MP 1,1-5,1 Mac Pro 1,1 reducing power consumption

[guardian452]

I have the above model mac pro with some upgrades (10GB ram, Radeon 5770, three disks). I use it mainly as a VPN and media streaming server. I don't use it for games much anymore since I recently purchased an xbox one. It still has the original dual xeon 5150's.

I've run the numbers and between electricity and additional AC this thing is costing about $25/month just to keep up, also it gets fairly warm in the room it is in. I understand that it's basically free in the winter, but we are in May now


Has anybody who owns a watt-meter experimented with this machine and different CPUs and configurations to reduce the power consumption? For example,
- I could replace the processors with low-power Xeon L-series. I could even install just one L5335 CPU. Each one has a TDP of 50 watts, vs. the 65W of the 5150s. Is it possible to disable one processor in the PRAM, or must it be physically removed? How much power is actually used by the CPUs vs. the chipset and other components on the mainboard?

- The radeon 5770 has a beastly heatsink on it, which must mean it *can* use several hundred watts. But does it consume any more power than a low-end card if my computer screen isn't even turned on? (Anymore, I log in remotely with vnc)

- I have 4x2gb and the original 2x1gb ram sticks. These must use a fair bit of power as well, judging by their heatsinks and the fact that they are FB-DIMMs. I could replace them with 2x4gb sticks.


Trying to get some data points here. I'm considering retiring my mac pro and replacing it with a mini or perhaps an alienware alpha (similar to, but more stylish and upgradable than a mini). I purchased it as-is in 2012 for one project and figured if it lasted 6 more months then I would get my moneys worth. Now it's almost 10 years old and I'm trying to justify an upgrade

 

[IowaLynn]

I have the above model mac pro with some upgrades (10GB ram, Radeon 5770, three disks). I use it mainly as a VPN and media streaming server. I don't use it for games much anymore since I recently purchased an xbox one. It still has the original dual xeon 5150's.

I've run the numbers and between electricity and additional AC this thing is costing about $25/month just to keep up, also it gets fairly warm in the room it is in. I understand that it's basically free in the winter, but we are in May now


Has anybody who owns a watt-meter experimented with this machine and different CPUs and configurations to reduce the power consumption? For example,
- I could replace the processors with low-power Xeon L-series. I could even install just one L5335 CPU. Each one has a TDP of 50 watts, vs. the 65W of the 5150s. Is it possible to disable one processor in the PRAM, or must it be physically removed? How much power is actually used by the CPUs vs. the chipset and other components on the mainboard?

- The radeon 5770 has a beastly heatsink on it, which must mean it *can* use several hundred watts. But does it consume any more power than a low-end card if my computer screen isn't even turned on? (Anymore, I log in remotely with vnc)

- I have 4x2gb and the original 2x1gb ram sticks. These must use a fair bit of power as well, judging by their heatsinks and the fact that they are FB-DIMMs. I could replace them with 2x4gb sticks.


Trying to get some data points here. I'm considering retiring my mac pro and replacing it with a mini or perhaps an alienware alpha (similar to, but more stylish and upgradable than a mini). I purchased it as-is in 2012 for one project and figured if it lasted 6 more months then I would get my moneys worth. Now it's almost 10 years old and I'm trying to justify an upgrade

Sell it and get one of those small Intel i3 or i5's that jus sip power.
Like the Intel NUC NUC5i5RYH

Otherwise...

 

[crjackson2134]

Here's the thing. It's a pro machine and not really designed with an emphasis on power conservation.

You might be better off with a laptop or other power saving computer.

i know this isn't what you want to hear, but you could upgrade to the new Mac Pro. It uses very little to electricity.

 

[Neodym]

• CPU: You could replace the original CPU's with two 5150's having the latest "G0 stepping" (SLAGA), thus effectively cutting at least IDLE power consumption by 32W.
  
• GPU: According to this source the 5770 is rated by AMD with 18W when idling (assuming PC flavour = MAC flavour). I seem to remember having read somewhere that someone was successfully running his Mac without any GPU at all, while only logging in remotely. Not sure whether it was a Cube or a MP and can't find it right now, unfortunately. But if true, it would be another 18W saved. Just make sure the system is running stable before pulling the GPU card.
  
• RAM: If you have the two 4GB sticks lying around, you could give it a try. FB-DIMM's sport complex onboard electronics, which consumes quite a bit of power (around 5W per FB-DIMM stick according to this and this source). So a swap like hinted by you could net you another 20W or so.

Apple rates the MP 1,1 with an idle power consumption of 171W, so the hardware tweaks mentioned above may reduce your electricity bill for the MP by some 41%.

If WLAN/BT are built in, disabling those may net a little bit more, but usually nothing to write home about.

You'll most probably never come too close to the mini's excellent values anyway (even though those would rise given that you probably would need external drives for your media storage), but it might be worth it over purchasing a new computer and setting up the server again (in case of going for another OS platform).

There is of course one more big thing you could do (would apply to a mini as well, though): Unless your server is required to offer 24/7 service, you could have planned shutdowns and restarts (System settings --> Save energy --> Time plan [not sure about the real english names, as my OSX is non-english]) e.g. over night, which would bring the effective power consumption down to Zero and thus potentially drastically lower the power consumption (depending on the up-/downtimes).

And before someone crucifies me, here's the disclaimer: This would increase wear on the hardware, especially on mechanical drives (however, that should be negligible imo).

 

[guardian452]

Here's the thing. It's a pro machine and not really designed with an emphasis on power conservation.

You might be better off with a laptop or other power saving computer.

i know this isn't what you want to hear, but you could upgrade to the new Mac Pro. It uses very little to electricity.

Hmm, maybe some background about where I'm coming from with this. My SGI Onyx (which was a "REAL PROFESSIONAL" machine in the sense that any apple will never be, was also not designed for lots of power cycles or low power states. It wasn't really designed to be run outside of a dedicated server room with a staff of operators. But I ran it in my house anyways. It is also 20 years old now and was given to a collector of such vintage machines a few years ago.

CPU: You could replace the original CPU's with two 5150's having the latest "G0 stepping" (SLAGA), thus effectively cutting at least IDLE power consumption by 32W.
GPU: According to this source the 5770 is rated by AMD with 18W when idling (assuming PC flavour = MAC flavour). I seem to remember having read somewhere that someone was successfully running his Mac without any GPU at all, while only logging in remotely. Not sure whether it was a Cube or a MP and can't find it right now, unfortunately. But if true, it would be another 18W saved. Just make sure the system is running stable before pulling the GPU card.
RAM: If you have the two 4GB sticks lying around, you could give it a try. FB-DIMM's sport complex onboard electronics, which consumes quite a bit of power (around 5W per FB-DIMM stick according to this and this source). So a swap like hinted by you could net you another 20W or so.

I am platform agnostic and am open to using mac, linux, windows, whatever. I'd even go back to irix if SGI was still around. The power consumption of the apple is not unreasonable, however I have always been curious. Lots of people upgrade the 5150 to 5355 or 5365. Nobody ever mentions energy consumption or thermal load, except for the temperature of the chip itself. Which is IMO silly because the fans are thermostat controlled. I want to know, can I upgrade my machine while reducing the power consumption? Your hint about stepping answered this question with a big YES! and I think there could be some information gleaned here.

The usefulness of the information is of course limited. However, the largest component of my electric bill is the AC and computer, because I always charge my car at work and have no charging station at my apartment. The fridge and water heater are probably a distant 3rd. I live in a relatively warm part of the US, although we still get a few months of winter. The electric is cheap and reliable here, which reduces this to an academic exercise for me. If it wasn't cheap and reliable, I would have dumped the mac pro years ago. However, because I'm a nerd about such things, I find them interesting and don't mind experimenting. I think the L5335 will be an interesting upgrade. It is plenty fast at 2ghz, quad core (2 would be 8-core!), but has a TDP of 50W. Since it is newer, the idle consumption should be much lower as well.

Duly noted about the FBDIMMS as well. It's somewhat shocking that each stick uses an additional ~5W on top of the actual RAM chips. 8 sticks is like having an extra incandescent lightbulb inside your desktop, and that's not even counting the actual memory! The nerd in me hates having empty slots, but sheesh!

I have not played with removing the gpu yet. Seems like a silly excuse but I don't really have a safe place to store it and my ESD equipment is at work right now.

There is of course one more big thing you could do (would apply to a mini as well, though): Unless your server is required to offer 24/7 service, you could have planned shutdowns and restarts (System settings --> Save energy --> Time plan [not sure about the real english names, as my OSX is non-english]) e.g. over night, which would bring the effective power consumption down to Zero and thus potentially drastically lower the power consumption (depending on the up-/downtimes).

And before someone crucifies me, here's the disclaimer: This would increase wear on the hardware, especially on mechanical drives (however, that should be negligible imo).

Ding Ding Ding! We have a winner here!
The mac pro has support for system sleep, and it works quite well. If apple had longevity concerns, we would have to hack it to get system sleep working. I have used and owned other workstations (The Octane that the MP replaced, and the Onyx before that) that state in their manuals that power cycles can reduce lifespan, and they are designed to be left running. The mac pro manual makes no such statments. Besides, it's nearly 10 years old and owes me nothing. However, I have not been using sleep since I updated to mavericks and especially yosemite (using the tiamo bootloader), because it takes what seems like an unreasonable amount of time to wake up again, 30 seconds or more. I think the newer OSX versions are optimized for SSDs, which my MP doesn't have (my mba and rmbp do of course, so I am aware of the benefits )

Anyways, it took all of 10 minutes to sort out my 10.6 partition, make sure the configuration was correct and the system was up to date. Put machine to sleep, and connected my mba via vnc. The machine woke up within 3 seconds (according to my stopwatch. try that, yosemite!) and I was in in less than 10. So long as I keep the vpn server (nothing else is available outside my lan) up to date, I am comfortable with the security level of osx 10.6. I repeated the test, connecting my lumia to the VPN server. Same results. A little longer than with the machine already awake, but a lot less than I had always feared.

I have never used WOL features because they seemed unreliable to me, and seemed like an unnecessary extra variable. If I can't log in, is it the connection, is the machine still waking up, has the wake gotten stuck, etc. However, this would be the best way to reduce power consumption. I wonder how powerful applescript is here. If I could have the machine always stay up during working hours, but maybe go to sleep more quickly on nights and weekends, etc. Sleep instantly if the power goes out (my ups sucks otherwise).

The machine is used mainly as a vpn server both for my work and personal use. It also serves music. It is also an offsite backup storage for work (the MP is located at my home), our working directory is backed up to a separate disk in the mac pro and to a firewire external disk. There is yet another backup in a cloud server so what my mac pro does is not a critical service.

Moral of the story, all I really need to know about energy conservation, I learned in kindergarten. If you're not using something, turn it off. Or at least let it turn itself off

 

[Madr]

• CPU: You could replace the original CPU's with two 5150's having the latest "G0 stepping" (SLAGA), thus effectively cutting at least IDLE power consumption by 32W.
• GPU: According to this source the 5770 is rated by AMD with 18W when idling (assuming PC flavour = MAC flavour). I seem to remember having read somewhere that someone was successfully running his Mac without any GPU at all, while only logging in remotely. Not sure whether it was a Cube or a MP and can't find it right now, unfortunately. But if true, it would be another 18W saved. Just make sure the system is running stable before pulling the GPU card.
• RAM: If you have the two 4GB sticks lying around, you could give it a try. FB-DIMM's sport complex onboard electronics, which consumes quite a bit of power (around 5W per FB-DIMM stick according to this and this source). So a swap like hinted by you could net you another 20W or so.

Apple rates the MP 1,1 with an idle power consumption of 171W, so the hardware tweaks mentioned above may reduce your electricity bill for the MP by some 41%.

If WLAN/BT are built in, disabling those may net a little bit more, but usually nothing to write home about.

You'll most probably never come too close to the mini's excellent values anyway (even though those would rise given that you probably would need external drives for your media storage), but it might be worth it over purchasing a new computer and setting up the server again (in case of going for another OS platform).

There is of course one more big thing you could do (would apply to a mini as well, though): Unless your server is required to offer 24/7 service, you could have planned shutdowns and restarts (System settings --> Save energy --> Time plan [not sure about the real english names, as my OSX is non-english]) e.g. over night, which would bring the effective power consumption down to Zero and thus potentially drastically lower the power consumption (depending on the up-/downtimes).

And before someone crucifies me, here's the disclaimer: This would increase wear on the hardware, especially on mechanical drives (however, that should be negligible imo).

Thank you!

Also saw your other topic on the stepping and i'm thinking about buying the 2 5150's with SLAGA

What i want is to get my Mac Pro 1,1 (updated to 2,1) to be as power efficient as possible while using.

I replaced the old CPU's with 65's some years ago but that uses minimal of 250 watts total.

But i don't only care about idle time because i don't want to use it as a server but only when i need to do my archive work that takes a couple of hours.

I think my old processors were duo core and even could be 5150's but i doubt they were the SLAGA versions. I still have the old cpu's but i have no idea where they are. I tried geekbench to get some info on what Apple has put in them when sold. Geekbench i found was stepping of 6 and i think that was the original mac pro but no 100% sure.

Do you know? Because i can order the 5150's with SLAGA but if i already have them, that would be a waste of money.

And would that fit my needs of lowest TDP, lowest possible idle while still being a bit powerful?

Or are there better options?

Thank you in advance!

 

[tsialex]

And would that fit my needs of lowest TDP, lowest possible idle while still being a bit powerful?

SLAG9 is also a G0 Woodcrest dual core with 8W idle consumption, but 3.0GHz. Processing and then going to idle faster is more power efficient than a slower processor in the same conditions, but this is purely academical now, since these processors are so inefficient nowadays.

 

[Madr]

Thank you! Is that still the 5150? Googles comes up with the 5160 slag9 with 80 watts tdp

Not going for hardcore processing. It's mainly for ripping cd's with itunes and pioneer rekordbox for usb organisation and maybe a little 2 track audio editing.

Did order the 5150's because 2 were 11 euro including shipping

Also just found this but i think the cpu's etc are too old

Volta - Ultimate power control for Mac

volta.garymathews.com

 

[tsialex]

Thank you! Is that still the 5150? Googles comes up with the 5160 slag9 with 80 watts tdp

5160, since is G0 step also have 8W idle TDP, fastest low-power Woodcrest Xeon.

 

[TzunamiOSX]

Call me stupid, but I’m really sure that the GPUs of this time not have a very efficient idle mode. See it here on my MacPro 6,1 where I get 60 °C on both GPUs when do nothing. CPU was at 50 Watt, System needs between 90 and 160 Watt.

I would say a more modern GPU can save electricity.

Using only one big drive also reduces the power consumption. (Around 7-10 Watt per mechanical drive)

But it is the best way to use a more efficient system as a Mac Pro to save electricity and money. A Mac mini M1 for example.

 

[tsialex]

Call me stupid, but I’m really sure that the GPUs of this time not have a very efficient idle mode. See it here on my MacPro 6,1 where I get 60 °C on both GPUs when do nothing. CPU was at 50 Watt, System needs between 90 and 160 Watt.

I would say a more modern GPU can save electricity.

Using only one big drive also reduces the power consumption. (Around 7-10 Watt per mechanical drive)

But it is the best way to use a more efficient system as a Mac Pro to save electricity and money. A Mac mini M1 for example.

View attachment 2409938

The sad reality is that nothing can really make a classic Mac Pro power efficient, back then Performance per Watt was not a metric for anything but small notebooks. The CPU have horrendous power draw even when idle, the chipset and RAM also have a excessive power draw full time. You can't install a modern GPU to it, no driver support.

Some years ago I saw a YouTube video showing a M1 Mac Mini while in a web/office workflow drawing less power than an old Mac Pro while in sleep mode.

 

[weckart]

Call me stupid, but I’m really sure that the GPUs of this time not have a very efficient idle mode. See it here on my MacPro 6,1 where I get 60 °C on both GPUs when do nothing. CPU was at 50 Watt, System needs between 90 and 160 Watt.

I would say a more modern GPU can save electricity.

Using only one big drive also reduces the power consumption. (Around 7-10 Watt per mechanical drive)

But it is the best way to use a more efficient system as a Mac Pro to save electricity and money. A Mac mini M1 for example.

60ºC sounds excessive at idle for the 6,1. Mine rarely go much above 40ºC, with ambient temps in the low to mid 20s. It's certainly better than either the 5,1 or the 1,1 and even a bit better than the Mac Mini 2012, which I use for casual browsing.

I actually find the sweet spot with light work or browsing. Leaving the computer alone and properly idle causes temps and the fans speed to rise about 10% for some reason.

 

[tsialex]

60ºC sounds excessive at idle for the 6,1. Mine rarely go much above 40ºC, with ambient temps in the low to mid 20s. It's certainly better than either the 5,1 or the 1,1 and even a bit better than the Mac Mini 2012, which I use for casual browsing.

View attachment 2411361


I actually find the sweet spot with light work or browsing. Leaving the computer alone and properly idle causes temps and the fans speed to rise about 10% for some reason.

I wish I had more than two or three weeks yearly with ambient temperatures around 20s. Theoretically, we are in winter time here:

 

[TzunamiOSX]

60ºC sounds excessive at idle for the 6,1. Mine rarely go much above 40ºC, with ambient temps in the low to mid 20s. It's certainly better than either the 5,1 or the 1,1 and even a bit better than the Mac Mini 2012, which I use for casual browsing.

View attachment 2411361


I actually find the sweet spot with light work or browsing. Leaving the computer alone and properly idle causes temps and the fans speed to rise about 10% for some reason.

My theory: You have a D300, right?

I have 2 x D500 and a 12-Core inside my 6,1
My data looks more like Alex, but my fan is not at 1600 rpm
Room temp is 24 °C

 

[weckart]

My theory: You have a D300, right?

I have 2 x D500 and a 12-Core inside my 6,1
My data looks more like Alex, but my fan is not at 1600 rpm
Room temp is 24 °C

View attachment 2411388

D500 and an eight-core (E5-2667 v2). Close.

I wish I had more than two or three weeks yearly with ambient temperatures around 20s. Theoretically, we are in winter time here:

Theoretically, we are in summertime here. Grass is never greener...

 

[Madr]

5160, since is G0 step also have 8W idle TDP, fastest low-power Woodcrest Xeon.

Thank you! May buy these later if i need more performance but i have 3 mac pro's and this one is for the one i don't need power. 1 of those 3 is a 5,1 with 1 cpu and 4 cores. And i have the fastest 6 core if i need really a lot of power.

Anyway the 5150 SLAGA arrived.

Also found the 2 sets of 5150 cpu's i got out of my 2 mac pro 1,1's when i upgraded some years back.

But can't find the idle power wattage info. 5150 SLABM and SLAC4

Or do i need an intel account to get that info from the intel site?

Also i got 2 MAC 5770's which can idle around 17 watts.

HIS Radeon HD 5770 1 GB Review

AMD's next step in their Radeon HD 5000 release strategy is the Radeon HD 5770 which is based on the new 40 nm Juniper core. It features 800 shaders and 1 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit bus. Essentially this makes the card perform like a HD 4870 but adds new features like DirectX 11, ATI...

www.techpowerup.com

And yes i know the efficiency of the M1's

Amazing but i don't want mechanical HD's in enclosures if not needed. I use a lot of raid 0 backup HD's in all my machines and the most stable is when i use the onboard sata ports.

Also the performance per watt isn't super important. We have disconnected the central block heating because the prices had gone up almost 400% and that needs to be paid even if nobody is using it. So we now going to use electric heaters.

Anyway if the mac pro's output heat i can use them also to keep the temps in the rooms higher.

About mechanical HD's: i think they can go in sleep mode while not used by the OS.

Ps. I'm also interested in a lower power GPU that i can use run el capitan with the lowest idle and perf mode wattage in the mac pro's 1,1's

Thank you all!

 

[tsialex]

Or do i need an intel account to get that info from the intel site?

Intel archived a lot of info for old processors and some detailed information was only available to partners from the start, I don't know if these white papers were posted publicly anywhere, if anyone know please post.

The Mac Pro CPU List thread compatibility chart have idle power draw values, data seems pretty accurate up to where I've double checked:

Mac Pro CPU Compatibility List

Bokkow and I have created a Mac Pro CPU compatibility list. The intent is to cover all relevant and compatible CPU upgrades for all Mac Pros. These are asked about over and over and over again, so I thought it would be nice to have it all in one place. Constructive criticism, corrections to...

forums.macrumors.com

Ps. I'm also interested in a lower power GPU that i can use run el capitan with the lowest idle and perf mode wattage in the mac pro's 1,1's

Probably something like GT630 or Quadro K2000, nothing newer will work and you won't have pre-boot configuration support with a EFI32 Mac, AFAIK.

 

[Madr]

Thank you! That 5160 SLAG9 is 65 watt TDP in that list not 80 watts as i said before. Not sure who's right in this.

And great! I found a low watt idle GPU card but not sure how it corresponds to other cards.

A list of gpu's with idle watts would be great if somebody seen such a list anywhere please let me know.

 

[TzunamiOSX]

Thank you! That 5160 SLAG9 is 65 watt TDP in that list not 80 watts as i said before. Not sure who's right in this.

And great! I found a low watt idle GPU card but not sure how it corresponds to other cards.

A list of gpu's with idle watts would be great if somebody seen such a list anywhere please let me know.

What GPU did you found?

I found this driver compatibility list for the Hackintosh, but these will also be helpful for the Mac Pro.
I've never used low power cards, but the GT710 looks like an option with its 19 Watt maximum, but is it fast enough?

 

[Madr]

What GPU did you found?

I found this driver compatibility list for the Hackintosh, but these will also be helpful for the Mac Pro.
I've never used low power cards, but the GT710 looks like an option with its 19 Watt maximum, but is it fast enough?

It was a r7 260x at 4 watt idle but isn't mac supported so i'm back where i was before. I think there a different version of this card or close with other names that will work but haven't checked it.

Also found my old system has a Gerorce 8400 GS but idle around the same as my 5770. I think 15 watts.

But i need metal for el capitan. Not sure it can provide that.

And i run into trouble with my old hackintosh 10.8.2 running Chameleon giving me:

boot0: GPT
boot0: test
boot0: test
boot0: done

And before it gave:

boot0: GPT
boot0: test
boot0: test
boot0: done
boot1: error

Been here before but forgot what i did back then.

Anyway that was off topic

Did find an idle chart but it's for PC and the numbers are different that what i found elsewhere

HIS Radeon HD 5450 1 GB Review

HIS recently released its entry-level Radeon HD 5450 silent, low-profile graphics card targeted at those looking for a simple step-up from integrated graphics, packing all the essentials of this generation's GPUs. The model we're looking at has double the onboard memory at 1GB, native HDMI with...

www.techpowerup.com

Oh and about he 8400 GS i found this:

"The GeForce 8400 GS is a very misleading GPU. Like the older GeForce FX 5200, this GPU comes in many different forms. Three of them to be exact. Rev. 1 comes with 16 cores and 256MB of DDR2 memory. Rev. 2 comes with 8/16 cores and 128-512MB of DDR2 or GDDR3 memory. Rev. 3 comes with 8 cores and 512MB-1GB of DDR3 memory. It is also based on the newer Tesla 2.0 architecture"

Not sure which version i have but tesla 2.0 may support Metal but not sure.

From:

UserBenchmark: AMD HD 5770 vs Nvidia GeForce 8400 GS

 

[weckart]

But i need metal for el capitan. Not sure it can provide that.

Metal for Mojave onwards, I think, on the 5,1. Metal isn't a must for the 1,1 unless you are using a specific application that can leverage the Metal API enough to warrant the cost and power draw for you.

I used the 5450 on a hackintosh running Snow Leopard server as the onboard graphics were not OSX supported. Mine was passively cooled but most had a small fan on them, particularly when AMD replaced it shortly afterwards with the similar 6450.

https://blog.greggant.com/posts/2018/05/07/definitive-mac-pro-upgrade-guide.html gives a nice summary of what GPUs are available and flashable for the MPs.

 

[Madr]

Metal for Mojave onwards, I think, on the 5,1. Metal isn't a must for the 1,1 unless you are using a specific application that can leverage the Metal API enough to warrant the cost and power draw for you.

I used the 5450 on a hackintosh running Snow Leopard server as the onboard graphics were not OSX supported. Mine was passively cooled but most had a small fan on them, particularly when AMD replaced it shortly afterwards with the similar 6450.

https://blog.greggant.com/posts/2018/05/07/definitive-mac-pro-upgrade-guide.html gives a nice summary of what GPUs are available and flashable for the MPs.

Thanks. I thought there are Metal 1 and metal 2 cards but maybe that's not important for El Cap, which is the latest OSX you can run on 1,1.

Looking for a HD 5450 now too because that was the lowest watt on this list i posted earlier.

HIS Radeon HD 5450 1 GB Review

HIS recently released its entry-level Radeon HD 5450 silent, low-profile graphics card targeted at those looking for a simple step-up from integrated graphics, packing all the essentials of this generation's GPUs. The model we're looking at has double the onboard memory at 1GB, native HDMI with...

www.techpowerup.com

What kind of 5450 do you have? I saw 1 gb with fans but i think the test uses this one with 512 gb and no fan.

HIS HD 5450 Silence Specs

ATI Cedar, 650 MHz, 80 Cores, 8 TMUs, 4 ROPs, 512 MB DDR3, 500 MHz, 64 bit

www.techpowerup.com

Sometimes there are different versions of a card and would like to have those low watt specs. Did you do any test on watt usage? And does that correspond to the specs i posted here?

Thank you!

ps i thought the 5770 is very low on power but it isn't with 72 watt average

I made a mistake between that card and the 5570 which is much lower in power in use.

 

[Madr]

Found some cheap, no fan, 512 mb 5450's for 9 euro each with low shipping. Could have waited but then i may forget and the auction ends.

I bought 2 of them because i have 2 mac pro 1,1's. Hope it is ok.

Grafikkarte e2 Radeon HD5450 512 MB 2x Dual DVI #4xx | eBay

Grafikkarte e2 Radeon HD5450 512 MB 2x Dual DVI #4xx | Computer, Tablets & Netzwerk, Computer-Komponenten & -Teile, Grafik-/Videokarten | eBay!

www.ebay.nl

 

[Madr]

Metal for Mojave onwards, I think, on the 5,1. Metal isn't a must for the 1,1 unless you are using a specific application that can leverage the Metal API enough to warrant the cost and power draw for you.

I used the 5450 on a hackintosh running Snow Leopard server as the onboard graphics were not OSX supported. Mine was passively cooled but most had a small fan on them, particularly when AMD replaced it shortly afterwards with the similar 6450.

https://blog.greggant.com/posts/2018/05/07/definitive-mac-pro-upgrade-guide.html gives a nice summary of what GPUs are available and flashable for the MPs.

About that definitive-mac-pro-upgrade-guide

I know it but if i'm correct there is no info on the 5450 cards or gpu cards for mac pro 1,1 specific.

Only see this:

• Pre AMD Radeons - ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT, 1900 XT, ATI Radeon HD 4870, 4890, 5770, 5850, 5870, 6850, 6870

 

[weckart]

You won't see the 5450 because as far as I know Apple never sold it so it won't come with a Mac bios. The default card my 1,1 came with was passively cooled, I think. Not sure if it was the stock card, though. I switched it for an Apple HD 5770 I got cheap from a second hand shop. I don't think they realised it was the Mac variant otherwise the price would have quadrupled.

Here's a thread on the 5450. You may have to edit a .plist or two and forgo the boot picker screen. I can't remember what I had to do on my hackintosh but there was a lot of editing .kexts and .plists along the way. Sadly, Netkas' site is long gone. If there was a way to flash the Mac ROM onto the card, it would probably have been there in the forum somewhere.

ATI Radeon HD 5450 - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com