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

[mikas]

I've got two Powercolor Vega 56, I used them with 2x 6-pin + dual sata power for over 8 months. They worked really good for me, but I got hungry, and changed them to VIIs + Pixlas mod. Vegas are in secondary use still too, and one VII is in an eGPU box with a 6,1 Pro.

If you find a Vega with power saving dip switch, you might be able to go on without pixlas mod. Just take care about balancing the power evenly to the connectors/cables feeding it to the card. And not to exceed any safe loads per wiring/connector.

You might want to try search the forum with some good keyword/criteria a couple of times still (though I'm sure you have allready done that).

 

[Melbourne Park]

I've got two Powercolor Vega 56, I used them with 2x 6-pin + dual sata power for over 8 months. They worked really good for me, but I got hungry, and changed them to VIIs + Pixlas mod. Vegas are in secondary use still too, and one VII is in an eGPU box with a 6,1 Pro.

If you find a Vega with power saving dip switch, you might be able to go on without pixlas mod. Just take care about balancing the power evenly to the connectors/cables feeding it to the card. And not to exceed any safe loads per wiring/connector.

You might want to try search the forum with some good keyword/criteria a couple of times still (though I'm sure you have allready done that).

Thanks for the advise.

I won't do the Pixlas mod - I am not confident enough to cut and join fine wires ... while I can be patient, I won't be with something that previously, such as doing stereo wiring, I've always left things looking a mess. No room inside a 5,1 for any mess, is there!

For such a card, I'd likely buy a seperate fanless power supply. But when I add up all the numbers, the 580 keeps looking good enough for me ...

 

[prefuse07]

@KeesMacPro I am so sorry!

I've been obsessively hunting down an RX-5700XT and with this stupid crazy market, it's literally the only thing on my mind! (it's driving me a little nuts, as you can see)

When I read your comment, I saw the keywords "Pulse" and "Nitro+" and I naturally thought you were talking about the 5700XT -- hence why I posted that pic of the Nitro+ 5700XT in the 5,1....

I admit it completely flew over my head that we were all discussing the 580, myself included.

Please accept my apologies for the confusion.

Back to the topic at hand -- @Melbourne Park

If you are seriously looking @ XFX -- I would recommend my model: XFX GTS XXX RX-580 8GB, but yes, as you've mentioned, it IS a popular card with miners, so you will probably have a hard time finding one under $500 (which is absolutely ludicrous, because I paid $170 for mine brand new when I bought it in November 2019, and remember, this card came out in 2017!).

In any case, while the RX-580 has been a total powerhorse, and has given me ZERO issues, it IS outdated tech, and I am feeling the constraints -- hence why I am so eager to find an RX-5700XT to upgrade to.

As others have mentioned -- if you can spare the extra cash, and since you don't want to Pixlas your cMP, I would echo the advice from the others: look for a Vega 56, because, while ALSO another very popular card with the miners, it IS an upgrade to the 580. Bonus points if you happen to score a Reference card, and DO decide to Pixlas mod your cMP in the future, because the reference Vega 56's can actually be BIOS flashed to a 64, thus boosting performance!


Lastly -- I didn't see this asked before, so here it is: What is your main goal out of a new GPU?

Are you looking for something for video editing? Gaming? Watching movies?

 

[KeesMacPro]

@KeesMacPro I am so sorry!

I've been obsessively hunting down an RX-5700XT and with this stupid crazy market, it's literally the only thing on my mind! (it's driving me a little nuts, as you can see)

When I read your comment, I saw the keywords "Pulse" and "Nitro+" and I naturally thought you were talking about the 5700XT -- hence why I posted that pic of the Nitro+ 5700XT in the 5,1....

I admit it completely flew over my head that we were all discussing the 580, myself included.

Please accept my apologies for the confusion.

No need to apologize !
All is good, I know that text is limited, so interpretation can vary a lot ; )

To be accurate , I was right about the picture not being a RX 580 Nitro, but I assumed it was a VEGA, looking at the dimensions, which was not correct : )

 

[Melbourne Park]

Back to the topic at hand -- @Melbourne Park

...

In any case, while the RX-580 has been a total powerhorse, and has given me ZERO issues, it IS outdated tech, and I am feeling the constraints -- hence why I am so eager to find an RX-5700XT to upgrade to.

As others have mentioned -- if you can spare the extra cash, and since you don't want to Pixlas your cMP, I would echo the advice from the others: look for a Vega 56, because, while ALSO another very popular card with the miners, it IS an upgrade to the 580. Bonus points if you happen to score a Reference card, and DO decide to Pixlas mod your cMP in the future, because the reference Vega 56's can actually be BIOS flashed to a 64, thus boosting performance!


Lastly -- I didn't see this asked before, so here it is: What is your main goal out of a new GPU?

Are you looking for something for video editing? Gaming? Watching movies?

I know of close to me a vega 56 and also an RX-5700XT ...

The prices are not too bad either.

Firstly I am an amateur - this is not for money.

I want the card for:

final cut pro
Topaz video enhancement (from low res to 4k which really pushed resources)
Some 3D cad work.
Some 3d rendering work
A little of photo stuff - I've bought Affinity. I own CS6 - the last ownership Photoshop - but I've lost the DVD for it, and I suspect at sometime I'll not be able to re-install. So I've given up on Photoshop.

The 3D cad work though is not huge - using Sketchup Pro for the mac. It's a strange program as it uses just one thread of the CPU, plus also the graphics card, but reports on mac and graphic cards / issues are thin. Rendering into 3D realistic will be required at the end of my project - if I can do it fast the rendering will be free as there is a 30 day trial of rendering software. But if it takes ages, I'll have to buy some expensive software for the realistic rendering!

I was going to just buy a Macbook Pro 16" and do my things on that - I have a 15.4" mid 2017 Macbook Pro as well, which is a quad core 2.9 Ghz i7 with a radeon pro 4GB 560 GPU.

One issue I will have is if I have to go back to an old OS, to recover old videos ... which will require me to replace the GPU. A real drag that issue ...

 

[amishallin]

Does the brand of GPU really matter as long as it gets appropriate power? For example the same AMD RX 6xxx card from Sapphire being 2.25 slots wide, Asrock being only 2.0 or Gigabyte being 2.5.

Right now I have the Sapphire Pulse RX 580 and it pulls on average 330W with around 90% usage and stays around 48-54C. It runs 22/7 doing computation for milkyway@home. The average computation size for the work units are around 63,000 GFLOPS and take about 1.5 min to complete using OpenCL. Eventually I would like to upgrade the GPU since my gaming PC does 2x that in half the time at around 45-50% GPU usage (CUDA and 48% power limit).

 

[tracer1]

Looking at some GPU cards and wonder which would be better for a 2009 5,1.
1. XFX RX560 Double Dissipation OC 4gb (Polaris 21)
2. Radeon 7850HD OC Edition 2gb Tahiti, I think
3. Sapphire 7870 3gb (will this card draw too much power under load)-Pitcairn
According to the GPU list, all are metal supported. Any other recommendation would be appreciated also.
So Nvidia cards that are Kepler are still supported but only the ones on the GPU list, correct?
Any help would be appreciated.

 

[tsialex]

Looking at some GPU cards and wonder which would be better for a 2009 5,1.
1. XFX RX560 Double Dissipation OC 4gb (Polaris 21)
2. Radeon 7850HD OC Edition 2gb Tahiti, I think
3. Sapphire 7870 3gb (will this card draw too much power under load)-Pitcairn
According to the GPU list, all are metal supported. Any other recommendation would be appreciated also.
So Nvidia cards that are Kepler are still supported but only the ones on the GPU list, correct?
Any help would be appreciated.

Forget any video cards with AMD 78xx GPUs and the derivatives like R9-270, even the ones that you are sure that have Tahiti GPUs. Lot's of problems with the video outputs and modern macOS releases. Most cards only work correctly up to High Sierra.

NVIDIA Kepler GPUs are supported up to Big Sur, Apple totally removed NVIDIA support from Monterey. Only buy one that is tested and confirmed working. Also, DP outputs are not working for most people after Catalina. Also read this if you want an interim solution until GPU availability improve.

4.1>5.1 W3520 to X5690 Upgrade Help!

Cheapest NVIDIA GT710 I could find today on eBay USA is $35 with free shipping within USA, no affiliation, I've found it cheaper some weeks ago. https://www.ebay.com/itm/384677182805?hash=item59908bfd55:g:5joAAOSwixph4DiE It's the weakest and cheapest METAL supported GPU, but works good if you...

forums.macrumors.com

If you can source an AMD RX 560 with a reasonable price, it's the card to go with recent macOS releases.

 

[MarkC426]

If you can source an AMD RX 560 with a reasonable price, it's the card to go with recent macOS releases.

In another one of my 'what's the current price - availability' searches, just looked at GPU's on Amazon.....
???? RX580's are listed USED, for £500-600 ????

Glad I bought 2 originally.

 

[tsialex]

In another one of my 'what's the current price - availability' searches, just looked at GPU's on Amazon.....
???? RX580's are listed USED, for £500-600 ????

Glad I bought 2 originally.

I bought a Sapphire Pulse RX 580 11265-05-20G back in October 2018 for $165 with shipping included.

Good times…

Today I can't even buy a RX 550 with $165.

 

[tracer1]

Just bought a AMD Radeon RX 560 4gb for $150. Think that will word?

 

[tsialex]

Just bought a AMD Radeon RX 560 4gb for $150. Think that will word?

Sure.

 

[tracer1]

Is this card about the same as the GTX680?

 

[tsialex]

Is this card about the same as the GTX680?

Not directly comparable.

GTX 680 is a 5 years older card with performance relative of 135~140% for shaders operations, but don't have ASICs for hardware acceleration of video compression/decompression/color grading/pixel transfer nor support for x265 and have ~2,7x the power draw.

Also NVIDIA support was removed from Monterey.

 

[joevt]

Also NVIDIA support was removed from Monterey.

OCLP has post install patch for Kepler Nvidia GPUs in Monterey. Works well enough for me on my MacPro3,1.

 

[Jegriva]

In another one of my 'what's the current price - availability' searches, just looked at GPU's on Amazon.....
???? RX580's are listed USED, for £500-600 ????

Glad I bought 2 originally.

Man, I bought one in Summer 2019 for 170€ from Amazon, I wish I bought two of them

 

[MarkC426]

Man, I bought one in Summer 2019 for 170€ from Amazon, I wish I bought two of them

Yeah, I ended up with 2 when they where on back order for months, one is still sealed in the box since 2017.
Nice to have a backup that's not gonna cost me a ton of cash.....

 

[tracer1]

Can you flash the AMD Radeon Rx 560 for boot screen? If so, does someone have the instructions to do it?
Thanks

 

[MarkC426]

AFAIK macvidcards do flashed RX580 gpu's.
Do you really need boot screens.
The majority of people don't.

 

[tracer1]

Occasionally yes but it's not something that I use everyday. Just available if I need it. So it can't be flashed? Can't pay what MVC charges, I don't need one that bad. But if possible I would like to flash it myself. Did my 680 with no problem.

 

[MarkC426]

I think AMD cards are bit more difficult for end-user than Nvidia cards.
Obviously mvc have put the time into developing the process.

 

[tracer1]

yes I agree. MVC are experts in their field.

 

[tsialex]

Since OpenCore started to have pre-boot configuration support with GOP GPUs, flashing a GPU is practically useless for anyone that run modern GPUs. You need OpenCore to run current macOS releases anyway, having pre-boot configuration support for free is a big bonus.

 

[tracer1]

Since OpenCore started to have pre-boot configuration support with GOP GPUs, flashing a GPU is practically useless for anyone that run modern GPUs. You need OpenCore to run current macOS releases anyway, having pre-boot configuration support for free is a big bonus.

Yes, I agree also with this. I'm just too stupid to install, acquire (???) OC. Every time I try it fails. Sip, Pram, Core configuration, yada, yada, yada, LOL. I just gave up on it.

 

[tracer1]

Yes, I agree also with this. I'm just too stupid to install, acquire (???) OC. Every time I try it fails. Sip, Pram, Core configuration, yada, yada, yada, LOL. I just gave up on it.

Wish I could just send you my computer or SSD and let you install it.