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MP 1,1-5,1 Extremely low graphic performances on Mac Pro 5.1

Nessdufrat

Nessdufrat

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 19, 2015
164
36
Between France and Switzerland
Hey guys,
I recently got the opportunity to grab a Mac Pro 2010, dual CPU 3.46Ghz, 128GB ram, with a radeon RX580 8GB graphic card, and I thought, good deal! I had a Mac Pro 2010, dual CPU 3.33Ghz, 64GB ram with a Geforce GTX980 4GB graphic card, not bad either, I figured I could sell mine and use the new one, get a little bit of a boost in the graphics department.
But.

I have a dual boot Mac os Sierra and Windows 7, on different physical SSD, I simply took all my drivers to put them in the new mac, all went well, and yesterday I thought I would play a little Tomb Raider (the latest one) to check the new card, expecting beautiful graphics and good speed. Bleh.
Pixels everywhere, and the computer was lagging like it was an old pentium 1 or something. I thought, this is super weird. The setting hadn't been changed, I was running the latest AMD driver... after maybe 30 minutes, the game simply crashed with a message from windows saying that not enough graphic memory was available. Like, yeah, 8GB is not enough...

So I did a benchmark with 3DMark and got an astonishing 3300... instead of something around 13000. WTF. Was the card fried or something?
I put my GeForce back inside. Benchmark: 3000. Again, instead of 12000. This card was working perfectly last week, when it was inside the old mac pro. I never did any benchmark, though, so I can't compare, but it was running Shadow of the Tomb Raider flawlessly.

I thought, maybe that's a problem with Windows. I decided to try the Radeon card with Sierra and Blender. I got a time around 13 minutes when 2 minutes were expected.

So, bad PCIe slot? I changed the slot. Same thing. Bad RAM? I went the whole way and swapped the daughter board with both CPUs. Same result.
I went all in and swapped everything. I simply exchanged the computers. I put everything back in my old mac, and the new graphic card. Same result.

I'm at a loss here. What the heck is happening? How come two graphic cards, at least one of which I had no reason to suspect was faulty since I was using it until today without any trouble, are both failing in two different computers? Could that be software related?
I can't really test a third graphic card here, and all I have is an old PC where I put the GTX graphic card but my friend with the steam account and therefore the 3DMark access is gone for the weekend for a RPG and I need his phone for the login. So at the moment I can't test the GTX980 in another computer with 3DMark.

What could have gone wrong? Two bad graphic cards? Like that? The seller, who actually seemed really honest and kept in touch, would have sold me a dud, and just today, my own graphic card failed too?

Thanks for any suggestion! I've been trying a bunch of things (like the slot thing, the ram thing, swapping the computers...) with my friend today but I've run out of ideas...
 
Step 1 in troubleshooting - clean install OS to a clean/new/blank drive. Test from that clean install. Eliminates any software and/or OS issues. Then take next steps from there.
 
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bsbeamer said:
Step 1 in troubleshooting - clean install OS to a clean/new/blank drive. Test from that clean install. Eliminates any software and/or OS issues. Then take next steps from there.
Click to expand...

My Sierra install is from about three weeks ago. There’s nothing except for Blender, that I installed today, and the drivers for the nvidia card. But I can totally do a clean install on a new ssd, as I was planning to do that anyway for the old Mac. I don’t think it will solve a problem that’s happening both on windows and on Sierra, though. That’s why I was super disappointed to see that the problem was also happening when running Sierra. I thought it was OS related :/
 
bsbeamer said:
Step 1 in troubleshooting - clean install OS to a clean/new/blank drive. Test from that clean install. Eliminates any software and/or OS issues. Then take next steps from there.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I was thinking that too. It could very well be a driver issue. Weird it being an issue both in macOS and Windows, but it's a possibility
[doublepost=1565988595][/doublepost]
Nessdufrat said:
My Sierra install is from about three weeks ago. There’s nothing except for Blender, that I installed today, and the drivers for the nvidia card. But I can totally do a clean install on a new ssd, as I was planning to do that anyway for the old Mac. I don’t think it will solve a problem that’s happening both on windows and on Sierra, though. That’s why I was super disappointed to see that the problem was also happening when running Sierra. I thought it was OS related :/
Click to expand...


Hold on... Sierra? If I recall correctly the drivers for the 580 aren't in Sierra. That requires High Sierra 10.12.6 or later.
Or kext modification
 
No, it works well with Sierra.
Anyway, I’m running a clean install of Mojave that I had prepared on a new SSD since I was planning on selling the old Mac and I put the SSD inside the computer and striped it of everything else except for the usb 3 card and one HD. And, of course, the Radeon graphic card. No windows dual boot on this one. I also reset the nvram. Smc was reset anyway since I had to take the plug out for a while.
I’m running a blender benchmark now and the problem appears to be the same.

Also, I managed to grab my friend with the steam account and ran a 3DMark benchmark on the GTX980 inside my old PC. Benchmark is 2900, even worse than on the Mac.
So what should I conclude? Both my cards are fried? My GeForce card, which was fine, got fried the instant it was plugged inside the new Mac? Is such a thing even possible? Or was is always that bad and I never noticed? (I don’t know how it would be possible but I never felt the need to do a benchmark before)
Right now, blender benchmark is taking almost 13 minutes to do the 3D rendering that normally takes 3 minutes with that card.
That’s the result on a clean Mojave install.
 
Nessdufrat said:
No, it works well with Sierra.
Anyway, I’m running a clean install of Mojave that I had prepared on a new SSD since I was planning on selling the old Mac and I put the SSD inside the computer and striped it of everything else except for the usb 3 card and one HD. And, of course, the Radeon graphic card. No windows dual boot on this one. I also reset the nvram. Smc was reset anyway since I had to take the plug out for a while.
I’m running a blender benchmark now and the problem appears to be the same.

Also, I managed to grab my friend with the steam account and ran a 3DMark benchmark on the GTX980 inside my old PC. Benchmark is 2900, even worse than on the Mac.
So what should I conclude? Both my cards are fried? My GeForce card, which was fine, got fried the instant it was plugged inside the new Mac? Is such a thing even possible? Or was is always that bad and I never noticed? (I don’t know how it would be possible but I never felt the need to do a benchmark before)
Right now, blender benchmark is taking almost 13 minutes to do the 3D rendering that normally takes 3 minutes with that card.
That’s the result on a clean Mojave install.
Click to expand...

You mean this Blender Benchmark?
RX580 1340:2150 BMW.png
 
I looked for the performance of the RX580 on the blender benchmark and it said about 3 minutes for the car. Besides, I mostly compared the 3DMark benchmarks and mine was 3300 when normal ones were around 13000 (some were above 24000 but that's probably overclocked cards).
Oh, and it couldn't run Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and crashed the game after 30 minutes saying "not enough graphic memory", when my GTX980, which is only 4GB and way older, way running it flawlessly. That's definitely weird.
 
I believe RX580s will run in Sierra, but only the latest 12.6. They don't identify properly, but they do work. I've installed one on a friends. He wants to stay at 12.6 because he uses FCP7.

Another friend (2012, 2xx5680) and I (4/5,1, 1xX5680) have them installed, running 14.6. In my experience (Mac, no Win) they got better with each dot release.
 
Nessdufrat said:
I looked for the performance of the RX580 on the blender benchmark and it said about 3 minutes for the car. Besides, I mostly compared the 3DMark benchmarks and mine was 3300 when normal ones were around 13000 (some were above 24000 but that's probably overclocked cards).
Oh, and it couldn't run Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and crashed the game after 30 minutes saying "not enough graphic memory", when my GTX980, which is only 4GB and way older, way running it flawlessly. That's definitely weird.
Click to expand...

Which test in 3D Mark?

Anyway, do you believe that OC can make a 13000 card score 24000? (~85% improvement)

Where you saw RX580 can finish BMW test in 3min?
 
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It was Fire Strike. I saw benchmarks over 24000 with that card so I assumed it had something to do with at least some overclocking (and probably a very good system to go with it).
As for the blender benchmark, I saw that on a website that was doing a review of several graphic cards, using a bunch of different tests, and that BMW test was included. The result for the RX580 was around 3:25 minutes. It really stuck me because mine took ten minutes more to finish that test.
But if that’s the performances I’m supposed to expect, then, ok :(

My friend suggested I should put the gtx980 back inside and test tomb raider again. Which I tried to go. Only to have the game crash as soon as it started. So I can’t even try to check that. Seems like the computer is now a big mess.
I’m reinstalling the game now. Maybe windows didn’t like having three graphic cards rotating inside that computer.

I tested the flashed gtx680 that the guy also gave me with the computer. I was so happy to finally have a flashed graphic card, no more putting back that old dusty thing inside everytime I have to do a PRAM reset or I need to use the disk utility from the recovery mode... but the benchmark from 3D Mark was so low the software rejected it, deeming it invalid. Lol. 1640. Apparently it was too shameful to ever be posted online.

I guess none of my graphic cards are fried, my computer is just a poor old thing and whichever graphic card I put inside, the performances will be hindered by the CPU and the rest of the hardware... still, I wonder why it was doing so well with the gtx980 on Shadow of the tomb raider and it crashed with the Radeon RX580, which has double the ram...

Oh, and yes, I’m on the latest Sierra release. I have a dual boot with windows seven, and since I don’t want to upgrade to Windows 10 for all sorts of reasons (the first one being, it sucks), I can’t be on an APFS system since I don’t have a boot screen and I need to use bootcamp. Windows 7 can’t see the APFS files so if I’m on high Sierra, I can’t boot from windows to my Mac session...
 
Nessdufrat said:
It was Fire Strike. I saw benchmarks over 24000 with that card so I assumed it had something to do with at least some overclocking (and probably a very good system to go with it).
As for the blender benchmark, I saw that on a website that was doing a review of several graphic cards, using a bunch of different tests, and that BMW test was included. The result for the RX580 was around 3:25 minutes. It really stuck me because mine took ten minutes more to finish that test.
But if that’s the performances I’m supposed to expect, then, ok :(

My friend suggested I should put the gtx980 back inside and test tomb raider again. Which I tried to go. Only to have the game crash as soon as it started. So I can’t even try to check that. Seems like the computer is now a big mess.
I’m reinstalling the game now. Maybe windows didn’t like having three graphic cards rotating inside that computer.

I tested the flashed gtx680 that the guy also gave me with the computer. I was so happy to finally have a flashed graphic card, no more putting back that old dusty thing inside everytime I have to do a PRAM reset or I need to use the disk utility from the recovery mode... but the benchmark from 3D Mark was so low the software rejected it, deeming it invalid. Lol. 1640. Apparently it was too shameful to ever be posted online.

I guess none of my graphic cards are fried, my computer is just a poor old thing and whichever graphic card I put inside, the performances will be hindered by the CPU and the rest of the hardware... still, I wonder why it was doing so well with the gtx980 on Shadow of the tomb raider and it crashed with the Radeon RX580, which has double the ram...

Oh, and yes, I’m on the latest Sierra release. I have a dual boot with windows seven, and since I don’t want to upgrade to Windows 10 for all sorts of reasons (the first one being, it sucks), I can’t be on an APFS system since I don’t have a boot screen and I need to use bootcamp. Windows 7 can’t see the APFS files so if I’m on high Sierra, I can’t boot from windows to my Mac session...
Click to expand...

That gaming thing looks really something wrong, but I believe you misinterpret those benchmarks.

For Firestrike, those high scores are triple RX580 score, not single RX580, and most likely as you said, those are the OCed score.
Screenshot 2019-08-17 at 9.21.21 AM.png


Besides, did you really run FireStrike test, but not FireStrike Extreme, or FireStrike Ultra?

For Blender Benchmark, it will help if you can show us the link. Running the BMW blender demo in Blender is NOT the same as running that Blender Benchmark. It is possible to render the BMW demo in Blender with a RX580 in just 3min, that's just depends on settings. For that demo, you will get something like this in the end, but not just a time.
4K.png


Back to the gaming thing. You should completely clean up the Nvidia driver before you install the RX580. It really looks that you have driver / software issue more than hardware issue.
 
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h9826790 said:
Back to the gaming thing. You should completely clean up the Nvidia driver before you install the RX580. It really looks that you have driver / software issue more than hardware issue.
Click to expand...

Yeah that's what I'm thinking too. I'd recommend using DDU to uninstall the drivers. Boot into safe mode too when you do it just to be extra sure it goes to plan.
 
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Yep, I wanted to do more tests with the gtx back inside and the game kept crashing so I completely uninstalled the AMD driver (even though it was disabled), reinstalled the gtx driver, rebooted twice, and then I was able to play like before, no weird artifacts, everything was nice and was flowing properly.
Now I have to try that tomorrow with the RX580.
I have the Strix version, with the 3 fans.

For the website, I'll have to look through the search history. I was using blender benchmark, maybe on the website they used the demo, I don't know. But still, it was striking me as really long and also, for a card with 8GB ram, I was expecting better performances. That could be, like you said, driver related, and I have to give it another chance once I get rid of the nvidia drivers and stuff and install the AMD again.
I uninstalled everything using the regular uninstall program feature from Windows the first time. Might not have been enough.
 
Nessdufrat said:
I uninstalled everything using the regular uninstall program feature from Windows the first time. Might not have been enough.
Click to expand...

It isn't always, no. There's a program called DDU. I think it stands for Device Driver Uninstaller. It's in my experience the best way of getting entirely rid of a graphics driver.
 
Thanks for that! I actually found the program yesterday during the night and decided to do everything after a good night sleep.
So here are things: I completely uninstalled both drivers (Nvidia and AMD) in safe mode using DDU, which is really a great program, I think it will definitely come in handy in the future. Then I rebooted and installed the latest AMD drivers for the Radeon card. Then I was able to play, no weird artifacts or lag.
The 3DMark benchmark remains at 3303, which is meh, but apparently not that bad, considering that I was always comparing to people who had systems waaaay more recent and also some of them have multiple GPUs installed.
Also, I am indeed using Fire Strike Ultra. I can’t run Time Spy, which is the one everyone seems to be using, since I don’t have direct X 12.
So it seems I’m on the lower average of the benchmark for that card.
My GTX980 card is probably also performing correctly.

Good surprise, on top of that, which has nothing to do with the rest, is that the GTX680 card that the guy gave me and that is a flashed card, is running Mojave without troubles, which I didn’t expect.
I’m not a gamer or anything (as you probably figured out from my total lack of knowledge about overclocking and card performances ^^), but that Tomb Raider game was the one I installed in the computer to test the performances of the GTX card and later, the new configuration with the 2 CPUs. So that’s my go-to test when I want to check if everything is performing as it should ^^

It was indeed simply a driver problem, and some unrealistic expectations on my side ^^

But I learnt a lot, and thanks to you guys I now found out about the DDU program, which is a must have.
 
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