MP All Models AMD Polaris, Vega, & Navi GPU macOS Support

[Objectivist-C]

Thanks for the reply.

1) Have NATIVE driver support.

What’s the practical effect of that? I see people running Vegas and VIIs so presumably they mostly work?

"Modern GPU for gaming" is impossible if you want boot screen and Mojave at the same time.

Is that true even with multiple cards, though? Like booting off a GTX 680 in slot 1 with a newer card in slot 2?

 

[AlexMaximus]

I was planning to buy a Pulse RX 580 because I was under the impression that this would give me boot screen support, but apparently that’s wrong. A few questions:
1) What’s the advantage of buying a card from the Apple list, then?
2) Is the GeForce 680 then the fastest card available that supports the boot screen?

Getting FileVault running on Mojave and Windows gaming are my ultimate goals here. Would some kind of dual-card setup with an old Metal- and boot-screen-compatible GPU for MacOS and a modern GPU for Windows be a viable solution?

With the introduction of Mojave, Apple actually did shut down this exact possibility of having a good hybrid system. There are basically only two options / pathways with one exception you can go:

#1 Stick with High Sierra for good as your final OSX and enjoy full bootcamp capabilities with all those EFI modified cards that deliver bootscreen.
You can use 1080Ti and Titan cards but you can’t upgrade to Mojave ever.

#2 a) Go obedient with Mojave and delete any NVIDIA options as well as bootcamp capabilities. Use a 580 and be Apples low power gpu slave.

#2 b) Go resist and mod your rig with pixlas power cable. This opens you up for Vega 56, 64, and Vega VII. - Still no bootcamp, be new as Mojave but stuck with Apple only. (That’s what I did)

#3 Stay stubborn Hybrid and choose one of two remaining low power cards to have Bootcamp, Bootscreen and Mojave.
This would be the old NVIDIA 680 and the Quadro K5000. The only special here might be two K5000 or two 680 cards with a Pixlas power cable for the second card.
(Important: There are a view 680 cards out there with 4GB Ram such as the classified with a larger cooler)

Everyone of us arrive at this question where you are right now.

Since I used to be on path #1 with a very fast 980 Ti, I did not want to go into a dark gpu cellar and replace a high power card with a crappy metal card just to run Mojave.
I am on path 2b) right now with a very fast VegaVII and I am super happy. The Vega 64 cooler was big time junk, hence the final upgrade. With many good Steam Mac games for the OSX side, the pain of not having Windows for that causal game was the best option in my opinion. I‘d rather have a high power Apple Pro machine then a hybrid that is mediocre on both sides with old OSX.
It was time for me to move on.

 

[startergo]

I was planning to buy a Pulse RX 580 because I was under the impression that this would give me boot screen support, but apparently that’s wrong. A few questions:
1) What’s the advantage of buying a card from the Apple list, then?
2) Is the GeForce GTX 680 then the fastest card available that supports the boot screen?

Getting FileVault running on Mojave and Windows gaming are my ultimate goals here. Would some kind of dual-card setup with an old Metal- and boot-screen-compatible GPU for MacOS and a modern GPU for Windows be a viable solution?

Titan is the fastest card available with boot screen (MVC flashed) and Mojave support.
http://barefeats.com/gputitan.html

 

[h9826790]

What’s the practical effect of that? I see people running Vegas and VIIs so presumably they mostly work?

For Vega or Radeon VII, they can work very flawlessly in 10.14.5, but not earlier Mojave (some Vega are OK in earlier OS, but most of them suffer from high fan speed bug until 10.14.5).

 

[zozomester]

I was planning to buy a Pulse RX 580 because I was under the impression that this would give me boot screen support, but apparently that’s wrong. A few questions:
1) What’s the advantage of buying a card from the Apple list, then?
2) Is the GeForce GTX 680 then the fastest card available that supports the boot screen?

Getting FileVault running on Mojave and Windows gaming are my ultimate goals here. Would some kind of dual-card setup with an old Metal- and boot-screen-compatible GPU for MacOS and a modern GPU for Windows be a viable solution?

The latest and fastest video card for Mojave and Win 10 with bootscreen on GTX 780 (I have a seller)

 

[startergo]

The latest and fastest video card for Mojave and Win 10 with bootscreen on GTX 780 (I have a seller)

Here is the review:
http://barefeats.com/gputitan.html
Titan is better

 

[JeDiGM]

Titan works in Mojave?

 

[startergo]

Titan works in Mojave?

Yes it does.

 

[AlexMaximus]

Yes it does.

This must be a lucky Annamoly.. I highly doubt it. But hey maybe you are the one.
Officially 99% Apple-NVIDIA grunts wait painfully since mid last year for the new MojavePascal Web drivers that never ever got released because of ongoing leagal battles between Team Green & Apple..
Is it a Macwell card or a Pascal card you are talking about ? Do you have this One-Part-Per-Million Six Sigma GEM Engineering Sample in your possession?

 

[h9826790]

This must be a lucky Annamoly.. I highly doubt it. But hey maybe you are the one.
Officially 99% Apple-NVIDIA grunts wait painfully since mid last year for the new MojavePascal Web drivers that never ever got released because of ongoing leagal battles between Team Green & Apple..
Is it a Macwell card or a Pascal card you are talking about ? Do you have this One-Part-Per-Million Six Sigma GEM Engineering Sample in your possession?

This is completely deviated from this thread already. I hope this is the last reply about "Titan support".

Titan belongs to Kepler, not Pascal (Titan X) or Maxwell (GTX Titan X), it has native support in Mojave.

 

[zozomester]

This is completely deviated from this thread already. I hope this is the last reply about "Titan support".

Titan belongs to Kepler, not Pascal (Titan X) or Maxwell (GTX Titan X), it has native support in Mojave.

Yes, but there is no Bootscreen on Titan Kepler. Not Supported von Macvidcards.

 

[MisterAndrew]

There’s a link in the first post that instructs how to Bootcamp without a boot screen, so you can install a new AMD card such as RX 580 and have Windows and Mojave dual boot. The only thing you’ll be lacking is FileVault (no boot screen). You can install a GTX 680 Mac Edition alongside an RX 580 (or Vega), but you may have some graphical & performance issues and you’ll need pixlas mod or separate PS to power them both.

For the ultimate solution just wait for the Mac Pro 7,1. It will have a powerful GPU with boot screen and support FileVault and Bootcamp. With the Intel security problem I recommend retiring the cMP.

 

[Le_Cactus]

I use Boot Runner with Mojave on my NVME and Windows 10, with the RX 580 Pulse.
https://twocanoes.com/products/mac/boot-runner/

 

[Objectivist-C]

Thanks for the help, all.

There’s a link With the Intel security problem I recommend retiring the cMP.

I bought this thing two days ago, haha. My only current Mac is a 2010 13” MacBook Pro, so this should let me put off buying a Mini for awhile.

I found a cheap EVGA 2GB GTX 680 available locally, so I think I’m going to try to grab that and flash it for now, then wait until after WWDC to decide on whether I want to put more money into it.

 

[slamjack]

Does anybody have Radeon VII and 10.14.5? Can you please post screenshots ofGPU hardware info, from istat Menus for example, or with this command in terminal:

while sleep 1; do clear;ioreg -l |grep \"PerformanceStatistics\" | cut -d '{' -f 2 | tr '|' ',' | tr -d '}' | tr ',' '\n'|grep 'Temp\|Fan\|Clock'; done

I wonder, do you have temp and clocks info from Radeon VII in 10.14.5? Because i don't (besides this, card functions normally).

 

[CIA]

So I put in a PowerColor Radeon Red Dragon RX 590 into my 2010 cMP. The cMP is flashed to the latest firmware as it's been upgraded with dual 6 core 3.46Ghz chips. Bought an adaptor that replaced the standard mini to full size 6 pin cables with a dual mini 6 pin to single 8pin power. The card is powered by that single 8pin plug. I went with a 590 over a 580 as it was (at the time of purchase) only $30 more, so I figured what the hell. No boot screen, but that was to be expected.

Anyway, before I had a Sapphire Mac Edition 7950. Geekbench 4 scores for the old card under OpenCL was 81329. The 590 with the same test scored 143332. So on the benchmark front that makes me pretty happy. Not sure why it says "AMD Radeon HD Ellesmere Prototype Compute Engine" as the device name under Geekbench.



The card itself is a VERY tight fit but only because I use Slot 2 for a USB 3 PCI card. (Slots 3 & 4 have SATA III PCI SSD cards with 2.5" SSD's). I had to use some rolled up random stuff I had laying around to wedge between the graphics card and the PCI USB card to keep the bottom of the small USB card from tapping the dual fan setup. I didn't notice if this was an issue with the 7950 as it's reference blower was back away from the USB card so it might have been resting on the GPU the whole time for all I know. I might need to bite the bullet and get a dual NVMe PCI card and retire my PCI SSD cards so I can leave a gap between the USB card and the GPU.



The 590 shows as this in the About This Mac section:




I didn't run a benchmark on the 7950 before I put in the 590 but they are available online as it's a common card. Regardless here's what I got with the 590.

The card is MUCH MUCH quieter than the old (dusty) 7950, even when under load.

 

[LightBulbFun]

nice stuff

it shows up as "Radeon Polaris" etc because the AMD drivers in 10.14.5 driver dont officially support the RX 590, I believe 10.14.6 adds support for RX 590 however 10.14.6 is still in beta atm

 

[XNorth]

*

I had to use some rolled up random stuff I had laying around to wedge between the graphics card and the PCI USB card to keep the bottom of the small USB card from tapping the dual fan setup.

So the the PowerColor 590 is wider than a 2-slot?

I tested the MSI RX 590 and Gigabyte RX 590. I kept the Gigabyte for its smaller dimensions and idle 0 RPM. the card is properly identified with 10.14.6 Beta.

Same Geekbench 4 and Valley scores as yours.

 

[CIA]

*
So the the PowerColor 590 is wider than a 2-slot?

I wouldn't say it's wider then the slot, but it's certainly at the absolute limit of width in regards to what will fit in the slot above it. My 590 has dual fans vs the single fan reference style blower on the Sapphire 7950. My USB card in slot 2 has little tiny drops of solder sticking down off the bottom of the card, and those drops stick out juuust enough from below to hit the one of the two fans on the 590.


If I didn't put that wedge in-between the two cards to separate them the solder would strike the front fan as it spun. If you use a longer card in slot 2 (without the little solder drops), there would be ZERO space between the fans on the GPU and the card above, so cooling would certainly be an issue. The USB card I use is only maybe 2.5" long so it's not a huge issue as it only covers about 1/2 of one of the fans, but still not ideal.

That said, the dual fan setup is much quieter then the reference blower card it replaced.

One last note in regards to computer sleep. I don't typically sleep this machine, but did as a test. Initially when selecting sleep, it went dark, the spinning HD's all spun up, the GPU fans went to 100% for about 20 seconds, then after some hemming and hawing, eventually the entire machine did go into a deep sleep with all fans off (case and GPU) and the drives spun down, but it wasn't instant for sure. When the fans went to 100% on the GPU I almost aborted it, but waited it out. Sure enough, eventually it did snooze.



/edit update: I don't have a tape measure handy but to the eye the PowerColor RX 590 is noticeably thicker than the 7950. So it might be a oversized card. If you don't use Slot 2 it's no issue, but if you've got your cMP loaded up with PCI cards it's probably not the best choice.

 

[itdk92]

#2 a) Go obedient with Mojave and delete any NVIDIA options as well as bootcamp capabilities. Use a 580 and be Apples low power gpu slave.

In this #2 a) case Bootcamp is not possible, but Windows 10 is. Tricky, but possible.

 

[Paradiseapple]

Hi, I just updated my Mac Pro 2010 to Mojave and use a RX 580. I use a HD from Seagate (213 MB/S write/226 MBs read) for editing. Is this the reason why i have bad performance editing 4K on FCPX and PP? I think about installing a Samsung SSD wit 4TB with an OWC Accelsior S Adapter. Does it take the 4TB SSD? Would you format it on Raid 0 or normal? And will it be sufficient for editing 4K?

 

[PowerMac84]

What 4K? Which format?

 

[netkas]

If you ever wanted to use subject cards in cmp 3,1 with mojave, now you can - http://netkas.org/?p=1484

 

[Paradiseapple]

What 4K? Which format?

Panasonic GH5 4k 25p 150M 10bit or 50p 4K 8bit 150M 8bit

 

[AlexMaximus]

Hi, I just updated my Mac Pro 2010 to Mojave and use a RX 580. I use a HD from Seagate (213 MB/S write/226 MBs read) for editing. Is this the reason why i have bad performance editing 4K on FCPX and PP? I think about installing a Samsung SSD wit 4TB with an OWC Accelsior S Adapter. Does it take the 4TB SSD? Would you format it on Raid 0 or normal? And will it be sufficient for editing 4K?

Since the good old cMP 5.1 from 2010 was never designed to do 4K editing a whopping Nine years later, there is some work & money involved to kind of get it there. But first things first, tell us your specs...
How manny open, unpopulated PCI slots do you have, what is your Budget to Hotrod your 5.1, and how long do you plan on keeping your current Mac.