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El Capitan/Yosemite on 256MB of VRAM

TechInit

TechInit

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 10, 2019
31
1
Scotland
Hey,

So, I'm thinking of investing in a 3, 1 Mac Pro, with a Radeon 2600 XT. It has 256MB of GDDR4 VRAM, and I was wondering if it would run on Yosemite or El Capitan. I'll definitely upgrade the Graphics Card to something better down the line, like a Quadro 4000, as I'm into video/ graphical applications, or something like a 5870, or one like an RX 580 so I can upgrade to Mojave. Just needing to know if El Capitan or Yosemite won't look like hot garbage if I install it with the 2600 XT

Thanks!
 
You can’t run an RX580 or similar on a 3,1- the CPU doesn’t support the requirements for the drivers.
Yosemite and El Capitan will work fine with the 2600XT, but you obviously won’t want to be doing any gaming or things which need good GPU performance.
 
I would recommend a Radeon HD 7950. It should support boot screens even back to the Mac Pro 1,1. I think this would be the best card with boot screen suport on the cMP1,1.

Even though the 7950 supports 10.14 Mojave, I believe there is no SSE4.1 emulator to allow even 10.13 High Sierra on the cMP1,1...
 
TechInit said:
Hey,

So, I'm thinking of investing in a 3, 1 Mac Pro, with a Radeon 2600 XT. It has 256MB of GDDR4 VRAM, and I was wondering if it would run on Yosemite or El Capitan.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

I am running a 3,1 with a 2600XT, and another 3,1 with a GT120 (512MB) and they not only both run El Cap' just fine, but I can't tell any difference between them for normal non-GPU intensive tasks. The 2nd one also as a patched install of Sierra on it and that runs fine too.
 
My 1,1 (upgraded to 2,1) would boot el cap with a 256mb card (7300GT) but there were obvious graphics issues, to the point that it made using the computer nearly impossible. El Cap thought the card only had 8mb VRAM according to system profiler. I have replaced that with a 1GB Quadro K600 which is very cheaply available from ebay. You can also fit a Quadro 410 which is the same card with only 512mb RAM. Either of them work great, obviously they are not gaming cards but for normal desktop use they are fine. There are no boot screens, as expected, but I will keep the GT7300 around to fit should I ever need it.
 
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