Can a Mac Pro Mid 2010 Support a AMD Radeon R7 370 graphics card? If it can't, any recommendations for a decent graphics card that will be able to run games like Black Ops 3 easily? Thank you 
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Graphics Card Compatibility mac Pro
- Thread starter Sphinxy Binxy
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
As far as I know, the R7 370 is a rebrand of the R9 270, so it should be fully supported from Mavericks onwards.Can a Mac Pro Mid 2010 Support a AMD Radeon R7 370 graphics card? If it can't, any recommendations for a decent graphics card that will be able to run games like Black Ops 3 easily? Thank you
Last edited:
Uh and one more quick question. Do you know anything about the drivers I would need to get to get the card to work? Thank you <3
There are no drivers to install. It should work out of the box.
I will not work out of the box, device IDs for R9 270 and R7 370 are missing! Drivers are there but you'll only get a black screen.
You could add the devid to AMD7000Controller and AMDRadeonX4000.kext, but with kext signing and rootless in mind this is no good idea.
You could add the devid to AMD7000Controller and AMDRadeonX4000.kext, but with kext signing and rootless in mind this is no good idea.
Just read this and you were so right dude. With the card in it will only work in Windows on boot camp. Any way you could tell me how to do the amd7000controller thing I'm kinda a newbie with computers and stuff. That would be so much help dude
Yeah was looking into that card unfortunately I didn't think there was any chance of that one working without it being flashed and didn't want to risk it. It was also slightly too pricey. Only a junior in highschool and making practically minimum wage so money's tight
Just read this and you were so right dude. With the card in it will only work in Windows on boot camp. Any way you could tell me how to do the amd7000controller thing I'm kinda a newbie with computers and stuff. That would be so much help dude
You'd have to add the device ID of your card to the Info.plist both in AMD7000Controller.kext and AMDRadeonX4000.kext (located in /System/Library/Extensions), fix file permissions and rebuild kext cache (all of this can be googled).
But:
- This will violate the signature of the kexts, so you'd have to disable kext signing in Yosemite
- In El Capitan you won't even be able to make this change with "Rootless" in place, so you'd have to disable this
- You'll have to repeat this with every OS X update since Apple likes to overwrite those kexts, even if they didn't change anything
The best Apple natively supported card so far is the GTX 680 / HD7950 (in both hardware and software). These 2 cards have Apple licenced Mac Edition. Therefore, the software support for these 2 cards should not be a problem. However, the real Mac Edition card is very expensive (relatively), and won't do any better than other 3rd party PC card (apart from the PC card may only able to run at PCIe 1.0 speed). So, it's much better to buy your own card and flash it. For the Nvidia card, I don't know much about it. But for the 7950 (also name as R9 280), a reference card should has 2 ROMs onboard, which is basically flash proof. The risk of bricking a card is extremely low (If you keep at least one ROM always in stock config). Anyway, if you want to flash a card, get the reference model, otherwise there is no guarantee it can work (or some port may not work properly after flash).
The HD7970 also works well in terms of software because it share the same device ID as the D700. However, it require a 8 pin connection which do not exist in your Mac Pro. You can use a 6pin to 8 pin adaptor to solve the problem, but it means the 8pin can draw up to 200% power from the 6pin source (150W vs 75W). If you don't care about this, then a 7970 (or R9 280X) should be a better choice in terms of performance.
For Nvidia card, you can refer to the sticky thread. The 9xx card of course is a much better card, new tech, lower power consumption, better performance... but I still stay away from it at this moment because there is almost no native support from Apple. You must install the web driver from Nvidia and activate it before you install the card. And every single OSX update (even a very minor one) may break it and leave you a black screen to fix.
For budget tight condition. You may consider to get a used 680 / 7950. I never own a 680, but for gaming, this should be a better choice than the 7950.
The HD7970 also works well in terms of software because it share the same device ID as the D700. However, it require a 8 pin connection which do not exist in your Mac Pro. You can use a 6pin to 8 pin adaptor to solve the problem, but it means the 8pin can draw up to 200% power from the 6pin source (150W vs 75W). If you don't care about this, then a 7970 (or R9 280X) should be a better choice in terms of performance.
For Nvidia card, you can refer to the sticky thread. The 9xx card of course is a much better card, new tech, lower power consumption, better performance... but I still stay away from it at this moment because there is almost no native support from Apple. You must install the web driver from Nvidia and activate it before you install the card. And every single OSX update (even a very minor one) may break it and leave you a black screen to fix.
For budget tight condition. You may consider to get a used 680 / 7950. I never own a 680, but for gaming, this should be a better choice than the 7950.
