I personally have a fairly heavily upgraded 2009 Mac Pro:

8-core 2.93ghz (Xeon X5670 x2, upgraded from stock 2.26ghz E5520 x2)
48gb Ram
Geforce GTX 960 4gb
512gb SSD (on Sata 3 card)
2tb HDD
USB 3.1 card

Mine is flashed so OSX recognizes it as a 2010-2012 model so I can run High Sierra (can run Mojave too if I want) rather than the "officially supported" El Capitan. It's great, and is a total beast (and even better when/if I get a pair of X5690's).

They are a great deal for what they are; however, I would only recommend them for tinkerers, and I would not recommend anything older than the 2009 model (even the 8-core 2008 model, it's not worth it).

Even with my 8-core beast, I still run into the odd thing that chugs along on it that is faster on my 2012 Macbook Pro - presumably there are new instruction sets in the newer i7 chip that the Xeon doesn't have.

But don't take my opinion necessarily - I'm one of those people who hates to update anything - still have High Sierra running Pro Tools 12 and Logic 10.4.8 and I'll keep them running until I actually find a good reason to spend thousands of dollars to upgrade everything.


Also, I found it very amusing that the link you posted had some G5 Power Macs for over $500 - the local craigslist has them pop up here for under a hundred, and still nobody wants them!

Last edited by Simon - PG Music; 11/13/20 09:11 AM.
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