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Fastest Mac GPUs with full EFI boot screens, etc, GTX570 & GTX580

i am more interested in this :
freeflywing said:
I confirmed that GTX580 classy ultra can be boot internally...
it is absolutely working, no booting issue...
Click to expand...
does it mean there is a boot screen with a gtx 580 if plugged in internally?
macvid reported that there is none, even w the 570 which can be used internally as he says.
--> ??
if this is really true, plz report! what card do you use exactly? brand, etc...
i pm'ed you already about this ;)

kreispendl said:
after a tech guy (working in a computer company both selling apple and pcs) told me, that putting a pc version of a 570 in my mac pro would most likely kill it within 3 month due to the missing thermal management, i decided not to take that risk ;)
Click to expand...
my thinking says the termal issue is the same w the modded card. (and i dont think that's a problem)
the power requirements might be a problem, but that is the same, too for retail or modded.
right?

btw... does anybody know why there is this price gap?
$375 - GAINWARD GeForce GTX 580 3072MB Phantom, GeForce GTX 580, 3.0GB GDDR5, PCI-Express, Retail
$550 - EVGA GeForce GTX 580 SC, 3.0GB GDDR5, PCI-Express, Retail

@ kreispendl : what do you pay all in all to get it to austria?
 
kreispendl said:
after a tech guy (working in a computer company both selling apple and pcs) told me, that putting a pc version of a 570 in my mac pro would most likely kill it within 3 month due to the missing thermal management
Click to expand...

This is simply not true. The NVIDIA driver is managing power levels, GPU clocks, thermals etc just fine. As far as I can tell, AGPM handles all the official Apple cards, but the NVIDIA driver does all the power management for non-standard cards.

Edit: The GTX 570 has a TDP of ~220W, which fits perfectly in the 225W budget of the Mac Pro. The GTX 580 is more like 240W, which is slightly higher than what the Mac Pro can deliver. As a result, the GTX 570 (or eventually the GTX 680) would be the safest choice.
 
slughead said:
So let me get this straight:

The GTX 580 has two 8 pin plugs, you put the 2 motherboard 6 pins in parallel and plugged and used them for one of the 8 pin plugs, and the other 8 pin plug you drew from the Optical drive bay molex?
Click to expand...

The Classified Ultra has 2 @ 8 pin AND a 6 pin.

His method will FOR SURE burn out something.

Keep a fire extinguisher handy.
 
slughead said:
So let me get this straight:

The GTX 580 has two 8 pin plugs, you put the 2 motherboard 6 pins in parallel and plugged and used them for one of the 8 pin plugs, and the other 8 pin plug you drew from the Optical drive bay molex?
Click to expand...

yes correct, for 2008 model, it has two molex available in DVD bay, one is already occupied by DVD. all you need is a molex splitter, and connect the molex to a PCI-E 6 pin cable (which come with the GTX580)

for 2009 model and above need SATA to molex adapter & molex splitter.
 
MacVidCards said:
The Classified Ultra has 2 @ 8 pin AND a 6 pin.

His method will FOR SURE burn out something.

Keep a fire extinguisher handy.
Click to expand...

nope, you are wrong.

It really depends on what you are running. for broswing the internet, office work, idle etc, classified ultra draws less than 50w in total tested with kill-a-watt directly through a corsair tx650. for those mini 6 pins connector on the motherboard has already provided 150w in total to the GPU, so it provides great enough of wattage for ur idle usage gtx580.

however, I did mention this internal setup is not for gaming or intensive 3D rendering, (tested with cinema 4D rending, diablo 3 with full res best quality setup, AE & FCP rendering, parrelle 7 running league of legends high res etc), the GTX580 classy ultra draw somewhere from 310w-380w (it stick with the usage of 300w-320w most of the time), i have never seem it passed 400w. with more than 300w drawing, it is gonna be a big problem or it will burn ur motherboard.

dont forget the cables that you get the power from are all from the motherboard, not directly from the PSU, so its not a good idea to connect a powerful gpu internally, external psu is always recommend.
 
zzzachi said:
another question to those who experimented with gtx5xx cards?
if you use a non-modded standard card...

1) you get no boot screen. does this mean you cant see anything when booting into superuser mode?

2) can you leave your original ati 5770/5870 in, next to a gtx570/580?
so you will have a boot screen?

3) does it work to use the ati for display and the gtx for cuda/opencl rendering

4) what difference makes this 2.5/5.0 pcie speed issue in real world tests?
would luxmark tests show a significant difference?
Click to expand...

1, non-flashed nvidia card has no boot screen; you have to choose ur OS/ CD-ROM to boot whatever OS you need under the Syterm Preferences/ Startup Disk (these wont work with raid setup)
 
freeflywing said:
1, non-flashed nvidia card has no boot screen; you have to choose ur OS/ CD-ROM to boot whatever OS you need under the Syterm Preferences/ Startup Disk (these wont work with raid setup)
Click to expand...

Ok, but I would call this a booting issue ;)

do you know if the EVGA Classified Ultra $550 is better than the GAINWARD Phantom $375?
 
zzzachi said:
hey macvids, can i ask you...

the 680 (4g) definitely doesnt work in a mac pro right now, correct?
(i suppose due to the driver?)

which 580 3gb would you recommend in a mac pro? evga $475, gainward $350!!, zotac, ... ?
(airflow and or other reasons)
(i know... external PSU)

same question for 570 2.5gb evga or point of view?
Click to expand...

brand isn't a matter, it will work. just download nvidia driver for mac from nvidia.com

i did some research on this, ppl mostly recommend EVGA, it is outperform other brands of gtx 580.

----------
zzzachi said:
Ok, but I would call this a booting issue ;)

do you know if the EVGA Classified Ultra $550 is better than the GAINWARD Phantom $375?
Click to expand...

i dont know, i have never tested it, but as i read through the spec, evga is better. and if you do some research, ppl are always compare the evga and the msi gtx 580, sometimes asus, it seems like these brands are way more popular/ or maybe better than others.
 
freeflywing said:
nope, you are wrong.

It really depends on what you are running. for broswing the internet, office work, idle etc, classified ultra draws less than 50w in total tested with kill-a-watt directly through a corsair tx650. ....with more than 300w drawing, it is gonna be a big problem or it will burn ur motherboard.

dont forget the cables that you get the power from are all from the motherboard, not directly from the PSU, so its not a good idea to connect a powerful gpu internally, external psu is always recommend.
Click to expand...

So if you use the super high powered GTX580 3GB for browsing the internet, it works great. (or office work)

But you advise against doing anything 3D with it. (As do I)

What exactly would the point be then?

Sort of like a Ferrari that will explode if you go faster than 50 MPH. I think most people would eventually "see what happens" and find out.

The power connections on the 580 UC are good for 450 Watts. Mac Pro can be counted on for 225, exactly half. Not sure why this makes me "wrong".
 
Hey Macvidcards,
Sorry to ask you this in this thread but i need to know something. I just bought a gtx 480 from you for macpro 5.1. Is it just plug and play plus install cuda drivers? Or do i have to delete AGPM KEXT? Opencl hack? The instructions only tell me to plug it in. Let me know, i dont want to mess up my system
 
Mediah said:
Hey Macvidcards,
Sorry to ask you this in this thread but i need to know something. I just bought a gtx 480 from you for macpro 5.1. Is it just plug and play plus install cuda drivers? Or do i have to delete AGPM KEXT? Opencl hack? The instructions only tell me to plug it in. Let me know, i dont want to mess up my system
Click to expand...

You should ask future questions through Ebay but as this bears on many people I will answer here.

We recently got some revelations on how Nvidia drivers work and were able to update our EFIs to enable AGPM to work with our cards.

Thus, newly shipping GTX470 and GTX480 cards no longer require you to remove AGPM kext, that is why it is no longer mentioned in the description. (If your card has a handwritten "A" on the back it has this update)

The OpenCl issue is a different thing. Apple has the whole OpenCl framework set to work with all of these Fermi cards, but then turns it off right before shipping the OS updates. Got to keep those dusty 5870s looking good I guess.

Anyhow, the fix is a little more bother than I like but the good news is that you only need to do it if you are using OpenCl. If you got the card for CUDA, leave it turned off.

Basically, you need to drag the "GeForceGLDriver.bundle" to your desktop to make a copy of it. Drag it also to another folder to make a 2nd copy in case you screw up the fix.

The fix here is from Netkas.org.

http://netkas.org/?p=1113

Inside that bundle (right click to open it up) you need to find the actual file.

Here is the path:

/System/Library/Extensions/GeForceGLDriver.bundle/Contents/MacOS/GeForceGLDriver

Drag "GeForceGLDriver" to a hex editor.

Now do a search and replace.

Find:

EB A8 83 F8 02 7C 15

Replace with:

EB A8 83 F8 03 7C 15
—
Find:

78 E8 83 F8 02 7C 11

Replace with:

78 E8 83 F8 03 7C 11

Now save this file back to it's location on your desktop.

Here is where it gets tricky.

You can just drag it back to the Extension folder and overwrite the unpatched one but the permissions will be all mssed up and will require a couple runnings of "repair Permissions" to fix.

Better to use "Kexthelper" or a similar app to install the bundle, and then run a "repair permissions" anyway. Kexthelper will need to be forced to quit, it just hasn't ever shut down by itself for me. Not sure why it never gets fixed. There are other utilities to do this, you can even do it in terminal if you know how (or Google it)



Now restart and try to fire up FCPX or one of the Luxmark OpenCl benches.

If it works, you did it right.

if it doesn't, you screwed up and should just reinstall the original that you saved and stick to potato farming or whatever it is you do when not geeking out.

If it works out, please consider sending Netkas a buck or 2. This isn't just to be nice, it is also because the 10.7.5 driver doesn't have these strings in it so someone smart (like Netkas) needs to figure out the next fix !!!
 
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MacVidCards said:
Y
Cindori's "Kextdrop" would be a nice easy choice, but I don't know if he ever finished fixing it to accept bundles. He was just about to a couple months ago and may very well have done so, in which case I would recommend you use it and send him a modest donation for helping you out. His app at least knew how to quit.
Click to expand...

yee um. had completely forgotten about this, but I fixed it now, .bundle, .plugin or .ppp should now work fine. just do a "Check for updates".
 
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I need to get my hands on a MacPro...Ive been working with my G5 for a while now, and I just need an Intel....I just really cant justify buying any of the new ones, for the pure fact of the video card...These hacks make it even more tempting!
 
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