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JayKay514

macrumors regular
Feb 28, 2014
181
161
Thanks for testing the WX 4100. Probably the only Baffin card working OOTB.

Glad to help.

Peeking into the System folder I did see a ton of .kexts for various AMD GPU classes as noted in the first post. Officially the WX7100 and 9100 are supported alongside various RX / Vega cards but I suppose it can’t hurt to try if someone’s got a card that’s close?

I had tried the WX3100 (also Polaris) but it wasn’t recognized under Sierra. I sold it, but now I wonder if it would work under High Sierra 10.13.4.
 

MacManu77

macrumors regular
Jan 31, 2018
110
4
Thanking the various guys for the tests done:
How about making a summary of the various AMD Radeon GPUs that currently work permanently in the mac pro 4.1 5.1?
In terms of performance, how can they be classified?
I am referring to the RX580 - VEGA 56 or 64 - WX 4100 - WX 5100 - WX 7100 - WX 9100
What do you think?
 

Tokaji_909

macrumors member
Nov 29, 2017
30
20
hi everybody,
today I found out that my Vega 64 (Fan Version) on latest Beta 10.13.5 is at 750-800 rpm Fan Speed at min. load and it ramps up to 1500-1600 rpm at LuxMark Stress Test.
My conclusion is, that the Fans are not running on full Speed all the time anymore.
Have it installed on the bottom PCI running an extra PSU in the Optical bay.

Regards
 
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MisterAndrew

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Sep 15, 2015
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Portland, Ore.
Glad to help.

Peeking into the System folder I did see a ton of .kexts for various AMD GPU classes as noted in the first post. Officially the WX7100 and 9100 are supported alongside various RX / Vega cards but I suppose it can’t hurt to try if someone’s got a card that’s close?

I had tried the WX3100 (also Polaris) but it wasn’t recognized under Sierra. I sold it, but now I wonder if it would work under High Sierra 10.13.4.

WX 3100 is not supported. Only WX 4100 and above.
[doublepost=1524677237][/doublepost]
Thanking the various guys for the tests done:
How about making a summary of the various AMD Radeon GPUs that currently work permanently in the mac pro 4.1 5.1?
In terms of performance, how can they be classified?
I am referring to the RX580 - VEGA 56 or 64 - WX 4100 - WX 5100 - WX 7100 - WX 9100
What do you think?

That’s basically what the first post is. In general, the higher the number the higher the performance. Except WX cards that have a little lower performance than their RX counterparts in MacOS. A good website to compare cards is userbenchmark.com. Of course that uses a Windows benchmark, but gives us a general indication of relative performance.
 

teagls

macrumors regular
May 16, 2013
202
101
hi everybody,
today I found out that my Vega 64 (Fan Version) on latest Beta 10.13.5 is at 750-800 rpm Fan Speed at min. load and it ramps up to 1500-1600 rpm at LuxMark Stress Test.
My conclusion is, that the Fans are not running on full Speed all the time anymore.
Have it installed on the bottom PCI running an extra PSU in the Optical bay.

Regards

So the fans are fixed in 10.13.5???
 

MisterAndrew

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Sep 15, 2015
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Interesting. I encourage those with Vegas that have the fan issue to test the latest beta. I could try it with a reference bios on my Pulse, but I don’t really want to keep risking putting different bioses on it. A couple things I noticed with the first 10.13.5 beta is that the HDMI audio kext didn’t load and a few times the Mac booted to a blank white screen. I haven’t tried the second beta yet. I reverted back to 10.13.4.
 
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m3rob

macrumors member
Dec 28, 2010
41
7
How are you guys reading the fan speed of the gpu? Sorry for the dumb question...
 

MisterAndrew

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Sep 15, 2015
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Interesting question. I don’t know either. I suppose you could use a sound level meter next to the graphics card to find out the decibels and then go into Windows and use GPU-Z to see what the fan speed is at that sound level (running a benchmark to speed up the fans).
[doublepost=1524721479][/doublepost]Here's 10.13.5 beta 2 showing HDMI audio driver not installed.

10.13.5 HDMI audio driver.jpeg
[doublepost=1524722955][/doublepost]
Some experiences with the Sapphire Pulse Vega 56:

Problems with the second monitor. Sometimes it stays black, even if it is incorrectly set to be the system‘s main display. Setting it to sleep and wake-up usually works. Two crashes related to heavy GPU rendering. Could not get it back to show an image.

Hmm, I'm having issues with DisplayPort on mine. The display flashes on connected to DisplayPort, but then it goes black. Same behavior on 10.13.4 and 10.13.5 beta and all 3 ports. It works great on HDMI. So perhaps Nitro+ is a better choice if you want 2 monitors connected since it has 2 HDMI ports.
 
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MisterAndrew

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Original poster
Sep 15, 2015
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Portland, Ore.
I wonder if it could be the DP cable I'm using.

Update: Hmm, nope. Tried a different one. Does the same thing.
 
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Tokaji_909

macrumors member
Nov 29, 2017
30
20
How are you guys reading the fan speed of the gpu? Sorry for the dumb question...

I have a Software that is called Monity...
You can get it via AppStore. Works pretty well and shows pretty much everything you can measure.
Costs only 5 CHF...
 

MisterAndrew

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Sep 15, 2015
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Good news. :) It's safe to use the Pulse RX Vega bios on the reference RX Vega cards and also other cards such as the XFX Double Edition and Powercolor Red Dragon which use the same nano pcb design. The issue would be using a higher power bios on the smaller Pulse pcb such as the 64 liquid cooled bios because it's smaller it'll generate more heat. But the cooler is great on the Pulse so it should be able to handle at least a 64 air bios fine (you'd just want to keep the VRM under 105 °C according to the video). So the reference cards would run cooler with the Pulse bios. As always, flash a different bios at your own risk, but it should be perfectly safe. It looks like you don't have to worry about whether it has Hynix or Samsung memory either since it seems the bioses are set up to autodetect the memory type.

 
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lilins

macrumors member
Apr 25, 2018
96
29
Villeurbanne
Hi, I just installed a Gigabyte vega 64 Gigabyte GV-RXVEGA64GAMING OC-8GD in my Mac Pro (5.1 2010, dual x5690, 64Gb RAM) it is recognized under osx, except boot screen and i just realized a few things:
1) idling, this monster's fans are loud
2) when putting the mac to sleep, about every 10 min, the mac will start running fans then after a minute back to sleep

Also because of in games strange behaviour i'm asking if the vega 64 is not overkill for the mac CPU so maybe a vega 56 or RX580 would be a best option.

what do you think?
 

h9826790

macrumors P6
Apr 3, 2014
16,656
8,587
Hong Kong
Hi, I just installed a Gigabyte vega 64 Gigabyte GV-RXVEGA64GAMING OC-8GD in my Mac Pro (5.1 2010, dual x5690, 64Gb RAM) it is recognized under osx, except boot screen and i just realized a few things:
1) idling, this monster's fans are loud
2) when putting the mac to sleep, about every 10 min, the mac will start running fans then after a minute back to sleep

Also because of in games strange behaviour i'm asking if the vega 64 is not overkill for the mac CPU so maybe a vega 56 or RX580 would be a best option.

what do you think?

For “CPU limiting”, it really depends on the game and setting.

What I observed is that even my 1080Ti is not bottlenecked in most games (Windows 10). The utilisation rate can still easily hit 100% at max setting. And I am not even running any games at 4k yet, but just 3840x1080 ultrawide.
 
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MisterAndrew

macrumors 68030
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Sep 15, 2015
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Portland, Ore.
Hi, I just installed a Gigabyte vega 64 Gigabyte GV-RXVEGA64GAMING OC-8GD in my Mac Pro (5.1 2010, dual x5690, 64Gb RAM) it is recognized under osx, except boot screen and i just realized a few things:
1) idling, this monster's fans are loud
2) when putting the mac to sleep, about every 10 min, the mac will start running fans then after a minute back to sleep

Also because of in games strange behaviour i'm asking if the vega 64 is not overkill for the mac CPU so maybe a vega 56 or RX580 would be a best option.

what do you think?

You could exchange it for a Sapphire Nitro+ 64 or 56, or Pulse 56 for the fan issue.
 
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MisterAndrew

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Sep 15, 2015
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It looks like the PowerColor Red Dragon RX Vega 56 may also be a winner in terms of fan noise. Under load the fans have the same volume of 34.5 dB (A) as the Sapphire Pulse RX Vega 56. However, we don't know if the fans run at full speed under MacOS 10.13.4 since this card (or bios) hasn't been tested yet. But even if they do, it would still be much quieter than the reference 56 that has a volume of 47 dB (A) under load. It's also nice that it's a 2 slot card and has 8+6 pin power connectors.

https://www.computerbase.de/2018-04/powercolor-radeon-rx-vega-56-red-dragon-test/3/
 
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MisterAndrew

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Sep 15, 2015
2,895
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Portland, Ore.
hi everybody,
today I found out that my Vega 64 (Fan Version) on latest Beta 10.13.5 is at 750-800 rpm Fan Speed at min. load and it ramps up to 1500-1600 rpm at LuxMark Stress Test.
My conclusion is, that the Fans are not running on full Speed all the time anymore.
Have it installed on the bottom PCI running an extra PSU in the Optical bay.

Regards

The fan speed issue is not fixed for 10.13.5 beta 2. I just tried it with the reference 56 bios. It’s not likely this is something Apple will fix on their end unless it’s just by accident.
 

MisterAndrew

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Sep 15, 2015
2,895
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Portland, Ore.
I tried the XFX Double Edition RX Vega 64 bios and it works great on the Pulse 56, except it definitely has the fan issue under MacOS. The fans spun up very high. That's the only Nano PCB 64 bios I could find. For Windows or Linux it's a great bios for the Pulse 56. The VRM temp targets are safe for the smaller PCB (under 105 °C), unlike a bios for a full size PCB (which are often 115 °C). The temperatures were just slightly higher running luxmark and the same at idle. It consumed 220W max so that's pretty good for a Vega 64. I expect the Pulse 64 to have a similar TDP.
 

MacManu77

macrumors regular
Jan 31, 2018
110
4
I updated the original post with more info.

Thanks.

I would like to ask if there is a gpu Vega 56 compatible with the mac pro 5.1 (High Sierra 10.13.4) that has the cooling system as the Ati Radeon HD 5770.
 
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MisterAndrew

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Sep 15, 2015
2,895
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Portland, Ore.
Thanks.

I would like to ask if there is a gega Vega 56 compatible with the mac pro 5.1 (High Sierra 10.13.4) that has the cooling system as the Ati Radeon HD 5770.

You mean the reference card? Yeah it works, but it has the fan issue so you’d have to live with it or try the Pulse or Nitro+ bios.
 

MisterAndrew

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Sep 15, 2015
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I tried a DisplayPort to HDMI cable on my Pulse 56 and it works perfectly (DP connected to card and HDMI to monitor). So if you're having issues with DisplayPort maybe it's your monitor or cable. Very happy to find out there’s nothing wrong with the DP output on the graphics card. :)
 
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