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A Good Gaming Graphics Card for Mac Pro 3,1?

bwillwall

bwillwall

Suspended
Original poster
Dec 24, 2009
1,031
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I recently got a 2008 Mac Pro with 2x 2.8GHz Quad core Xeons

It needed some RAM which is easy enough, but I'm trying to decide on a graphics card that would be good for video editing and gaming. I was looking at a 3GB version of the Radeon R9 280X (2GB version is in the new retina iMac)

http://www.ebay.com/itm/361314453024?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

It's pricey though, and had to be "professionally flashed" by the seller. There just don't seem to be a lot of Mac GPU options out there, do there?
 
GTX 660 is basically as good as you're going to be able to get.... but even that is bottlenecked by the processors and their lack of hyperthreading. At this point a 'good' gaming GPU for the 2008 Mac Pro doesn't exist as now due to the bottleneck they're all forced to suck. If you wanna game, you'll need either a 2009-2012 Mac Pro (but old tech) or a PC/Hackintosh
 
Well guys I settled on the R9 280X and ordered it. I will let you know my results.
 
At least for OS X this is no good choice, there's a bug in the drivers (for a few years now...) which prevents current AMD cards to show their full potential on MacPro3,1 (has to do with power management I think).
As MVC pointed out, you'd have to modify some kexts to unlock the full potential of your card.
 
I've got TitanX from MVC. Simply awesome card. New lease on a gaming really. All games run smooth as a butter on 30" full res.
Works perfectly in OSX, not so perfectly in Windows when running games. I guess drivers a a bit dodgy.
Highly recommended.
 
Fl0r!an said:
At least for OS X this is no good choice, there's a bug in the drivers (for a few years now...) which prevents current AMD cards to show their full potential on MacPro3,1 (has to do with power management I think).
As MVC pointed out, you'd have to modify some kexts to unlock the full potential of your card.
Click to expand...
If this is the case I don't really know where to go as far as modifying kexts :L
 
VikNomad said:
I've got TitanX from MVC. Simply awesome card. New lease on a gaming really. All games run smooth as a butter on 30" full res.
Works perfectly in OSX, not so perfectly in Windows when running games. I guess drivers a a bit dodgy.
Highly recommended.
Click to expand...
lol I can't afford a Titan and if I could I wouldn't be messing with a 2008 machine ;) thanks for the suggestion though.
 
bwillwall said:
lol I can't afford a Titan and if I could I wouldn't be messing with a 2008 machine ;) thanks for the suggestion though.
Click to expand...
Buy 980ti then. It is half the price for nearly same performance.
There is nothing wrong with 2008 machine. It has more than enough CPU power to saturate modern GPUs. Maybe latest games wont run in full res with highest settings but 1+ old are flying (In Windows though)
 
VikNomad said:
Buy 980ti then. It is half the price for nearly same performance.
There is nothing wrong with 2008 machine. It has more than enough CPU power to saturate modern GPUs. Maybe latest games wont run in full res with highest settings but 1+ old are flying (In Windows though)
Click to expand...
Costs 2-3x as much as the card I ended up getting.
 
bwillwall said:
Costs 2-3x as much as the card I ended up getting.
Click to expand...
As long as you are happy :)
My setup is quite big so I need all the power. And I can't be happier.
Literally rediscovering all games I have. OSX 3D sucks really but with all that grunt Titan has it is still awesome.
 
So, my son (a windows user) upgraded the graphics card in his machine. I'm wondering if I would be able to use his old card and if it would improve performance over the card currently in my mid 2010 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Mac Pro running El Capitan. I am currently using a stock ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB card.

His card is an EVGA GeForce GTX770 SuperClocked with EVGA ACX Cooler, 2GB GDDR5 256bit, DL DVI-I, DVI-D, HDMI, DP, SLI Ready Graphics Cards (02G-P4-2774-KR) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CZIQXBA?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_search_detailpage

I do see I would need to purchase a second power cord (an 8-pin to run) this. Would I be able to plug this in and run it without a problem or would I need to download a new driver, or is this even compatible? Also, what would I be searching on in order to find an 8-pin plug?
 
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If you would prefer to use 2 x 6pin cables, buy a GTX760 instead; it has nearly 3 times the texture fill rate and nearly twice the floating point performance of your 5770:
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/1857/geforce-gtx-760.html
6 pin cables are found here: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mini-6-pi...438011?hash=item234326497b:g:64oAAOSwHPlWfWcL

If you want to use the GTX770 then an 8pin converter is needed:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mini-6pin...966849?hash=item2106245bc1:g:moMAAOSwp5JWUrZ4

Your call mate.
 
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