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Mac Pro 4,1 + GTX 960 + Samsung U28D590 (?)
- Thread starter KProject
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I'd upgrade those processors before the video card for the type of work you do. You'd see an incredible difference with the x5690 procrssors.
Hi bladerrunner, I just got the your exact gt960, also with 3.1 mac pro, but when I start up, nothing happens, light is on in-front, front fans are spinning slowly, but no other sound, screen blank, not recognising any input. I suspect its a power issue, what cable did you use for power?
My old 8800gt is fine.
My old 8800gt is fine.
You need to put your old card back in and install the Nvidia Web Drivers and switch to using those from system preferences. Then put in the 960.
Also, keep in mind that the 960 is going to be GREATLY bottlenecked on the 3,1 Mac Pro. I put mine up for sale and built a hackintosh. WAY better performance.
Thank you for helping,
I've got the drivers installed, all up to date it says. Did you use the standard 6 pin power cable in the mac?
I had to go out and buy a 6 pin mini to a standard 6 pin cable connector. You can use the power from the 3 pin power connectors that connect to the DVD drives. They should be 4 pins per connector but I think they may be 3 per cable. You'll need a splitter for that (2x4pin to 1x6pin). The card needs about 120 watts of power, the PCIe slot will give you 75 watts, the 6 pin connector will give you the rest.
Apologies, but I am a bit confused.
Would you perhaps have a link for the cable(s)/splitters?
You are correct, the dvd drives has 2x4 pins, how exactly am I connecting the DVD pins and the normal 6 pin power cables to the card's 6 pins? I have tried to Google this, but most guys bought a different brand, so the use 2 x power pins from the board.
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Great thanks, ordered it, could you explain how I connect the mini-connections to the card and how to connect the DVD drive's power to the card too? If that is what I am suppose to do...
My first time doing this, so I apologise for sounding like this IS my first time!
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The Mac Pro 3,1 has the 6 pin connectors on the motherboard itself underneath the fan. That connection is also a mini connection. It's ridiculously backwards the way apple does it, but you don't have much of a choice. Just connect that to the the standard sized 6 pin connector on the GPU.
Using the DVD drives power will require you to remove one (or both) DVD drives in order to use the 960. I had that in my mac temporarily, BUT, the cable would sometimes block the side panel from closing so i had to move it around a bit.
So just get the right cable, you need to give the 960 all of its required power. 75 watts is only a little more than half of what it needs... even if you could power it up with half the power draw, you'd get roughly half the performance anyway... not like it matters though, the 960 performs REALLY poorly on a 3,1. I had around 45-50fps in Cinebench. When I fired up Cinebench on my hackintosh I got 165fps. The difference is massive.
I hear you. The thing is I got this for nothing, so I though I'd give it some love, buy it a new card, I have to bake the 8800gt every now and again, so I needed a card anyways, so bought this one, reading your post that it does work.
I am just confused as to how the wattage change if you connect a mini pci power to it.
But the cable is on its way, so hopefully that works, I also might want to put new processors in it, you said it will make a big difference. But thank you for helping.
I am just confused as to how the wattage change if you connect a mini pci power to it.
But the cable is on its way, so hopefully that works, I also might want to put new processors in it, you said it will make a big difference. But thank you for helping.
Bad news....i bought the Asus 4GB Gtx960, installed drivers, installed Cuda. All works fine in yosemite (except the boot screen, but i don't care).
Now i've tried to export a video in FCPX and i have big surprise!!!
With my old ATI Radeon 5870, 1 GB VRAM, time to export was 22'02"
With the new GTX960, 4 GB VRAm, time to export is 22'20" !!!
How this is possible??? also with Compubench CL the results are the same between the two cards (and very very low, for example 1.44 in face detection!!!)
I think there is something wrong, but how can I resolve?
Now i've tried to export a video in FCPX and i have big surprise!!!
With my old ATI Radeon 5870, 1 GB VRAM, time to export was 22'02"
With the new GTX960, 4 GB VRAm, time to export is 22'20" !!!
How this is possible??? also with Compubench CL the results are the same between the two cards (and very very low, for example 1.44 in face detection!!!)
I think there is something wrong, but how can I resolve?
There are a few things to consider here:
- Cinebench isn't very meaningful for real life gaming performance. My old HD 5770 achieved almost the same OpenGL score in CB as my new R9 280 (in my 2010 hackintosh), but in games (or more relevant benchmarks, e.g. Unigine Heaven) it performs almost 3 times better than the old card.
- An unmodified PC card in a MacPro will run only at PCIe 1.1 speed which is half the bandwith of PCIe 2.0 (won't happen on a hackintosh). This affects both windows and osx.
- The MacPros processors are definitely not too slow for gaming. My hack has a i5-750 which is on par with the lowest-end 2008 Xeons (regarding both single-core and multi-core performance) and delivers the performance you can expect from a R9 280 in all games (most run maxed out).
I think these results are normal, ATI/AMD is better at OpenCL (which FCPX relies on) than Nvidia and the HD 5870 is still a quite good card despite its age.
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Unigene benchmark proved to be the same, both cards gave me scores of around 35-40fps. In Battlefield 4, I got only a 5% increase moving from a GTX 660 to the GTX 960.
The processors are definitely the bottleneck.
Ok i tried others benchmark (heaven) and the new card is 2x faster!
I also received the Dell p2715q, connected via displayport on the card and minidisplayport on the monitor. All works fine but if i set the high resolutions, texts and windows becomes very little! I haven't the option for retina displays for setting texts dimension, it's possibile to activate it?
I also received the Dell p2715q, connected via displayport on the card and minidisplayport on the monitor. All works fine but if i set the high resolutions, texts and windows becomes very little! I haven't the option for retina displays for setting texts dimension, it's possibile to activate it?
Hello all,
Any help would be appreciated, I got the mini-6 pin power connector, as bladerunner suggested, but my Asus gtx960 strix is not working, my mac pro 3.1 starts, light is on, but everything is silent, nothing going to the screen. Is there anything else I am missing? I don't think its getting enough power.
So first of all, is this the correct power cable, and secondly, can anybody send a link to the correct web drivers for Mac pro 3.1 running Yosemite, my current web driver is 346.01.03f01. I have attached pics of the power cable.
Thank you in advance.
Any help would be appreciated, I got the mini-6 pin power connector, as bladerunner suggested, but my Asus gtx960 strix is not working, my mac pro 3.1 starts, light is on, but everything is silent, nothing going to the screen. Is there anything else I am missing? I don't think its getting enough power.
So first of all, is this the correct power cable, and secondly, can anybody send a link to the correct web drivers for Mac pro 3.1 running Yosemite, my current web driver is 346.01.03f01. I have attached pics of the power cable.
Thank you in advance.
Attachments
Hi Socket, thank you for the reply, I have tried to start it up with both cards, however, only my original 8800gt is recognised. I have tried the 16x and 4x slot, nothing.
Alright, maybe I can uninstall and reinstall drivers. I'll do it now.
After you've installed the driver, you need to go into system preferences and tell OS X to use them instead of the OS X Default Graphic Driver.