Dual RX 480s in Mac Pro 5,1 running MacOS (w/ How-to)

[rdej47]

Sounds perfectly fine, not even 50W. Compute applications are usually not that demanding though, the power draw will surely increase when running games. Running FurMark should give you an idea what the worst case power draw looks like.

At what point would the numbers be high enough that I should be concerned? I did manage to find a 8 pin to dual 6 pin so I will add that in when it arrives.

Is there anyone here using the 480 with FCP or Motion? I'm a big Motion user but I actually didn't notice a huge jump in performance compared to my 2015 MBP with the R9.

 

[h9826790]

At what point would the numbers be high enough that I should be concerned? I did manage to find a 8 pin to dual 6 pin so I will add that in when it arrives.

Is there anyone here using the 480 with FCP or Motion? I'm a big Motion user but I actually didn't notice a huge jump in performance compared to my 2015 MBP with the R9.

75W is the magic number.

You better run Furmark and check if any of the power source (slot, and both mini 6pin) deliver more than 75W. If yes, that's something that you should know, and consider if you happy with.

FCPX is not that demanding, but 4K editing can still reach ~80% (peak) of Furmark can achieve.

 

[JoSch]

It will work after adding the device ID blindly (-> VNC, 2nd GPU, ...) after each OS update.

I guess it's a better idea to stay on 10.2.3 and wait for an OS update which introduces native Polaris 10 support.

Well, there is a reason, I still have a flashed HD5770 in my Macpro ;-)

 

[SolidCake]

Just updated to 10.12.3 (AMD RX480 8GB)
Did the kext edit to AMDRadeonX4100.kext and signed with Kext Utility. Restarted and acceleration is still disabled.
I tried to repeat the process with a backup fresh kext but still no luck. Am I missing something?

 

[Capt America]

Just updated to 10.12.3 (AMD RX480 8GB)
Did the kext edit to AMDRadeonX4100.kext and signed with Kext Utility. Restarted and acceleration is still disabled.
I tried to repeat the process with a backup fresh kext but still no luck. Am I missing something?

I just did it upgrade and did the kext edit and it was fine. Maybe your SIP got re-enabled somehow?

 

[SolidCake]

I just did it upgrade and did the kext edit and it was fine. Maybe your SIP got re-enabled somehow?

Hey, thanks! I disabled the SIP but no-luck... I'll go and re-disable the SIP and try again. I even tried signing the kext with KextDrop but that didn't work as well... I'll try and get back with, hopefully, some results.

Here's my info.plist from the kext file:

<key>IOPCIMatch</key>
<string>0x73001002 0x67DF1002 0x67E01002 0x67FF1002 0x67EF1002</string>
<key>IOProbeScore</key>

EDIT: Disabled SIP Again, still no luck...

EDIT 2: Fixed! Got a fresh kext from my macbook pro, did the edit, signed and everything is fine again!

 

[rdej47]

Hey guys so I got my 8 pin to dual 6 pin setup and things are working fine. Now how do I actually know that I have full acceleration enabled for the 480? I'm running Sierra 10.12.3 and I added the ID to the plist and changed the 4100 kext file.

It's running smooth but I expected more a jump in performance for After Effects compared to my 2015 MacBook Pro R9. I ran Geekbench and it's averaging between 77000 - 80000 and my model is the MSI 480 4GB. Just wondering if this is normal or if there's something i'm missing?

 

[Daniel Reed]

rdej47, does the card show in luxmark?

Also, have you run CU unlock script to get 36 compute units? Otherwise, you're only using 16 CUs.

You should be getting around 120,000 in geekbench OpenCL compute bench as eGPU.

Also, the only way to get exceleration for me on nMP on 10.12.2 was to plug in the TB cable after the chime, the moment the apple logo appears, but before the load bar shows.

Also why use a 4Gb 480 model?
Use the 8GB version or switch to a 4GB Fury X

 

[rdej47]

rdej47, does the card show in luxmark?

Also, have you run CU unlock script to get 36 compute units? Otherwise, you're only using 16 CUs.

You should be getting around 120,000 in geekbench OpenCL compute bench as eGPU.

Also, the only way to get exceleration for me on nMP on 10.12.2 was to plug in the TB cable after the chime, the moment the apple logo appears, but before the load bar shows.

Also why use a 4Gb 480 model?
Use the 8GB version or switch to a 4GB Fury X

Hey Daniel, thanks for the response. I haven't heard of the CU unlock script, i'll need to check it out.

To clarify i'm not running it as an eGPU, i'm running this on my 2009 (5,1) Mac Pro. I was just making the comparison to my 2015 MBP. This was my first time buying a new GPU so I didn't want to ball out until I knew it would work.

 

[H2SO4]

So, I’m having a little trouble still wth my RX470. I have it in slot 1 wth a GT120 in slot 3 and if I run Heaven the app crashes with;

Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type: EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000
Exception Note: EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Application Specific Information:
abort() called

Application Specific Signatures:
Graphics kernel error: 0x00000003


Thread 0 Crashed:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0 libsystem_kernel.dylib 0x00007fffccd47dd6 __pthread_kill + 10
1 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x00007fffcce33787 pthread_kill + 90
2 libsystem_c.dylib 0x00007fffcccad420 abort + 129
3 libGPUSupport.dylib 0x00007fffc523acb7 gpusKillClient + 83
4 com.nvidia.web.GeForceTeslaGLDriverWeb 0x000000012608bdae 0x125d9c000 + 3079598
5 com.nvidia.web.GeForceTeslaGLDriverWeb 0x0000000126079d81 0x125d9c000 + 3005825
6 GLEngine 0x00000001257d1e05 gleFlushRange + 65
7 GLEngine 0x00000001257cf0a3 glUnmapBuffer_Core + 83
8 GLEngine 0x00000001257cf032 glUnmapBuffer_Exec + 374
9 libUnigine_x64.dylib 0x000000010b17f860 GLParticles::render(mat4 const&, vec3 const&) + 608

Also, the card boots from cold with no problem, but if I sleep the Mac, upon wake I get the PSU and expansion slot fans on full. Any ideas?

 

[michaelwalkertoye]

So, I’m having a little trouble still wth my RX470. I have it in slot 1 wth a GT120 in slot 3 and if I run Heaven the app crashes with;

----

Also, the card boots from cold with no problem, but if I sleep the Mac, upon wake I get the PSU and expansion slot fans on full. Any ideas?

Do you get different results without the gt120?

 

[JoSch]

Does anyone know whether audio over Displayport works on OSX? If yes, does it with the Baffin driver?

 

[H2SO4]

Does anyone know whether audio over Displayport works on OSX? If yes, does it with the Baffin driver?

Yes it does.
[doublepost=1486280907][/doublepost]

Do you get different results without the gt120?

I’ll give that a shot later. I’m sure I did have issues with that before, but that was on 10.12.2

UPDATE: Not sure what I’ve done other than move to 10.12.3, and remove the GT120 but my days of errant behaviour seem to be over.
Still a bit miffed about the boot screen though. Does anybody know what you have to do to a disk to get it to show in the start up disk pref pane ? I’d like the recovery partitions to show. At the moment I have more than one version of OSX and want to make sure that when I need to I boot into the correct one.

 

[JoSch]

Yes it does.

How can I test that? I don't see any audio device that hints at DP audio.

 

[H2SO4]

How can I test that? I don't see any audio device that hints at DP audio.

Strange, but I’m not seeing it right now. That said, when I had mine plugged in to my monitor before, I saw LG Monitor as an option in the sound drop down in the menu bar. Not sure why it isn't there now.

 

[michaelwalkertoye]

Does anybody know what you have to do to a disk to get it to show in the start up disk pref pane ?

If it's a valid start up disk, even USB, it'll show. I created one on a 64gb stick specifically to go into recovery (my main drive is a RAID 0) and that stick shows up in the pref pane.

 

[H2SO4]

If it's a valid start up disk, even USB, it'll show. I created one on a 64gb stick specifically to go into recovery (my main drive is a RAID 0) and that stick shows up in the pref pane.

But not the recovery partitions, there must be another flag/attribute that makes the difference.

 

[michaelwalkertoye]

But not the recovery partitions, there must be another flag/attribute that makes the difference.

I could be missing your meaning, but a bootable OSX instance will show up in the start up preference pane, not recovery partitions. They're only negotiated when you boot with CMD-R. If you have multiple recovery partition instances, I don't know how you, or OSX, would navigate those.

 

[H2SO4]

I could be missing your meaning, but a bootable OSX instance will show up in the start up preference pane, not recovery partitions. They're only negotiated when you boot with CMD-R. If you have multiple recovery partition instances, I don't know how you, or OSX, would navigate those.

This is what I mean. As I have the RX alone installed in my Mac I have no boot screen. I can see my other Windows and OSX partitions but Would be nice to be able to select that too.

 

[STek ZeNIO]

The community in this thread has helped me a huge deal on the way to making right choices and installing GT120 and Sapphire Nitro+ RX480 8GB GPU into cMP 5,1 with Sierra 10.12.3 (official). And just in case someone is wondering.. yes I use 2x (dual) mini 6pin male to 8pin male power adapter cable for preventive measure towards logic board, and to supply the Sapphire OC's power need (225W). The RX480 works right off the bat! Of cuz with no acceleration and metal support so now I am on progress to kext editing as IT Sage suggested in #1. A couple of questions if you guys don't mind:

• Is there an alternative option to Kext Utility due to security reason with cMP at work? Perhaps terminal command to repair kext permission?
• Is it not at all possible to make RX 480 work on El Capitan? This is what shows in my Graphics/Displays info - No Kext loaded.

The links are included hoping to help future readers. Along with some pro softwares, Windows 10 pro on separate bootcamp drive, and FreeSync on Ultrawide screen, for next few days hardcore testing to its limit is in order, to understand if RX 480 has future in my work flow.

 

[JoSch]

• Is there an alternative option to Kext Utility due to security reason with cMP at work? Perhaps terminal command to repair kext permission?
• Is it not at all possible to make RX 480 work on El Capitan? This is what shows in my Graphics/Displays info - No Kext loaded.

1.) No, you even have to disable SIP to make the patch work, otherwise the Kext will not be loaded.
2.) Could be possible, if the kernel API wasn't changed too much. But again, you have to disable SIP, so that El Capitan loads the unknown Kext.

 

[STek ZeNIO]

WRT SIP in Sierra, I was able to enable it without kext (in Terminal: csrutil enable --without kext) and it works great! So you don't have open up your security layers all the way thru.

Btw could any of you get audio (HDMI or DP) pass through? In window is fully passed through but not in Sierra. In window, the audio quality via DP is significantly much superior than that via "Line Out" in cMP.

 

[H2SO4]

WRT SIP in Sierra, I was able to enable it without kext (in Terminal: csrutil enable --without kext) and it works great! So you don't have open up your security layers all the way.

Btw could any of you get audio (HDMI or DP) pass through? In window is fully passed through but not in Sierra. In window, the audio quality via DP is significantly much superior than that via "Line Out" in cMP.

Not me, but I was looking for that also.

 

[JoSch]

The HDMIAudio kext referenced in some other thread doesn't work for me, too. The audio passthrough with Windows 10 works, though.

 

[vaspgn]

Luxmark and Unigine Heaven show be a very good way to test the performance and stability.

So, I have installed 2 cards rx480 Saphire Radeon (one 8 gb Vram, second 4 vram) into my mac pro 5.1 with 48 Gb and 2 xeon x 6 cores = 12 and, sierra. OS Sierra. kexts 5100 hacked as described in this forum, cards not flashed.
I did Luxmark light:
average about 23.000 points in light ball, using both cards. CPU gives +2500 only, so in total about 25.500.
Each card is connected with mini 6 to 6pci, power consumption according to iStat is
Pci boost A: up to 6 peak amper + 3 pci slot 4 up to 3 amper, that is (6+3)*12V=108 Watt
same second card attached to pci slot 3 and PCI boost B supply
Each card sucks about 100 watt, though according to passport should be up to 225 watt.
I thought they might be underloaded because of 6 pin connection limitation, though I-stat showes almost 100% load GPU for both cards when benchmarking luxmark
Cards are not flashed.
Great performance when working with final cut.
Be cautious when running luxmark text with 12 cpu - it is near PSU limit, though I assume completely ok for final cut, as cpu usage normally does not exceed 800% with up 80% of those both GPU load.
When installing
7 days the flight is in normal mode.
1 problem found: in Civilization 6 with max graphics capacity setup for 4k monitor PSU has stopped in emergency for 5 minutes after I started equipment test in the game interface. I have not tried to repeat it again. I assume power total capacity, thought I have not experieced problem with luxmark. So for final cut I find the solution great and safe, thought it is up to your responcibility.