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Best videocard for an upgraded Mac Pro to run Fallout 4?

ADDvanced

ADDvanced

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 8, 2015
147
23
Hey guys, I definitely need your advice. I have a Mac Pro 1.1 that has been upgraded pretty well, 32 gigs ram, 240 gig SSD (just installed OSX El Capitan thanks to your forum), and an ATI 5770. The 5770 is the sticking point, Bethesda says minimum requirements are NVIDIA GTX 550 Ti 2GB/AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB or equivalent.

Now, I am not afraid of modding things, but it's not really a hobby for me anymore so I am definitely out of the loop. I need the boot screen, as I boot into windows for gaming/CAD work, and OSX for everything else. Using google, much of the information on upgraded cards is from 2012 or 2013, so I'm sure there are more options now at the end of 2015. What's my best bang for the buck to meet minimum requirements?
 
A game like this has to be played in high settings for the visual impact and experience. It won't happen very well with your bottle neck. Buy a console for the same price as a graphics card and you won't need to buy a new computer.
 
SoyCapitanSoyCapitan said:
A game like this has to be played in high settings for the visual impact and experience. It won't happen very well with your bottle neck. Buy a console for the same price as a graphics card and you won't need to buy a new computer.
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Already have some consoles, but not interested because then you can't mod the game at all. Fallout without mods is just... meh.
 
As far as I know, the last Nvidia video card with EFI32 compatible firmware was the 8800GT. Since you need boot screens, I don't think any of the Nvidia video card will fit your needs.
 
This barefeats test of the 2006 MP shows that in some applications there are notable gains to be had by upgrading past a 5770, but in other applications there is little to no point at all because the rest of the 2006 MP is the bottleneck. I suspect that it will be difficult to find the specific combination of a Fallout 4 benchmark on such an old computer, so it would be hard to give advice for that specific scenario.

My completely wild guess is that you probably will have some increase in performance, but not a lot. If you want to take a chance, I'd buy the card from some place with a generous return policy.

If you need boot screens, you could go the official route and get an Apple 5870 or a Sapphire 7950 Mac Edition. For the unofficial route you could get a flashed 5870, 6870, or 7950. Or take the DIY approach and buy an appropriate PC card to flash it yourself.
 
Yes, with the Bethesda games, you definitely want the PC version, and not the console version. I couldn't imagine any of their games without the mods!

I'm just throwing this out there, I'm not sure if it will be helpful, but I have a Nvidia 660 2GB card in my MacPro 4,1, and it works great with both Mac and PC side. The bad side is, there is no boot screen on the Mac side (I keep my old original card in the Mac, just in case I need to trouble shoot).

The 660 is getting long in the tooth, but still gives solid performance. I have no idea how it will do with Fallout 4, but I'm able to get decent/playable frame rates with the Witcher 3.
 
pastrychef said:
As far as I know, the last Nvidia video card with EFI32 compatible firmware was the 8800GT. Since you need boot screens, I don't think any of the Nvidia video card will fit your needs.
Click to expand...
I already modded the EFI to get 10.10 installed on it, working great no issues. Does this still pertain to me? Or because the OS isn't officially supported it won't work?
 
I recently got a 7870 on eBay for $90 and a 7950 for $120. Not that hard to get a good card. You can also install Windows via Bootcamp and after Windows installs, accept all the bootcamp driver prompts. You can then in the task bar tell Windows to restart into OS X and in OS X from Settings, pick startup Volume to be Windows when you want to restart into Windows. I'm currently testing Parallels 11 now. So far I've been able to play Halo 5 through Xbox One streaming flawlessly, waiting to see how Fallout 4 holds up. I do have it on my Bootcamp partition as well just in case. My point is you don't have to break the bank on Mac Pro upgrades, you just have to hustle a little bit.
 
ADDvanced said:
I already modded the EFI to get 10.10 installed on it, working great no issues. Does this still pertain to me? Or because the OS isn't officially supported it won't work?
Click to expand...

I don't know what is involved in getting 10.10 installed on Mac Pro 1,1s and 1,2s, so I really don't know.
 
ADDvanced said:
I'm guessing that one didn't have dual quads, 32 gigs ram and an SSD. :p
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Perhaps not, but it doesn't matter for Fallout 4 frame rates. Going beyond four cores almost never helps games, and in some rare cases dual CPUs actually hurt (disabling one CPU can fix stuttering problems). You are best off with the highest clock speed you can get. Sufficient RAM is very important, but RAM beyond what the game needs will just remain unused. The SSD will help load times, not frame rates.

ADDvanced said:
I already modded the EFI to get 10.10 installed on it, working great no issues. Does this still pertain to me? Or because the OS isn't officially supported it won't work?
Click to expand...

Yes it still pertains to you. Those newer Nvidia cards will work after booting, but you won't get boot screens even if they are flashed. So if you want a faster card and boot screens, you'll have to stick with AMD.

Sorry man I feel like I'm raining on your parade, and I didn't mean to do that.
 
No offense taken. You'd be surprised how this thing feels, it's amazing it's 10 years old and still feels this great. I just treated it, I ordered a flashed 7970 3 gig card, pretty much the best one it will accept. I realize it's still Pcie 1.1, not 2. whatever, but the price difference was negligable so screw it. Will report back in a bit.
 
towdow3 said:
never mind. well this SUCKS. i got this mac pro specifically for gaming and editing etc can't even install windows on this? is that true?
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Don't understand why you say that. You have a 1,1 as well? And you can't install Windows via bootcamp?
 
ADDvanced said:
I'm guessing that one didn't have dual quads, 32 gigs ram and an SSD. :p
Click to expand...

The two most graphically intensive games this year Advanced Warfare and Arkham Knight don't use more than four cores and in some cases dual CPUs reduces performance.

Recent tests show no gaming benefit above 8GB system memory and 4GB is plenty. Games don't utilise much system memory.

http://www.pcgamer.com/new-testing-shows-that-4gb-of-ram-is-still-plenty-for-gaming/

And as for SSD, there is only a slight improvement. Developers have optimised the file structure, loading method and scene packaging for optimal loading on spinning drives.

The most important factors for gaming are a new as possible CPU and GPU.
 
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SoyCapitanSoyCapitan said:
The two most graphically intensive games this year Advanced Warfare and Arkham Knight don't use more than four cores and in some cases dual CPUs reduces performance.

Recent tests show no gaming benefit above 8GB system memory and 4GB is plenty. Games don't utilise much system memory.

http://www.pcgamer.com/new-testing-shows-that-4gb-of-ram-is-still-plenty-for-gaming/

And as for SSD, there is only a slight improvement. Developers have optimised the file structure, loading method and scene packaging for optimal loading on spinning drives.

The most important factors for gaming are a new as possible CPU and GPU.
Click to expand...

Think what you want. I've noticed a huge improvement with an SSD, especially for fallout and going in and out of buildings. Almost instant.
 
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