Upgrading Mac Pro (mid 2010) hardware to run newer OS and software

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Level 1

4 points

Upgrading Mac Pro (mid 2010) hardware to run newer OS and software

I have this old Mac Pro I want to newer OS and Software. Obviously the message is always the same "this software can not be installed on your system" so I'm thinking to upgrade the hardware (processor) is it possible to solve the problem I have?

can anyone tell me what I need to do? without changing too many expensive hardware components, of course.

Mac Pro (mid 2010)

2 x 2,4 Ghz Quad Core Intel Xeon

64 GB 1066 MHz DDR3

Graphics ATI Radeon Hd 5770 1024 Mb

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: Upgrading Hardware/Processor (??)

Mac Pro, macOS 10.13

Posted on Sep 1, 2025 09:38 AM

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Answer 1

Niel

Community+ 2025

Level 10

739,511 points

Sep 1, 2025 09:47 AM in response to claudVI2

If you upgrade the graphics card, you can install Mojave. Aside from this, no.

(261198)

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Answer 2

Sep 1, 2025 11:11 AM in response to claudVI2

I'm looking on the Geekbench 6 charts, and for a Mac Pro (Mid 2010) with a 8-core 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon E5620 CPU (actually: a pair of 4-core CPUs), I'm seeing scores like

420 – 428 for single-core CPU benchmarks
2425 - 2611 for multi-core CPU benchmarks

Looking in MacTracker, I see the following scores for

A 10/10 core M4 Mac mini: 3748 / 14467
A 14/20 core M4 Pro Mac mini: 3829 / 22495
A 14/32 core M4 Max Mac Studio. 3893 / 23386

Seems like the appropriate hardware upgrade might be to replace the 2010 Mac Pro with a Mac mini or Mac Studio.

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Answer 3

claudVI2 Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 2, 2025 03:08 AM in response to Servant of Cats

Very useful information. Exactly what I needed. I'm not cash ready for a new Mac so I'll use it as it is for as long as it runs. Thank you.

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