I'm not seeing any issues with Nvidia's Windows drivers, except that GeForce Experience forces me to log in now.
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Dual RX 480s in Mac Pro 5,1 running MacOS (w/ How-to)
- Thread starter theitsage
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I'm not seeing any issues with Nvidia's Windows drivers, except that GeForce Experience forces me to log in now.
I actually agree, but it was the last documented number I had written down.
BruceX should be taken with a few grains of salt, since it's somewhat dependent on user execution. Some of the scores I see posted makes me think not all users have firm grip around how FCPX works in terms of caching/pre-rendering and so on. Anyway, I'll say this:
At the time of the 280X's 42s score, the 480 scored around 35s (pre FCPX 10.3 on Sierra beta, perhaps). I make sure that I have no rendered project files, but even so, the delta between the first export and succeeding ones are almost 5 seconds. This is due to unavoidable caching of data in the OS wide RAM. A cold boot and cold launch of FCPX would lead to the slowest scores, naturally.
Anyway, I wouldn't pay too much attention to 1-2 frame differences, but for me in FCPX the 480 has been constantly faster. But I'll say again: performance wise, the 280X vs RX480 on the Mac with current drivers is a toss up. To me it comes down to:
280X
- traditionally a great match for 4.1 and 5.1 systems
- Maintenance free, even without flash.
- faster in compute benchmarks, by a small margin (as of Sierra 10.12.2 beta)
- cheap to buy new
- power efficient
- lots of RAM, 8GB in my case
- real life performance same as 280X, with untapped potential possibly coming
- boots to desktop unflashed, but needs kext mod for acceleration and Metal support.
Zero. They can't sell any upgrades which would put the cMP in front of the nMP. They just stopped to care about this business, the rMPB with it's tiny entry-level GPU is the new FCPX workstation. It's enough for fancy YouTube clips and the real work is done on other hardware now.
What about Mac Edition cards for TB3 enclosures, which the new MBP's and supposedly refreshed iMacs and Mac Pro's will surely benefit from?
Apple could release a TB3 GPU enclosure akin to Alienware or Razer in a much better Apple-eque design? Maybe, incorporate a few more practical benefits of adding dock-like functionality?
Mac Edition Polaris or Vega GPU's would make sense in that sense addressing past customers and present and future customers, at the same time.
Everyone wins. Everyone is happy. Everyone is making $$$$
1. Apple design team gets to design a TB3 enclosure.
2. Third-party GPU vendors (including AMD themselves) are happy that 1% of the market has suddenly opened up for them.
3. And, we, the users are happy about new Macs being "upgradeable" again.
4. No more octopus/dongle syndrome of wires all hanging out from Macs with this supposed TB3 enclosure that is also part Docking Station.
5. Multi-GPU opens up gaming potential for new rMBP owners and future Mac owners with TB3.
6. Multi-GPU opens up video/audio/animation/CAD productivity users with more access to GPU compute units for better, smoother, faster productivity
7. Used Mac retailers/sellers are happy that the value of at least mid-2010 and 2012 Mac Pro's have suddenly risen due to this prospect of elongating its value from new Mac Edition Polaris/Vega GPU's
8. The Earth is happy that these old Mac Pros are not being put in landfills for recycling as well as the new Polaris architecture being more power efficient. Thus, lowering carbon footprint
9. Hackintosh community is happy because they can now buy cheaper PC variants and have a kick-ass hackintosh
10. Current ppl with RX 480's (or 470's/460's) in their Macs can flash them and get full ROP usage with their cards now... also enable correct PCI System Report and About This Mac ID....
There's no everyone wins situation. Apple is a control freak and would never build/sell an eGPU enclosure. The most likely chance was a new Thunderbolt 5K display with built-in eGPU. That did not happen and Apple quit making displays.
Quite a few Late 2016 13" MBP owners who have access to a Thunderbolt eGPU have confirmed there's some coding within macOS to prevent eGPU from working fully. I want to be hopeful but at this point in time, eGPU for Mac is more trouble than it's worth.
Quite a few Late 2016 13" MBP owners who have access to a Thunderbolt eGPU have confirmed there's some coding within macOS to prevent eGPU from working fully. I want to be hopeful but at this point in time, eGPU for Mac is more trouble than it's worth.
Well, everyone but Apple. A TB3 GPU chassis would cannibalize their insane profits. At the last WWDC they publicly laughed about people with >5 year old computers, they surely won't help people upgrading their TB equiped Macs to get older than that.
The freshly released TB3 MacBooks have made this very clear. Many people said TB3 Macs were supposed to support eGPUs OOB, but in fact the support is even worse than before.
An "Apple approved" eGPU would only add drivers, but that's only half of a story. This won't result in a Mac Pro compatible ROM (remember, they're stuck on their old EFI 1.1 implementation) and it also won't fix Hackintosh specific issues.
We finally got a Bootscreen without flashing?
How ist this possible?
No, it simply boots to the desktop… you don't get the boot screen functionality. I didn't mean to imply new functionality. I was just trying to summarise the experience in comparing the two cards. They booth boot to the desktop without boot screen, but you need to kext mod to get acceleration on the RX 480.
Apple may have backed down a bit from all the criticism following the TB3 MBP launch. eGPU works better in 10.12.2 beta 2. I was able to run my eGPU with Metal Support. There's something not right with OpenCL though. Nevertheless this is a good change.
I changed the hex string inside AMD9500Controller.kext to reflect my GPU rather than the generic R9 XXX.
That's slightly encouraging. They seriously need to put more resources in the graphics division.
It shows the boot screen, it just doesn't show the OS selection screen because that's in firmware.We finally got a Bootscreen without flashing?
How ist this possible?
uh..oh...arrgh...i can't find vanilla card or manufacturer with genuine vanilla port (3DP and 1HDMI) in my country. Most brand like ASUS/MSI alter their ports and added DVI.....urgh..
Im interest with cheap 8GB vRAM for my hackintosh (so i can move my maxwell titan X to my cMP). I can easily inject this card information into my DSDT or separate SSDT for better cosmetics and optimisation but i need card with vanilla port, because card with altered ports have different ports mapping and off course PITA to deal with.
I wonder how this card perform under PCIE3 using hackintosh.
Im interest with cheap 8GB vRAM for my hackintosh (so i can move my maxwell titan X to my cMP). I can easily inject this card information into my DSDT or separate SSDT for better cosmetics and optimisation but i need card with vanilla port, because card with altered ports have different ports mapping and off course PITA to deal with.
I wonder how this card perform under PCIE3 using hackintosh.
If they'd wanted to, they'd support it. The fact is that they don't care about hackintosh sales, or new GPUs for the oMP, so there's no reason to include driver support for GPUs they don't sell.
First benchmark of Radeon Pro 460 is out (per fs454 in MacBook Pro section). 16CU @ 900MHz - scores slightly lower than RX 460.
Imho It would be INSANE if Apple does something to hijack eGpu with the new TB3.
It's like.. It makes so much sense to have an upgradable gpu on the side.
Anyways, I have bought a used Mac Pro 2009 and will soon tinker with it and a standard RX480 (maybe two)
I am doing video editing and actually wanted to sell my 2015 rmbp and get smth more portable, together with havkng this Mac Pro but I can see that because of low performance of AMD's drivers, I might have to wait
hell, I might even consider the gtx980 ti afterall
It's like.. It makes so much sense to have an upgradable gpu on the side.
Anyways, I have bought a used Mac Pro 2009 and will soon tinker with it and a standard RX480 (maybe two)
I am doing video editing and actually wanted to sell my 2015 rmbp and get smth more portable, together with havkng this Mac Pro but I can see that because of low performance of AMD's drivers, I might have to wait
hell, I might even consider the gtx980 ti afterall
Are there any news for RX 480/470?? I hope Apple to support drivers for those graphic cards. I guess we should expect iMac...
Polaris should be a lock on the iMac, if a Mac Pro ever comes out it should be Vega.
The screenshot @lowendlinux posted was in Windows 10. No changes in macOS yet, it's still using Baffin with only 16CU.
I just installed two XFX Radeon RX 480 GTR cards and after the plist edits, they seem to be working well. I'm surprised how quiet they are. I haven't really put them through any real stress tests yet, but they seem like they're solid. The only thing I'm worried about is having both cards smashed so close together. Between the backplate and the fan shroud, there's almost no room. Anyone know how much of a performance hit I'd get by putting one card in a x4 slot?
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It's about 2.4% performance penalty for the 7950, since the 480 only perform just a bit better than 7950 with the current MacOS driver. So, you may assume there is virtually no real world penalty. However, when all CU avail in MacOS in the future, that may be another story.
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...mac-with-2-d700s.1732849/page-5#post-21722712