MP 1,1-5,1 GPU Compatibility List for cMP

[nemomec]

I have now installed a new AMD RX5700XT Anniversary Edition on my Mac Pro 5.1 (W3690, 24GB RAM). In the past i had a Vega 56, 980Ti and RX 580/590 but now the Windows 10 performance is incredible and nearly the same like my Gaming AMD PC from 2020!

I installed the EVGA PowerLink and from board two mini 6pin->8pin power cables and run some benchmarks without any problems. My old Vega56 need addional SATA power to run without crashes also the RX590 but the RX5700XT is not so power hunry.

The RX5700XT in reference design is in my opinion a very good upgrade for the Mac Pro 5.1, but you need Catalina!

 

[hifimac]

I have now installed a new AMD RX5700XT Anniversary Edition on my Mac Pro 5.1 (W3690, 24GB RAM). In the past i had a Vega 56, 980Ti and RX 580/590 but now the Windows 10 performance is incredible and nearly the same like my Gaming AMD PC from 2020!

The RX5700XT in reference design is in my opinion a very good upgrade for the Mac Pro 5.1, but you need Catalina!

I have a 5,1 running High Sierra and a Nvidia 980ti. Is it possible to jump to Catalina via Open Core with a 5700XT, or would I need a Metal capable card supported in HS/Mojave to do the Open Core install?

I installed the EVGA PowerLink and from board two mini 6pin->8pin power cables and run some benchmarks without any problems. My old Vega56 need addional SATA power to run without crashes also the RX590 but the RX5700XT is not so power hungry.

I have the Apple 6 pin cables running into the 980ti via a EVGA Powerlink and have not had any Power or shutdown issues. Can I run the 5700XT this way? Do I need 6pin to 8pin adapters? I believe the extra 2 pins are not necessary with the EVGA Powerlink. So we do not need to do a Plexus mod to run a 5700XT Anniversary Edition?

 

[nemomec]

I have a 5,1 running High Sierra and a Nvidia 980ti. Is it possible to jump to Catalina via Open Core with a 5700XT, or would I need a Metal capable card supported in HS/Mojave to do the Open Core install?

I have the Apple 6 pin cables running into the 980ti via a EVGA Powerlink and have not had any Power or shutdown issues. Can I run the 5700XT this way? Do I need 6pin to 8pin adapters? I believe the extra 2 pins are not necessary with the EVGA Powerlink. So we do not need to do a Plexus mod to run a 5700XT Anniversary Edition?

I don´t know, but in my knowledge you must first install Mojave with a supportet Metal card and then OpenCore.

I had also first a EVGA 980Ti with the EVGA Powerlink and two 6pin cables and now the same with the RX 5700XT Anniversary Edition. No problems, no shutdowns, very good temperatures and no Plexus mod.

 

[h9826790]

I have a 5,1 running High Sierra and a Nvidia 980ti. Is it possible to jump to Catalina via Open Core with a 5700XT, or would I need a Metal capable card supported in HS/Mojave to do the Open Core install?




I have the Apple 6 pin cables running into the 980ti via a EVGA Powerlink and have not had any Power or shutdown issues. Can I run the 5700XT this way? Do I need 6pin to 8pin adapters? I believe the extra 2 pins are not necessary with the EVGA Powerlink. So we do not need to do a Plexus mod to run a 5700XT Anniversary Edition?

It's fine, tested since Mojave beta.

HOWEVER, you have to think about how to do that in correct order.

e.g.
1) Install OpenCore with VMM flag ON
2) Install Catalina with 980Ti (expect nothing to display. So, better have remove control setup)
3) shutdown -> remove 980Ti -> install 5700XT
4) boot Catalina with 5700XT which able to display boot screen and accelerate.
5) turn off VMM flag

If I were you, I will do that with a backup boot drive. If anything goes wrong, then remove it, and boot back to HS with 980Ti.

 

[Flocarino]

Just one question here:
in a Mac Pro 5.1 with Catalina installed, do you have a BOOT SCREEN with any 5700XT? or we need OpenCore or a MacVidCard Flashed version for a Boot screen 5700XT?
Thank you for any clarification.

 

[tsialex]

Just one question here:
in a Mac Pro 5.1 with Catalina installed, do you have a BOOT SCREEN with any 5700XT? or we need OpenCore or a MacVidCard Flashed version for a Boot screen 5700XT?
Thank you for any clarification.

Only 2018 Mac mini and 2019 Mac Pro have pre-boot configuration support with recent PC GPUs.

MP5,1 needs OpenCore or MVC flashing.

 

[Flocarino]

Thank you Alex

 

[antonioc]

Hello, my 6 years old EVGA GTX 650Ti is dead. What can I buy today to replace it in My Mac Pro 3.1 (early 2008) for less 100 €?
I use El Capitan and the Mac has 1x6 pin cable.

 

[dfdmy]

Hello,

a quick question to be sure, I have an early 2008 mac pro 3,1. On the motherboard there are 2 male SATA ports just next to the two mini 6pin PCIe, can I plug cables into these two SATA ports, bundle them and use them to power a 6pin PCIe in my GPU?

Thanks!

 

[joevt]

a quick question to be sure, I have an early 2008 mac pro 3,1. On the motherboard there are 2 male SATA ports just next to the two mini 6pin PCIe, can I plug cables into these two SATA ports, bundle them and use them to power a 6pin PCIe in my GPU?

Those are SATA data ports. SATA data ports do not have power like SATA power ports do. I would not try to get 75W from SATA power anyway. There's an adapter at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007Y91B80 It uses two SATA power so I guess it means they think SATA power can do 38W. I don't know if that's true. You have to look it up to be sure.

 

[dfdmy]

Those are SATA data ports. SATA data ports do not have power like SATA power ports do. I would not try to get 75W from SATA power anyway. There's an adapter at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007Y91B80 It uses two SATA power so I guess it means they think SATA power can do 38W. I don't know if that's true. You have to look it up to be sure.

Thanks! I have this GTX680 that comes with a 6pin and an 8pin PCIe (https://tweakers.net/pricewatch/310258/asus-gtx680-dc2o-2gd5/specificaties/). I believe, from looking at this thread https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/designing-the-magic-power-cable-sata-gpu.2173579/ that the two cd drive power supplies should be sufficient.

However the electricity ports from the cd drives in my computer are not the SATA outlets that you linked, rather they look like these molex ones https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matter...ords=PCIe+6+cable+molex&qid=1590969847&sr=8-1

I'll give those a try.

 

[Jayson A]

I'm using an RX 560 2GB model in my Mac Pro 5,1 without too many issues. The only problem I have is running it at 4K resolution over HDMI. It works, but when I change sources and then change back, the screen will not turn back on until I change the resolution to 1440p again. However, if I use DisplayPort, it works perfectly even at 5K supersampled down to 4K.

 

[MassMacMan]

I thought I'd jump in with my recent adventures. I have a venerable 10-year old dual core MacPro that still has a lot of meat on its bones. For all its long life, it has had a series of NVidia cards, which of course means no boot screens. I got sick and tired of ripping out my GTX 1070 card to swap my old EFI card to see the boot screen whenever I needed it. Finally, a week ago I got a new AMD card, an overclocked Vega 64. OMG.

I already had an external BoosterX power supply for running 12v power to cards from back in the days when I had twin GPUs in the machine. It took a bit of futzing to get everything running smoothly, but what a difference. Here's a smattering of benchmarking results comparing the Vega 64 to its most recent predecessor, the GTX 1070. No other hardware changes. See sig below for hardware.

Benchmark ................................ GTX-1070...........Vega 64
Furmark 1600x900 aa off................129fps.................234fps
Furmark 3840x2160 aa off ..............42fps..................179fps
LuxMark 2.0 Ball.............................27966.................38274
Geekbench 5 Compute Metal............19497..................61968

 

[Mike Richardson]

​

6.3. For MacPro 4.1 - 5.1
The best price/performance/troubles ratio cards with Boot Screen:

• for GUI and 2D - ATI Radeon 5770,
• for 3D - Nvidia GTX 680, ATI Radeon HD 7970 / R9 280x.

The best price/performance/troubles ratio cards with Metal 2 (Mojave) support:

• for GUI and 2D - ATI Radeon RX 560,
• for 3D - ATI Radeon VEGA 56.

I need 4K at 60 Hz, Boot Screen, and Mojave support.

The quote above implies that the Radeon HD 7970 / R9 280x does not support Mojave. True or false?

 

[Objectivist-C]

I’m thinking of putting a 5700 XT into my 5,1. Will Mojave even boot with one? I’d only be using it to maintain my Catalina install.

Also, is a PowerLink required for / compatible with the Sapphire Pulse 5700 XT?

 

[h9826790]

I need 4K at 60 Hz, Boot Screen, and Mojave support.

The quote above implies that the Radeon HD 7970 / R9 280x does not support Mojave. True or false?

7970 is supported in Mojave, but can't display boot screen at 4K 60Hz.

 

[Rico]

I meant to post this here, too, but forgot:

For anyone interested, I can confirm that the Radeon Pro WX 4100 is fully supported up to 6K resolution on Mac Pro 2008 3,1 in Mojave 10.14.6. (using Dosdude1's installer and the SSE emulator patch).

It's an excellent option for ~$110-$180 used, as it gives 4 mini-DisplayPort in a single-slot form factor; which is great if you don't want to lose an extra slot for a second GPU (I have it in slot 3 @ x4).

It plays quite nicely with a Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 (mine is in Slot 1).

Only catch is most of them (WX 4100) come with a low-profile bracket/card, so you'll have to kick another ~$10-$12 for a high-profile PCIe gate bracket, specific to that card (eBay).

Thanks for all the help, everyone.

 

[Demigod Mac]

With today's ARM announcement I'm leaning towards getting more mileage out of my 5,1 until those new Macs arrive.
That said, High Sierra is dropping out of support in the fall and I have a Titan X which obviously won't work in Mojave and beyond.

So as a stopgap measure, I was thinking about installing a low key RX 560 for macOS and use the Titan X for Windows.

In particular these two RX 560's caught my eye since they don't require additional power and take up only one PCI slot:

Dell RX 560D OEM OC 2 GB Specs

AMD Polaris 21, 1200 MHz, 896 Cores, 56 TMUs, 16 ROPs, 2048 MB GDDR5, 1750 MHz, 128 bit

www.techpowerup.com

VisionTek AMD Radeon RX 560 Graphic Card - 4 GB GDDR5 - Low-profile | Dell USA

Versatile Whether you want to power a convenience store display, a multi-monitor display wall in a public venue, feed four individual monitors to separate rooms in your business office environment, the RX560 4M is ready to present your desired message or content from a single PC. No Additional...

www.dell.com

Is this a feasible solution, having dual video cards in one cMP? (and if these particular RX 560's are compatible)
(I don't need nearly as much video card horsepower in macOS as I do in Windows)

 

[MarkC426]

You can't run AMD and Nvidia together in Mojave.
If you use the cuda cores on the Titan, just stay on HS......who cares if there are no updates, just don't browse to anything bad. There is no reason not to keep using your Mac for many more years as is.

 

[smashashing]

I am about to buy a 2010 5,1 Mac Pro and I have three questions for you guys if you don't mind answering them.
1. Why is it that even though Mojave is supported by Apple on the 5,1 you still don't get to see the bootscreen? What's the reasoning behind the absence of a boot screen?
2. If I were to buy a regular non-flashed GPU for the 5,1(considering the 4gb RX580) can I at least access the startup menu where you see all of your hard drives or does it have to be flashed to see that too? I plan to put Windows 10 alongside MacOS on another drive and I want to be able to switch OS's without booting onto MacOS and then switching to W10.

 

[joevt]

1. It takes time/money to make it work. Apple's not going to make money on a computer it doesn't sell anymore.
2. The GPU has to have the EFI driver (since the Mac does not) to show the startup menu / boot screen on that GPU. There are threads that describe installing EFI boot loaders that can load a EFI graphics driver that can show graphics during EFI boot time.

[HowTo] MP 3,1 Use AMD RX 580 for Mojave/Catalina and bootscreen (without flashing)

Here is a guide that I think a few are looking for to help them open the door to other options outside of Nvidia Kepler GPUs like the GTX 680 that are rather old and quite expensive. I'm going to do my best to break this into two sections, one about getting boot screen with a stock PC RX 580...

forums.macrumors.com

That one is about MacPro3,1. I'm not sure about MacPro5,1.

 

[kohlson]

I have three questions

1. That ship sailed.
2. See this thread.
3. Was there a 3?

 

[flowrider]

1. Why is it that even though Mojave is supported by Apple on the 5,1 you still don't get to see the bootscreen? What's the reasoning behind the absence of a boot screen?

With the right GPU you certainly do get a boot screen. You also get a boot screen with a non-capable GPU by using Open Core per the link supplied in the post above this one.

Lou

 

[paolocampitelli]

Hi All, this is my first post!

I have a 5.1 cMP (flashed from 4.1 to 5.1 with latest bootROM), Mojave with a flashed Gigabyte Radeon R9 280x.

It is a good gpu but i have a very big issue with it: My cMP stucks at chime if i leave connected the minidp->dp cable to my Samsung 4k monitor. It is very weird... basically to start the system, i have to:
1) unplug the minidp cable from the cMP
2) wait more or less 30/60 seconds
3) plug the cable

and everything works fine. If I forget the cable, nothing will appear on the screen and the only thing that i can do is force the shutdown. I have also installed opencore but nothing changes.

Any ideas?

Thanks!
Paolo

 

[smashashing]

With the right GPU you certainly do get a boot screen. You also get a boot screen with a non-capable GPU by using Open Core per the link supplied in the post above this one.

Lou

So could I get a bootscreen on an RX580 using opencore or do I have to get it MVC flashed?