MP 7,1 2019 Mac Pro Roll Call

[randy85]

Just wanted to check-in on everyone else who bought one of these back near the release in 2019/2020. The discussion on them has understandably quietened down and I was curious who stuck with theirs and who quietly switched to a Mac Studio or similar.

I was planning to keep mine going for longer, but now might sell (despite the resale value being low) due to a few changes; might need more portability post-pandemic, downsizing my belongings in general, MacBook Pros are realistically getting powerful enough to be my main machine. Also, honestly the reduced amount of heavy lifting I've had to do during a 'difficult' time for the film industry probably plays a role.

I know they're probably getting popular in the enthusiast space now and people who want to boot Windows, but I guess I'm asking more about users who paid full price to get what they needed at the time.

One thing that I maybe didn't consider at the time is how much more use I'll probably get out of my Pro Display XDR in the long run. I find it really hard to use other monitors now! I'll probably keep it even if I switch to a MBP.

 

[avro707]

I got mine in 2022 brand new from Apple to replace my 12 core 5,1 and immediately swapped my Sonnet M2 NVME storage card into it as well.

It runs with Windows 11 Pro for Workstations along with Sonoma 14.4. I have a Studio Display and LG Ultrafine 5K. It's doing well. Only planned upgrades are a pair of W6800X Duos, the 2.5ghz 28 core CPU and more ram.

I could have got the Studio fully maxed out but it wouldn't have met my needs. I needed native Windows operation and didn't want a separate windows machine on the desk.

(despite the resale value being low)

What spec is yours? I could be potentially interested.

 

[CanPhantom]

Got mine in very early 2022. First Mac Pro I've ever owned, and wanted to grab the definitive Intel mac before they were phased out completely (I used it for work and I depend heavily on Windows VMs, but much prefer to use a Mac for everything else, and all my personal stuff). It's been my main machine since.

I was expecting it to keep that spot for at least another couple of years before it got shuffled off to be the household server. But recently upgraded my laptop (2019 i9 to M3 Max), and that rebirth as a server may come sooner. The M chips run the ARM version of Windows like a dream. And the Windows ARM ecosystem seems to have become "good enough" for what I do now, so that switch may happen this year.

 

[MisterAndrew]

I've had my 7,1 for a year and it's the best computer I've ever had. I love it. I also liked my 5,1 and 6,1 Mac Pros very much, but this has been better. I may pick up another one as prices continue to fall. The x86 platform is still the best supported for Windows software and a VM doesn't have access to the full capabilities of the hardware. It will be at least a few years before I consider upgrading to a new machine. If they bring back Boot Camp to allow native Windows installations and 3rd party GPU upgrades then I may buy another Mac Pro. Otherwise it will be a PC workstation.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Still using mine since 2019. Still hoping they do an M3 extreme Mac Pro. 2023 release was doa for me And I skipped it.

 

[H. Flower]

Still using it and loving it.

For video production. 2d graphic design, and light 3d, it does everyting I need.

Only thing is Im wanting to push further into 3d and am feeling its limitations. Hopefully a new M3 extreme would help with that.

 

[flaubert]

I know they're probably getting popular in the enthusiast space now

Yes, I fall into this category. I took advantage of the recent drop in prices to pick up a 2019 Mac Pro this past October. I don't have any huge justification for it other than enthusiasm, desire to tinker, and I like to stuff my boxes with lots of drives running ZFS.

 

[flowrider]

I've had mine since February of 2020. It's going nowhere.

I've updated the CPU from 8 core to 16 core.

RAM is 96GB.

GPU is Gigabyte RX6800XT

HighPoint RocketU 1144C USB expander card

IOCrest IO-PCE2854-TM2 with two Samsung SSDs

HighPoint SSD7103 with four Samsung SSDs

Fusion Flex J3i with three 2½" Samsung SSDs


Lou

 

[avro707]

Only thing is Im wanting to push further into 3d and am feeling its limitations. Hopefully a new M3 extreme would help with that.

have you thought about upgrading the GPU? If your signature is correct the Radeon 580 is a big limitation. Think of a W6800X 32GB or a reference Radeon 6900XT if you don't need 32GB VRAM.

Beware the length of the Radeon 6900, only certain ones will fit. Keep your 580X so you have the thunderbolt ports.

Also upgrade to Sonoma.

 

[flowrider]

^^^^Threw my 580X in the trash months ago😱

Lou

 

[PowerMike G5]

I bought my 7,1 on release day! Over time, I added more RAM and upgraded the GPU. I really love the machine and it's truly a beautifully engineered computer. Use it primarily for film/tv & digital media post production.

I have a fully specced 16" MBP M1 Max that I use when mobile. These machines compliment each other very well.

I thought for a moment about selling the 7,1 to move to either the new Mac Pro or Mac Studio, but will stick with it for 2-3 more years, as I realized that desire stemmed from the appreciation of AS hardware rather than pragmatic usage. The 7,1 is still quite fast, does the job I need it for very well and has a good amount of hardware acceleration for h.264/HEVC/ProRes between the T2 processor and the Afterburner installed. Hopefully by then, the future iteration of the Mac Pro will be quite something!

 

[CanPhantom]

^^^^Threw my 580X in the trash months ago😱

Lou

TBH, I kept mine, since Apple stopped selling replacement MPX modules. Just in case.

 

[avro707]

^^^^Threw my 580X in the trash months ago😱

Lou

Expensive item to throw out!

 

[Melbourne Park]

I guess support for the 2019 will finish in 2029 if not before? And can you switch between windows and mac os easily with the 2019 mac pro?

 

[flowrider]

Expensive item to throw out!

I had had a bad day with that darn card. One of my GPU power cables got caught up with the 580X and broke and with the card installed performance was less than with the RX6800xt alone. So, I ripped it out, replaced the offending cable and threw it into the trash. Am I sorry, Nope!

Lou

 

[avro707]

I guess support for the 2019 will finish in 2029 if not before? And can you switch between windows and mac os easily with the 2019 mac pro?

Super easy - you just install windows on a second drive and boot into it in the normal way via bootcamp. Windows runs very reliably on the 2019 Mac Pro.

I have a number of other NVME drives on a Sonnet card and one of them is used for Windows.

 

[Melbourne Park]

Super easy - you just install windows on a second drive and boot into it in the normal way via bootcamp. Windows runs very reliably on the 2019 Mac Pro.

I have a number of other NVME drives on a Sonnet card and one of them is used for Windows.

That's good ... I thought I read somewhere Bootcamp doesn't work well in the 2019 and onwards intel Mac Pros.

I bought an M3 MacBook Pro 16.2", with a 1 TB drive, 38 MB Ram and Max processor. That's the lesser of the Max processor choices. I had a discount on that, as retailers in Australia discount them 10% now and then, and the maximum drive capacity that such mass market sellers get from Apple are the 1Tb variety. I returned it because I reckon 1 TB will not be enough in a few years. So to buy from Apple, I'd pay full price and to upgrade the drive capacity, costs 2.5 times more than a faster NVME drive. I have a RAID card in my CMP. I find my CMP is super solid, better than my 2017 i7 MacBook Pro 15.4". Which is getting flakey since Apple replaced the keyboard (for free too although I had to try a second time to the replacement). I thought the M3 Max was a good replacement, and thought I'd put the RAID card into a T-3 box ... but if I do all that, I might be better off buying a used Mac Pro Intel. A lot slower, but at least it's flexible. I'd also then have to buy another MacBook I guess ... I guess a 15" Air. Which brings me back to Apple's retail prices for an M3 Max ... I have a lot of videos to compile, I'm now retired. Somehow I feel secure with a Mac Pro tower.

 

[avro707]

That's good ... I thought I read somewhere Bootcamp doesn't work well in the 2019 and onwards intel Mac Pros.

Because I wanted to run Windows 11 Pro for Workstations (or any Win 11) I had to do some tweaks of the Windows install process to get around the TPM requirement. The Mac Pro has TPM as needed, just not enabled by Apple as far as I know.

Once installed it's really good, very stable and very, very fast - at least for me.

One other thing to watch for - connect your screen via HDMI cable from the MPX module (if you have one), the Windows installer won't see the thunderbolt ports until the Bootcamp drivers are installed. If you don't do this you'll have a blank screen.

That caught me out at first.

 

[SecuritySteve]

I purchased mine at some point in 2020, and it's been a great machine for me. I needed the ability to run x86 VMs, and while the ability isn't as important to my job anymore, I still like having the function handy. In terms of the performance benefits of Apple Silicon, the GPU benefits are still largely lackluster in comparison to a 6900 XT, albeit at a lower energy cost. My wife uses a M1 Ultra Mac Studio, and it runs into problems that my machine just doesn't. For example when she tries to share her desktop for a presentation, occasionally her entire machine will lag out and be pretty much unusable until reboot. This bug is independent of the software that is doing the sharing - we notice the same problems on Webex, Discord, Teams, and even recording software.

I'm still pretty comfortable with my 2019 Mac Pro. I would need a very compelling graphics performance reason to really move over, as CPU performance isn't a major bottleneck for me yet. A 16 Core Xeon, while expensive, is still plenty powerful today.

 

[profdraper]

Since Feb 2020. Zero issues with the box, far less so with the awful Sonoma OS. Monterey works best with all my 3rd party apps, drivers & plugs. Sonoma still has probelms mounting my Sonnet 4.m2 PCIe.

 

[cobra521]

Randy,

Bought mine Feb 2020. Still using it and hope to keep it for quite a while longer unless Apple's OS gets much worse...

Tom

 

[TrevorR90]

I bought mine February 2020 about 3 months after it launched and still using it to this day.

 

[J-MI]

I bought mine on Refurb about a year ago to replace my Mac Pro 5.1
Like Lou, I bought an 8-core which I replaced with a 16-core and increased the memory to 128 GB.
I also have a number of NVME drives on an OWC card
I replaced the original graphics card and installed a Radeon RX6900 XT used on OSX and an Nvidia RTX 4080 used on Windows 11.
Both systems are installed on different SSDs under open core and everything works fine.

 

[avro707]

Nvidia RTX 4080 used on Windows 11.

What do you do with the Nvidia to prevent any issues on the MacOS side?

 

[davidec]

Bought mine on release starting to show its age, especially against my m3 MBP. Hoping they get an m3 Pro to market this year