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2013 Mac Pro vs 2010 Mac Pro with Sapphire HD 7950 Video Card
A big thanks to Other World Computing for loaning MPG Sapphire HD 7950.
For the right tasks, the Sapphire HD 7950 installed into a 2009/2010/2012 Mac Proc falls squarely into the D300/D500 GPU range on the new Mac Pro.
GPU usage in general
With all GPUs (video cards) in general, many tasks see no benefit, but for those that do, a fast GPU (video card) can be a huge improvement. If those are your workflow tasks, it’s a great investment.
Video users are particularly likely to benefit.
90° Rotation
The Sapphire HD 7950 would not drive an NEC PA301W at 90° rotation (1600 X 2560), though the stock ATI Radeon 5870 worked/works fine for years. Later, the 2013 Mac Pro shows 90° rotation to be a more general problem.
NuGard KX Case for iPhones and iPads.
Outstanding protection against drops and impact!
Plus, excellent grip for wet hands, cycling, etc.
Results
Most 2009 Mac Pro users have the GT120 video card, which is much slower than the results with the ATI Radeon 5870 shown here. Most 2010/2012 Mac Pro users have the Radeon 5770 video card, which is also slower than the 5870 video card.
So the results here understate the gains in GPU friendly tasks for users upgrading from the GT120 and Radeon 5770 cards.
As shown below, the Sapphire HD 7950 brings down the times for 3D rendering as well as sharpening in Photoshop (more gains could come in 2014 as Adobe adds improved GPU support).
The Unigine Valley benchmark shows that video and 3D rendering gains should also see large gains.
8-bay Thunderbolt 3
2.5 or 3.5 inch hard drives, NVMe SSD, USB-C, USB-A, DisplayPort 1.4, SD slot, PCIe slot, 500W power supply.
Non-RAID or RAID-0/1/4/5/10.
Capacities up to 128 Terabytes!
Ultra-high performance across entire capacity, outperforms the competition.
Tiny, bus-powered, rugged, compact!
Eight-bay Thunderbolt 3 high-performance storage for photo and video.
Hard drives or SSDs.
Non-RAID or RAID-0/1/4/5/10.
Capacities up to 128 Terabytes!
High capacity, high-performance fault-tolerant storage for photography and video.
Non-RAID or RAID-0/1/4/5/10.
Capacities up to 64 Terabytes!
6000 MB/sec!
Mac or PC.
Ideal for Lightroom, Photoshop, video.
Capacity up to 16TB!