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Thanks, yes, power is a limitation, but these things to have high quality 1000W PSUs and it's not like I am going to be running a pair of them in SLI.

I am just trying to decide if I should go for it or hold off for the upcoming Pascal GPUs which are meant to be a massive leap forward in performance/power draw.

The current architecture is pushing over 1.5 years old and I am looking towards the oculus rift just because it is awesome.

I have a 2009 dual socket that will get bumped up to either a pair of x5680 or x5690 CPUs. The 5680 seems to be the sweet spot as far as the price/performance ratio goes. I know that they are rated higher power draw also, but I am sure I have seen builds here where people have the x5690s and a GTX 980 or above GPU.

We all know the 980W power supply of the Mac Pro is capable of handling the video cards. It's the motherboard traces that lead to the 6 pin auxiliary power connectors that are incapable of proving 150W.
 
We all know the 980W power supply of the Mac Pro is capable of handling the video cards. It's the motherboard traces that lead to the 6 pin auxiliary power connectors that are incapable of proving 150W.

+1. I considered a 980 Ti but ultimately went with a 980 because I was uncomfortable with the power requirements of the 980 Ti - one 6-pin and one 8-pin for most models, two 8-pins for some of them. I found a EVGA reference 980 (i.e. not overclocked) with ACX 2.0 cooling that runs on two 6-pins. It has stomped everything I throw at it, and I can push it as hard as I want without worrying about my motherboard traces. I know there are probably people out there happily using a 980 Ti on their cMP but in my case I decided that the extra 20% performance wasn't worth the risk. You would need to evaluate that cost/benefit for your own case. I believe that the flashed 980 Tis from MacVidCards may be modified to run more safely even with an 8-pin involved but cannot confirm.
 
f78d6966be1821917f7709e67046c86d66b15066_23790.jpg


The Geforce 980 blows away my old Radeon 5870 in Heaven and Valley in the fullscreen mode.
I have decided to keep the Geforce.
 
I have a question. How do I install windows if I don`t have a bootscreen anymore?
I tried to boot from DVD with the C key but it won`t work.

I have a Mac Pro 1,1( now 2,1 ) with 2 x5355, 16GB Ram, a Elsa Gladiator GeForce GTX 550 Ti 1023 MB and I am running OS 10.10.5( soon 10.11 ).
 
Sorry if this has already been covered, but do you need to install any drivers to get an nVidia card to work well on the Mac Pro? I have a EVGA GTX570 1.2GB on the way, for my 8-core 2.8 Mac Pro 3,1, and I have read conflicting evidence as to whether the CUDA drivers are needed etc.
Thanks.
 
^^^^Yes, it's been covered many many times! For a GTX570 Nvidia drivers are not required, Apple drivers will work just fine. But, Nvidia drivers may offer a performance advantage.

Lou
 
I am curious... just how far can you get with Windows rescue media with a non-EFI nVidia GPU in a Mac Pro?

I assume not very far since the drivers needed to be able to view any basic rescue media menus will not be present.

Thx
 
Is the 970 fully powered?

Frequently new cards in Windows won't work right until drivers are installed or it can find the port a display is connected to. These things don't absolutly REQUIRE an EFI card, but they are certainly much easier with one.
 
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Frequently new cards in Windows won't work right until drivers are installed or it can find the port a display is connected to. These things don't absolutly REQUIRE an EFI card, but they are certainly much easier with one.

+1 to this. I installed Windows 10 on a separate SSD in my MP 4,1->5,1 with a flashed 980 and could not access the full range of resolutions for my monitor until I installed the nVidia drivers. I didn't test this, but I would guess I didn't have any acceleration either.
 
I installed windows 8.1 on my mac pro 5,1(10.11.3) in EFI mode, its working fine and I have had no problems at all. I used the old ATI 5770 mac card to run this install since its an EFI card.

When I tried putting my unflashed PC GTX 970 Strix card in, win8 just goes to a black screen. I'm assuming it cant detect the video card.

is there anyway to fix this?

Apple EFI and "CSM" (aka legacy mode BIOS emulation) boot is possible in classic MacPro with Windows.
I guess the way it works is by checking if any boot volume has a GUID Partition Table and a bless flag, then enable EFI, if not, fall back to CSM. (for some reason usb drives will always enable EFI)

If you install Windows 8 with an EFI card (with bootcamp or USB drive methods), it will enable EFI.
When you format your hard drive under advanced mode, a GPT will be used. (check for a partition called "Reserved MSR")
If you preformatted your drive with MBR, windows will refuse to install and force you to format again.
Then, if you switch for an non-EFI GPU, you get a black screen (+blinking cursor on top left of screen). This is because no EFI is present in the GPU ROM.

If you boot Windows 8 with a install DVD (without bootcamp), Mac HD unplugged, with a Non-EFI GPU, MacPro will switch to CSM and you will get display. If you format your Windows drive it will be an MBR partition table.
You can proceed to win install and install drivers.

I've tested this with my PC GTX 970.
Now, I just use a flashed ATI 7970, since it makes my life easier.

so do i have to use both efi and non-efi cards for windows to work?

No.
 
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Is the 970 fully powered?

Frequently new cards in Windows won't work right until drivers are installed or it can find the port a display is connected to. These things don't absolutly REQUIRE an EFI card, but they are certainly much easier with one.

Not sure what do you mean by fully powered. I have a 6pin to 8 pin connector and the card itself has a 8 pin connector only I assume it is.
I tried to install the nvidia driver with the efi ati card but it won't install. I removed the ati driver and tried again and still won't install. both times giving me “Nvidia graphics driver can not find compatible graphics hardware“ msg.

Then I tried to install it from mac side with non efi card and wine bottle but it just got stuck on the initial driver install image. won't even load the program.
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Apple EFI and "CSM" (aka legacy mode BIOS emulation) boot is possible in classic MacPro with Windows.
I guess the way it works is by checking if any boot volume has a GUID Partition Table and a bless flag, then enable EFI, if not, fall back to CSM. (for some reason usb drives will always enable EFI)

If you install Windows 8 with an EFI card (with bootcamp or USB drive methods), it will enable EFI.
When you format your hard drive under advanced mode, a GPT will be used. (check for a partition called "Reserved MSR")
If you preformatted your drive with MBR, windows will refuse to install and force you to format again.
Then, if you switch for an non-EFI GPU, you get a black screen (+blinking cursor on top left of screen). This is because no EFI is present in the GPU ROM.

If you boot Windows 8 with a install DVD (without bootcamp), Mac HD unplugged, with a Non-EFI GPU, MacPro will switch to CSM and you will get display. If you format your Windows drive it will be an MBR partition table.
You can proceed to win install and install drivers.

I've tested this with my PC GTX 970.
Now, I just use a flashed ATI 7970, since it makes my life easier.


I installed windows using this method cause i keep getting the "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk has an MBR partition table. On EFI systems, Windows can only be installed GPT disks." malarkey

diskpart
select disk 0
clean
convert gpt
create partition efi size=200
format fs=fat32
create partition msr size=128
create partition primary size=179200
format fs=ntfs quick label=Windows
exit

then I downloaded the bootcamp patch from apple and installed that.
Windows will run and works with ati card but the screen doesn't get a signal with the non efi 970.

I have Mac and windows on separate ssds
 
Not sure what do you mean by fully powered. I have a 6pin to 8 pin connector and the card itself has a 8 pin connector only I assume it is.

No idea what this means.

Do you have all power input ports on the card plugged into power output ports from the Mac?

Windows not seeing it would seem to imply an issue. Check in Device Manager and see what it says about the card there.
 
No idea what this means.

Do you have all power input ports on the card plugged into power output ports from the Mac?

Windows not seeing it would seem to imply an issue. Check in Device Manager and see what it says about the card there.
I do. How do I check in device manager if i can't even get to the windows side?
 
You still have not clarified how the card is powered. Many of the dual 6 to single 8 adapters have one side that can't work with just a single 6 pin input. If you have a single 6 to 8 plug, it should work. External PSUs need to be triggered on.

If you are saying that you have a 6 to 6 and a 6 to 8 then I am curious why you don't use both cards to get up and running and then remove 5770. This would be easiest choice. EFI cards are much easier to deal with, as they don't require a working OS to work.
 
You still have not clarified how the card is powered. Many of the dual 6 to single 8 adapters have one side that can't work with just a single 6 pin input. If you have a single 6 to 8 plug, it should work. External PSUs need to be triggered on.

If you are saying that you have a 6 to 6 and a 6 to 8 then I am curious why you don't use both cards to get up and running and then remove 5770. This would be easiest choice. EFI cards are much easier to deal with, as they don't require a working OS to work.
it's a single mini 6 pin to 8pin. not sure if that clears things up.
I'll get another mini 6 pin to 6 pin to try it with 2 cards
 
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I have a Mac Pro 4,1 Early 2009 which came with an Apple ATI card with EFI. That's my main card, and I want to upgrade it to a NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti LP. I bought and installed the non-EFI NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti LP, and discovered it did not need a power cable. I ordered the power cable since I read that it would need one. I'm not going to bother returning the power cable. Anyway, it seems to work alright with the Insanely Mac NVIDIA driver manager (thanks so much for that).

But there's no sound with my computer anymore. My computer's Realtek audio hardware is hijacked and overridden whenever the NVIDIA GPU is in the PCI slot, even when it is not connected in handshake to the monitor. I read some info about this, none of it helpful, but after upgrading the Realtek drivers on my Windows bootcamp partition from the Realtek web site, I was able to get the audio running through the NVIDIA card's HDMI connection to the monitor which has a headphone jack. That's only on the Windows operating system.

However, the latest version of OS X does not have any sound, neither from the audio port nor the headphone jack in my monitor. So when I run OS X with the NVIDIA card installed, my computer has no sound at all. As a professional musician, you can understand how frustrating this ordeal is. Whenever I want to have audio on my computer, I have to remove the NVIDIA GPU from the PCI slot. Whenever I want nice graphics on my computer, I have to put the NVIDIA GPU back in. I guess I can't have both audio and video with NVIDIA.

I am looking for a solution to have both this NVIDIA GPU while also having sound come out of the computer, both on Windows and Mac, but primarily on Mac, since I can "make do" with the noisy headphone jack on my monitor under Windows for now.
 
I have a Mac Pro 4,1 Early 2009 which came with an Apple ATI card with EFI. That's my main card, and I want to upgrade it to a NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti LP. I bought and installed the non-EFI NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti LP, and discovered it did not need a power cable. I ordered the power cable since I read that it would need one. I'm not going to bother returning the power cable. Anyway, it seems to work alright with the Insanely Mac NVIDIA driver manager (thanks so much for that).

But there's no sound with my computer anymore. My computer's Realtek audio hardware is hijacked and overridden whenever the NVIDIA GPU is in the PCI slot, even when it is not connected in handshake to the monitor. I read some info about this, none of it helpful, but after upgrading the Realtek drivers on my Windows bootcamp partition from the Realtek web site, I was able to get the audio running through the NVIDIA card's HDMI connection to the monitor which has a headphone jack. That's only on the Windows operating system.

However, the latest version of OS X does not have any sound, neither from the audio port nor the headphone jack in my monitor. So when I run OS X with the NVIDIA card installed, my computer has no sound at all. As a professional musician, you can understand how frustrating this ordeal is. Whenever I want to have audio on my computer, I have to remove the NVIDIA GPU from the PCI slot. Whenever I want nice graphics on my computer, I have to put the NVIDIA GPU back in. I guess I can't have both audio and video with NVIDIA.

I am looking for a solution to have both this NVIDIA GPU while also having sound come out of the computer, both on Windows and Mac, but primarily on Mac, since I can "make do" with the noisy headphone jack on my monitor under Windows for now.

Have you tried selecting a different output device in System Preferences > Sound or the menu bar volume control (option-click)?
 
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