MacPro compatibility

[alomax92]

I am helping my friend reinvigorate his landscape business.  His IT systems are antiquated but operable and in a cash-strapped environment, we need to make due with what we have.  His primary machine is a MacPro early 2009 with MacOS X Lion 10.7.5.  I just updated Vectorworks 2013 to the latest build.  My question is whether this machine can handle anything beyond Vectorworks 2013.  The machine has the following graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512MB.  

[Christiaan]

Check out this page and use links on left of page to go to a different version:

https://www.vectorworks.net/sysreq?version=2014

[zoomer]

AFAIK my 2007 Mac Pro 2.1,

latest OS is 10.7.5,

could run VW 2015 max.

 

But very likely the 2009 Mac Pro can run even some later OS.

In this case it could also run later versions of VW.

 

But this will not necessarily make sense as the hardware specs

may be too weak, especially the GPU with only 512 MB VRAM.

(I had to give up my Cheese Grater in early 2015 and switch

to a Trash Can because my kind of projects became too laggy

on the Cheese Grater)

 

But the 2009 Cheese Grater, AFAIK, can run even relatively

recent Nvidia (gaming) GPUs like the 2012 MP can.

(Which my 2007 can't !)

So this could be a relatively cheap upgrade together with

maybe some RAM and latest possible macOS, to run the latest

possible VW version.

 

 

On the other hand he could alternatively buy a $1000-1500

M1 Mac Mini 16 GB though, which would be much faster

everywhere and can run latest macOS and VW 2022+

 

[Peter Yianilos]

Hello Member,

 

I thought I’d share with you that I am running Catalina and Big Sur on my 2009 MacPro.  It is not a trivial task, but it was an inexpensive and solid update.  Some hardware, some firmware, a few days and a couple hundred dollars.  There are numerous videos on YouTube detailing various methods to achieve the same thing.  Feel free to write me for more detail if you are interested.  I’m in a bit of a rush to join friends for Christmas dinner.

 

Happy holidays!

 

Peter