Inspiring

Question

Advice on Upgrading 2010 Mac Pro for Premiere Pro?

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
March 23, 2018
6 replies
6354 views

Hi,

My 2010 Mac Pro 5,1 (specs below) has been giving me years of stable support.

It's struggling to deal with 4K footage and large PrP projects, and I'm considering installing a faster GPU -- and a lot more RAM.

I've seen a lot of conflicting information about this online, [and much of the upgrade discussions revolve around gaming), so I would appreciate advice from video professionals, (and of course, Adobe Staff).

So, here goes:

1: Which GPU is recommended for this Mac [Running 2 HD Displays]

2: My Mac can apparently take up to 128GB RAM. What is the maximum amount that Premiere Pro could actually access? Mac Pro Memory Upgrades Up to 128GB

3: Am I wasting my time with these upgrades? Ie, will I actually see a boost in performance, or am I trying to put lipstick on a pig?

Thanks so much in advance,

Wayne

8 Core Mac Pro, (Mid 2010) 32GB RAM,

NVIDIA 4000 CUDA Card

OSX 10.12.4

Premiere Pro: 2017.1.2

This topic has been closed for replies.

A

adobeses1995

Known Participant

Have their been any more updates on this end?

My use is more Lightroom and Photoshop, but occassionally work on video projects. I have a mid 2010 with a 6 core 3.33ghz and 32gb of RAM, and I need to upgrade to a Metal-compatible graphics card to update to newer OS.

My debate is whether to get a low end Metal card and use this machine as a 'library' machine, or try to upgrade to a top end 8gb radeon RX 580 and throw in a new 12 core processor with RAM in 3 slots each?

I'd switch to a trash can unit, but then I'd have to buy a Drobo or something to put all the HDD's in for all my files.

So, I'm wondering what the cost/benefit analysis looks like, firstly for the cards, and then the rest (i.e. upgrade to a lower end metal compatible card and it's still a backup system capable of running current/recent OS)

Thanks for any insight.

WMKAuthor

Inspiring

UPDATE:

For those interested in this topic.

This is a very interesting article that explains the how and why to upgrade a Mac Pro.

https://create.pro/blog/mac-pro-51-best-system-creative-professionals-2018-internal-expandability-unparalleled-workstation-customisation/

And this video explains how to do it -- and some speed-tests:

Ultimate 12 core Mac Pro Upgrade for 2017! - in 4k - YouTube

Thanks

R

Rumori

Known Participant

WMK: at the very end of that 5,1 upgrade video, he dropped a stunner: his Geekbench benchmark score improved when he DROPPED his memory from 64 GB to 48 MB. He only added that at the tail and it was brief, but it blew my mind. I have 64 GB in my system. I get Geekbench scores on par with what he displayed. The first thing I am going to try here is to actually remove some memory... which seems completely nuts, but that's what he said.

WMKAuthor

Inspiring

Rumori wrote
WMK: at the very end of that 5,1 upgrade video, he dropped a stunner: his Geekbench benchmark score improved when he DROPPED his memory from 64 GB to 48 MB.

I know!!!

It surprised me too!

R

RjL190365

Legend

At this point you're trying to put lipstick on a pig. Your two Xeon E5620 CPUs only Turbo to a sluggish 2.53 GHz with all eight cores in use. At that speed, those two Xeons combined are actually weaker (performance-wise) than even a single quad-core Haswell or later generation i7 CPU. In fact, it has gotten to the point where even a current-generation 21.5" iMac with the optional quad-core i7 CPU beats that particular mid-2010 Mac Pro in overall performance.

Because of that, any significant hardware upgrade to that system would be a colossal waste of money from this point on.

WMKAuthor

Inspiring

Hi Jason, RJL, and everyone else,

Thanks for your thoughtful replies.

I've been doing some more research and I think that I'm going to be moving towards the iMac Pro in the near future.

But I will say this.... this Mac Pro, even though it's a 2010 model, is still working surprisingly well.

I'm working in a project that is either HD, or 4K using Proxies -- it works great!

The main issue I have with the machine right now is that I'm working on a very large feature documentary project, and the

project size is very large, over 100MB. And this is what is causing the machine to choke.

When I break the project into smaller projects, and work on those sequences, it works great, [even 4K with proxies].

Which is why I was thinking that if I throw more RAM and GPU power at it, I could extend the life of the machine by another year or so.
[From what I understood, PrP relies heavily on the GPU via Mercury PE, as well as RAM].

In the end, though, the iMac Pro looks like an amazing machine, and is likely where I'll be headed.

Thank you all for the help and insights.

Wayne

R

RjL190365

Legend

Wayne,

If that 2010 Mac Pro could handle short 4k projects but chokes on longer ones, then it's not the CPU or GPU per se; it's more likely the relatively low amount of system RAM and/or slow media and/or project disks. No single HDD of that era could sustain more than about 130-ish MB/s in sequential performance.

Peru Bob

Community Expert

Moved to the Hardware forum.

jasonvp

Inspiring

WMK wrote

It's struggling to deal with 4K footage and large PrP projects, and I'm considering installing a faster GPU -- and a lot more RAM.

Ultimately I don't think a new GPU or more RAM is going to help you with your 4K footage. I'll bet a dollar that it's your CPU that's tripping over itself during playback. It just isn't that powerful at all.

For their time, the Westmere Xeon processors were pretty beefy and powerful. But that was 9+ years(!) ago. Today, they're useless beyond serving as a back-room email/web server and little more. They really don't have enough oomph to handle today's high-resolution workloads.

If you have to stick with the MacOS/OS X/whatever-Apple-is-calling-it-today environment, your best bet is to buy a new iMac Pro and switch away from the Adobe suite. Adobe's software isn't as efficient in the Apple environment as, say, Final Cut Pro X. But pouring money into that old Mac Pro is, IMHO, just a waste. It's way past its retirement age.

E

excited_Genie16B8

Legend

$2,000 Custom PC vs $4,000 Mac Pro - YouTube

The upshot is, Windows is 3x faster at 1/2 the cost.

WMKAuthor

Inspiring

Hi Jim,

Thanks so much for the response, and you're right.

But, for various reasons, I need to remain inside the Mac ecosystem.

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