Got an extra mac, sort of a 'spare'?

R

rob aylestone

Moderator
A fella I bought an old imac from a couple of years back asked if I was interested in a Mac Pro+. Sitting around in his workshop. A few scratches on the case, but 6 core processor and 32Gb of RAM, running the latest mac OS - £320? I said yes pretty much without thinking. It's something he bought from one of the BBC auctions. It's arrived and is rather swish. Then I discover it has final cut and logic pro - both about 3 yrs old versions, and running fine, AND MS Office.

two months ago, and I would not have bough the new mac mini. I'm thinking that I'll replace the PC in the video studio with it, but I suppose I need to do a side by side video edit and make sure it's quick enough. I've never had a full sized mac before, so I'm rather pleased so far. Not a mac expert at all, but I didn't think the latest OS would work on an older mac.
 
2010 version. so not that new. Its got a nVidia Quadro NVS 510 graphics card, and Xeon 6 Core CPU 2.9GHz -so that's fairly old now. Next step is to test it against the PC, which is much newer, but not new enough to install the latest versions of premiere and audition - OR - windows 11
 
Fair enough.
That model wont take Sonoma without workarounds.
I don't think it's particularly difficult to do but, just so you know, the machine wont let you just reinstall as normal.

6 core 2010 is about 1/5th the single core performance and less than 1/3rd the multi core performance of a base model M1 mac from 2021 for reference.
I retired my 12 core 3.33ghz mac pro when I got the M1 macbook air because the air embarrassed it in all areas.

There's a Geekbench results chart for all apple computer models that can be handy for getting a rough idea of what a machine's capable of.

The main reasons for hanging on to these machines would be requirement for PCI-Express cards (Protools?), or the need for powerful discrete graphics,
but advancements in apple silicon are quickly narrowing the latter gap.

Remember, also, you're (probably) looking at a 14 year old logic board, CPU tray, and power supply, all of which still command surprising money on the used market.

Cpu is probably a W3680 (although you can confirm).
Being an intel chip you can get a quick idea of where it falls against pretty much any other CPU at cpubenchmark.net

The GPU is very weak and has probably just been left in it so you have something that'll show boot screens and recovery if needed.
If you see the grey screen and apple logo when you turn it on, keep that card.
People used to keep an old GT120 on hand for that reason.

Nvidia kept updating drivers for mac definitely into the gtx9** range but possibly into the 10s.
For example mine had a GTX970 then, for a while, and AMD RX580.
Those will work well and have drivers but won't display boot screens.

On board sata is Sata II so realistic top speeds are something like 250MB/s each way, from memory.
You can add a 2X Sata III card to get around double that for two drives but it's a bit of a faff with adapter cables for power etc.
Alternatively you can use NVME/AHCI SSDs on a PCI-E card for up to 12-1400 each way...again, from memory.
AHCI (SM951) would be bootable by default.
NVME cards were bootable with a modded firmware if I recall correctly.

Sounds like a lot of negative there. Just sharing what I know. :ROFLMAO:
Hopefully you find a home for it and get some good use out of it!
 
Thanks for this - I'm really not remotely a mac expert, but it's running Sonoma. I suppose I realistically need to put some software on it and see how export of video works? Bring in an identical clip and do a resize or something and time it. I'll report back.
 
For sure.
I have a fair bit of experience with these boxes so if you think I can help with anything just ask. (y)
Just be aware that if you're doing rendering that can leverage GPU power, the test won't really tell you much with that Quadro in it.
 
I downloaded Cinebench - and the Mac Pro+ scored 222. The swishest computer in the top rankings scored over 1600. I stuck it on my MacBook M1 and got 434, and then on the new Mac mini m2 it got 726, making it number 7 on the rankings list. The mini also gave me the option of GPU testing, but the other two didn't, so I only tested the CPU. 222 doesn't seem very high at all - all running the latest OS. I've also discovered the USB sockets on the Mac Pro are also pre-USB3, so hard drive transfers are a bit on the slow side. I just like the idea of old Mac hardware still being useful when my 3 year old PC can't even run windows 11!
 
Fair enough.
Yeah, it's one of those...It's a dinosaur but that doesn't mean it isn't still useful to someone.

I have a Core2Quad + 750ti (2010 I think) windows box that I still run daily for some programming related work.
It's headless - I just turn it on and it auto fires up an instance of a server then I do my work on that from elsewhere.

That's 100% fine for what I need but if I needed it for any other task I'd definitely have upgraded about 6 years ago.

You're right. The Mac Pro 4,1/5,1 are USB2, Firewire 800, and Sata2.
As I say you can go Sata3 via PCI-E card. I'd imagine you can probably do USB3 that way too. Not certain about that,
but it really is just squeezing every last drop out of a now antiquated machine.

Unless you have unusual pci express requirements, or need big amounts of ram (128 max I think) without breaking the bank,
it's been not just replaced but destroyed by Apple Silicon.

That said, I could still be happily working away on my 5,1 12 core Mac Pro.
The reasons I sold it and moved on were that the base model m1 outperformed it greatly and it seemed inevitable some part of it would pack up at some point
and cost me money in either replacements or resale value.
 
Steenamaroo said:
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but it really is just squeezing every last drop out of a now antiquated machine.

Unless you have unusual pci express requirements, or need big amounts of ram (128 max I think) without breaking the bank, it's been not just replaced but destroyed by Apple Silicon.
….
Click to expand...
I can’t even “give away” a 2017 27” iMac. My mini m2 pro has replaced it but I do miss that screen. Funnily/oddly enough I sold my 2012 Mini easily, but it’s shippable so I could sell it on eBay, and it was stuck at a few OSs back! I haven’t booted the iMac but it was on Ventura. It’s off to Goodwill if they’ll take it.
 
I took a project edited on premiere, on my usual PC I edit on. Timed the rendered Mp4 end to end. It took the PC 1:52 to render the completed video. Put the project folder onto the mac and did the same thing - it would not use the GPU option, the rather ancient video card wasn't compatible - just random colours and flashes, so using the CPU only, it took 3:40 - so nearly double the time to produce the same file. Seems very stable, and it's a good backup I think. This is with a 1080 project, I've not tried 4K, as I rarely use that format.
 
Update. Well, the cunning plan to move to apple hasn't worked. My PC doesn't have the correct processor for the latest Adobe products, but the mac pro is running Sonora - and I have updated the processor to the fastest zeon, and put in a better video card, and Adobe just released a new version of Premiere and ..... the processor in the mac cannot use it - so I have reached a ceiling with both PC and Mac - so whatever I do means that I have to upgrade a PC or buy a new spec Mac - I suppose a PC will be the simplest and most cost effective, but the mac pro 5,1 works really well - once the video card was upgraded and the storage moved to the PCEi version rather than SATA on the motherboard. I just hate having upgrade paths blocked. I guess windows 11 and a motherboard upgrade will have to be the way forward!

Speed wise - the cinebench result is now up to 306, and the render time for the video down to 2:08 - so both more respectable results. the M1 macbook was only in the low 400's so for an elderly mac, it's doing OK. certainly usable, and it's fine with audio software with samples on the PCIe card drive. For audio it seems perfectly usable, so an interesting experiment.
 
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This is where you have to adjust expectations, in my opinion.
You're running a 12+year old mac with an operating system that it "can't run" so you're already extending it well past expected life span.
If the performance is pleasing to you that's great but why do you need the latest and greatest version of Premiere?
My approach when I ran the 5,1 Mac Pro was to find the OS version that works best, find the software versions which work best with that OS, then leave it alone! :ROFLMAO:

Seems like if you need the latest software versions, for whatever reason, then just use the M1 macbook?
 
They keep bringing out new features - there are some nice audio ones for audio restoration when cameras did a poor job - and I'm paying for the option to keep as updated as I can. I hate using the macbook for serious editing - having to have one of the hanging off interfaces to get extra monitor sockets, USB, cards and networking is a pain unless you gaffer tape them onto the machine - they fall out so easily. My hope was that the Mac would be good because it specified modern OS - and the mac pro runs Sonora quite happily with just a bit of simple software - but suddenly the chip requirement (that came first to Windows) appears in apple too. Never mind. It's still useful for other things and video on it is fine - just missing out on updates. I'm having a look at what it will cost for a motherboard and W11 comfy i7 - that is probably how I will go as I have some Carillon 19" rack cases which I really like.
 
I'm not sure the intricacies of your setup but every day I set my macbook on a shelf (under the desk) and plug in two USB-C cables,
then I sit at the desk and use mouse, keyboard, two screens, and audio monitors.
Nothing's falling out of anything. (y)

I admire your interest in keeping old hardware alive but maybe you'd get better use out of it as a backup station or an audio editing box or something else.
 
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