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Mac Pro 4,1 + GTX 960 + Samsung U28D590 (?)

K

KProject

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 31, 2015
6
0
Hi!
I'm Davide from Italy and I have a question for upgrade my Mac Pro 4,1 with the new MSI GTX 960.
Someone can help me about the compatibility of this card with my Mac Pro ?
If I use this card with the SamsungU28D590 4K monitor i think that I have a 60Hz freq refresh with the 1.2 DisplayPort.

Thanks for everyone that will help me. :)

Bye
 
Have to wait until Nvidia releases a new update of the web drivers.

With actual drivers it will be recognized by OSX/NV Web Driver under the generic name of "NVIDIA Graphics Device 2047MB", what means it is not yet fully supported, but it works.

Apple won't support it for a good while. maybe in .3 or .4 Yosemite release.
 
Thanks so much for the reply Synchro3!

What are the functions that are not supported?
For now, I don't need the max performance, just support for the 4k @ 60 Hz..
I'll use the workstation for post production of images and not for gaming or video editing..

It's a problem if Apple doesn't support this GPU?

Thanks for your time.

Davide
 
I have this screen on a 15" rMBP mid 2014 and i get 60hz with the 1.2 cable adapter. needed a special thunderbolt to displayport 1.2 cable. cost like 10 on amazon prime. works great. replaced my thunderbolt display. only thing that sucks is no speakers and no webcam.
 
KProject said:
Hi!
I'm Davide from Italy and I have a question for upgrade my Mac Pro 4,1 with the new MSI GTX 960.
Someone can help me about the compatibility of this card with my Mac Pro ?
If I use this card with the SamsungU28D590 4K monitor i think that I have a 60Hz freq refresh with the 1.2 DisplayPort.

Thanks for everyone that will help me. :)

Bye
Click to expand...

Hello Davide ! Your Maxwell GPU might be too new to support 4K60 in a Mac Pro with that display in OS X . You may have to wait for the drivers . I don't think anyone has tried it here yet . I have a Mac Pro 5,1 with two GTX 970 cards for compute . It's just connected to a 2560 X 1440 display .

There is a forum member here who got a Mac Pro 5,1 with a Mac Edition GTX 680 running an U28D590 display at 4K60 Hz in OS X 10.9.3 . So, it is possible . It works because the display is based on SST technology .

screen shots of his rig :
 

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My 970 works definitely works with that display, using the nv web drivers. I *suspect* the 960 would too - there's a few posting of people using them with lower res screens.

The 680 also definitely works at 60hz, though even after flashing a mac rom on it I couldn't get a bootscreen on the U28D590 - had to hook up a secondary display for bootscreen.
 
omvs said:
My 970 works definitely works with that display, using the nv web drivers. I *suspect* the 960 would too - there's a few posting of people using them with lower res screens.

The 680 also definitely works at 60hz, though even after flashing a mac rom on it I couldn't get a bootscreen on the U28D590 - had to hook up a secondary display for bootscreen.
Click to expand...

That's great news ! Are you using your rig for FCPX or any other app using Open CL ?
 
Machines said:
That's great news ! Are you using your rig for FCPX or any other app using Open CL ?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately most of my work is 2D - the card is mainly just to drive the monitor & give better game performance. For games it is noticeably better than the 680, enough I can usually run full 3840x2160

Do you already have the samsung monitor? I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anyone - its nice to have a 60Hz refresh (I use a UHD TV at work @ 30hz), but the color / viewing angles aren't impressive, and normally I don't notice suck things.
 
omvs said:
Unfortunately most of my work is 2D - the card is mainly just to drive the monitor & give better game performance. For games it is noticeably better than the 680, enough I can usually run full 3840x2160

Do you already have the samsung monitor? I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anyone - its nice to have a 60Hz refresh (I use a UHD TV at work @ 30hz), but the color / viewing angles aren't impressive, and normally I don't notice suck things.
Click to expand...

No , I do not have the Samsung . I have not bought a 4K display yet , since I am really unhappy with the lack of support Apple is providing with drivers .

I am still at 2.5K (2560 X 1440) with a gorgeous Asus 27" Pro PB278Q I paid 400 USD for last month , new . She's 100 percent sRGB .

My still image clients love it . It's like the apple thunderbolt display without the thunderbolt , glossy screen and sky high price .

I know TN is far from ideal ... I remember TN technology from the 1970s lol .
 
Thanks to all for the replies !

Do you think it might be a good choice the combination of these three devices (Mac Pro 4.1 + GTX 960 + Samsung U28D520) to do the post production of photography?
I am an amateur and I do not try anything extreme.
Could fit the GTX 960 even without official drivers?

Thank you all.

Davide
 
Assuming you mean the Samsung U28D590, I suspect the answer is no because the TN panel wouldn't be great for color accuracy due to the TN panel. But to be fair, I don't do much photo work - I just notice the colors change with viewing angle, and the 27" IPS I have next to it seems a lot nicer.

The rest of the system is probably fine for you, but I would *strongly* suggest looking at that display before buying - or make sure its returnable if you don't like it.
 
For color work you need a professional grade monitor that can handle Adobe RGB (aRGB) as opposed to the standard RGB (sRGB)
 
Thanks for the opinions about the Samsung display!
Mmmmhhh I'll see for another monitor..

Do you have any suggestions for me about the monitor?

Thanks in advance!!!


Davide
 
Why not look at the Dell P2715Q? A touch smaller but also 4K and an IPS monitor. I've heard mostly great things.
 
addink said:
Why not look at the Dell P2715Q? A touch smaller but also 4K and an IPS monitor. I've heard mostly great things.
Click to expand...

Oh, thanks for the suggestion!
Yes I really have a look for the Dell Monitor, in Italy the price is nearly the same!

Thanks addink!
 
I have a slightly different combination in my Mac Pro: Zotac GTX 960 and Acer B326HK 4k display.

However, I'm having what appears to be an overheating issue. When I use the Zotac card with the latest NVidia web drivers at 4k 60Hz, the expansion slot fan revs up to 1500 rpm and the display blinks randomly (every 20-30 sec), with erratic mouse pointer.

Switch back to GT120 card at either 4k/30Hz or 2560 x 1440 @ 60Hz and the problem goes away.

I wonder if it's just a faulty graphics card or some other issue (power supply)? Power requirements of the card would not appear to make it incompatible with Mac Pro 4,1 or 5,1.
 
KProject said:
Hi!
I'm Davide from Italy and I have a question for upgrade my Mac Pro 4,1 with the new MSI GTX 960.
Someone can help me about the compatibility of this card with my Mac Pro ?
If I use this card with the SamsungU28D590 4K monitor i think that I have a 60Hz freq refresh with the 1.2 DisplayPort.

Thanks for everyone that will help me. :)

Bye
Click to expand...

ciao Davide
alla fine hai preso quella scheda video? e il monitor? funzionano con il mac pro? te lo chiedo perchè voglio fare lo stesso passo tuo e ho bisogno di conferme!!!

Hi Davide
have you bought this video card and monitor 4K? I ask you because i'd like to buy the same things and i need help!
 
I had a similar setup and the results are VERY disappointing:

2008 Mac Pro (3,1) with 16gb RAM and dual quad core xeons @ 2.66ghz (8 cores total) I had so-so performance from a GTX 660 when playing in BF4. At high settings and 2xMSAA at 1920x1200 I was getting about 40-50fps and would often dip down to 30fps.

I went out and bought a GTX 960 and realized that the Mac Pros are basically hot garbage for gaming. The CPUs are the bottleneck. Results from the 960 were only MARGINALLY better than the GTX 660; about a 5% improvement.

I tried various benchmarks both in Windows and OS X and the results from the 660 and 960 were almost identical. A Cinebench score of around 45fps and around 38FPS in Unigine. I CANNOT imagine a Mac Pro 4,1 would perform much better seeing how it's processors are also slow for todays standards, especially since many games don't recognize the second CPU (do the Xeons from the 4,1 CPUs even have hyperthreading?).

I got tired of trying to justify the ownership of a Mac Pro and built a hackintosh with a Core i7 4790k processor and my framerates increased by a ridiculous number. I got a frame rate of 168 in Cinebench with the 960 backed by the 4790k. On top of that, I'm able to play BF4 at 1920x1200 @ 2xMSAA in ultra settings and get anywhere between 70-90 FPS and almost never dip below 60fps.

Putting any new GPU into older Mac Pros is a complete waste of time and money. Better off getting a 2012 Mac Pro if you can even find one for sale, but don't expect it to be cheap either, those things are still very powerful (albeit requiring 2 processors when a single 5960X beats both anyway).
 
hi bladerunner
have you tried also to work in fcpx? there are some improvements?
your 960 was flashed or you putted her in the mac pro and she works well? any crashes, any disturb?
and did you tried to work with a 4k display @60 hz?
sorry for all these question!!!
 
Socket said:
hi bladerunner
have you tried also to work in fcpx? there are some improvements?
Click to expand...

Nope, I only work in After Effects. All my video work is limited to just a few minutes of video, so no need for Premiere either.

your 960 was flashed or you putted her in the mac pro and she works well? any crashes, any disturb?
Click to expand...

Not flashed. Didn't have any issues at all, it ran as reliably as you'd expect. The only drawback was that I couldn't see the boot screen.

and did you tried to work with a 4k display @60 hz?
Click to expand...

No, but I'm sure it could handle it if cheap mobile graphics cards from AMD can on the iMac 5k, lol.
 
thanks!!!
what model is your 960? msi? gigabyte? i'd like an evga, did you know how she can work?
and the power connectors? one or two cables? 6 or 8 pin? I need to buy a cable or there is one good for the mac inside the bundle?
thanks again!
 
Socket said:
thanks!!!
what model is your 960? msi? gigabyte? i'd like an evga, did you know how she can work?
and the power connectors? one or two cables? 6 or 8 pin? I need to buy a cable or there is one good for the mac inside the bundle?
thanks again!
Click to expand...

I went with the Asus 960 4GB model. It uses only ONE 6-pin connector. From my experience, Asus and EVGA make the best Nvidia GPUs, but I like Asus more. Im not sure about the PCI connectors on the mac 4,1 but i'd make sure whichever card you get doesn't require 8 pins, as I only had two 6pin connectors on my Mac Pro 3,1 and basically forced me to be limited to 6 pin cards... so the 960 was the best I could get. It's surprisingly awesome for so little power draw.
 
no i'm not a gamer, i'm a video editor, i work with fcpx (95%) and motion or after effects (5%) and i will use 4k videos and displays...do you think it's good fir this?
 
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