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MP 1,1-5,1 Am I wasting my time trying to run Sonoma on my Mac Pro 5,1?
- Thread starter matthewpomar
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There you go. Price gone up a little bit from what it was but still a steal!
These aren’t second hand, they are brand new!
Go directly to the ipowerresale website - they have been consistently cheaper directly from the company than eBay.
MacBook Air 11" late 2010 1.4Ghz intel Core Duo, 2 Gb RAM, NVidia GeFORCE 320M 256MB, 60GB SSD.
So now I know.
The Sonoma install took, but... it ran quite happily booting and finder stuff, but 2Gb Ram was too little. Every time an app wanted some Ram - slow to the point of goodbye.
Catalina via DosDude - still OK.
Thank you, I'm now very happy.
same place has used machines same spec at US$1900.
I follow along with all this, but why does my 27" iMac 11,1 (Late 2009) run near-perfect with Sonoma + metal GPU, and its CPU has no AVX support?
I'm using them in the same way. Not discounting your theory, but is there a technical reason?
The conventional wisdom around here is:
A) "Don't upgrade a Mac Pro 5,1 to Ventura/Sonoma - no AVX/AVX2 means you're playing with fire"
B) "My 2009 iMac and/or 2008 MacBook Air runs like a dream on Sonoma"
What am I missing?
As @macguru9999 said - you are not doing anything to trigger the AVX/AVX2 issues.
The technical reason is newer software, including Sonoma itself, is increasingly being compiled with AVX/AVX2 instructions and will not run without support for AVX/AVX2.
I was running my cMP5,1 fine with Sonoma but could not view copy protected videos with my Vega 56. They would work with my RX580. This was due to issues with the patched graphics drivers.
If Sonoma works for your work flow great. "Conventional" wisdom is driven by many who use their cMP5,1 for work flows that have software which has migrated to AVX/AVX2 being required so they need to stay on Monterey. Their decision point for what to do next comes this fall when support for Monterey will be dropped by Apple.
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Out of curiosity I looked up the specs for a Mac Pro 5,1. Dual Xeon 5690, 6 cores each, so 12 cores, 24 threads... A massive powerful workstation then... And compared against the lowest Apple Silicon Mac, the base M1 Air. A base M1 Mac mini would be the same if you want to keep the desktop form, and use of an HDMI monitor.
The Air has 4x the single threaded, and 2x the multicore performance! Whoa. Heck there's a good chance the air outperforms the MacPro even when doing sustained work and is throttled. The cheapest and crappiest of what's available now blows away your formerly high-end workstation, to a degree that surprised me.
Now, if you you need the higher possible RAM, Intel CPU, drive bays, multiple monitors etc, then sure, you can keep your MacPro going, but if you're fine with fewer peripherals, then, yes, it would appear you're wasting your time.
The Air has 4x the single threaded, and 2x the multicore performance! Whoa. Heck there's a good chance the air outperforms the MacPro even when doing sustained work and is throttled. The cheapest and crappiest of what's available now blows away your formerly high-end workstation, to a degree that surprised me.
Now, if you you need the higher possible RAM, Intel CPU, drive bays, multiple monitors etc, then sure, you can keep your MacPro going, but if you're fine with fewer peripherals, then, yes, it would appear you're wasting your time.
I reckon this is right. Mac Pro 4,1 flashed to 5,1 Sonoma, 8 cores RX590 8gb - buttery smooth and -
the only time I can get it to stutter is when I run three different screen savers on three monitors. Dolphins on one, Seals on two and the Whale on three.
So as a precaution I've stayed away from the spectacular side of Sonoma and admittedly I'm not working with 8K video, still only 1080 HD for me.
i just bought an apple refurb 13" macbook pro, M2, 24G/1TB from these guys for about $1800. when i tried to call apple to add applecare, they informed me that the machine had been sold several times between distributors and that apparently made it ineligible for applecare. it has a 90 day warranty and that's it.
it's too bad because the refurb M2s had just disappeared from apple's refurb store and i imagined that apple just sold them all to ipowerresale. but i guess not.
not unhappy with the deal but just surprised.
They're still in the Canadian refurb store. CAD$2079 for that system, which is just over USD$1500, AND you'd be eligible for Apple Care. Checking the US refurb store, and they're available, and just $1609.
Maybe return the $1800 one, pick up one up from Apple, and use the savings to pay for Apple Care.
wow, when i checked the other day they were all sold out and i figured that was that and there was no more stock. indeed i see them in the us refurb store now. i just sent my kid back to college with the machine i bought so i think it's too late to mess with it now. but that'll learn me to keep checking the apple refurb store. darn.