# Best Version of OS X For 2009 Mac Pro



## pb69 (Jun 10, 2017)

I have a 2009 mac Pro with 5,1 firmware upgrade. 16GB ram. 2.26 quad cpu. Currently running El Capitan with a lot of issues. I may revert to Mavericks. Not sure if I should try Sierra. 
As far as DAWs, I'm considering Cubase and Digital Performer.


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## dtonthept (Jun 10, 2017)

I'm just having to do my second clean install of Sierra in three months on my 2009 MP. Pretty much turned out to be the final straw for me, I'm in the process of finally ordering my first PC at the moment!

I remember Mavericks running pretty well on mine back in the day, I think I had a decent run with Yosemite too.


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## pb69 (Jun 10, 2017)

dtonthept said:


> I'm just having to do my second clean install of Sierra in three months on my 2009 MP. Pretty much turned out to be the final straw for me, I'm in the process of finally ordering my first PC at the moment!
> 
> I remember Mavericks running pretty well on mine back in the day, I think I had a decent run with Yosemite too.



How did things go with El Capitan?


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## KerrySmith (Jun 10, 2017)

Sierra runs fine on mine (5,1 upgrade as well). Pro Tools mostly. Some Cubase


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## pb69 (Jun 10, 2017)

KerrySmith said:


> Sierra runs fine on mine (5,1 upgrade as well). Pro Tools mostly. Some Cubase



I'v tried 2 different good thumb drives of Sierra. Neither one was bootable. ! was made through terminal, the other through Disk Creator. Didn't have trouble making one for El Capitan.


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## dtonthept (Jun 10, 2017)

pb69 said:


> How did things go with El Capitan?


Went straight from Yosemite to Sierra, waited till pretty deep into the lifecycle of both, Yosemite ran pretty well for quite some time. Sierra was going reasonably well, but I realised the amount of time I've been spending on maintaining or trouble shooting was going through the roof....


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## pb69 (Jun 10, 2017)

dtonthept said:


> Went straight from Yosemite to Sierra, waited till pretty deep into the lifecycle of both, Yosemite ran pretty well for quite some time. Sierra was going reasonably well, but I realised the amount of time I've been spending on maintaining or trouble shooting was going through the roof....



I just finished installing Sierra.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jun 10, 2017)

Good move. Unless there's a reason to stick with an older OS, why not stay current with the one all the developers are supporting.


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## Michael Antrum (Jun 11, 2017)

I recently upgraded my 2009 from a 4,1 to a 5,1 and installed Sierra.

(All was going well until I just upgraded VE Pro 6 and it it broke the DNS server)

I've not had any issues at with any of the OS X versions on this machine since I bought it from new. It's been the best computer i've ever had.

In fact I just upgraded it to 64gb RAM (£160 from eBay) and one of those PCIe cards you can screw two SSD's onto so you can get SATA3 speeds for loading libraries loads (£ 30).

I never had any issues with El Capitain either.

What issues have you had with El Capitain ? Have you tried using the mac hardware test to check the ram etc. Also is the heatsink clean - it might be worth getting a can of air and blowing all the dust out of it.

(I use Studio One 3 & Cubase)


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## pb69 (Jun 11, 2017)

mikeybabes said:


> I recently upgraded my 2009 from a 4,1 to a 5,1 and installed Sierra.
> 
> (All was going well until I just upgraded VE Pro 6 and it it broke the DNS server)
> 
> ...



I ran Apple Hardware Test. The result was bad video card. The video card doesn't always take over like it should. Also random freezes then the MP restarts itself. Never a kernel panic. I bought this from a Mac only Pro Audio dealer about 1.5 years ago. It came to me with Mavericks which I like. I never put it to sleep. It won't wake up. I believe that is also the video card. I will be ordering a brand new one in a few days. Still deciding. I updated firmware and installed Sierra today. So far nothing unusual happening. Other than the video card issues. 

I've been demoing Digital Performer but no pre fader metering from the mixing console is throwing me off. Either it or Cubase which I do like. 

I wonder if it will be best to run El Capitan with the new video card and get to making music.

As far as upgrades my next one will be SSD on PCIe card. I think 16gb ram will be ok for now. And possibly a Westmere 6 core cpu.


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## Michael Antrum (Jun 11, 2017)

It depends on your video card - but have you checked to make sure the cooler on your video card is working correctly ? I had a PC video card a few years ago that got too hot and then crashed - until I realise the cooling fan had failed. £ 3 for a new one and I was good to go.

I just ordered on of these - very cheap....

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/322494996069?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT


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## pb69 (Jun 11, 2017)

mikeybabes said:


> It depends on your video card - but have you checked to make sure the cooler on your video card is working correctly ? I had a PC video card a few years ago that got too hot and then crashed - until I realise the cooling fan had failed. £ 3 for a new one and I was good to go.



The fan still works. It's the original GT 120.


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## nas (Jun 11, 2017)

I've been having some USB 3 / iLok 2 problems lately with the latest version of Sierra 10.12.5. Although this has been a known issue with newer Mac USB 3 ports and USB 2 hardware and dongles, earlier versions of Sierra seemed more stable... frankly it's become a major nuisance and does affect workflow, so Im hoping this issue gets resolved in later versions or firmware updates.


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## KerrySmith (Jun 11, 2017)

mikeybabes said:


> I recently upgraded my 2009 from a 4,1 to a 5,1 and installed Sierra.
> 
> (All was going well until I just upgraded VE Pro 6 and it it broke the DNS server)



They have just released a new version (6.0.16012) that fixes everything - but you need to restart after installing it for everything to work.


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## Shad0wLandsUK (Jun 11, 2017)

mikeybabes said:


> I recently upgraded my 2009 from a 4,1 to a 5,1 and installed Sierra.
> 
> (All was going well until I just upgraded VE Pro 6 and it it broke the DNS server)
> 
> ...


Was this with the latest version of VE PRO 6? 

Because I installed macOS Sierra just yesterday and had to install again after about 6 hours because I could not get any internet either over LAN or Wi-Fi...

I thought it had to be macOS..but could it have been when I fresh installed VE PRO 6?


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## KerrySmith (Jun 11, 2017)

Shad0wLandsUK said:


> Was this with the latest version of VE PRO 6?
> 
> Because I installed macOS Sierra just yesterday and had to install again after about 6 hours because I could not get any internet either over LAN or Wi-Fi...
> 
> I thought it had to be macOS..but could it have been when I fresh installed VE PRO 6?



Yes, apparently the prior update (from yesterday?) hosed DNS. 
https://www.vsl.co.at/community/pos...date---has-it-broken-my-DSN-server#post259673


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## Shad0wLandsUK (Jun 11, 2017)

KerrySmith said:


> Yes, apparently the prior update (from yesterday?) hosed DNS.
> https://www.vsl.co.at/community/pos...date---has-it-broken-my-DSN-server#post259673


Thanks man. Gosh I ended up doing a second fresh installation.

Would have been good to know this beforehand...oh well...at least my macOS is really clean now


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## pb69 (Jun 11, 2017)

mikeybabes said:


> It depends on your video card - but have you checked to make sure the cooler on your video card is working correctly ? I had a PC video card a few years ago that got too hot and then crashed - until I realise the cooling fan had failed. £ 3 for a new one and I was good to go.
> 
> I just ordered on of these - very cheap....
> 
> http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/322494996069?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT (http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/322494996069?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&amp;ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT)



I saved that to my watch list. A very good price.


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## pb69 (Jun 11, 2017)

I left MP powered up and logged in last night. It crashed and hanged on restart at 5:10 am. The same as running El Capitan. I need to decide on a video card. Not sure If I will keep Sierra or reinstall El Capitan.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jun 11, 2017)

bp69, your issue has nothing to do with Sierra, it has to do with a bad video card!

If you think you might want to run a 4K monitor, this is a relatively cheap card that works very well without a driver (as long as you're running El Capitan or later).

My computer is the same as yours.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jun 11, 2017)

I should have added another point to my post above about running the latest macOS unless you have a reason to run an old one: you want the latest security updates, and older versions of the OS don't have it.

But unless you freeze your system, you're going to update a plug-in and find it breaks your computer.


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## pb69 (Jun 11, 2017)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> bp69, your issue has nothing to do with Sierra, it has to do with a bad video card!
> 
> If you think you might want to run a 4K monitor, this is a relatively cheap card that works very well without a driver (as long as you're running El Capitan or later).
> 
> My computer is the same as yours.



I installed Sierra as one final confirmation test. 

I am leaning toward a new GTX 750 ti or a GTX 660.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jun 11, 2017)

I think you're saying Sierra confirmed that the card is broken? If not, I can tell you that I have the GT 120 in my machine and it's not broken under Sierra.


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## dtonthept (Jun 11, 2017)

pb69 said:


> I left MP powered up and logged in last night. It crashed and hanged on restart at 5:10 am. The same as running El Capitan. I need to decide on a video card. Not sure If I will keep Sierra or reinstall El Capitan.



It's worth finding a card that still natively supports Mac OS if you can, I ran a gtx 970 flashed by macvidcards which needed new incremental drivers for every OS update, big or small, which always made me wonder about real time performance etc. Switched to a Sapphire 280x from AMD which doesn't require drivers. Take this post with a bit of salt, I don't have empirical evidence that one is better than the other, but I did a lot to try to reduce excess background processes after wondering if that might have been behind some bad performance I was getting for a spell...


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## pb69 (Jun 11, 2017)

dtonthept said:


> It's worth finding a card that still natively supports Mac OS if you can, I ran a gtx 970 flashed by macvidcards which needed new incremental drivers for every OS update, big or small, which always made me wonder about real time performance etc. Switched to a Sapphire 280x from AMD which doesn't require drivers. Take this post with a bit of salt, I don't have empirical evidence that one is better than the other, but I did a lot to try to reduce excess background processes after wondering if that might have been behind some bad performance I was getting for a spell...



Thank you.
I don't mind installing the driver for Nvidia. 
What's a good AMD under $150 that works with El Capitan?


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## pb69 (Jun 11, 2017)

I can now report that I removed the wifi card and now it wakes from sleep! We have progress!


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