Resolved Gainward GTX580

[FlatEarth]

Greetings fellas,

I am thinking of adding the Gainward GTX580 3GB to my MacPro "2012" (and yes, it was given to me, I didn't buy it, but hey, even I'm not that pedantic to say "no, I'm not taking it, it's not new").

I've scanned the threads and the opinions seem to differ slightly when it comes to the GTX 580. The nominal TDP of the 580 is 244W. The PCI-x slot provides us with 75W, the "authentic" 6-pin-PCI-x with another 75 and the 6-pin to 8-pin PCI-x-hack gives us another 75 for a total of 225W of power.

The power supply itself is 980W, which is more than enough to feed a 580 and all the other components, this is about the PCI-x-rails here, not the total power the PSU can dish out.

I've read reports of people claiming it's no problem, and that one could connect it without any problems, others claim one needs an external power supply with a proper 8-pin.

Being someone who's blown up more than one i7-3960X when experimenting with power supplies, I am rather reticent to just hook the bad girl up and go for a round of high-FPS action gaming, out of fear of ruining my "new" MacPro.

Can someone give me an educated opinion on this, maybe with own experiences?

Thanks a lot,

Sami.

Edit: Best answer by Asgorath, thanks a lot mate!

 

[Asgorath]

I have a GTX 580 in one of my machines at the office. I use a 6-pin to 8-pin converter cable. So far, I haven't had any problems, and I've run the system in some pretty stressful situations.

However, there is still a chance (however small) that you will burn something out or otherwise damage the system if you do it this way. There are several other options, including a small power supply that fits into the DVD drive bay etc.

My general position these days is do as I say, not as I do -- that is, I wouldn't really recommend just running with a converter cable. In fact, I generally recommend people not buy the 580 and stick with the 570. Since you got a 580 for free, you could give it a go and see what happens. It's not like you're trying to drive a 300W monster, but who knows.

FWIW Mac OS doesn't seem to like cards with more than 2GB for a variety of reasons, Netkas found one hack that let OpenCL work but there might be other problems.

 

[FlatEarth]

Gainward GTX580

Alright, thanks a lot for that info. I've sourced an external power supply and connected the card up and it's working like a charm.

Now, the question is, what's the deal with the EFI? I've read the thread by MacVideoCards, but haven't been able to figure exactly what I've got to do to get the 580 to show me a boot screen from which I might even be able to select Windows or MacOS. Is this a hardware-level hack or a driver modification or...?

Thanks for your help!

Sami

 

[Asgorath]

You don't need a boot screen to switc between Mac and Windows, you can switch the boot partition from System Preferences or the Boot Camp control panel.

 

[FlatEarth]

Asgorath, you now have hero status for me. I installed the GTX, it's working, Windows 7 Ultimate is working, I can game, I can DaVinci Reslove, Speedgrade, Premiere, the lot. Thanks a lot mate! If you were around, I'd buy you a pint!

 

[DanielCoffey]

For swapping OS, look at the FREE app, BootChamp.

 

[BigJohno]

I use a program called quickboot to go between systems.