MP 7,1 I installed a 3080 in my 2019 Mac Pro yesterday. Benchmarks here:

[5050]

Perhaps I'm late to the game, but how are you able to run NVIDIA GPUs higher than Titan Xp (Pascal) on a Mac Pro? I thought NVIDIA driver development/compatibility was dead after Pascal?

Hello Friends,

My best friend and I braved the elements and tent camped outside the Micro Center in Tustin, CA from about 6pm to get our hands on Nvidia's new 3080 graphics card the next morning. The even was fun, and this card is a beast.

This Mac Pro is probably the only one with a 3080 in it at the moment, so I figured I'd post some bench marks. I'm a film editor, orchestral music composer and I do Key Art for major video games. I run OS X, because I prefer to use logic, appreciate the stability, iMessage and the Magic Trackpad, but for video work, games and 3d work, I switch to windows. This makes running 2 video cards a good option for me.

The Mac:
16-core Xeon
384gb Ram (yes I fill it right up)
2tb apple main drive
8tb of Samsung 2tb NVME 970s in a sonnet 4x4 PCIe board in raid zero
W5700X 16gb MDX board
(I recently sold my pro Vega 2 MDX to another forum member)

Our 3080 is the MSI Ventus 3x variant. It does come with an overclocking utility, but I ran everything at default.

I didn't test the w5700x extensively because results for any of the Mac Pro video cards are available easily, but I did run keep bench 5 compute in Metal and the Heaven Extreme benchmark.

W5700X results:

Geekbench 5 compute
metal: 72,937
OpenCL: 67,520

Heaven Extreme
Score: 2791
FPS: 110.8
Min FPS: 50
Max FPS 230.2
temp: 120 C

Nvidia 3080 results:

Geekbench 5 compute (Cuda)
cuda: 209,924
OpenCL: 184,827

Heaven Extreme
Score: 5847
FPS: 232.1
Min FPS: 9.6 (this was a moment when there was a frame skip while loading a new scene, but its interesting)
Max FPS: 461.8
Temp: 80 C

Time Spy
15,899

Time Spy Extreme
8,314

Port Royal
10,896

Flight sim 2020
average 42 FPS


I know these are pretty limited benchmarks, so if anyone has any requests, let me know and I'll run them.


INSTALLATION

The third party cards use 2x 8 pin power, so the standard Belkin Adapters worked fine to power it. It does fit in the Mac Pro case, but just barely. I wasn't able to full screw down the PCEi lock plate, but I was able to get on screw locked and locking the board secures it just fine. Perhaps the Founders addition will fit better.

Actually getting it to work required a little extra work.I was getting blue screens of death when booting both the AMD and Nvidia cards in the Mac. This is the solution that worked for me:

After starting bootcamp, you MUST remove your MDX model from your Mac Pro before it boots into the windows install. After you get to the windows desktop, install the Nvidia geforce drivers before installing bootcamp the bootcamp drivers. Once you restart and have a working 3080, install the bootcamp drivers before installing the MDX model. Once you have everything running and working, install the MDX model and disable it in device manager before it installs the AMD drivers. This way windows ONLY looks for the 3080, and Mac obviously only sees the W5700X.

 

[vinegarshots]

Perhaps I'm late to the game, but how are you able to run NVIDIA GPUs higher than Titan Xp (Pascal) on a Mac Pro? I thought NVIDIA driver development/compatibility was dead after Pascal?

Bootcamp (running Windows). Which kind of negates the only real benefit of running a Mac (MacOS).

 

[5050]

Ahh thanks. Had hope there for a moment.

Bootcamp (running Windows). Which kind of negates the only real benefit of running a Mac (MacOS).

 

[OkiRun]

Bootcamp (running Windows). Which kind of negates the only real benefit of running a Mac (MacOS).

I find your comment very interesting. I understand the benefit of having two operating systems on one computer - it lets you do some work/gaming in multiple platforms.
But I *boink* myself on head trying to understand why someone buys mac pro in order to install windows in order to 'mainly' run their professional workflow in windows system. If the only software you need for business is windows based, why go bootcamp? If you are only using Adobe CC software, why buy a mac? That is what I don't understand. And I don't understand trolling when someone does this - and then others complain that a PC is more optimized for Adobe CC. Its a circular argument that has no end... ^^

 

[crypto7]

Apologies for asking if already answered (I couldn't find it scrolling through here and another MR thread) but...

What is the maximum length of a PCIe card which can fit in the MacPro7,1?

I've looked at support.apple.com and a bunch of different forums and I cannot for the life of me find the *internal dimensions* of the 2019 Mac Pro... other than a couple vague references to "this 3090 barely fit..."

 

[joevt]

Apologies for asking if already answered (I couldn't find it scrolling through here and another MR thread) but...

What is the maximum length of a PCIe card which can fit in the MacPro7,1?

I've looked at support.apple.com and a bunch of different forums and I cannot for the life of me find the *internal dimensions* of the 2019 Mac Pro... other than a couple vague references to "this 3090 barely fit..."

MacPro1,1, MacPro2,1, MacPro3,1, MacPro4,1, MacPro5,1, MacPro7,1 support full length PCIe cards as defined in the PCIe spec (312 mm). Most PCs support longer (they don't have the notches to support a full length PCIe card at the other end of the PCIe card).
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-3090-in-a-mac-pro-2019.2252358/post-28847139
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_Component_Interconnect
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express

 

[crypto7]

Thanks! And here I was about to get adventurous...

 

[joevt]

Thanks! And here I was about to get adventurous...

So you have a selected a card that is short enough to avoid that adventure? Or at least you know such cards exist and your choice will be one that avoids that adventure.

 

[crypto7]

Yeah I think I know enough now to avoid having to hack up a card. Next up: How to avoid scalper prices ?
I don't think I have any choice but to wait. And wait...

 

[hamishb2]

What Belkin 8 pin cables are you referring to, and are they plugged into the mini 6 pin outlets on the motherboard?

So no need to Pixlas mod?

Also what version of Windows are you using - EFI or UEFI? How did you get Windows under Bootcamp to recognise the card?

Reason I ask is that my son tried to install a 3080 on a Mac Pro and he ended up buying a new PC as we couldn't even get the Mac Pro to boot. He was running Windows 10 (no UEFI) with an Nvida 970 previously.

Upside is I now have a Mac Pro 5,1 running 11.2.3 using OpenCore!

 

[crypto7]

Oh, these are all things I haven't even thought about yet... lol. I'm flying by the seat of my pants. But I am using a MacPro7,1 (2019) and not an older model. The only things I know as of now are that any card 312 mm or shorter should work (maybe 313 or even 315 mm works, I don't know; I'm just playing it safe) and I will most likely need the Belkin AUX Power Cable Kit...
Fortunately my Mac never sleeps; it's either off or on full tilt. Apparently sleep in macos is a problem since macos doesn't "know" what the Nvidia card is.
And AFAIK Boot Camp runs in UEFI mode only... I never messed with the firmware. I installed Windows 10 x64 from an ISO put on a USB stick. I've been reading other Mac Rumors forum threads that seem to indicate I might need to remove boot camp software from windows and install Nvidia drivers first, then re-install Boot Camp... or something. I think I truly won't know what all is involved until I get a card into my grubby little paws.