apple Silicon and when we hear Intel users moaning and groaning that something won't run anymore on Intel..then it will be time to finally go to AS as far as I'm concerned.
> 
> But hey...at some point I will probably end up also with new thunderbolt audio hardware, probably MOTU, etc..and get rid of my PCI stuff and there is a lot of spending $$$ that is going to occur when I finally do it...I'm just waiting until its truly needed, right now I'm working just fine with what I have now.


I suspect the next generation of Mac Studio will suit most of us for DAW use.
I’m using a RME UCX via usb, why wouldn’t this work with a Mac Studio?
Storage for sample drives I anticipate will be a big expense.


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## Dewdman42

it should work just fine as long as they have native Apple Silicon drivers for it.


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## kgdrum

From some posts on GS


“The new rme drivers are natively m1. Also their well working betas are available one their forum, but will be official releases soon.

I have been running the m1 silicon native RME driver betas for my Babyface Pro for some months now and they are working great. The kernel extension issue is solved with these version.

RME UFX+ and UCX II working great with my M1 here.”



So I suspect there will be no apparent problems a year from now.


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## Dewdman42

Given that Monterey is probably the last version of MacOS to be ran on 5,1 MacPro...and that the recent LogicPro update requires Monterey 12.3, this is probably the last major update for LogicPro on the 5,1 also, just a guess.... Even some of the features related to Atmosphere inside this release require Ventura.


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## mjsalam

Anyone have the latest Monterey running on Mac Pro 5,1? I had 12.2 running well but 12.6 just won't take. I seem to recall something around the 12.5 update causing all sorts of issues but not sure if I'm fabricating.


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## Dewdman42

Yes I have it running no problem. What approach did you use to set it up?


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## mjsalam

Using OCLP. I seem to be making progress but it's bene a right PITA. I just disabled VMM flag and this has allowed the install to complete but then it still wouldn't boot (gets about halfway and reboots). Finally got it booted in safe mode...so ..ya some progress.


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## mjsalam

Update: it spontaneously rebooted while in safe mode when choosing language (during the initial setup). Then it booted into normal mode without issue and so far it seems alright? Go figure.


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## Dewdman42

I am not too knowledgeable about OCLP but I know many people are using it with the latest version of Monterey on 5,1. Some gpu’s are harder to deal with, mine has been pretty easy. Also I have upgraded the Bluetooth/Wi-Fi board which the original factory bt may have become problematic at a certain os version but that is also solvable with patching in OCLP as I understand it.

The installation of macOS does need to reboot itself several times before it is complete. You have to be patient and wait for it to finish and reboot at least 3-4 times. 

I’m not sure if VMM is still required anymore and especially if you are using id spoofing. Depends on what OCLP is trying to do but you definitely want that off while running macOS later. I think probably you wanted it off.

But there are certain opencore settings and patches you need to make sure are enabled since 12.5 introduced a problem with AVX and might affect installation during some of those reboots. Also some people said you want tiake sure to set boot-args to include -v. OCLP should be taking care of the details of that or you might have to answer some question properly when you run OCLP. I would check the Macrumors forum for more details and questions about OCLP and your specific hardware but I can certainly attest macOS 12.6.x is ruining fine on mine.

The reason I don’t use OCLP is because it does too many hacks, many of which you don’t need and you don’t even know exactly what it’s doing and have little ability to fix it or tweak it if you need to. For a lot of people if they run OCLP and it just works then they don’t care to learn or know anything about how opencore is configured. When they have some problems though they are helpless.

See the following Macrumors thread for manually setting up opencore specifically on 5,1









OpenCore on the Mac Pro


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




forums.macrumors.com





for a good way to setup opencore manually. It’s not that hard and the people using that approach and instructions are all using 5,1’s so they already know the best and cleanest way to run Monterey on 5,1. They will offer help if you have problems but if you ask them about OCLP you will get no help.


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## mjsalam

Dewdman42 said:


> I am not too knowledgeable about OCLP but I know many people are using it with the latest version of Monterey on 5,1. Some gpu’s are harder to deal with, mine has been pretty easy. Also I have upgraded the Bluetooth/Wi-Fi board which the original factory bt may have become problematic at a certain os version but that is also solvable with patching in OCLP as I understand it.
> 
> The installation of macOS does need to reboot itself several times before it is complete. You have to be patient and wait for it to finish and reboot at least 3-4 times.
> 
> I’m not sure if VMM is still required anymore and especially if you are using id spoofing. Depends on what OCLP is trying to do but you definitely want that off while running macOS later. I think probably you wanted it off.
> 
> But there are certain opencore settings and patches you need to make sure are enabled since 12.5 introduced a problem with AVX and might affect installation during some of those reboots. Also some people said you want tiake sure to set boot-args to include -v. OCLP should be taking care of the details of that or you might have to answer some question properly when you run OCLP. I would check the Macrumors forum for more details and questions about OCLP and your specific hardware but I can certainly attest macOS 12.6.x is ruining fine on mine.
> 
> The reason I don’t use OCLP is because it does too many hacks, many of which you don’t need and you don’t even know exactly what it’s doing and have little ability to fix it or tweak it if you need to. For a lot of people if they run OCLP and it just works then they don’t care to learn or know anything about how opencore is configured. When they have some problems though they are helpless.
> 
> See the following Macrumors thread for manually setting up opencore specifically on 5,1
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> OpenCore on the Mac Pro
> 
> 
> This guide explains how to use the excellent OpenCore boot loader to install, run, and update macOS Catalina, Big Sur or Monterey on the MacPro5,1, resulting in a clean, unaltered operating system just like on a supported Mac.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> forums.macrumors.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> for a good way to setup opencore manually. It’s not that hard and the people using that approach and instructions are all using 5,1’s so they already know the best and cleanest way to run Monterey on 5,1. They will offer help if you have problems but if you ask them about OCLP you will get no help.


Thanks. Super helpful. I may go the OC route. I am running Ventura quite happily on a proper hackintosh using OC. I guess I assume OCLP would make my life easier with the MBP. Strange thing right now is it will only
Boot with VMM on. Thanks a lot for the detailed info! And the sanity check.


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## Dewdman42

OCLP is just a program that asks you a few questions, probes your system and then attempts to configure an OC setup. Its still OC either way. OCLP just attempts to do it automatically. Sometimes you get what you pay for though. I prefer to do it manually.

Ventura will never be able to run properly on our 5,1 mainly because we don't have AVX in our CPU's. Well never say never...but its highly unlikely. By the time anyone could figure out a solution to that, if ever, we will all be on Apple Silicon. Monterey is the end for the 5,1

VMM runs 25% slower. It should work, but you would never want to run that way. The only reason people mainly used that in the past was to access the App Store and get updates when Apple would try to block it. But since then, OC has been improved to include capabilities where you can spoof your Mac to look like a 7,1 Mac and then it gets to the App Store, etc.. Most of the time with modern spoofing techniques you should not need VMM and it definitely slows down your Mac substantially


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## Dewdman42

Check out the link above I mentioned. It will tell you exactly how to configure OC to work with the 5,1.


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