1080ti - why buy flashed?

[NightLion]

Hi - i am looking to upgrade the video card in my Mac Pro. Have an older 2009 model but plan to upgrade the CPU and tray so 10.13 can be installed. Once i do this, i was wanting to get an NVIDIA 1080ti. The prices on MVC are WAY higher than normal... but can’t I just use a regular EVGA card at that point? Since the drivers are supported for 1080ti, why would I need to buy a super expensive version from Mac vid cards?

Thanks

 

[h9826790]

You can use normal unflashed 1080Ti (I am doing that now, link in my signature).

Flash card can let you use file vault, boot manager, upgrade cMP’s firmware, access recovery partition, have display before web driver installed and selected, etc. If you don’t need all these, most likely flashed card is not necessary to you, but just something nice to have.

 

[flowrider]

^^^^There's one other thing. A card (post GTX 680/780) with a Mac EFI (flashed) will allow you to see the desktop after an OS Update, prior to updating the Web Driver. Their will be no acceleration, but installation of the Web Driver will be much easier. A non EFI flashed card will being you to a black screen.

Lou

 

[h9826790]

^^^^There's one other thing. A card (post GTX 680/780) with a Mac EFI (flashed) will allow you to see the desktop after an OS Update, prior to updating the Web Driver. Their will be no acceleration, but installation of the Web Driver will be much easier. A non EFI flashed card will being you to a black screen.

Lou

Correct, or must use some work around. e.g. Remote control to "see" the screen

Or something like the following procedure to update the OS and driver.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-update-with-non-flashed-gtx-1080ti.2045822/#post-25678371

 

[ActionableMango]

If you run an unflashed Nvidia card I strongly recommend you keep your existing card around as a backup.