Mac Pro 3,1 and Metal?

[honeycombz]

Now that Apple has discontinued making computers if I were to upgrade to the 4,1 or 5,1 at some point which I probably will considering apple is just focusing on watch bands now would the 680 be a fine GPU to transfer over? Most of the used 5,1s i'm seeing come with a 5770 or GTX 120 so It would be nice if I invested in a GPU now for 3,1 if I could take it with me when I get 4,1 or 5,1.

 

[honeycombz]

Since it seems like a Mac Pro might be on the horizon I am definitely going to try and push the cheesegrater a tad longer. I am definitely committed now to purchasing a GPU for the 3,1 that could make sense to transfer into a 5,1 possibly 6-12 months from now. It looks like I can buy pre-flashed GTX 680s for not much more than non-flashed ones so I might just go that route and get the 2gb one. Do people feel that would be a fine GPU to move forward with or should I target a different one (around the same pricepoint)? I realize this thread has dragged on but am ready to actually do this now so any additional thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

[jfoiles]

Can I get an update? I googled this as a last ditch effort. I also want to hold on to my 3,1 as long as I can. How has the upgrade transpired?

 

[Project Alice]

I have a GTX 1060 in my 3,1 running High Sierra. Metal works on it, and I'll be updating to mojave once nvidia releases the drivers for it. This is my main machine and gets used for just about everything. It can handle 1080P at 60+ FPS with the GTX 1060. 2.8Ghz 8 core and 20GB of ram.

 

[honeycombz]

The GTX 680 2gb has been a fine GPU for my 3,1. I am still on El Capitain but planning to upgrade to High Sierra before Mojave hits.

 

[LeChat]

I have a Macpro3,1 as well with a Nvidia Quadro 4000 (2Gb but not Metal compatible). I also have a GTX1060 6Gb in my drawer that I would love to use in my macpro. Do you folks think I can use both GPUs at the same time ? Say the GTX1060 on the SLIx16 slot and the Quadro 4000 on the SLIx4... My main concern though is about powering them. I was think of using the 2 mini PCIe hidden on the motherboard, one for each GPU, but isn’t it going to pull too much power from the motherboard (or the main PSU) ?
I cannot find the specifications regarding max wattage available on the macpro3,1 motherboard...

thank you for sharing!

PS: as far as I have understood the GTX1060 pulls ~375W and the Quadro4000 pulls ~175W (+/- 5W for each, according to the source I check the info from).

 

[Ludacrisvp]

I have a Macpro3,1 as well with a Nvidia Quadro 4000 (2Gb but not Metal compatible). I also have a GTX1060 6Gb in my drawer that I would love to use in my macpro. Do you folks think I can use both GPUs at the same time ? Say the GTX1060 on the SLIx16 slot and the Quadro 4000 on the SLIx4... My main concern though is about powering them. I was think of using the 2 mini PCIe hidden on the motherboard, one for each GPU, but isn’t it going to pull too much power from the motherboard (or the main PSU) ?
I cannot find the specifications regarding max wattage available on the macpro3,1 motherboard...

thank you for sharing!

PS: as far as I have understood the GTX1060 pulls ~375W and the Quadro4000 pulls ~175W (+/- 5W for each, according to the source I check the info from).

75w from slots 1/2
120w each from the mini 6 pin power supplies on the board.

 

[tsialex]

75w from slots 1/2
120w each from the mini 6 pin power supplies on the board.

120W is the shutdown, not what is safe. I'd never use it over 100W.

 

[Snow Tiger]

120W is the shutdown, not what is safe. I'd never use it over 100W.

I'm more conservative than that . I would draw no more than 90 W for fear of burning out logic board traces in the long term . The connectors are rated for 75 W and I figure going 20 percent over that is about as high as I would feel comfortable . You can get away with a lot in the short run with these Systems , they are so over-manufactured and over-engineered .

 

[Macsonic]

I have a Macpro3,1 as well with a Nvidia Quadro 4000 (2Gb but not Metal compatible). I also have a GTX1060 6Gb in my drawer that I would love to use in my macpro. Do you folks think I can use both GPUs at the same time ? Say the GTX1060 on the SLIx16 slot and the Quadro 4000 on the SLIx4...

PS: as far as I have understood the GTX1060 pulls ~375W and the Quadro4000 pulls ~175W (+/- 5W for each, according to the source I check the info from).

Depending on your tasks, as far as I know, Mac software apps like 3D or video editing are CPU intensive and not yet optimized to utilize two graphic cards installed. I could be wrong on this. The ambient temperature on your 2008 Mac Pro might increase with two GPUs installed. The Nvidia Quadro 4000, can run very hot as the card design does not have a blower fan.

 

[Snow Tiger]

120W is the shutdown, not what is safe. I'd never use it over 100W.

Alex . Could you please tell me how you were able to determine the 120 W limit ?

 

[tsialex]

Alex . Could you please tell me how you were able to determine the 120 W limit ?

HP 6060B DC load connected to PCIe AUX A, shutdown happens around 120W.

 

[Snow Tiger]

HP 6060B DC load connected to PCIe AUX A, shutdown happens around 120W.

That's a serious piece of gear for a software tech ?

 

[LeChat]

Thank you all for your answers.

Depending on your tasks, as far as I know, Mac software apps like 3D or video editing are CPU intensive and not yet optimized to utilize two graphic cards installed. I could be wrong on this. The ambient temperature on your 2008 Mac Pro might increase with two GPUs installed. The Nvidia Quadro 4000, can run very hot as the card design does not have a blower fan.

If I may, I think the Nvidia Quadro 4000 has a blower (closed one, but still it has a blower fan...). But I am new to this so do not hesitate to correct me if I'm wrong.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

75w from slots 1/2
120w each from the mini 6 pin power supplies on the board.

and

120W is the shutdown, not what is safe. I'd never use it over 100W.

I was asking this because I read that @Zlobnick manage to use both a GTX1060 and an Ati Radeon HD5770 at the same time:

Yeah, I installed Mojave today using both cards at the same time. 1060 in slot 1, 5770 in slot 2. All went flawlessly using dosdude's Mojave patcher. I even get a usable picture in Mojave with 5770, but it's slow. But it's enough to install nVidia web drivers which haven't been released yet

So I was wondering about this.
• is the wattage is not too intense (in fact the Quadro4000 consumes 142W and the GTX 1060 takes, in fact, 120W according to these guys in idle and 300W in "Gaming" according to these guys)?
• if not, how shall I plug each GPU into the macpro?
From @Ludacrisvp I guess I could plug the GTX into the x16 slot + mini PCIe port (which is 195W max available for the GTX) and the Quadro into the x4 slot + the other mini PCIe port (I guess this gives also 195W max so it should be fine for the GPU)...? Is my calculation correct? @Ludacrisvp I am not sure about the slots numbering... is #1 the x16SLI and #2 the x4?

Regarding the needs I have, I am a young (no money) researcher in physics and use CUDA for some of my computations as well as multiple single core tasks... So I need to forget about AMD and I do not have the budget to get a brand new multicore PC. Also I love the macpro and would be very sad to toss the one I have just been given... (+ I hate waste and this is a great machine, still working etc.)

Keeping both GPU would allow me to 1) have Metal compatibility while keeping the boot menu and 2) have much more computation power I guess... But maybe this is too much to ask from my old macpro3,1 and too dangerous for its motherboard and PSU...?

Thank you so much for your expertise and patience in your explanations.

PS: regarding the power consumption, I guess the Nvidia driver does not allow for the overclocked mode of the GTX (which is fine by me), which maybe will lead to lower power consumption (than the advertised 300W in gaming mode...)?

 

[tsialex]

Thank you all for your answers.

If I may, I think the Nvidia Quadro 4000 has a blower (closed one, but still it has a blower fan...). But I am new to this so do not hesitate to correct me if I'm wrong.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

and

I was asking this because I read that @Zlobnick manage to use both a GTX1060 and an Ati Radeon HD5770 at the same time:

So I was wondering about this.
• is the wattage is not too intense (in fact the Quadro4000 consumes 142W and the GTX 1060 takes, in fact, 120W according to these guys in idle and 300W in "Gaming" according to these guys)?
• if not, how shall I plug each GPU into the macpro?
From @Ludacrisvp I guess I could plug the GTX into the x16 slot + mini PCIe port (which is 195W max available for the GTX) and the Quadro into the x4 slot + the other mini PCIe port (I guess this gives also 195W max so it should be fine for the GPU)...? Is my calculation correct? @Ludacrisvp I am not sure about the slots numbering... is #1 the x16SLI and #2 the x4?

Regarding the needs I have, I am a young (no money) researcher in physics and use CUDA for some of my computations as well as multiple single core tasks... So I need to forget about AMD and I do not have the budget to get a brand new multicore PC. Also I love the macpro and would be very sad to toss the one I have just been given... (+ I hate waste and this is a great machine, still working etc.)

Keeping both GPU would allow me to 1) have Metal compatibility while keeping the boot menu and 2) have much more computation power I guess... But maybe this is too much to ask from my old macpro3,1 and too dangerous for its motherboard and PSU...?

Thank you so much for your expertise and patience in your explanations.

PS: regarding the power consumption, I guess the Nvidia driver does not allow for the overclocked mode of the GTX (which is fine by me), which maybe will lead to lower power consumption (than the advertised 300W in gaming mode...)?

Some of your assumptions are incorrect.

First one is about how Apple designed the GPU power delivery with the backplane, but this is a long explanation that I already posted about in detail previously. I'll resume here, it definitely don't work like you think as GPUs don't equally are feed by the PCIe slot power lines as they are from the PCIe auxiliary power inputs. This tremendously changes from GPU to GPU power design and almost none do it equally, almost all PC GPUs use most of the power required from the PSU power connectors and just a little from the PCIe slot. Never assume that a GPU will use 75W from the slot, almost all GPUs use around 25W, some GPUs use a little more, from the PCIe slot and the rest of the power are feed from the PCIe AUX power connectors.

A GTX 1060 will never use 120W at idle, NVIDIA Pascal idle usage is around 14W or less, you are looking at total system power consumption.

Second one is that Apple supported SLI or Crossfire, it never was supported feature. Apple implements multi GPU supported very differently from the way it's supported with PCs. Developer Center has documents that explain how this is implemented with Apple APIs.

Third one is that you can use dissimilar GPUs simultaneously, you can't. Up to High Sierra you can use an AMD GPU with a NVIDIA one without much trouble when you are doing 2D or light 3D work, but you always have headaches when using compute. After Mojave you can only use GPUs from one brand and even if you stick to AMDs only, you can't use an unsupported GPU like HD 5770 and a supported one. dosdude patches gives you the impression that you can do this, but save the future headaches tracking weird problems, just use officially supported GPUs and with the way Apple intended you to use it. If you need pre-boot configuration support, rEFInd works nicely with GOP GPUs and MP3,1. No need to keep a Mac EFI GPU just for boot screens/boot picker.

 

[LeChat]

Thank you for your answer and for these explanations. So glad to finally find some answers...
So from what I understand, I am better of installing the Nvidia driver (for the GTX 1060) on Mojave, then patch (thank you @dosdude1 ) and install High Sierra on my macpro3,1 and then remove the Quadro and plug in the GTX instead (with one single aux mini-PCIe to normal 6-pins* power cable)?
I keep finding very different values for the wattage requirements/power consumption for the GTX1060.

Also, I was not so much looking for SLI use but more about allocating the GPU to display and the other for computation (like a friend of mine apparently does on his PC with Windows). But one Metal-compatible card that works fine is good for me

*(apparently it is not 8pins on this GPU)

 

[tsialex]

Thank you for your answer and for these explanations. So glad to finally find some answers...
So from what I understand, I am better of installing the Nvidia driver (for the GTX 1060) on Mojave, then patch (thank you @dosdude1 ) and install High Sierra on my macpro3,1 and then remove the Quadro and plug in the GTX instead (with one single aux mini-PCIe to normal 6-pins* power cable)?
I keep finding very different values for the wattage requirements/power consumption for the GTX1060.

Also, I was not so much looking for SLI use but more about allocating the GPU to display and the other for computation (like a friend of mine apparently does on his PC with Windows). But one Metal-compatible card that works fine is good for me

*(apparently it is not 8pins on this GPU)

Another wrong assumption. NVIDIA don't offer any web driver support for Mojave or Catalina. GTX 1060 like any other Maxwell and Pascal GPUs, is only supported up to High Sierra.

Apple native NVIDIA drivers only support NVIDIA GPUs that were used by Apple, last one ever used by Apple is GTX 750 with mid-2014 MacBook Pro. Mojave and Catalina only support Kepler NVIDIA GPUs.

Some 6-pin GPUs when in heavy load, for example when running Furmark, can activate the backplane power protection shutdown. There were reports of some factory overclocked GTX 1060 doing this. It's better to use an eVGA Powerlink or a dual mini-PCIe to 6-pin PCIe with these GPUs. Another GPU with just one 6-pin power input that have frequent reports of shutdowns is the reference design of the AMD RX 480.

 

[LeChat]

Another wrong assumption. NVIDIA don't offer any web driver support for Mojave or Catalina. GTX 1060 like any other Maxwell and Pascal GPUs, is only supported up to High Sierra.

Apple native NVIDIA drivers only support NVIDIA GPUs that were used by Apple, last one ever used by Apple is GTX 750 with mid-2014 MacBook Pro. Mojave and Catalina only support Kepler NVIDIA GPUs.

Some 6-pin GPUs when in heavy load, for example when running Furmark, can activate the backplane power protection shutdown. There were reports of some factory overclocked GTX 1060 doing this. It's better to use an eVGA Powerlink or a dual mini-PCIe to 6-pin PCIe with these GPUs. Another GPU with just one 6-pin power input that have frequent reports of shutdowns is the reference design of the AMD RX 480.

My bad I was meaning El Capitan instead of Mojave. So I will just patch on High Sierra and use the GTX1060 with a dual mini 6pin to 8pin (I just checked on the one I have at home, just came back from work... so do I need the dual?). Out of curiosity, can 8pin GPU also draw too much power and lead to automatic shutdown? And in any case, is this security always working ? (Just wanna make sure I won’t burn my motherboard or the GPU...)
Thank you for your expertise and for your help.

ps : I guess it does not make too much sens le getting à Kepler GPU for such an old macpro, sadly...

 

[tsialex]

My bad I was meaning El Capitan instead of Mojave. So I will just patch on High Sierra and use the GTX1060 with a dual mini 6pin to 8pin (I just checked on the one I have at home, just came back from work... so do I need the dual?). Out of curiosity, can 8pin GPU also draw too much power and lead to automatic shutdown? And in any case, is this security always working ? (Just wanna make sure I won’t burn my motherboard or the GPU...)
Thank you for your expertise and for your help.

ps : I guess it does not make too much sens le getting à Kepler GPU for such an old macpro, sadly...

8-pin power connections are rated to 150W, so yes, you have to use a dual miniPCIe 6-pin to PCIe 8-pin cable.

 

[LeChat]

8-pin power connections are rated to 150W, so yes, you have to use a dual miniPCIe 6-pin to PCIe 8-pin cable.

Just ordered one! Thank you for your answers!

 

[LeChat]

Mojave and Catalina only support Kepler NVIDIA GPUs

Did you mean Turing? because I though Kepler is a bit old and was followed by Maxwell and then Pascal (like my GTX1060) and at last Turing GPU generation...?

In any case, what would you advise as a (cheap?) Catalina compatible (CUDA-capable) GPU model for a macpro3,1?

 

[tsialex]

Did you mean Turing? because I though Kepler is a bit old and was followed by Maxwell and then Pascal (like my GTX1060) and at last Turing GPU generation...?

In any case, what would you advise as a (cheap?) Catalina compatible (CUDA-capable) GPU model for a macpro3,1?

Apple native NVIDIA drivers only support NVIDIA GPUs that were used by Apple, last one ever used by Apple is GT 750M (GK107) with mid-2014 MacBook Pro. Mojave and Catalina only support Kepler NVIDIA GPUs.

Turing and Volta were never supported on Macs, not even by the own NVIDIA web driver.

 

[LeChat]

Apple native NVIDIA drivers only support NVIDIA GPUs that were used by Apple, last one ever used by Apple is GTX 750 with mid-2014 MacBook Pro. Mojave and Catalina only support Kepler NVIDIA GPUs.

Turing and Volta were never supported on Macs, not even by the own NVIDIA web driver.

So you are saying that this (GTX750Ti SC) would be my best investment if I want to upgrade to Catalina? (also regarding drivers availability)

 

[tsialex]

So you are saying that this (GTX750Ti SC) would be my best investment if I want to upgrade to Catalina? (also regarding drivers availability)

GTX 750 Ti, GM107, is Maxwell.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti Specs

NVIDIA GM107, 1085 MHz, 640 Cores, 40 TMUs, 16 ROPs, 2048 MB GDDR5, 1350 MHz, 128 bit

www.techpowerup.com

Apple used GK107 for Mobile GT 750M used on mid-2014 MacBook Pro

 

[LeChat]

ok you meant GT750M.
So which CUDA-compatible GPU model would you recommend for a macpro3,1 with Catalina?