Advice on shopping for GPU: rx 290/390/ Gtx 980ti/1080ti

[fendersrule]

From an "Off" state, then yes, you may have to boot into an OS first in order to get to another one. But with a 5,1 with SSD drives? It's super fast!

Who is turning their Mac Pro's off? I keep mine asleep, so when it wakes it's always in a known state and super fast to switch over to another OS.

But yes, if you are turning your Mac Pro off often, you may need to do what you said, boot into one, and switch into another. But again, 30 seconds really detrimental? It takes like 20-30 seconds to wait for the drives to show up in pre-boot by holding "Alt". Plus, there are times where I'm just not able to beat the chime...you have a half-second to hold the "alt" key, so there's times where you're going to miss it, and have to restart again. Not to mention, it's mentally pressing. Doing it from an OS is something you can drink a beer while doing, much easier to do.

btw, my Windows EFI disk shows up in the "alt" menu. It's named weird though, like "EFI volume" or something.

 

[ActionableMango]

btw, my Windows EFI disk shows up in the "alt" menu. It's named weird though, like "EFI volume" or something.

Yes, I said those choices didn't appear in OS X's Startup Disk preference pane. So I had to use boot-time OS selection.

FWIW, you are 100% right about ALT taking a long time. I used rEFInd, which is vastly faster and better. It took maybe 1/5th the time, finds more volumes than ALT does, and is customizable. I avoided it for a long time because it seemed intrusive and strange, but after finally installing it I regretted putting it off. rEFInd is hands down one of the best pieces of independent software I've ever used, it is one of the best improvements I've ever made to my Mac Pro, and I ended up giving a decent donation to the developer via PayPal.

 

[pat500000]

Now is not a good time to buy a new CPU. Prices are insane, and products are missing from shelves from the mining craze. My advice is to look for used deals on Craigslist for the time being while the Vega cards become released and prices/products settle back on the shelves.

As mentioned above, some of the cards you've listed are above the Mac Pro's power capacity. It's possible to go above a TDP of 225w with some tweaks/mods, but I personally don't find it worth the effort when there's plenty of super fast cards that fall under the envelope.

A 7950 (RX 280) or a GTX 680 is a baseline choice (and the only choice) if you require boot screens. I wouldn't spend any effort going below these performance level of cards (from a gaming perspective). For me, they are not good enough, but they are astronomically faster than the 5770, so for $70 I made a wise choice obtaining a 7950 OC for the time being. These cards are also flashable. Keep in mind that currently, the 7950 does not play nice when flashed with a Windows EFI drive, so I chose to flash it back and just live without boot screens (which is easier than I thought after H9826790's help after getting the right version of bootcamp installed). Also keep in mind that if you are stubborn like me and demand a Windows EFI installation, SIP must be installed in order to boot back and forth without boot-screens. Easy to do.

I'd be looking for an RX 470, RX 480, GTX 980, GTX 1060, GTX 1070, and GTX 1080. I'm sure there's others, but these are the main big-dawgs.

For 1440p and VR, RX 480, 1070, and 1080.

Notice that I left the "Ti's off for a reason--they go above the power envelope of the supplied 2x 6-pin connectors.

Basically, if the card has two 6-pin connectors, there's no worry. If the card has a single 8-pin connector, there's no worry. If the card has one 6-pin connector, there's no worry. If the card has 1 6-pin and 1 8-pin, there's reason to worry and start doing research. If the card has 2 8-pin connectors, don't buy.

Yeah...i'm thinking i should hold off.

 

[fendersrule]

Hmm. I know that disabling SIP made it possible to boot into Windows EFI from MacOS. I bet that has somethign to do with why it's not showing up in the startup disk pane. Security issues, darnnit!

REFInd sounds pretty good, if I was stuck on needing to see the pre-boot screen, I'd probably have installed that by now.