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MP 1,1-5,1 AMD Radeon RX 5700

jgleigh

jgleigh

macrumors regular
Apr 30, 2009
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231
Dimensions of the two different cards:

PowerColor Radeon™ RX 5700 XT
230mm*111mm*41mm

PowerColor Red Dragon Radeon™ RX 5700 XT
240mm*132mm*41mm

I installed the smaller one in my MacPro 5,1, but based on the available room the Red Dragon should also fit.

7F5D9BE1-CF40-47F2-A562-B4C45D0D5F81_1_105_c.jpeg


BA7BAC5A-EF7C-4973-9107-2D3D6F5530CB_1_105_c.jpeg


A93EF80E-C6BB-4D13-9BEB-1C6D0879F0DB_1_105_c.jpeg
 
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star-affinity

star-affinity

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Nov 14, 2007
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Those of you who have an RX 5700 XT in a MacPro5,1 (I have that) or in a MacPro7,1 for that matter – do you also have the fans spinning up slightly but noticable from being passive, every 10-15 minutes or so? I can just be at the desktop with nothing heavy running (basically just the Finder open) and the fans still spin up like that. It's a bit annoying, so curious if it's only me or if it's something that happens with the card in a MacPro5,1. I think it happens in Windows 10 too, but not as frequently. I guess it could be due to the firmware on my specific version: Gigabyte RX 5700 XT GAMING OC 8G.
 
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bsbeamer

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Sep 19, 2012
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Sapphire Pulse RX 5700 XT in eGPU and the fans are silent. They seem to only spin up after 10+ min of intensive GPU/METAL rendering. EGPU housing fan spins more than GPU itself. Same results with either BIOS.
 
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star-affinity

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w1z said:
No fan issues to report with AMD reference cards.
Click to expand...

So the fans (or ”fan” – just one in the reference card?) of the AMD GPU are always passive (standing still) in your MacPro5,1 when you don't do anything graphically intensive?
 
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w1z

macrumors 6502a
Aug 20, 2013
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star-affinity said:
So the fans (or ”fan” – just one in the reference card?) of the AMD GPU are always passive (standing still) in your MacPro5,1 when you don't do anything graphically intensive?
Click to expand...

The blower fan spins at idle factory speeds during normal loads under Catalina - be it watching 4K/8K content, using photoshop or premier, browsing the web or watching videos on youtube. The noise level is on par with an EVGA GTX 780 ACX (with 2 fans). The only time the fans rev up steadily is when running 2K+ graphic benchmarks and the noise level is very acceptable (can't hear the GPU fan over the mac pro's)

I don't believe there is a way to obtain GPU fan speeds for Navi cards under macos but I recorded the idle speed under Windows at ~1,160 RPM.
 
Last edited:
jgleigh

jgleigh

macrumors regular
Apr 30, 2009
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I haven't noticed any unusual fan activity with the PowerColor Radeon™ RX 5700 XT.
 
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bsbeamer

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Sep 19, 2012
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RX 5700/XT only works in Catalina 10.15.1+. If you're not on Catalina, there is zero benefit.
 
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star-affinity

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w1z said:
The blower fan spins at idle factory speeds during normal loads under Catalina - be it watching 4K/8K content, using photoshop or premier, browsing the web or watching videos on youtube. The noise level is on par with an EVGA GTX 780 ACX (with 2 fans). The only time the fans rev up steadily is when running 2K+ graphic benchmarks and the noise level is very acceptable (can't hear the GPU fan over the mac pro's)

I don't believe there is a way to obtain GPU fan speeds for Navi cards under macos but I recorded the idle speed under Windows at ~1,160 RPM.
Click to expand...

Aha, the reference cards doesn't support passive cooling? That explains that you don't have the behavior I have in my setup. For me the fans are – for the most part – passive when idle, except for this occasional "spin up" every 10-15 minutes or so. I'm trying to figure out of that's normal or not. But maybe it is if you have a RX 5700 XT that support passive cooling.

jgleigh said:
I haven't noticed any unusual fan activity with the PowerColor Radeon™ RX 5700 XT.
Click to expand...
Does your card support passive cooling or does the fans spin even if the computer is idle and not doing anything special?
 
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bsbeamer

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MarkC426 said:
Is this on a Mac mini, with eGPU?
Click to expand...

Currently using on MacBookPro16,1 (5500M 8GB) and iMac19,1 (Vega 48 8GB). Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Box 650 GPU-650WOC-TB3 housing. Cannot get DP3 (third DP port) to function correctly - results in a system freeze with both machines. Aside from that, no major issues. Much better "results" if using monitors connected to the GPU in eGPU. If none available, using headless adapters. Have a thread reporting the results in the MBP forum.
 
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jgleigh said:
The card supports passive cooling and the fans will completely stop below a certain temperature.
Click to expand...
Same for my card (Gigabyte RX 5700 XT GAMING OC), but obviously something makes the fans kick in slightly every now and then (10-15 minutes in between) despite the computer being idle and temperatures should be low enough to keep them stopped. Maybe something with this particular card then, and/or the firmware on it.

Hmm... But I notice now when I'm booted into Windows 10 the fans keep standing still all the time when idle. Seems to be something that gets triggered in MacOS then for some reason. Would be interesting to find out for certain if it's only something that happens with the GPU I have or if it's the same for all RX 5700 XT cards that support passive cooling when used in MacOS. But you're saying yours are still all the time when idle – even for longer periods, i.e. 30 minutes? 100% sure? :)

I think I will post a new thread and see if I can ascertain what's going on.
 
jgleigh

jgleigh

macrumors regular
Apr 30, 2009
177
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I can't say for sure. If the fans are coming on, they're quiet enough that I don't notice. The main MacPro 5,1 fans are much louder than card anyway.
 
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overshoot

macrumors regular
Oct 11, 2018
118
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Hi Guys,

I already ordered my Radeon RX5700 (Not XT) from macvidcards and will give it a try. It will replace my GTX780 with 3GB of VRAM.
However I was curious about the impact of the PCIe/CPU bottleneck we would be getting using such cards in the MacPro 5.1.
I have already tried the 5700XT version with in an eGPU enclosure with a 2018 MacMini and the performance were impacted by the Thunderbolt (I took a screenshot of the Unigine Valley results as the time but can't find it).
I understand that the CPU main clock is an important factor to the bottleneck.

Are we loosing a lot of performance from the card, therefore a high end card like this one doesn't make sense, or it's not that bad?
 
star-affinity

star-affinity

macrumors 68000
Nov 14, 2007
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overshoot said:
Hi Guys,

I already ordered my Radeon RX5700 (Not XT) from macvidcards and will give it a try. It will replace my GTX780 with 3GB of VRAM.
However I was curious about the impact of the PCIe/CPU bottleneck we would be getting using such cards in the MacPro 5.1.
I have already tried the 5700XT version with in an eGPU enclosure with a 2018 MacMini and the performance were impacted by the Thunderbolt (I took a screenshot of the Unigine Valley results as the time but can't find it).
I understand that the CPU main clock is an important factor to the bottleneck.

Are we loosing a lot of performance from the card, therefore a high end card like this one doesn't make sense, or it's not that bad?
Click to expand...
I went from a GTX 1070 to RX 5700 XT in my MacPro5,1 (6-core 3,33 GHz) and I did notice an improvement in the games I play in Windows 10, but I'm pretty sure the graphics card would be even better of with a faster CPU feeding it.

It sure seems that connecting a GPU via Thunderbolt 3 will mean a performance hit, but on the MacPro5,1 it's connected directly to the PCI-e slot.

I absolutely think going from a GTX 780 will give you a nice boost. :)
 
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overshoot

macrumors regular
Oct 11, 2018
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What score do you get using Unigine Valley in extreme preset please?
I would to compare that with the one I got using the MacMini + 5700XT.

I am sure it will be a huge improvement however I am really kine on knowing what kind of bottleneck we can get.
For instance, will there be any different between the RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT?!
 
jgleigh

jgleigh

macrumors regular
Apr 30, 2009
177
231
overshoot said:
However I was curious about the impact of the PCIe/CPU bottleneck we would be getting using such cards in the MacPro 5.1.
I have already tried the 5700XT version with in an eGPU enclosure with a 2018 MacMini and the performance were impacted by the Thunderbolt (I took a screenshot of the Unigine Valley results as the time but can't find it).
I understand that the CPU main clock is an important factor to the bottleneck.
Click to expand...

Thunderbolt 3 on the 2018 MacMini maxes out at 5GB/s. The PCIe 2.0 x16 on the 2010 MacPro maxes at out 8GB/s. Assuming the 5700 XT can even utilize the full bandwidth, you're better off on the PCIe bus.
 
Pressure

Pressure

macrumors 603
May 30, 2006
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jgleigh said:
Thunderbolt 3 on the 2018 MacMini maxes out at 5GB/s. The PCIe 2.0 x16 on the 2010 MacPro maxes at out 8GB/s. Assuming the 5700 XT can even utilize the full bandwidth, you're better off on the PCIe bus.
Click to expand...

That's absolutely not true. The biggest bottleneck is how fast the decade old Westmere processor can feed the GPU data. A new Mac mini with an eGPU will be faster than the ancient Mac Pro in pretty much all instances.
 
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