MP 1,1-5,1 Lastest OS for a 4,1 with GTX 1080?

[Selsk]

Hello! I'm trying to help out a friend. He has a flashed 4,1 to 5,1. Early 2009. 2 x 3.46 6-Core Xeons.
SSD and a GTX 1080 video card.

Currently he is on 10.13.6. Does anyone know what the latest OS he can upgrade to? Can he run Catalina? I remember reading that the latest versions are very anti-Nvidia, but is there a workaround?

Thank you for the help.

 

[tsialex]

Hello! I'm trying to help out a friend. He has a flashed 4,1 to 5,1. Early 2009. 2 x 3.46 6-Core Xeons.
SSD and a GTX 1080 video card.

Currently he is on 10.13.6. Does anyone know what the latest OS he can upgrade to? Can he run Catalina? I remember reading that the latest versions are very anti-Nvidia, but is there a workaround?

Thank you for the help.

NVIDIA Pascal GPUs, GTX 1080, are supported up to 10.13.6. No workarounds.

Only Kepler NVIDIA GPUs (GTX 6xx and most of 7xx) works with Mojave and Catalina, because Apple still support some Macs that have Kepler GPUs. Apple never supported Maxwell, Pascal, Volta or Turing GPUs and not one can be used with Mojave or Catalina.

For Mojave official support and Catalina hacked support, change the GPU for one that have support.

 

[Snow Tiger]

High Sierra is end of the road for modern nVidia graphics cards in a cMP .

There are some legacy exceptions , but they are limited in performance by modern standards .

Your friend will need to obtain an AMD card with modern metal support to run Mojave .

I recommend a blower type RX 480 with 8GB video memory to run Mojave in your Mac .

It looks like this :

You will not have any CUDA support with an AMD card .

Catalina will run unofficially on a MP5,1 . It actually runs nicely , but you have to ask yourself if there is any advantage over running Mojave . You will lose 32 bit app support running Cat and there might be some annoying sleep and screen lock issues as Apple is not performing any bug fixes with this hardware and software combo .

You should have boot ROM version 144.0.0.0.0 on your Mac by now . If you don't , upgrade now .

 

[tsialex]

High Sierra is end of the road for modern nVidia graphics cards in a cMP .

There are some legacy exceptions , but they are limited in performance by modern standards .

Your friend will need to obtain an AMD card with modern metal support to run Mojave .

I recommend a blower type RX 480 with 8GB memory to run Mojave in your Mac .

It looks like this :

View attachment 904592


You will not have any CUDA support with an AMD card .

Catalina will run unofficially on a MP5,1 . It actually runs nicely , but you have to ask yourself if there is any advantage over running Mojave . You will lose 32 bit app support running Cat and there might be some annoying sleep and screen lock issues as Apple is not performing any bug fixes with this hardware and software combo .

You should have boot ROM version 144.0.0.0.0 on your Mac by now . If you don't , upgrade now .

You should stop recommending this the way you do.

You know that Dell workstation GPUs that need more than 75W from the PCIe slot are identical of the photo and Dell RX 480/580 GPUs are know to damage the Mac Pro PCIe slot.

A user that see the photo/read the way you wrote would buy a Dell GPU since eBay has lots of it and burn the backplane inadvertently.

 

[Snow Tiger]

You should stop recommending this the way you do.

You know that Dell workstation GPUs that need more than 75W from the PCIe slot are identical of the photo and Dell RX 480/580 GPUs are know to damage the Mac Pro PCIe slot.

A user that see the photo/read the way you wrote would buy a Dell GPU since eBay has lots of it and burn the backplane inadvertently.

Au contraire , the blower type RX 480 is a conservative choice in term of safety installed in these machines , Alex .

All of the RX 480 blower type cards I have installed in cMPs that look like the picture , whether made by Dell or Radeon branded , stay within the power safety ranges even when at full System load . Specifically , the PCIe slot will not need to provide more than 65 W and the single mini six pin PCIe booster on the logic board will not need to provide more than the 75 W it is safely rated for .

I watch this like a hawk , Alex , with all my builds .

I admit , it's unusual for a graphics card to pull more than 30 or so Watts from the PCIe slot , but the slot is safely rated for 75 W .

And there are a lot of advantages to using this card over the officially recommended RX 580 .

Here are some pictures of the sensor read outs during a System stress test with one of these RX 480s installed in a recent Build :

The PCIe air channel fan is set to a constant 1200 RPM because this is an AMD card and no unusually high temps were noticed with an infrared temperature gun in the PCIe slot areas . The blower fan on the card acts an an exhaust fan in this channel , since there is no system exhaust fan here installed at the factory . That actually helps to keep temps reduced in the PCIe slot area , over alternatives ( like open air type fans on GPUs , like found on the official RX 580 ) .

 

[tsialex]

Au contraire , the blower type RX 480 is a conservative choice in term of safety installed in these machines , Alex .

All of the RX 480 blower type cards I have installed in cMPs that look like the picture , whether made by Dell or Radeon branded , stay within the power safety ranges even when at full System load . Specifically , the PCIe slot will not need to provide more than 65 W and the single mini six pin PCIe booster on the logic board will not need to provide more than the 75 W it is safely rated for .

I watch this like a hawk , Alex , with all my builds .

I admit , it's unusual for a graphics card to pull more than 30 or so Watts from the PCIe slot , but the slot is safely rated for 75 W .

And there are a lot of advantages to using this card over the officially recommended RX 580 .

Here are some pictures of the sensor read outs during a System stress test with one of these RX 480s installed in a recent Build :

View attachment 904596

The PCIe air channel fan is set to a constant 1200 RPM because this is an AMD card and no unusually high temps were noticed with an infrared temperature gun in the PCIe slot areas . The blower fan on the card acts an an exhaust fan in this channel , since there is no system exhaust fan here installed at the factory . That actually helps to keep temps reduced in the PCIe slot area , over alternatives ( like open air type fans on GPUs , like found on the official RX 580 ) .

Seriously?

My problem with your post is that you don't warn people about it, since Dell cards use the reference design. Dell cards are made for Dell motherboards that can provide more than 75W.

Please don't generalise your own experience, use the search and learn about Dell RX 480/580 burning Mac Pro slots and shutting down PSUs when in full load.

 

[Snow Tiger]

Seriously?

My problem with your post is that you don't warn people about it, since Dell cards use the reference design. Dell cards are made for Dell motherboards that can provide more than 75W.

Please don't generalise your own experience, use the search and learn about Dell RX 480/580 burning Mac Pro slots and shutting down PSUs when in full load.

What more can I say , Alex ?

Wouldn't the reference design be the one with ( AMD ) Radeon branding ? AMD designed the chip , after all .

I have successfully used Radeon , XFX and Sapphire branded RX 480 Cards in cMPs .

I have used a lot of Radeon and Sapphire branded versions of these cards in cMPs , rebuilt them with Arctic MX4 thermal paste , carefully set the system fan rotationals with Macs Fan Control because my average build is very high performance , place the System at load ( this usually involves the processor , memory , graphics card and drive subsystems placed concurrently at 100 percent load ) for between 12 and 24 continuous hours , observe all the thermal , fans and power sensor data for any abnormalities during the load test and then meticulously re-certify the individual components once the stress test has been completed . Because stress tests are designed to be ... well ... stressful . And the whole point of doing this is to test the rebuilt System under conditions more demanding than the client will experience with his daily workflow . That's for durability and reliability purposes .

Someday , over a few good beers , I'll tell you what a shake , rattle and roll test is . Because some of my rigs wind up in mobile environments and it's not a pretty sight to verify a workstation at load for shock endurance . ?

At any rate no RX 480 has shut down any System I installed it in . I must have the luck of the Irish ? .

 

[wonderspark]

This thread has made me think about my plan to update from 10.11.6 to 10.13.6.
I'm in a 4,1->5,1, W3680 cpu, boot ROM MP51.0084.B00, GTX 980Ti by MVC. I think this means that High Sierra is my "end of the road" OS. I do have an old R9 280X GPU, but that W3680 is the barrier I face.

I've done some digging and found what I believe to be the answers, but confirmation doesn't hurt, haha.

I can just run the High Sierra installer, and it will work out, right? It will update boot ROM to MP51.0089.B00 in that install process, and I'll be fine, so long as I don't brick the thing with 144.0.0.0, I'm good?

 

[wonderspark]

Oh yeah, more detail...
My wifi card is 0x8E, so WiFi should keep working per dosdude1, hope that's still true.
I haven't decided about whether or not to convert to AFPS, but I see the thread about how to NOT convert, if I go that way.

 

[wonderspark]

Last detail I uncovered was to unplug my second monitor. One is DVI and one is DisplayPort 1.2, I believe... so I'll unplug that one and just use my good old ACD 30".

 

[Snow Tiger]

This thread has made me think about my plan to update from 10.11.6 to 10.13.6.
I'm in a 4,1->5,1, W3680 cpu, boot ROM MP51.0084.B00, GTX 980Ti by MVC. I think this means that High Sierra is my "end of the road" OS. I do have an old R9 280X GPU, but that W3680 is the barrier I face.

I've done some digging and found what I believe to be the answers, but confirmation doesn't hurt, haha.

I can just run the High Sierra installer, and it will work out, right? It will update boot ROM to MP51.0089.B00 in that install process, and I'll be fine, so long as I don't brick the thing with 144.0.0.0, I'm good?

Install High Sierra onto your Mac using your current configuration to update your boot ROM version , then ...

Remove your 980 Ti and install a metal compatible GPU in your Mac and begin to load the latest Build of Mojave from an USB installer with one blank drive installed in your Mac . You'll get firmware version 144.0.0.0.0 . The process takes awhile and remember not to turn off the power to your Mac until the OS install is done . Your 280X should do the trick . It's possible you'll get black screens occasionally , so don't worry .

 

[wonderspark]

Well, I started the first step of going to High Sierra. It's been waiting to shut down for maybe 20-30 minutes. I realized that I forgot to do the step to NOT use APFS, but I think it must be too late now, and that's what is taking so long. I suppose it's okay, since I'm using an SSD for my boot drive, connected via standard ODD bay SATA connection. As I understand it, APFS is okay if using an SSD.

 

[Snow Tiger]

Oh yeah, more detail...
My wifi card is 0x8E, so WiFi should keep working per dosdude1, hope that's still true.
I haven't decided about whether or not to convert to AFPS, but I see the thread about how to NOT convert, if I go that way.

Your Mojave boot drive will definitely be formatted APFS . If you have any data drives in ( or connected through external interfaces to ) this System , its best to format them HFS+ for high performance . Data drives with these legacy Systems formatted with APFS will have reduced performance .

 

[wonderspark]

At this point, I was only going to go to High Sierra to make sure it works, but I'm still waiting for the shutdown part of installing the firmware update to MP51.0089.B00. Can't believe it hasn't shut down yet, actually.

 

[wonderspark]

What's the longest anyone has heard of for the system to shut down during the High Sierra firmware update? I might be up to an hour now, looking at the spinning beachball after clicking "Shut Down", and I ran this from the app store link.
[automerge]1586461272[/automerge]
Entered Force Quit, and I see "Install macOS High Sierra (not responding)
and Finder.
I think it hasn't even started the firmware update yet. Gonna shut down and try again...

 

[wonderspark]

Okay, tried again, this time it shut down in a few seconds, now booting, got flashing LED on holding power, and grey boot screen, LG Blu-ray drive opened, grey progress bar is going along, finished, shut itself down, ODD drive closed, power light is on, it's rebooting, login, huh... I have MP51.0085.B00, not 89.
[automerge]1586462665[/automerge]
So I tried again, and this time, following link to app store High Sierra installer, it says "This copy of the Install macOS High Sierra.app application is damaged, and can't be used to install macOS."

 

[wonderspark]

Since I only went from 84 to 85, I looked for the High Sierra installer, found it, deleted it, and now when I use the link, it gives option to download the installer. I'm downloading it now, to try again. Less than a minute. Okay, now the NO APFS helper is working... it is rebooting. Lots of RAM disks were created. Apple logo boot screen with progress bar moving. 41 minutes remaining. I wonder if I should have just hit the Shut Down button instead of using the NO APFS helper script.

 

[Snow Tiger]

Since I only went from 84 to 85, I looked for the High Sierra installer, found it, deleted it, and now when I use the link, it gives option to download the installer. I'm downloading it now, to try again. Less than a minute. Okay, now the NO APFS helper is working... it is rebooting. Lots of RAM disks were created. Apple logo boot screen with progress bar moving. 41 minutes remaining. I wonder if I should have just hit the Shut Down button instead of using the NO APFS helper script.

I think what you need to do is first make a High Sierra USB installer and then begin the process of macOS installation onto your cMP . That will trigger the firmware updater since the firmware is part of the macOS installer these days . It is not an independent download . Once your Mac has shut down , you need to press the power button until the indicator light flashes and you hear a long tone .

If this is not working with your flashed 980 Ti , chuck it and install an Apple branded EFI graphics card like a GT 120 or ATI 5770 .

 

[wonderspark]

Progress bar still going, now 29 minutes, over half way across. No menu bars or mouse action available, no button to press. I think I have to ride it out!
It recalculated and now 20 minutes remain. Progress bar about 80% done. Slowly still moving, little less progress bar remains, says about 17 minutes remain. I hear the Blu-ray drive search from time to time.
Oh, now rebooting itself. Login screen, and... Data & Privacy window prompt. This is new! Apple ID password, now asking to check on two-factor authentication.
Guess I have software called Gutenprint, and it's not compatible with High Sierra. Ha. Don't care if I don't recall what it is!

 

[wonderspark]

So now I'm still on 85, my web driver for Nvidia is no good, so it's using OSX driver, and I'm on 10.13.6. Crazy. I'll try firmware update again. And it says this is a beta version of macOS. So crazy.
Did software update, rebooted, now web driver update installed for Nvidia. Rebooting.
Still on 85, and I can't get to the full installer page again in order to update firmware to 89. I'm stuck.

 

[Snow Tiger]

So now I'm still on 85, my web driver for Nvidia is no good, so it's using OSX driver, and I'm on 10.13.6. Crazy. I'll try firmware update again. And it says this is a beta version of macOS. So crazy.
Did software update, rebooted, now web driver update installed for Nvidia. Rebooting.
Still on 85, and I can't get to the full installer page again in order to update firmware to 89. I'm stuck.

Gain access to another Mac that has an OS installed that predates High Sierra , but can install it natively . Log into your App Store account and try to download HS retail . If this doesn't work , try to find a direct download link from an Apple server . Sometimes the addys are listed here at MR . I would not use a bootleg copy .

 

[startergo]

Dell cards are made for Dell motherboards that can provide more than 75W.

So here is an HP card which uses almost the same vbios as the DELL card. Are HP slots designed with the same power usage?
HP vbios:

HP RX-580 VBIOS

8 GB GDDR5, 1266 MHz GPU, 1950 MHz Memory

www.techpowerup.com

Dell vbios:

Dell RX 580 VBIOS

8 GB GDDR5, 1266 MHz GPU, 2000 MHz Memory

www.techpowerup.com

 

[tsialex]

So here is an HP card which uses almost the same vbios as the DELL card. Are HP slots designed with the same power usage?
HP vbios:

HP RX-580 VBIOS

8 GB GDDR5, 1266 MHz GPU, 1950 MHz Memory

www.techpowerup.com

Dell vbios:

Dell RX 580 VBIOS

8 GB GDDR5, 1266 MHz GPU, 2000 MHz Memory

www.techpowerup.com

Dell never revised the PCB to correct the problems of the initial AMD design, and to matters worse, they modified the firmware to identify RX 480 (Polaris 10) cards as RX 580, they probably had a enormous contract buy of Polaris 10 GPUs. Almost every manufacturer revised the initial power plane design after the debacle, but I'm not sure about what HP did, not a common version here.

Dell have a big factory in São Paulo, and it's a very common corporate PC/workstation down here. These Dell cards are easily find used and every friend trying to make a cheap upgrade asks about it. While if you don't game/render and use it to power the UI only, you don't have shutdowns, anyone that game/render have problems. Even people that tracked down dual miniPCIe 6-pin to PCIe 6-pin have shutdowns and some that initially used it to game/render now have slot-1 problems. I have one damaged backplane here, not all cards work and when work are identified as PCIe 1.0.

 

[startergo]

Dell never revised the PCB to correct the problems of the initial AMD design, and to matters worse, they modified the firmware to identify RX 480 (Polaris 10) cards as RX 580, they probably had a enormous contract buy of Polaris 10 GPUs. Almost every manufacturer revised the initial power plane design after the debacle, but I'm not sure about what HP did, not a common version here.

Dell have a big factory in São Paulo, and it's a very common corporate PC/workstation down here. These Dell cards are easily find used and every friend trying to make a cheap upgrade asks about it. While if you don't game/render and use it to power the UI only, you don't have shutdowns, anyone that game/render have problems. Even people that tracked down dual miniPCIe 6-pin to PCIe 6-pin have shutdowns and some that initially used it to game/render now have slot-1 problems. I have one damaged backplane here, not all cards work and when work are identified as PCIe 1.0.

Interesting HP named the VBIOS Polaris20, but if you look closely everything is the same even memory support and timing.