Or How to Transform a 2009 Mac Pro into a 2012 Mac Pro
I have installed a 3.46ghz Zeon W3690 (3.73ghz Turbo Boost) processor into my 2009 Mac Pro, replacing the original 4 core 2.93ghz chip, making it a 6 core machine with 12 virtual threads. This chip is faster and better specified than any currently available from Apple (They only sell an older 3.33ghz), yet is a simple replacement job. Hence the headline grabbing “World’s Fastest” claim, along of course with the many others who have doubtless carried out this conversion, so let’s call it first equal.
Rather sad that this processor is not available from Apple and that no improvements were made to the beautifully engineered Mac Pro line in 2011, here’s hoping they will be upgraded in 2012, despite the rumours.
Well when I say simple replacement, I still had to upgrade the firmware to turn my computer from a 4.1 model into a 5.1 2010 Mac Pro, apparently the only actual difference between 2009 and 2010 models. Many thanks to MacEFIRom at netkas.org for his Firmware Upgrade Utility which worked seamlessly and has the side benefit of enabling faster 1333mhz RAM and allowing audio out from the Mini Display Port. Naturally applying any unsupported firmware update or changing the processor will void AppleCare and your Guarantee.
The only tool required was a very long 3mm hex wrench to unscrew the heatsink, and then some Arctic Silver Thermal Compound for the CPU. All went smoothly if nervously and my renewed Mac Pro restarted first time with nary a crash since. The power requirements and temperature limits of the new Xeon chip are identical to the older one. There are some thorough instructions here at MacRumors. This procedure may also be carried out on dual processor machines, but is a little more complicated.
Following this other improvements were made, including 24gb RAM from OWC, an internal RAID 0 hard disk, and a faster graphics card. For me, who needs a machine like this for making gigapixel panoramas (5-10gb files), the biggest improvement in actual usage was the increased RAM. Results for the real world retouchartists.com speed test showed an improvement from 21secs to 11.2secs, which demonstrates the faster processor. To put this in perspective my 2005 dual 2.7ghz G5 Power Mac took 65secs to carry out this test. That’s Progress…
Apple today updated the dual processor Mac Pro line with some minor improvements to the processor. On the We Want a New Macpro facebook site these improvements were variously called a minor tweak, a joke and an insult. There is still no Thunderbolt, no USB3, nor the latest Intel processors, but they do provide an ancient 2009 video card. A Macbook Air now has faster memory!
I can only say Seriously not Great…
Well I think it looks small and cool and am relieved it exists. I certainly don’t need one though since it will hardly be any faster for my work, plus it has no internal drive space and so requires an expensive external Thunderbolt drive array for any real work.
Since the new Xeon E5 processors only represent a minor upgrade over my current Xeon processor I am happy to wait for a new faster generation, if there is one! Still the new Mac Pro does have PCIe-based Flash Storage, which certainly does speed things up so I have installed an OWC Mercury Accelsior_E2 SSD in my own Mac Pro. It’s great!
Nvidia 5k Video Card
This information is now out of date, the K5000 card has now been superceded and was very expensive, explaining why I never actually bought one. Now I have installed a much more powerful card for a quarter of the price, the NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-970.
This graphics card has 4095MB of VRAM, HDMI 2.0 and can run a 5k monitor, as well as excellent Open CL, GL and CUDA benchmarks. A new Mac Pro cannot even run CUDA, since it uses AMD cards and in most tests the GTX-970 beats the fastest Mac AMD cards.If you want to spend more money the GTX-980 and 980Ti are also available, but beyond this you may run into power supply issues. Incidentally make sure you have 2 of the slightly obscure pci-e to mini pci-e 6 pin power cables.
I have also installed a cheap Orico USB3 card which works natively and is more reliable than external SATA. So my advice is to buy a second hand Mac Pro 4.1 or 5.1 and upgrade it to your required specification, rather than purchase a new Mac Pro 6.1, which is both expensive and inflexible.
Update 12 February 2016
Still the Fastest!
According to Novabench Benchmark Testing my computer is faster than a new Mac Pro! So much for Moore’s Law, and recent Apple engineering…
Tha average modern trashcan Mac Pro scores 1595 and the latest iMac 5k 1250, so unbelievably my 2009 Mac Pro is still the Worlds Fastest in 2016 !
Update 14 April 2017
Apple eats Humble Pie and admits building the wrong Mac Pro
Phil Schiller: We made something bold that we thought would be great for the majority of our Mac Pro users. And what we discovered was that it was great for some and not others. Enough so that we need to take another path.
Phil Schiller: Apple cares deeply about the Mac… and if we’ve had a pause in upgrades and updates on that, we’re sorry for that, what happened with the Mac Pro, and we’re going to come out with something great to replace it.
Craig Federighi: The architecture, over time, proved to be less flexible to take us where we wanted to go to address that audience. In hindsight, we would’ve done that differently. Now we are.
Update 15 December 2017
Hot Sierra Apple
I have just installed macOS Sierra 10.12.6 on my 2009 computer so I could use the updated Final Cut Pro X 10.4 with support for 360° VR Editing. I must say the transition went smoothly and remembered nearly all my previous preferences and tweaks. FCPX is a great piece of software and I am pretty impressed I am running such a recent system on a computer this ancient, even though Apple says you can’t. I did not have to do any special install tricks, although I had previously updated the firmware to 5.1 as mentioned above. So kudos to Apple.
10 Year old Computer running Mojave
Apple have withdrawn support for Nvidia graphics cards, preventing them from running in Mojave. Under Sierra my NVIDIA GeForce GTX-970 was working well and supported Metal. Despite this Apple has forced me to buy a new AMD graphic card to run my 4k monitor on a newer system. The recommended card is a Sapphire Radeon RX 580 8GB, which while rather large works as a direct replacement. Specification wise it is not much better than my previous card, but does have 8gb video ram. The good news is that it works natively with Sierra 10.12.6 and higher, allowing for simpler system upgrades. Also had to buy a new dual mini 6 pin to 8 pin PCIe power connector, previous one was 6 pin of course.
To upgrade my Mac Pro 5.1 (see above) it is advised to update first to High Sierra 10.13.6, to receive the required firmware updates. FileVault should be switched off, since it is no longer compatible with this old computer, fine for me since I never use it. The startup disk is a PCIe Accelsior SSD, which is converted to APFS, no problems so far. (There is a firmware update for this card from OWC, which avoids the need for an extension, I applied this before upgrading). Mojave Installer will crash if you have an additional incompatible video card installed, like the Nvidia GT120 or Radeon HD5770, so remove it first.
I was upgrading mainly to use the latest version of FCPx, a great application requiring a recent system. Still awaiting the new modular Mac Pro, now forecast for 2019.
Update 5 June 2019
The Cheesegrater is Back!
At WWDC 2019 Apple unveiled the 2019 Mac Pro.
It looks awesome and costs as much as a car. Wheels will be available.
Well Done Apple !
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