Another Mac 5,1 thread

[MacNoobPro]

Hello,


I have 3 x Mid 2010 Mac 5.1 machines and I am trying to do some upgrades for them.


They are https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/specs/mac-pro-eight-core-2.4-mid-2010-westmere-specs.html


I’ve upped the memory on some and done an SSD and one GPU

I do them in different stages so it’s a bit of mix bag. This is what I have at the moment


MAC1 High Sierra, new SSD, but old 5770 gpu and ROM MP51.0089.B00 and 32 GB of RAM (I’d like to match it to MAC2 with the 1050Ti.) Currently only office use will be used for Static graphics (Photoshop CC / Indesign CC)


MAC2 High Sierra new SSD, Gigabyte 1050TI + 5770 (I left it plugged in in the bottom slot but I didn't plug the power connector in case I need to do any upgrades and I cannot see the boot menu) ROM MP51.0089.B00 and 32 GB of ram


MAC3 Sierra, HDD, 5770, 16 GB ram. (ROM MP51.0089.B00) This one I want to use video editing. It will be used for ADOBE premiere pro CC. I got £700 and I would like to get the best GPU for this budget. I want to avoid soldering the PSU so only using the 2x SATA connectors and 2x Mini 6 Pin.

What I already have for this mac, new SSD, extra 16 GB of ram, cable 2x Mini 6 Pin to 1x 8 pin connector.

My Questions are:

1)MAC3: what GPU to get aka RX580 or 1080(Ti), 2080, what additional cables to I need? Do I need 64 GB of ram or 32 is sufficient?

2)Should I upgrade to Mojave ? What are the benefits? Can someone explain the METAL bit for the gpus ? Will that mean I will be able to use my 1050ti in a boot menu? It seem to not support 5770 ?

3)I keep the old 5770 in the bottom PCI slot, and the new 1050Ti in the one above it (the 1050Ti is choking the fan of 5770 but its not connected unless I am doing upgrades), are both of the bottom PCI slot x16 ? is there any Disadvantage for this ? The 5770 is unplugged I only unplug the 1050ti and plug the 5770 when I need to do rom upgrade or NVIDIA drivers update.


I hope someone can help me shed some light into this.

 

[octoviaa]

1. additional cable depend on the power cable requirement of your chosen card. RAM depend on your application usage. Which GPU to get: AMD seems to have better support from macOS at the moment.

2. General recommendation if upgrading to Mojave won't break your work (all the application you need are compatible with Mojave) then it is generally preferred to update to Mojave. No boot menu for any GPU (be it NVIDIA or AMD) unless it has Mac EFI. METAL is graphic API specific to APPLE OS (macOS and iOS), currently no other OS support it, Vulkan is more cross platform hence has more platform support, while DirectX is Microsoft specific.

3. Both of the bottom PCI slots are x16.

 

[MacNoobPro]

Hello Octoviaa, thanks for the reply,

1.I was quite specific about my choice of an application aka Adobe Premiere PRO CC and video editing. So hopefully who has experience will be bit more precise in the recommendations. AMD also seems to be less powerful based on the few articles I have seen.

2.So theoretically if i get NVIDIA 2080 i still need to keep my 5770 around in case i need to do any admin.

3. Thanks for confirmation

 

[saulinpa]

One thing to keep in mind is that Mojave is not supporting newer Nvidia cards and Nvidia has not released Mojave drivers.

 

[MacNoobPro]

One thing to keep in mind is that Mojave is not supporting newer Nvidia cards and Nvidia has not released Mojave drivers.

Hmm so in this case 1080 or 1080Ti would be top performer for mojave ?

 

[saulinpa]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/marcoc...rs-and-nvidia-with-macos-mojave/#5c0e17f537e9
1080 is too new so no native support for Mojave. Apple stopped support with 780 or thereabouts.

 

[MacNoobPro]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/marcoc...rs-and-nvidia-with-macos-mojave/#5c0e17f537e9
1080 is too new so no native support for Mojave. Apple stopped support with 780 or thereabouts.

Really ? the 1050Ti works fine with the Nvidia drivers on High Sierra

 

[octoviaa]

Hello Octoviaa, thanks for the reply,

1.I was quite specific about my choice of an application aka Adobe Premiere PRO CC and video editing. So hopefully who has experience will be bit more precise in the recommendations. AMD also seems to be less powerful based on the few articles I have seen.

2.So theoretically if i get NVIDIA 2080 i still need to keep my 5770 around in case i need to do any admin.

3. Thanks for confirmation

If you're already familiar with your mentioned apps, then you can easily check whether your RAM is enough by looking at memory usage / 'pressure' on the activity monitor when using the apps to do your most demanding work.

Hmm so in this case 1080 or 1080Ti would be top performer for mojave ?

Only GTX 680 (or Kepler) have native support with Mojave, hence 7xx, 10xx, 20xx are on the same situation as not being supported with Mojave as they'll require NVIDIA web driver and currently no NVIDIA web driver for Mojave is available.

 

[MacNoobPro]

If you're already familiar with your mentioned apps, then you can easily check whether your RAM is enough by looking at memory usage / 'pressure' on the activity monitor when using the apps to do your most demanding work.

Only GTX 680 (or Kepler) have native support with Mojave, hence 7xx, 10xx, 20xx are on the same situation as not being supported with Mojave as they'll require NVIDIA web driver and currently no NVIDIA web driver for Mojave is available.

I am familiar with the app that I will be running, that is certainly true, I am just wondering if increasing ram makes exporting or rendering or skipping trough the video faster or this is down to something else ? I cannot really check as the current PC that will be using Premiere is not sufficient to run the app. Hence the reasoning to upgrade. On adobe site is says 16gb of ram or more I was just wondering if anyone has idea of a good sweet spot ?
https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/premiere-pro/system-requirements/earlier-versions.html

Ok so if there is no nvidia driver for mojave is there a 20xx series driver for high sierra or shall is stick to 10xx gen on High sierra as that seem to work ?

 

[tsialex]

If you're already familiar with your mentioned apps, then you can easily check whether your RAM is enough by looking at memory usage / 'pressure' on the activity monitor when using the apps to do your most demanding work.

Only GTX 680 (or Kepler) have native support with Mojave, hence 7xx, 10xx, 20xx are on the same situation as not being supported with Mojave as they'll require NVIDIA web driver and currently no NVIDIA web driver for Mojave is available.

Apple native NVDIA drivers support Kepler cards, so GTX 780 is supported with Mojave.
[doublepost=1545069300][/doublepost]

I am familiar with the app that I will be running, that is certainly true, I am just wondering if increasing ram makes exporting or rendering or skipping trough the video faster or this is down to something else ? I cannot really check as the current PC that will be using Premiere is not sufficient to run the app. Hence the reasoning to upgrade. On adobe site is says 16gb of ram or more I was just wondering if anyone has idea of a good sweet spot ?
https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/premiere-pro/system-requirements/earlier-versions.html

Ok so if there is no nvidia driver for mojave is there a 20xx series driver for high sierra or shall is stick to 10xx gen on High sierra as that seem to work ?

No support for any RTX cards yet. The newest consumer NVIDIA card supported with High Sierra NVIDIA web drivers is 1080Ti. No NVIDIA web drivers for Mojave yet.

Only cards that have METAL support works with Mojave, HD 5770/5780 are not supported. METAL is similar to OpenGL/DirectX, it's an API for direct hardware access to the GPU, you can read about here: https://developer.apple.com/metal/

Read here to know what you have to do to upgrade to Mojave: MP5,1: What you have to do to upgrade to Mojave.

 

[MacNoobPro]

Apple native NVDIA drivers support Kepler cards, so GTX 780 is supported with Mojave.
[doublepost=1545069300][/doublepost]
No support for any RTX cards yet. The newest consumer NVIDIA card supported with High Sierra NVIDIA web drivers is 1080Ti. No NVIDIA web drivers for Mojave yet.

Only cards that have METAL support works with Mojave, HD 5770/5780 are not supported. METAL is similar to OpenGL/DirectX, it's an API for direct hardware access to the GPU, you can read about here: https://developer.apple.com/metal/

Read here to know what you have to do to upgrade to Mojave: MP5,1: What you have to do to upgrade to Mojave.

Hello Tsialex, I have seen your post about upgrading to Mojave, and it was very informative, (Ive used part of the article to do the boot ROM upgrades)
Based on what you are saying and my budget the best combo for me should be 1080/1080Ti and High sierra, and the potentially later upgrade to Mojave if Nvidia releases the drivers. Do you thing its a good plan ? Do you have any experience if the render time on adobe premier pro cc can use the cuda cores on the nv cards ?

 

[parisinvest]

Hello Tsialex, I have seen your post about upgrading to Mojave, and it was very informative, (Ive used part of the article to do the boot ROM upgrades)
Based on what you are saying and my budget the best combo for me should be 1080/1080Ti and High sierra, and the potentially later upgrade to Mojave if Nvidia releases the drivers. Do you thing its a good plan ? Do you have any experience if the render time on adobe premier pro cc can use the cuda cores on the nv cards ?

my opinion i don't think Mojave will continue use cuda, or even in the future, selon apple cuda is not good for Mojave system, as long as cuda doesn't change, there is probably no next webdriver for Mojave, so you can choose stay high Sierra with Nvidia 1080/ti, or Mojave rx580 8go with metal, but if you use cuda, that will leave you only the first choice

 

[MacNoobPro]

my opinion i don't think Mojave will continue use cuda, or even in the future, selon apple cuda is not good for Mojave system, as long as cuda doesn't change, there is probably no next webdriver for Mojave, so you can choose stay high Sierra with Nvidia 1080/ti, or Mojave rx580 8go with metal, but if you use cuda, that will leave you only the first choice

That is interesting indeed, looking at the AMD side then, the 580 doesn't seem to be even close to the Adobe premiere pro CC performance of the 1080, should I be looking into vega ? Also that would introduce power issues no ? Getting vega card powered I'll need to start soldering the psu ?

 

[tsialex]

Hello Tsialex, I have seen your post about upgrading to Mojave, and it was very informative, (Ive used part of the article to do the boot ROM upgrades)
Based on what you are saying and my budget the best combo for me should be 1080/1080Ti and High sierra, and the potentially later upgrade to Mojave if Nvidia releases the drivers. Do you thing its a good plan ?

For 10.13.6, exclusively, yes.

Don't make plans involving NVIDIA cards and Mojave. Apple already released the first beta of 10.14.3 and not a sign that NVIDIA will release drivers for Mojave. With all the strange messages from NVIDIA, I won't bet on it.

Start studying AMD alternatives, if you plan on long term support.

Do you have any experience if the render time on adobe premier pro cc can use the cuda cores on the nv cards ?

I don't personally use any Adobe programs, so I'm the wrong person to answer this.

 

[parisinvest]

That is interesting indeed, looking at the AMD side then, the 580 doesn't seem to be even close to the Adobe premiere pro CC performance of the 1080, should I be looking into vega ? Also that would introduce power issues no ? Getting vega card powered I'll need to start soldering the psu ?

if possible your budget, yes go Vega 64, it's the best video card on Mac Pro, I did not tried personally the power supply, it should be the same as 1080Ti, one Y 2x 6pin to 8pin, and one Y 2x sata to 8 pin, yes you are right about loosing two sata, but I found the best way if you are good to mod yourself: http://thehouseofmoth.com/mac-pro-pixlas-mod/ , good luck

 

[MacNoobPro]

if possible your budget, yes go Vega 64, it's the best video card on Mac Pro, I did not tried personally the power supply, it should be the same as 1080Ti, one Y 2x 6pin to 8pin, and one Y 2x sata to 8 pin, yes you are right about loosing two sata, but I found the best way if you are good to mod yourself: http://thehouseofmoth.com/mac-pro-pixlas-mod/ , good luck

I am not really willing to mod that deep, so 2 sata to 8pin would be the only alternative (is this actually sufficient?). Is there any other mods I need to to do to the vega card or just plug and play ? I surely need some drivers ? Or I just install Mojave and it works?

 

[octoviaa]

I am not really willing to mod that deep, so 2 sata to 8pin would be the only alternative (is this actually sufficient?). Is there any other mods I need to to do to the vega card or just plug and play ? I surely need some drivers ? Or I just install Mojave and it works?

Mojave has native driver for VEGA, so it should work OOTB.

 

[MacNoobPro]

Ok so my options are:
1.1080 and keep to High Sierra with small to no chance to upgrade to Mojave
2.Vega 64 with mojave option but less performance

With the second option,
If i upgrade the other 2 machines to RX580 and the video editing machine to vega I can then upgrade all 3 machines to mojave no ?

how about 20xx still has no drivers as far as I can see so will not work under HS.