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Hello friends,

My machine: Mac Pro 5,1 (2010)

Ram: 32GB

CPU: 3,33 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon (original)

GPU: ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB (original/1GB)

The work:
graphic design, dtp and photo editing (expected .-).

I'm thinking of installing a new card like the AMD Radeon RX 580 4GB or 8GB. Then I will upgrade the High Sierra to Mojave.
Will this new card make a big difference in the performance of the three (or any) Affinity Photo/Designer/Publisher apps I use?

Or to notice real (or more) performance improvements, should I also have to add more ram or change the CPU?

Thank you very much.
Greetings.

 

 

 

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I believe only a small subset of GPUs are supported. Oddly I can't see any mention on the "tech specs" listing.

Not sure how noticeable the performance difference would be on an upgrade to your cpu or ram. There are ever diminishing returns these days. If you can get a compatible GPU though that would bump the performance a fair bit.

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1 hour ago, BofG said:

I believe only a small subset of GPUs are supported. Oddly I can't see any mention on the "tech specs" listing.

Not sure how noticeable the performance difference would be on an upgrade to your cpu or ram. There are ever diminishing returns these days. If you can get a compatible GPU though that would bump the performance a fair bit.

Thanks for your opinion.

I am thinking about a card like this; because mine is 10 years old :) without Metal support.

https://www.msi.com/Graphics-card/Radeon-RX-580-ARMOR-X

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I recall reading on here that GPU support was expanded on Mac to include GPU compute, as opposed to just rendering the viewport. Which is a big improvement. I do seem to recall it wasn't universal to all the graphics cards.

The sales page for the Affinity suite doesn't seem to have any real info on it. Might be worth having a Google around to see if you can find out.

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15 minutes ago, BofG said:

I recall reading on here that GPU support was expanded on Mac to include GPU compute, as opposed to just rendering the viewport. Which is a big improvement. I do seem to recall it wasn't universal to all the graphics cards.

The sales page for the Affinity suite doesn't seem to have any real info on it. Might be worth having a Google around to see if you can find out.

Thanks .-)

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From my understanding of some YT stuff the GPU-Support on the Mac is working through Metal. I read this that GPUs will be used when the are driven by Metal / MacOS. One video even showed that 2 GPUs (one integrated Intel, one external AMD) were employed simultaneously.

So if your Mac Pro can run Metal, I believe it should run pretty fast through whatever you throw on him.

To be sure I would probably DM the serif/affinity support team.

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14 minutes ago, Blende21 said:

From my understanding of some YT stuff the GPU-Support on the Mac is working through Metal. I read this that GPUs will be used when the are driven by Metal / MacOS. One video even showed that 2 GPUs (one integrated Intel, one external AMD) were employed simultaneously.

So if your Mac Pro can run Metal, I believe it should run pretty fast through whatever you throw on him.

To be sure I would probably DM the serif/affinity support team.

Thank you.

With this type of card it run Metal. That is the goal. Upgrade from High Sierra to Mojave.

Better performance with Affinity Trio? That is the question ,-)

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Don’t know - My MacBook Pro is just going into its second year now, running on Catalina, with an AMD Vega GPU. Makes not much sense to compare,

Maybe I will ask the same a few years from now - but I will have to get a new Machine then, because nothIng is upgradable.

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1 hour ago, Blende21 said:

Don’t know - My MacBook Pro is just going into its second year now, running on Catalina, with an AMD Vega GPU. Makes not much sense to compare,

Maybe I will ask the same a few years from now - but I will have to get a new Machine then, because nothIng is upgradable.

Thanks anyway .-)

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Look also if there might be possible problems fixed for the GPU you named above (see here possible pitfalls) in your hardware context. - On the other side you are lucky to have an upgradable hardware and that for your Mac Pro 5,1 (2010) it's possible to upgrade the GPU and thus also to make the move to macOS Mojave. Performance wise your RAM & CPU look Ok sized, I could do pretty good development with those specs running several application servers, the DB, IDE and tools all in parallel and probably also some docker containers additionally too.

Sadly sooner or later one has to move over to newer OS versions, since a bunch of newer versioned third party apps dictate that route if they do cut the support for older OS versions. I do see this increasingly lately for a bunch of software. On a dev/coding machine I actually still use Mojave due to fact that some things aren't that smooth and bug free working with Catalina, though colleagues already upgraded and use all Catalina. I'm the last of the Mohicans, so to speak, which still uses Mojave in the company. LOL

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

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14 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Look also if there might be possible problems fixed for the GPU you named above (see here possible pitfalls) in your hardware context. - On the other side you are lucky to have an upgradable hardware and that for your Mac Pro 5,1 (2010) it's possible to upgrade the GPU and thus also to make the move to macOS Mojave. Performance wise your RAM & CPU look Ok sized, I could do pretty good development with those specs running several application servers, the DB, IDE and tools all in parallel and probably also some docker containers additionally too.

Sadly sooner or later one has to move over to newer OS versions, since a bunch of newer versioned third party apps dictate that route if they do cut the support for older OS versions. I do see this increasingly lately for a bunch of software. On a dev/coding machine I actually still use Mojave due to fact that some things aren't that smooth and bug free working with Catalina, though colleagues already upgraded and use all Catalina. I'm the last of the Mohicans, so to speak, which still uses Mojave in the company. LOL

Thank you very much for your testimonial.
I plan to go only to Mojave since being more modern it is more stable than Catalina.
At a time when Apple is in the transition to its own processors, maybe it is a good policy to make a small investment in a graphics card and stay a little longer with this Mac Pro 5.1 and then when the Mac Mini, etc; are in a new phase, think about a machine upgrade.

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Later, probably with a Mac Mini and the same Eizo monitor, I can always use this graphics card in an external box like the Razor X and turn this Radeon card into an eGPU with a fast connection. It is an upgrade now on the Mac Pro that may have more life to follow when the Mac Pro becomes just a "server".

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4 hours ago, AT.HA said:

At a time when Apple is in the transition to its own processors, maybe it is a good policy to make a small investment in a graphics card and stay a little longer with this Mac Pro 5.1 ...

Sounds logical and being on the more secure side then, instead of buying new hardware which might be possibly quickly outdated.

4 hours ago, AT.HA said:

... with a Mac Mini and the same Eizo monitor, I can always use this graphics card in an external box like the Razor X and turn this Radeon card into an eGPU with a fast connection.

Yip so the GPU card investment will still have a usage and doesn't go obsolete or at all useless then.

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

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57 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Sounds logical and being on the more secure side then, instead of buying new hardware which might be possibly quickly outdated.

Yip so the GPU card investment will still have a usage and doesn't go obsolete or at all useless then.

We agree .-) Thanks for your feedback.

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