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Dual RX 480s in Mac Pro 5,1 running MacOS (w/ How-to)
- Thread starter theitsage
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Also, these two points are really, kind of, important, as well. Are you saying, that PC cards of RX 400 series can be used without flashing them? So, OOB, a PC version of RX 400 card will boot a mac with the boot screen?
Yet, in point number 5), you say there is still some hacking involved?
Can one expect this on the Public Release of Sierra 12.0? Or are you running this on the Dev Preview of 12.1?
Thanks!
While I can say that FCPX loads and everything appears to work within a limited test scope, the peeps from West Hollywood are better suited to kick these tires. In my development workflow, the 470/480 >= 970GTX.
MSAA is definitely not Nvidia specific. The iPhone 3GS was the first mobile platform that could handle MSAA and still maintain a decent frame rate.... The desktop arena had that too many years before.
1) RX 480 / 470 cards can be used without without a flash
2) The Apple Logo Boot screen appears with an empty progress bar that quickly fills up.
3) Without an updated kext, the 480 / 470 boots as an unaccelerated device. The modification of info.plist inside of AMDRadeonX4100.KEXT and the drag/drop installation of a KEXT file brings full acceleration.
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Cool. So, is there a second way to edit the KEXT without downloading another software?
And, do you think the editing of the KEXT file is only necessary now because it's not fully supported, yet? Or, do you think, in future Sierra updates, that this will no longer be a necessary step?
Editing a KEXT is necessary today and perhaps tomorrow. The fate of this situation depends on what the peeps from Cupertino deliver to us in Late October 2017. FWIW... Upgrading to MacOS Sierra from El Capitan, my 5,1 Mac Pro sat without display for 30+ minutes before rebooting to display an image on a Lenovo USB 3.0 Display. Whilst I appreciate Nvidia's attempt at updated drivers, I'm fed up with the lost time and productivity...
With that said. The 'Captn's points are well taken.. Disabling SIP is a requirement to enable KEXT injection and my oversight
. If you are comfortable in enabling trim, then SIP is a walk in the park, and leagues above the Nvidia web driver mess..To enable SIP...perform a Restart. After the BONG! Hold CMD-R until the system had had a chance to boot. In my case, around 9 seconds. Once Caps-Lock responds to input, press RETURN to continue the boot process. Once within the Mac GIU, follow the steps as defined following the above aforementioned jump.
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Editing a KEXT is necessary today and perhaps tomorrow. The fate of this situation depends on what the peeps from Cupertino deliver to us in Late October 2017. FWIW... Upgrading to MacOS Sierra from El Capitan, my 5,1 Mac Pro sat without display for 30+ minutes before rebooting to display an image on a Lenovo USB 3.0 Display. Whilst I appreciate Nvidia's attempt at updated drivers, I'm fed up with the lost time and productivity...
With that said. The 'Captn's points are well taken.. Enabling SIP is a requirement to enable KEXT injection and my oversight
To enable SIP...perform a Restart. After the BONG! Hold CMD-R until the system had had a chance to boot. In my case, around 9 seconds. Once Caps-Lock responds to input, press RETURN to continue the boot process. Once within the Mac GIU, follow the steps as defined following the above aforementioned jump.
It looks like SIP is enabled by default. Can I inject KEXT manually without installing third-party software?
My bad.. disable SIP... not enable. We need to disable SIP to enable KEXT injection. Although injecting a KEXT can be done manually, it's a multi-step process that, IMO.. is best left to a drag & drop operation.
Davinci performance is bad, Real bad compared to Windows. In my tests Dual RX480's are losing to a single GTX 980 and D300's
Absolutely no idea, however, my guess would be the actual limit is a overall bandwidth. So, e.g. the limit is equals to PCIe 1.1 x16. The card may actually able to run at PCIe 2.0 x4 in a x4 slot.
That sounds disappointing. But I'm not comparing to Windows. Strictly relative performance in MacOS.
And this is the reason I'll stick to actual application tests myself. I don't work or compete in benchmarks. We've seen enough of benchmarks that don't translate to real world performance to just ignore them, really.
namethisfile osx10.12 is public now, the rx4XX kind of work at the mo but..
there are some bugs, if there are some we know of that means there's more we dont know off (id gess) & may be new ones as they update drivers (even if there fixed in later updates)
so if your using pro apps to make a living then it's potentially risky to use a rx 4xx card as you primary may brake a project or end up wasting a lot of time etc..
but if your just having fun with it being on the bleeding edge or doing apps/games for fun then it's ok i gess but you may hit bugs & problems
if you can/do wait the cards will get cheaper, the bugs will get fixed & the drivers may even get optimized
there are some bugs, if there are some we know of that means there's more we dont know off (id gess) & may be new ones as they update drivers (even if there fixed in later updates)
so if your using pro apps to make a living then it's potentially risky to use a rx 4xx card as you primary may brake a project or end up wasting a lot of time etc..
but if your just having fun with it being on the bleeding edge or doing apps/games for fun then it's ok i gess but you may hit bugs & problems
if you can/do wait the cards will get cheaper, the bugs will get fixed & the drivers may even get optimized
Interesting. So, the RX480 is slower than the 280X?
Also, interesting is how you have two different AMD cards in there. Are those two cards running in a cMP, or, a hackintosh? If, you don't mind me asking.
Does OSX/MacOS leverage two GPU's and even two different GPU's? Does it help in FCPX?
he's running them both in a CMP, some apps can use two GPU's or more but only apps that say they will.
not all can use or see more than one GPU.
yes FCPX will use 2 GPU's (it's one of the few apps you can find that will)
ps the rx 480 is a budget card the 280x was not. also the 280x takes two power cables and the rx 4xx cards only take one so it's easy to run dual cards and gives the possibility to run more, he'd be able to run 4 if wanted as he's done a mod to his cmp (i think)
not all can use or see more than one GPU.
yes FCPX will use 2 GPU's (it's one of the few apps you can find that will)
ps the rx 480 is a budget card the 280x was not. also the 280x takes two power cables and the rx 4xx cards only take one so it's easy to run dual cards and gives the possibility to run more, he'd be able to run 4 if wanted as he's done a mod to his cmp (i think)
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Cool. I use FCPX (my own projects current.y. But I am applying to be a video editor or something) so this interest me greatly.
I already have an HD5770. So, will adding an RX470 or RX460 along with my HD5770 work? And, if so, will it be stable? Will I notice the performance boost, whilst editing in FCPX? And/or, using Motion5?
1 i dont think rx 4xx is 100% stable as mentioned it's beta drivers with bugs, i think/hope it will be stable soon with updates from apple.
2 the rx 460 is about half the speed of the rx 480 (id gess it's faster than your 5770)
3 :E no idea if mixing such a old card with a new one will work & if it dose if it will bring any real gains
4 the rx 470/480 will be fairly fast & cheep (rx 470 looking like a good deal unless you need lots of vram)
just wait, unless you want to buy one to play with
2 the rx 460 is about half the speed of the rx 480 (id gess it's faster than your 5770)
3 :E no idea if mixing such a old card with a new one will work & if it dose if it will bring any real gains
4 the rx 470/480 will be fairly fast & cheep (rx 470 looking like a good deal unless you need lots of vram)
just wait, unless you want to buy one to play with
Here are some cleaned up numbers for quick relative performance:
Edit: added Geekbench. Let's hope new drivers can bridge the performance gap between current Sierra and Windows 10 for the Polaris cards.
Edit: added Geekbench. Let's hope new drivers can bridge the performance gap between current Sierra and Windows 10 for the Polaris cards.
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Yeah. I was thinking of buying one to play with...
And, also work with.
If, she is the right one.
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Thanks for doing the work!
For a cheapish modern card with native support I would be happy with that. If I wanted performance I would always use Windows.
Well, I'm not quite happy as it stands now. I'm trying to buy the best 'current generation' AMD card and it comes in slower than my old card. I like it better when performance doubles each year and the price stays the same, if you know what I mean... Anyway…
My 280X is also a MSI Gaming card and I do like the way they look and feel. Also very quiet. It feels good that the power strain on the system goes down with these new cards, but like I've said before: it's not my main focus. While I would have liked the card to slightly outperform my 280X, the 8GB RAM is the great redeemer for me. I've had memory issues in both Cinema 4D (complex scenes and/or huge arcvis textures) and DaVinci Resolve (4k+ resolutions).
I hope—and do believe—that we'll see increased performance from these cards in future MacOS updates. Let's hope they get closer in performance to what they show under Windows 10.
I'm buying a new MacBook Pro regardless, and I'll wait to see what happens on the Mac Pro + iMac and external display front. But I won't wait another year for a new workstation. If Apple fails to deliver this fall, it's back to Windows on that front.