How to choose between an old Mac and new Mac Pro

Do not pay money for the MacPro 2013 today. Its huge proprietary graphic boards are trouble-prone, and NOT especially repairable, and no third-party parts are available. Tear-down is not just a chore, it's closer to a rite of passage. Replacing the PRAM backup battery is a 32-step tear-down.

ANY apple-silicon Mac will do better, provided as you get one with MORE that 8GB RAM. 8GB RAM is required JUST to run Ventura and later, not ANY open Apps at the same time. And RAM is NOT upgradeable, so you must buy all you will need with your original purchase.

I really can't see much benefit for most users in a Mac Pro. Unless you have a very specific need for a Mac Pro, such as the need to run specific PCI cards, I'd concur with my colleagues here and tell you to avoid it. A Mac mini M4 Pro would almost certainly run rings around even the latest Mac Pro models in many functions and probably be a lot less expensive. Or wait until Apple releases an M4-based Mac Studio and see what it would offer.

Regards.

Also remember that some features in recent versions of macOS only work on Apple Silicon Macs. For a Mac Pro desktop, that was not acailane intilthe 2023 models.

Even the refurbs are pricey:

https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished/mac/mac-pro

Old-New wrote:

I have looking at buying a new Mac....but I am also looking at apple mac pro late 2013 with 128 gig ram amd 1 tb drive...Would like some input from you mac geniuses !!!

Unless you need to run old Mac software, pass on the 2013 Mac Pro.

That Mac cannot run anything newer than Monterey. Monterey is no longer one of the "most recent three" that vendors like Adobe and Microsoft support.

That Mac has twin GPUs that were fast for its time – but its design does not support installing a single very beefy graphics card. The 2019 Mac Pro is a real beast of an Intel machine – but unfortunately, in the transition to Apple Silicon, Apple has abandoned that approach.

CPU benchmarks aren't everything – but they do add a little more fuel to the fire. That Late 2013 Mac Pro was a very high-end, expensive Mac in its day. The M4 Mac mini is an entry-level Mac, and I'd say that the M4 Pro Mac mini would be mid-level (similar to the M2 Max Mac Studio).

• Mac Pro (Late 2013) – Single-core: 676 to 758, multi-core: 2596 to 4885
• M4 Mac mini – Single-core: 3748, multi-core: 14467
• M4 Pro Mac mini – Single-core: 3829 to 3841, multi-core: 20168 to 22495

Servant of Cats--

you may not have emphasized the punchline, but this jumped out at me:

• Mac Pro (Late 2013) – multi-core: 2596 to 4885, depending on number of processor cores (average: 3740.5)

• M4 Mac mini – Single-core: 3748

>> Single core M4 equals or exceeds mid-range multi-core 2013 Mac Pro. <<

That's all the answers I need.

I don't think I need to dive deeply into the minutia of any more benchmarks.

I sorta agree with Grant B.-A. , if it was up to me, i’d go for a 2019 Mac pro ( but, I know it’s not)

just my opinion though

john B