Geforce GTX 1080 or Radeon Pulse Sapphire RX 580 in Mac Pro

[Mac Hammer Fan]

I am considering putting the following cards in one of my good old Mac Pros.
I can buy the Geforce for 350 EUR, the Radeon for 220 EUR. The advantage of the latter is that I can run Mojave. The advantage of the first would be that it is considerably faster (74%) and uses less power. (165 Watt vs 185)
Has anyone of you used these cards and can you just report your experience? Is the difference really noticeable? Which card is most recommended?
https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-1080-vs-AMD-RX-580/3603vs3923

 

[Pentaxer]

Choose Vega 56:

Pros: much faster than 580, Mojave.
Cons: need some magic to be power supplied.

 

[Mac Hammer Fan]

Choose Vega 56:

Pros: much faster than 580, Mojave.
Cons: need some magic to be power supplied.

Unfortunately, all my SATA ports are occupied. Additional internal power is not possible.

 

[Squuiid]

I am considering putting the following cards in one of my good old Mac Pros.
I can buy the Geforce for 350 EUR, the Radeon for 220 EUR. The advantage of the latter is that I can run Mojave. The advantage of the first would be that it is considerably faster (74%) and uses less power. (165 Watt vs 185)
Has anyone of you used these cards and can you just report your experience? Is the difference really noticeable? Which card is most recommended?
https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-1080-vs-AMD-RX-580/3603vs3923

Owning both of those cards I can wholeheartedly recommend that you go with a Sapphire RX580 Pulse 8GB, as recommended by Apple. It just works better, full stop.

 

[bsbeamer]

Own NVIDIA GTX 1080 FE 8GB and Sapphire Pulse RX 580 8GB. If you want/need Mojave, the answer is easy - RX580. If you can stay on High Sierra, and deal with NVIDIA Web Driver updates, and/or need CUDA, the answer is easy - GTX 1080. If you do not need CUDA, the RX580 is becoming more and more tuned for macOS with each update and would recommend RX580 moving forward.

 

[Manzanito]

I am considering putting the following cards in one of my good old Mac Pros.
I can buy the Geforce for 350 EUR, the Radeon for 220 EUR. The advantage of the latter is that I can run Mojave. The advantage of the first would be that it is considerably faster (74%) and uses less power. (165 Watt vs 185)
Has anyone of you used these cards and can you just report your experience? Is the difference really noticeable? Which card is most recommended?
https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-1080-vs-AMD-RX-580/3603vs3923

Depends a lot on the use case. For fcpx and the ability to use mojave, the rx 580 works really good.

 

[Mac Hammer Fan]

9 votes for the Radeon, 0 for the Geforce. There is no doubt the Radeon wins. Thanks everyone, for your usefull advice. I decided to replace my old Geforce GTX 980 by the Radeon rx 580 Pulse Sapphire. I will keep the nVidia which supports CUDA and install it in my second Mac Pro. So, I have the best of two worlds.
The Radeon is on his way and arrives thursday. I will upgrade to Mojave 10.14.4.

 

[Mac Hammer Fan]

I finally upgraded to Mojave and AFPS. But I still have a second SSD where I boot High Sierra 10.13.6.
Twice I got a grey screen booting in High Sierra. I used screensharing with a second computer and there the login window from the MacPro appears, so I can reboot from there. But it's annoying. Is there a solution to avoid the grey screen?

 

[Mac Hammer Fan]

Another problem with the Radeon RX 580 is that the fans sometimes (even in idle work) are quite noisy: 2000 rpm!
I installed MacsFanControl
Sensor Based value PCIE Ambient 27-55°C
Sensor Based value PSMI Supply AC/DC Supply 2 27-55°C
Are these settings safe?

 

[h9826790]

Another problem with the Radeon RX 580 is that the fans sometimes (even in idle work) are quite noisy: 2000 rpm!
I installed MacsFanControl
Sensor Based value PCIE Ambient 27-55°C
Sensor Based value PSMI Supply AC/DC Supply 2 27-55°C
Are these settings safe?

IMO, that's safe.

You may also simply use AirOut to make the PCIe and PSU fan back to normal speed.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/airout-a-solution-to-the-racing-fan-bug.2143951/

Anyway, this is not RX580's fault, lots of 3rd party GPU can cause this issue. It's a SMC bug.

 

[Mac Hammer Fan]

I have noticed that the manual mentions a button gaming mode/compute mode. Is there really a difference in benchmarks? I installed the Radeon RX 580 in the standard gaming mode without looking at this button.

 

[h9826790]

I have noticed that the manual mentions a button gaming mode/compute mode. Is there really a difference in benchmarks? I installed the Radeon RX 580 in the standard gaming mode without looking at this button.

For RX580 in macOS, doesn't really matter, the difference is tiny.

 

[Mac Hammer Fan]

During the summer the Radeon RX 580 Card is rather noisy.
I have changed the MacsFans Control to:
Sensor Based value PCIE Ambient 30-55°C
Sensor Based value PSMI Supply AC/DC Supply 2 30-55°C
Are these settings still safe?
Fan speed is now between 1100rpm and 1400 rpm idle

 

[h9826790]

During the summer the Radeon RX 580 Card is rather noisy.
I have changed the MacsFans Control to:
Sensor Based value PCIE Ambient 30-55°C
Sensor Based value PSMI Supply AC/DC Supply 2 30-55°C
Are these settings still safe?
Fan speed is now between 1100rpm and 1400 rpm idle

Looks very safe to me. I am still using 38°C - 55°C.

 

[rodedwards]

I finally upgraded to Mojave and AFPS. But I still have a second SSD where I boot High Sierra 10.13.6.
Twice I got a grey screen booting in High Sierra. I used screensharing with a second computer and there the login window from the MacPro appears, so I can reboot from there. But it's annoying. Is there a solution to avoid the grey screen?

Buy a refurbished Radeon RX 580 with Mac Efi from Mac Store UK. I just did and now get boot screen. I think in six months they said they'd also flash existing cards for customers. Call them https://www.macstoreuk.com/product/amd-radeon-rx580-8gb-with-mac-efi/

 

[Mac Hammer Fan]

That is nearly twice the price for a new card with no boot screen. The grey screen that blocks the login window can be avoided by a safe boot that cleans the cache. That solved the problem for me.

 

[Pending]

That is nearly twice the price for a new card with no boot screen. The grey screen that blocks the login window can be avoided by a safe boot that cleans the cache. That solved the problem for me.

Currently I have the same setup as your pre RX580 config, ie running High Sierra with a GTX980 (MVC flashed) and am considering the RX580 to open the door for Mojave. I understand gpu performance is similar. A concern at the moment is I might get stuck on Mojave as the up and coming Catalina I understand doesn't support the 2010 MacPro, unless its just down to gpu type.

 

[Mac Hammer Fan]

Here is a comparison of both cards: Geforce in High Sierra vs Radeon in Mojave
The Radeon RX580 draws more power than the GTX 980.
The Radeon runs hotter.
Geekbench CPU single/multi scores went from 3082/14114 to 3110/14576
Geekbench Open CL went from 116991 to 140051 (better than an iMac 2019 with Radeon Pro 580X - 128111)
Geekbench Metal went from 131087 to 136927 (better than an iMac 2019 with Radeon Pro 580X - 128427)
Cinebench Open GL went from 60 FPS to 66 FPS (slower than an iMac 2019)
Luxmark 3,1 Luxball went from 12996 to 14384 (better than an iMac 2019 with Radeon Pro 580X - 12637)
Unigine Heaven for Extreme 1600x900 scores were:
Geforce 68 FPS and Radeon 48 FPS
Valley was approx. the same at 55 FPS (extreme)
GFX Bench Metal Aztec High (Offscreen Mode) is 115 FFS which is better than an iMac 2019 with Radeon Pro 580 RX - 103 FPS
Furmark 1024x640 went from 154 FPS to 192 FPS
Of course most of the scores of the Geforce GTX 1080 are better than the Radeon RX 580.
(e.g. Geekbench OpenCL 181137, Luxmark 15479 and Heaven 88 FPS)
But personally, I have troubles with kernel panics in Mojave which resulted in unrepairable disk damage. I think that my OWC Accelsior SATA III card with the Samsung SSD is not fully compatible with APFS. High Sierra 10.13.6 is rock solid, I hope with the last supplemental update 10.14.6 stability will improve. We'll see in the coming weeks. I reformatted the SSD and installed everything back.
Catalina will not be supported on a MacPro 5,1 officially, however dosdude installed it successfully with his Mojave Patcher and I think the Radeon 580 works, but Wifi doesn't work.