# Mac Pro + SSD dropouts ===> upgrade to 12 core!



## Simon Ravn (Dec 26, 2015)

It was hard for me to create a topic title that might get the attention of people in the same boat as mine. People who experience dropouts and "sub par" performance from their Mac Pro running a lot of orchestral libraries off SSD's.

Anyway, if anyone reads this who has experienced the same as me, I just want to tell a quick upgrade experience.

As mentioned I think my system was pretty powerful (6-core Mac Pro, 48 GB RAM, only SSD's, VE Pro + Logic, 2 PC slaves) and I was a bit frustrated that demanding tracks with a lot of voices streamed off those SSD's, pretty easily led to dropouts and the Kontakt diskmeter going in to the red. I thought it was simply down to SSD random read speed not being that fast afterall.

But nevertheless, when I found a pretty inexpensive 12-core 3.46Ghz Mac Pro for sale on Ebay I decided to give it a try - at least I figured it would help performance of Zebra, Omnisphere and other synths. I never realized that it would totally transform and turbo boost my system like it did. 

I moved everything from my old 6-core to the 12-core, and apart from having to re-register Kontakt libraries, everything just worked right from the start. And Logic/Kontakt performance has been boosted significantly. A track I was working on which constantly had me a bit "in the dark" because not all voices were really playing, because of Kontakt diskmeter going in red, worked flawlessly - and I can even record and add much more stuff on top - and no sign of Kontakt going in red anymore. I am not kidding, I don't think I have experienced a single dropout of anything working on this track that was giving me a headache on the old machine.

So I must say that I am so happy I made the decision to buy this system. I also upgraded to 64GB RAM (but wasn't near using the 48GB on the old system) and from Yosemite to El Capitan, which might account for some of the performance gain (or not), but apparently a faster machine (CPU wise) also helps Kontakt performance which you could be fooled to think was related to disk speeds.

Just a heads up


----------



## SuperD (Dec 26, 2015)

This is good to read. I'm trying to invest in something long term and am considering buying used hardware as you did if it proves an effective solution. What's a "pretty inexpensive 12-core"?
This is what my day is all about: http://vi-control.net/community/threads/post-crash-hardware-advice.50633/


----------



## Suganthan (Dec 26, 2015)

Thanks for the info. Can I know your latency before and now? or the sample rate?


----------



## Coldsound (Dec 27, 2015)

Just a little precision, by Mac Pro you mean the latest round Thrash can Model, or the old Grey ones? 

I'm about to buy a 6-core Thrash can, and I'm aiming at 256 buffer at least, with 1 PC slave (VEpro, all in SSD too). And I wouldn't find it "christmas like happiness" if after spending so much money, it wasn't really working...


----------



## Simon Ravn (Dec 27, 2015)

Latency/sample rate is the same, I generally run 256 samples, haven't tried lowering it to 128. Sample rate usually 44, some projects 48.

I am talking about the old one, "classic" Mac Pro. No way in h*ll I am gonna throw $10.000 after a new one that is about the same speed...


----------



## Simon Ravn (Dec 27, 2015)

SuperD said:


> This is good to read. I'm trying to invest in something long term and am considering buying used hardware as you did if it proves an effective solution. What's a "pretty inexpensive 12-core"?
> This is what my day is all about: http://vi-control.net/community/threads/post-crash-hardware-advice.50633/



I paid 1500 GBP including postage for the 12-core with 32GB RAM.


----------



## Coldsound (Dec 27, 2015)

Simon Ravn said:


> Latency/sample rate is the same, I generally run 256 samples, haven't tried lowering it to 128. Sample rate usually 44, some projects 48.
> 
> I am talking about the old one, "classic" Mac Pro. No way in h*ll I am gonna throw $10.000 after a new one that is about the same speed...


Thanks. 
But a quick remark about the new mac being at the same speed: at 256 buffer the cpu are not fully saturated, i.e. they are not the weakest leak of the chain... It not about speed and raw calculating power than it is of fluidity of realtime exchanges and communication of the computer for us composer. New mac pro are supposed to have better architecture surround the cpu that helps this communication. But you're right it's damn expensive for this...


----------



## Simon Ravn (Dec 27, 2015)

Coldsound said:


> Thanks.
> But a quick remark about the new mac being at the same speed: at 256 buffer the cpu are not fully saturated, i.e. they are not the weakest leak of the chain... It not about speed and raw calculating power than it is of fluidity of realtime exchanges and communication of the computer for us composer. New mac pro are supposed to have better architecture surround the cpu that helps this communication. But you're right it's damn expensive for this...



Buffer size... you can't make a general remark about that. Depends on a lot of stuff in your setup: Audio interface, host sequencer, how much stuff you have running/loaded etc etc. The nMP is not a piece of magic - it's a computer just like the old MP - it has faster memory access and slightly better CPU architecture, but I very much doubt that will translate to much difference as a DAW host.


----------



## kunst91 (Dec 27, 2015)

I'm curious, how would upgrading CPU and RAM affect disk spikes? I always thought those bottlenecks had to do with multiple samples/libraries streaming from a single SSD.


----------



## Simon Ravn (Dec 27, 2015)

kunst91 said:


> I'm curious, how would upgrading CPU and RAM affect disk spikes? I always thought those bottlenecks had to do with multiple samples/libraries streaming from a single SSD.



I guess the disk access can also be impacted by CPU performance. Afterall CPU is also involved along the way of every streamed voice. But I was pretty surprised about the significant improvement myself.


----------



## Coldsound (Dec 29, 2015)

Simon Ravn said:


> Buffer size... you can't make a general remark about that. Depends on a lot of stuff in your setup: Audio interface, host sequencer, how much stuff you have running/loaded etc etc. The nMP is not a piece of magic - it's a computer just like the old MP - it has faster memory access and slightly better CPU architecture, but I very much doubt that will translate to much difference as a DAW host.



You are right. But I was also assuming a good pro audio interface (apollo, rme...), a good pro DAW (pro tools, logic, cubase). with a slave computer loaded with hundred instruments on VEPro and streaming from SSD. What I want is to be able to play theses instruments with as low latency as I can. And the more small buffer (i.e. low latency) the less time you give your cpu to handle things in real time. When I monitor my cpu, he is not saturated at 100% (as he is when rendering offline) meaning he spend most of the time waiting for data and not calculating. having more core is one answer, because if one core is waiting for some data, the other can still work (as long as it's well programmed to spread the load). Cpu have to calculate (so work) for plugin stuff like reverb or compressor, but doesn't have much to do for streaming samples. They just tell to route the input stream to the output audio stream. and the more stream you handle, you have to have pipe big enough (i.e. architecture, bus...) for them to be fluid...But again, you're right , I'm guessing because I don't have yet the new Mac Pro Thrash Can  
It's more a reflexion about realtime music on computer, as inspired by this video from Richard Ames Music


----------



## Simon Ravn (Dec 29, 2015)

My CPU's are never saturated either, and they were not on my 6-core setup either. But I still got massive amounts of voices missing/dropouts. My diskmeter was in red, not the CPU. But getting faster/more CPU cores still got rid of the disk streaming problem. That's what I wrote in my original post too.


----------



## Rennaissance_manta_ray (Jan 28, 2016)

It'd be cool if someone could start a thread where everyone could chime in about how good their "real time" performance is vs their CPU performance. I'm looking to upgrade my system, but after watching that video I'm a little worried that I'll buy something with a better CPU but worse DAW performance. It'd be great to hear what's _really_ working for fellow composers so I could choose wisely! From Simon's example we know that a 12 core cheese grater mac pro works great. I have the 8 core cheese grater, I wonder if stepping up to 12 would make a big difference?


----------



## Maestro77 (Jan 28, 2016)

As someone who just ordered a 6-core trash can, I hate this post.


----------



## samphony (Jan 28, 2016)

Maestro77 said:


> As someone who just ordered a 6-core trash can, I hate this post.



Don't worry. I had the 8core cheese crater and my trashcan 6cord outperforms that one. Different architecture and thanks to thunderbolt black magic multi docks. 

A friend of mine will upgrade my trashcan to a 10 or 12 core in a couple of months.


----------



## clisma (Jan 28, 2016)

Rennaissance_manta_ray said:


> I have the 8 core cheese grater, I wonder if stepping up to 12 would make a big difference?



Yes, for sure. Went from 2.26 8-core to 3.06 12-core and the difference was quite enormous. Only regret is that I did not go all the way up to 3.46. Some concerns about the fans being able to handle the extra load at the time...


----------



## JohnBMears (Jan 28, 2016)

I upgraded my 8 core to a 12 a while back. Really glad with the performance upgrade. If I didn't use PLAY it would be close to all I need (I also put 64GB in it). 

I got a short test with a trashcan 6 core and it does outperform my 12 core. But at a MUCH higher price point. If it were just a slave machine, I'd say build a 6core PC. If you want it as a main machine and have the cash, the trash can mac is good stuff.

I used this guy. http://www.ebay.com/itm/CPU-Upgrade-for-Dual-Processor-2009-2010-Apple-Mac-Pro-12-core-3-33GHz-64GB-/271587564688?hash=item3f3be15c90:g:59oAAOSwcBhWZmAy


----------



## kunst91 (Jan 28, 2016)

Got the four core trashcan because I knew I would upgrade to 12 core someday, and 4 has been ok for me so far. Hoping that maybe when the newer Xeon models come out the 12 core prices will start dropping.


----------



## madbulk (Jan 28, 2016)

samphony said:


> Don't worry. I had the 8core cheese crater and my trashcan 6cord outperforms that one. Different architecture and thanks to thunderbolt black magic multi docks.
> 
> A friend of mine will upgrade my trashcan to a 10 or 12 core in a couple of months.



The 6 core cylinder can be upgraded to 12 core? I'm just setting mine up. So I definitely don't wanna hear about dropouts!


----------



## kunst91 (Jan 28, 2016)

madbulk said:


> The 6 core cylinder can be upgraded to 12 core? I'm just setting mine up. So I definitely don't wanna hear about dropouts!



They're all upgradable. They use the same model for all of the versions, so the CPU's are all swappable.


----------



## samphony (Jan 28, 2016)

madbulk said:


> The 6 core cylinder can be upgraded to 12 core? I'm just setting mine up. So I definitely don't wanna hear about dropouts!



You'll be fine. It's an awesome machine.


----------



## IFM (Jan 29, 2016)

I decided to go with a previous gen (5,1) upgraded 12 core (3.46 dual 6core) and all SSD's and 64gb of RAM. I just installed it last night so haven't done much testing but Geekbench puts it nearly the same as the nMP. Mine came with a simple video card so if I upgraded that it would score higher. Next mover is to el Cap. I almost got a six-core nMP but it would have been twice as much for me to add all the bits I needed.

Chris


----------



## Rennaissance_manta_ray (Feb 9, 2016)

What do you guys do about the old cheese-grater lacking thunderbolt? I was thinking about changing to the new UA Apollo interface... but now it's only thunderbolt. Would love to still get more use out of my old MP but it seems like the hardware is going to be a problem.

Thanks!


----------



## IFM (Feb 9, 2016)

Meh. I have a couple Macs with TB and never used it. I just bought a 12 core 5,1 instead. 
Chris


----------



## resonate (Feb 13, 2016)

I just got myself a 1TB Samsung EVO 850 msata drive (used Addonics quad msata pcie card) for my mac pro (2009-2x 2,26 Ghz xeon cpus). Was pretty sad when i saw that realtime performance has not improved much with 10.9.5 mavericks/ve pro/logic pro x combo (various libraries) I was getting a lot of disk spikes in Kontakt 5, to the point that the voices were breaking up in not so big arrangements. *Inspired by this thread i installed a fresh copy of El capitan,10.11.3 (with ve pro 5.4.14074) and lo and behold! - right now the disk meter barely moves! *Everything is very smooth, and i can even start the playback before the ve pro metaframe loads... No need for cpu upgrade for me, just wanted to encourage some more testers, looks like the improvement is significant... I even did the same test with mavericks clean install,(same drive, same versions of software) but the performance improved only barely compared to my old install.. So for me, El capitan with logic pro x it is from now on! Good times....


----------



## Killiard (Feb 13, 2016)

I'm using that same Mac Pro as a slave at the moment. So you're saying you're getting much better performance from it since upgrading to El Cap? Mines is still on Yosemite at the moment. Might give it a try. Thanks.


----------



## Killiard (Feb 13, 2016)

Oh and what read speeds are you getting with the Msata pcie card?


----------



## resonate (Feb 14, 2016)

Jordan, the card itself maxes out at 10 Gbits/sec as it is 2 lane pci only. But that's for all 4 drives mounted. I get maximum speed from one samsung at the moment which is about 520-540 MB/s read and write. if i did the math correctly, when you raid the ssd's and run them together you should get about 1250 MB/s max (that's theoretical max speed for 10Gbit/sec) , altough i've only seen reports of maxing out at about 700 MB/s. Still plenty for streaming samples i think. This is the card in question i use : http://addonics.com/products/ad4mspx2-a.php

the quote from the site :

Maximum throughput up to 10 Gbits/sec when set up as a RAID 0. Individual drive setting is limited to 6 Gbps , the maximum throughput of the SATA 3.0 mSATA SSD. Simultaneously data transfer on all 4 mSATA SSDs will be limited to 10 Gbps, the maximum speed of the 2 lanes PCIe 2.0 that this controller supports
Supported OS: any OS with built-in AHCI driver*, Windows XP (driver required)


I didn't try yosemite. but the difference with clean install of mavericks 10.9.5 and el cap with the same drivers and software is obvious, and very encouraging.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf (Feb 14, 2016)

Yo Simon, thanks for posting this. I missed it the first time around.

While I haven't been breaking my 32GB 2008 8x2.8GHz machine, this is good to know.


----------



## Killiard (Feb 14, 2016)

resonate said:


> Jordan, the card itself maxes out at 10 Gbits/sec as it is 2 lane pci only. But that's for all 4 drives mounted. I get maximum speed from one samsung at the moment which is about 520-540 MB/s read and write. if i did the math correctly, when you raid the ssd's and run them together you should get about 1250 MB/s max (that's theoretical max speed for 10Gbit/sec) , altough i've only seen reports of maxing out at about 700 MB/s. Still plenty for streaming samples i think.



Thanks. The card seems pretty inexpensive. I was planning on buying another SSD soon anyway, so I'll take a look at the msata drives.


----------



## PJMorgan (Feb 16, 2016)

I see a few of you have gone the Classic Mac Pro route, I've been Considering a 2009/2010 Mac Pro myself.

I'm currently using a 2012 Mac Mini i7 2.3GHZ with 16GB RAM, it's served me well but the larger projects are taking their tole which I think is mostly down to overheating & throttling of the CPU. I haven't fully ruled out an i7 iMac 5k with 32GB RAM but I'm not a fan of the all in one system. At least with my Mac Mini I can change the RAM & hard drive pretty easily, also coming from building PC's before moving to Mac/Logic, I'm pretty comfortable with swapping out hard drives, GPU's, PCIE cards etc.

I'm happy with Logic so have no intention of moving to PC/Cubase/Studio One etc. I don't use massive templates so I have no need for a Slave PC & would like to stick to using the mac only.

Ideally I'd love to go for the latest 6 core Mac Pro but It’s about £1000 (when you add extra RAM) out of my budget range, so that leaves a cMP. I'm more than likely going to buy from creat.pro because they offer grade A refurbs with a 3 year return to base warranty which I think is probably worth the extra cost over buying used from ebay.

Here are a few configurations I have been toying with:


_3.46GHz 6 Core Xeon W3690 Mac Pro 5,1
_
_48GB (3x16GB)
_
_AMD R9 280X 3GB (requires OS X 10.9 or newer) (Slot 1)
_
_Samsung SM951 PCI-e Flash Storage Module 256GB (Slot 2)
_
_OS X 10.10 Yosemite
_
_3 year extended return to base warranty_

*Price: £1810*
This is as much as i'd like to spend but this CPU has a single core geekbench score of 2685, my mac mini scores 2948 but there's a big difference in multicore performance (Mac Mini/3615QM=11108, Mac Pro/X5690=19109) which will definitely help especially now that logic uses multicores more evenly.

But ideally I'd prefer this configuration:

_3.46GHz 12 Core Xeon X5690 Mac Pro 5,1
_
_48GB (6x8GB)
_
_AMD R9 280X 3GB (requires OS X 10.9 or newer) (Slot 1)
_
_Samsung SM951 PCI-e Flash Storage Module 256GB (Slot 2)
_
_OS X 10.10 Yosemite
_
_3 year extended return to base warranty_

*Price: £2490*
This is a bit over budget for me but I could bring the cost down to £2140 if I go for the ATI 5770 GPU, no hard drives & just use my own SSD's.

This is the wild card configuration:

_2.93GHz 12 Core Xeon X5670 Mac Pro 5,1
_
_48GB (6x8GB)
_
_ATI Radeon 5770 1GB (Official Apple) (Slot 1)
_
_Samsung SM951 PCI-e Flash Storage Module 256GB (Slot 2)
_
_OS X 10.10 Yosemite
_
_3 year extended return to base warranty_

*Price: £1940*
This I think could be a nicely balanced compromise for the price but my main concern with this config. is the low clock speed of of the CPUs. I use a few CPU hungry synths, Serum, Bazille, Ace & Alchemy & I'm not sure if the X5670 could handle multiples of these synths. I know you shouldn't really go by geekbench scores alone & what really matter is realtime use. I see a few of you on here have gone the classic Mac Pro route & would really appreciate any input you might have, e.g. will the 6 core w3690 MP be a really noticeable boost over my Mac Mini, or will the 2.93GHZ 12 core (2 x X5670) be able to handle the more demanding synths etc. ?

Paul


----------



## Vision (Feb 17, 2016)

I've been a pretty vocal advocate of the 3.46 12 core machine.. Did a ton of research before buying, and took the plunge in late December 2014. It's worked out very well. I pretty much maxed out this machine (128 RAM, 3 pci-e cards), except for the relatively standard video card that allows for 3 monitors.

Btw, I would suggest moving your system to a fast pci-e card. This seemed to have given me more cpu headroom in logic. Also, with the Logic 10.2.1 update, the machine is handling the cores (spikes) much better than before. My stress test used to be to try to record enable 5 demanding instruments, and play them layered. Before I used to get a massive spike on one core. Now things get distributed much better without spiking. The only real hiccups I've had are when using software like Sonokinetic Grosso and NI Action Strikes together on 128 buffer.

Anyway, if anyone is interested, I can post some video/audio captures I took in 2014/15 comparing orchestrations that were demanding on my 2008 8 core 3.2 Ghz, as compared to the 12 core 3.46. The difference is pretty astounding, even though I captured this on an older version of logic (10.1).


Also, here is an old thread of my experiences on this machine.

http://vi-control.net/community/threads/2012-3-46-mac-pro-with-logic-update.43363/


----------



## Vision (Feb 17, 2016)

resonate said:


> I just got myself a 1TB Samsung EVO 850 msata drive (used Addonics quad msata pcie card) for my mac pro (2009-2x 2,26 Ghz xeon cpus). Was pretty sad when i saw that realtime performance has not improved much with 10.9.5 mavericks/ve pro/logic pro x combo (various libraries) I was getting a lot of disk spikes in Kontakt 5, to the point that the voices were breaking up in not so big arrangements. *Inspired by this thread i installed a fresh copy of El capitan,10.11.3 (with ve pro 5.4.14074) and lo and behold! - right now the disk meter barely moves! *Everything is very smooth, and i can even start the playback before the ve pro metaframe loads... No need for cpu upgrade for me, just wanted to encourage some more testers, looks like the improvement is significant... I even did the same test with mavericks clean install,(same drive, same versions of software) but the performance improved only barely compared to my old install.. So for me, El capitan with logic pro x it is from now on! Good times....



Ok.. now _this_ has peaked my interest. I'm still on Mavericks 10.9.5. I moved to Yosemite last year, and it actually made logic less efficient for me.. so I moved back to Mavericks. If what you say can be confirmed by more people, I'll definitely move to El Capitan. I would be absolutely floored to get even more performance out of this machine with El Capitan.


----------



## PJMorgan (Feb 17, 2016)

Vision said:


> Btw, I would suggest moving your system to a fast pci-e card. This seemed to have given me more cpu headroom in logic. Also, with the Logic 10.2.1 update, the machine is handling the cores (spikes) much better than before. My stress test used to be to try to record enable 5 demanding instruments, and play them layered. Before I used to get a massive spike on one core. Now things get distributed much better without spiking. The only real hiccups I've had are when using software like Sonokinetic Grosso and NI Action Strikes together on 128 buffer.
> 
> Anyway, if anyone is interested, I can post some video/audio captures I took in 2014/15 comparing orchestrations that were demanding on my 2008 8 core 3.2 Ghz, as compared to the 12 core 3.46. The difference is pretty astounding, even though I captured this on an older version of logic (10.1).
> 
> ...



Thanks for your input Vision, yes if I do go for a cMP I plan on getting at least one pcie ssd. I was looking at the 5k iMac lately too, it's great that it (unofficially) now supports 64GB RAM but what's not so great is that just one 16GB module will cost £167!!, £670 for 64GB from macupgrade.eu. RAM for the cMP is so much cheaper, naturally because it's an older system. Even though the 6 core is more within my budget, I just know I'd be kicking myself after a while for not going for the 12 core. 

Yes please do put up your screen capture, most other performance videos feature video editing/rendering so it'd be nice to see something more DAW based. I'm also a graphic designer & do some lite video work so a half decent GPU like the R9 280X will also help.


----------



## dtonthept (Feb 18, 2016)

I did the 12 core 3.46 upgrade recently, and while I don't have the empirical data, I gotta say I'm likewise blown away by the step forward. I'm just running 32GB of RAM - didn't actually upgrade that when I put in the new processors - but in Pro Tools where I do most of my work, I can suddenly run Kontakt instances all over the joint whereas before it would be an almost instant faceplant.

Unfortunately all my PCIe slots are full with Pro Tools and Universal Audio cards. I'm running SATA SSDs which are a step forward from the spinners, but the leap is nowhere near as big as it was when I moved my laptop over, data xfer is the main bottleneck now without a doubt. But I did some loose timing tests of stuff like loading up heavy duty mix sessions in Pro Tools, system booting, etc, and found I got a consistent reduction of 25% of those times. Oh, I was on the 8 core 2.26 setup before. 

But once I actually started running Pro Tools sessions the headroom is phenomenal!

Really great value way to go - I'd be really nervous investing a big ton of cash in the nMP ecosystem right at the moment.

And very interesting El Cap news, I've likewise stayed on Mavericks till now....


----------



## IFM (Feb 18, 2016)

I moved my 5,1 to El Cap and have been very pleased. Looks like everything is ready on it these days.


----------



## PJMorgan (Feb 18, 2016)

How is the 12 core cMP when it comes to heat & fan noise? My home studio is pretty small so it would be sitting pretty close to my desk. 

The only other thing is I'd be using finance with a pretty hefty deposit & unfortunately it's much easier to get finance on the latest Macs, which is why I'm still considering the 5k iMac. I found a uk based store that sells multi config. latest iMacs & Mac Pros with very flexible financing options.


----------



## Simon Ravn (Feb 18, 2016)

PJMorgan said:


> How is the 12 core cMP when it comes to heat & fan noise? My home studio is pretty small so it would be sitting pretty close to my desk.
> 
> The only other thing is I'd be using finance with a pretty hefty deposit & unfortunately it's much easier to get finance on the latest Macs, which is why I'm still considering the 5k iMac. I found a uk based store that sells multi config. latest iMacs & Mac Pros with very flexible financing options.



A little more noise than my 6-core which I would call "virtually silent". I think it's because of an extra CPU fan? But nothing that bothers me at all and I'm sitting 4-5 feet away from it. My Shuttle XPC slaves are more noise for sure. Can't tell about heat, but of course it will generate some heat - definitely heats up my room fairly quickly with all three machines on


----------



## Nick Batzdorf (Feb 18, 2016)

Gotta put even the "quiet" stuff on the other side of a wall. Life is bliss that way.


----------



## Kaufmanmoon (Feb 19, 2016)

Playing devil's advocate....
I'd be really interested to see how a 2009 12 core 64gb matches up to a 2015 5k retina imac i7 with 64gb ram in there.
Not sure if there's been a logic benchmark test on this yet.
I know another forum poster got around 140 tracks with the Imac and 32gb ram.

Edit
Actually, Create pro did nearly just that
http://create.pro/blog/mac-pro-51-4k-monitor-vs-imac-5k-create-pro-face/


----------



## jononotbono (Feb 19, 2016)

I have literally just made an offer and bought (on Ebay) a 2009 Mac Pro. It's an 8 Core but I plan on upgrading it asap with 2 x x5650 CPUs so it will be a 12 Core. And I will put 64gb of RAM in it (128gb - 8 x 16gb Dimms are too much for me at this time). My current 2600k PC with 32gb of RAM will be slaved and quite frankly I am so bloody excited by having more computing power!


----------



## PJMorgan (Feb 20, 2016)

jononotbono said:


> I have literally just made an offer and bought (on Ebay) a 2009 Mac Pro. It's an 8 Core but I plan on upgrading it asap with 2 x x5650 CPUs so it will be a 12 Core. And I will put 64gb of RAM in it (128gb - 8 x 16gb Dimms are too much for me at this time). My current 2600k PC with 32gb of RAM will be slaved and quite frankly I am so bloody excited by having more computing power!



Nice one! Best of luck with your cMP, I'm still torn between a cMP & 5k iMac with i7. Since I'm also a graphic designer I need a half decent GPU & I can get a great deal until the end of Feb on the 5k iMac with i7, 256gb ssd & r9 m395 GPU.


I've done a LOT of research lately on Mac Pros, 2009/2010 in particular & if I was you I wouldn't go any lower than 2 X x5670 or x5675 CPUs, if you can even shoot a bit higher the x5680 or x5690s would be even better. As great as it will be to have all those extra cores, single core processing matters too, so go as high as you can. Also don't forget to flash the cMP from 4.1 to 5.1 before upgrading the CPUs.


----------



## jononotbono (Feb 20, 2016)

PJMorgan said:


> Nice one! Best of luck with your cMP, I'm still torn between a cMP & 5k iMac with i7. Since I'm also a graphic designer I need a half decent GPU & I can get a great deal until the end of Feb on the 5k iMac with i7, 256gb ssd & r9 m395 GPU.
> 
> 
> I've done a LOT of research lately on Mac Pros, 2009/2010 in particular & if I was you I wouldn't go any lower than 2 X x5670 or x5675 CPUs, if you can even shoot a bit higher the x5680 or x5690s would be even better. As great as it will be to have all those extra cores, single core processing matters too, so go as high as you can. Also don't forget to flash the cMP from 4.1 to 5.1 before upgrading the CPUs.



Thank you for the great advice. I was only thinking the x5650s because I was concerned anything faster might get too hot for the motherboard but If I can put something faster in then I shall definitely look into it! Great!. Yesterday I ordered a Samsung 850 Evo SSD for the boot drive which will make the machine feel snappy. I know the Sata bus is restricted to Sata 2 but when I can afford it, I shall buy a Pcie Card and plug the SSD into it and enjoy sata 3 speeds. I also ordered an Inateck pcie to USB 3 card to give a few USB3 ports. The only concern I have at the minute is that I have a GTX 960 gfx card that I want to take out my current PC (It's so new and cost about £200 that it would be a shame to waste it) and put it in the cMP but I haven't found many success stories of it working too well yet. Perhaps I will need to sell it and get something else? I want it to have 4 x Display outputs.


----------



## PJMorgan (Feb 20, 2016)

As far as I know the 960 card should work with the nvidia web drivers for that particular card. You won't have a boot screen though so if the gpu that comes with the MP is apple support hold on to it just incase something ever goes wrong with an update & the 960 stops working. Nvidia are supposed to be pretty fast with new drivers after an OS X update.

The 2009 MP is supposed to be a bit trickier to upgrade when it comes to swapping the CPUs, something About the CPUs on the 2009 being de-lidded. The macrumors forum is one of the best place to check for advice for upgrading macs, definitely check it out & there's a few decent videos on YouTube too.

I have to make my mind up before the end of the week cMP or 5k iMac.....maybe I should start a pole.


----------



## jononotbono (Feb 20, 2016)

Thanks again. One of the Main reasons why I couldn't get an iMac is because I still use Motu PCIe and just cannot make the jump to a Thunderbolt interface (my next Audio Interface will be UA Apollo). If I was a GFX designer I would seriously consider the iMac too 

I have bought this cMP purely because I need more Cores and more Ram. And to try out OSX with Cubase! Hopefully it will be joyously stable. I know, I'm a dreamer haha


----------



## Simon Ravn (Feb 21, 2016)

jononotbono said:


> Thank you for the great advice. I was only thinking the x5650s because I was concerned anything faster might get too hot for the motherboard but If I can put something faster in then I shall definitely look into it! Great!. Yesterday I ordered a Samsung 850 Evo SSD for the boot drive which will make the machine feel snappy. I know the Sata bus is restricted to Sata 2 but when I can afford it, I shall buy a Pcie Card and plug the SSD into it and enjoy sata 3 speeds. I also ordered an Inateck pcie to USB 3 card to give a few USB3 ports. The only concern I have at the minute is that I have a GTX 960 gfx card that I want to take out my current PC (It's so new and cost about £200 that it would be a shame to waste it) and put it in the cMP but I haven't found many success stories of it working too well yet. Perhaps I will need to sell it and get something else? I want it to have 4 x Display outputs.



Don't worry about the SATA bus limit. That will never be your bottleneck when streaming samples. Streaming = random read, which tops out at about 40 mb/sec on each device - will be very hard to saturate the SATA2's 300 mb/sec. Will require 7-8 devices all streaming at max = highly unlikely. I have three SSD's on PCI myself though, but also 5 on SATA and the performance difference between the two doesn't seem that huge when streaming.


----------



## jononotbono (Feb 21, 2016)

Simon Ravn said:


> Don't worry about the SATA bus limit. That will never be your bottleneck when streaming samples. Streaming = random read, which tops out at about 40 mb/sec on each device - will be very hard to saturate the SATA2's 300 mb/sec. Will require 7-8 devices all streaming at max = highly unlikely. I have three SSD's on PCI myself though, but also 5 on SATA and the performance difference between the two doesn't seem that huge when streaming.



Thank you. I shall no longer worry. By the way, 'Hvidsten Gruppen's Music is Awesome.
JnB 
x


----------



## Vision (Feb 25, 2016)

PJMorgan said:


> Thanks for your input Vision, yes if I do go for a cMP I plan on getting at least one pcie ssd. I was looking at the 5k iMac lately too, it's great that it (unofficially) now supports 64GB RAM but what's not so great is that just one 16GB module will cost £167!!, £670 for 64GB from macupgrade.eu. RAM for the cMP is so much cheaper, naturally because it's an older system. Even though the 6 core is more within my budget, I just know I'd be kicking myself after a while for not going for the 12 core.
> 
> Yes please do put up your screen capture, most other performance videos feature video editing/rendering so it'd be nice to see something more DAW based. I'm also a graphic designer & do some lite video work so a half decent GPU like the R9 280X will also help.




So, here are some examples of the differences in performance of my 2008 8 core versus the 2012 12 core using a small, mostly cinesamples template. At the time CS libraries seemed to be the most demanding on my cpu, so this was a good experiment for me. I specifically did this track as a sort of a casual stress test.

Keep in mind these examples are running on logic 10.1. (With the exception of one running in Logic 9). I pretty much did these screen captures a year or so ago for my own purposes. So, you'll have to excuse the pauses, and interruptions with the first example.. some the sounds were cutting out, and I needed to make sure everything was playing correctly.


2008 8 core buffer at 256:


2012 12 core buffer at 64


2012 12 core buffer at 128


2008 8 core:


2012 12 core:


----------



## resonate (Feb 25, 2016)

Vision, what kind of memory are you using in your mac pro for a total of 128gb? doesn't it run hot? i use some 8gb ecc rdimm sticks and they get very hot, i cannot imagine using more than 32gb....is the memory udimm?


----------



## PJMorgan (Feb 25, 2016)

Vision said:


> So, here are some examples of the differences in performance of my 2008 8 core versus the 2012 12 core using a small, mostly cinesamples template. At the time CS libraries seemed to be the most demanding on my cpu, so this was a good experiment for me. I specifically did this track as a sort of a casual stress test.
> 
> Keep in mind these examples are running on logic 10.1. (With the exception of one running in Logic 9). I pretty much did these screen captures a year or so ago for my own purposes. So, you'll have to excuse the pauses, and interruptions with the first example.. some the sounds were cutting out, and I needed to make sure everything was playing correctly.



Thanks for sharing, wow there is a massive jump in performance from the 8 to 12 core MP. Unfortunately ive had to put the Mac Pro on the back burner for a while. As I've said in an earlier post I needed to use finance to help with payment & over hear in the UK it was extremely hard to get hold of used/refurbished cMP via finance. 

Sooooo... Long story short i ordered a top spec 5k iMac on Sunday night & it arrived on Tuesday. Been spending the past couple of days setting it up (installing plugins, VIs, re-activating kontakt libraries) so i haven't had a chance yet to properly gauge performance. I did check out one old project tha the Mac mini was struggling with even at a buffer size of 1024, the iMac is playing it with about half the cpu load at 128 samples. 

Somewhere down the line I might get a used cMP to upgrade but I think this iMac will do nicely for now.


----------



## Vision (Feb 25, 2016)

resonate said:


> Vision, what kind of memory are you using in your mac pro for a total of 128gb? doesn't it run hot? i use some 8gb ecc rdimm sticks and they get very hot, i cannot imagine using more than 32gb....is the memory udimm?



I'm using standard 16 GB 1333mhz DDr3 ECC. Yes, the machine runs hot.. just get a fan. Get to work.


----------

