Mac Pro 5,1 Single Slot GPU??

[Jimfoon]

Hey All,

Budget is under 300 but would prefer as cheap as possible. It's for a professional recording studio environment not for video professional use.

I'm looking for a solid relatively modern Single Slot GPU that works OOB with OSX Sierra+. It's a weird situation where I need to occupy 3 PCIe slots in the tower with other cards to get the most performance out of it. Only requirements are that it can push 2x 1080p monitors with DVI connectors (I know I'll need adapters for this either way, which is not an issue). 3 Monitor outs would be a plus for future use but I know that's pretty rare on a single slot card. I could also use a recommendation on the USB 3.0 card but there's already a ton of info on those I can look up!

I'm looking to have
x1 Avid HDX Card
x1 Universal Audio Octo Card
x1 USB 3.0 x4 Port Card
x1 Single Slot GPU


I have installed higher end NVidia cards (GTX TITAN X/XP and 1080/ti) on these towers before for video professionals but it gets complicated with updates breaking the driver every time there's a ".X" update. I can work around this if there's a solid option but would rather a native AMD card if possible. This will be for an audio professional with no need for heavy GPU usage just to keep graphics running smooth on both monitors.

I really appreciate your help!!!

 

[tayy]

Dont think you have that many options.

I only know about GT120 and Quadro 4000 for Mac.

 

[bsbeamer]

Are any of the cards you need to use 2-slot and/or need to use either of the x16 lanes?

Believe the Avid HDX is a x4 single slot.
UAD Octo looks like a single slot.
USB 3.0 cards I've seen are single slot.

That should leave the bottom PCIe (x16 lane) for any standard 2-slot GPU?

If you truly need single slot, 8800 GT may be another option if you can't find the GT120 and Quadro 4000 mentioned above.

 

[abdyfranco]

If you don't need EFI, you can use a GT 1030.

 

[h9826790]

IMO, GT120 is the most straight forward option.

 

[Surrat]

I dont understand why you want a single slot card for video in a 5,1 since there is a gap between the slot 1, and slot 2. Using a double wide video card does not block any other slots.

The best single slot card I can think of that has zero driver problems and no hoops to jump through, is as already mentioned, the Quadro 4000 Mac Edition.

 

[MisterAndrew]

If you really need a single slot card then a Radeon Pro WX 4100 is probably the best option for under $300. I've seen a used WX 5100 in that price range as well. Both of those cards are supported out-of-the-box in High Sierra 10.13.4 beta. The final release is probably next week. The performance of the WX 4100 sits in-between an RX 550 and an RX 560. A WX 5100 is on par with an RX 560. The relatively mediocre WX 4100 is about 150% faster than a Quadro 4000 while sipping about 1/3 the power. It also offers 2.46 TFLOPS of single precision compute performance compared to 0.486.

 

[orph]

id think about something like a GT630 or RX 560 i gess (is RX460 better supported?)

RX 560 may be the best option only get something like a GT630 if it's sub £30 as there not worth much.
think Sapphire is the best supported brand with osx?

a GT120 is also valid just so old now if you dont have one and cant pick it up super cheep not shore if it's worth it if the price is anywhere close to a RX 560

some info
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/amd-polaris-gpus-plug-and-play-in-macos-10-12-6-10-13.2050945/

 

[kohlson]

As the owner of 2 (!) GT120s, I cannot recommend this card unless you have minimal graphics requirements. While it does support boot screens, and takes only a single slot, it does not support even the most minimal requirements required by most programs today. For example, it is perhaps 5-10 slower in import/render for FCP, and Resolve doesn't seem to want to start with our something better.

I am curious about the WX series cards - are they noisier?

 

[rjtiedeman]

how about the real official graphics card that came with the 5’1 new.
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Apple/MC743ZMA/

they also have a more update version for 2x the cost.

 

[h9826790]

how about the real official graphics card that came with the 5’1 new.
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Apple/MC743ZMA/

they also have a more update version for 2x the cost.

If you don't need a single slot card, then there are lots of choice.

 

[ofawx]

A little bit outside your budget is the Galax GTX 1070 Katana, a fully-fledged 1070 but with a single-slot air cooler. I can verify it works with the Nvidia web driver (so no boot screen) but definitely one of the most powerful single-slot card on the market at the moment.

 

[kwikdeth]

A little bit outside your budget is the Galax GTX 1070 Katana, a fully-fledged 1070 but with a single-slot air cooler. I can verify it works with the Nvidia web driver (so no boot screen) but definitely one of the most powerful single-slot card on the market at the moment.

Are you located in the US? Ive never been able to find one of these for sale anywhere in the states.

 

[bsbeamer]

Good to know. There’s an ELSA single slot 1050 available as well, but heard that does not work correctly with MacPro. Maybe better compatibility on the 1070 & 1080 variants than lower end?

 

[ofawx]

Are you located in the US? Ive never been able to find one of these for sale anywhere in the states.

No, Australia. One of our popular PC stores had sale prices on them, must've been struggling to get rid of them. I could've gone for a full cooler but didn't need the extra thermal headroom and the price was too good to pass up.

 

[MisterAndrew]

As the owner of 2 (!) GT120s, I cannot recommend this card unless you have minimal graphics requirements. While it does support boot screens, and takes only a single slot, it does not support even the most minimal requirements required by most programs today. For example, it is perhaps 5-10 slower in import/render for FCP, and Resolve doesn't seem to want to start with our something better.

I am curious about the WX series cards - are they noisier?

This review says they're not loud. They do get a little warm though.

https://techgage.com/article/amd-radeon-pro-wx-5100-wx-4100-workstation-gpu-review/6/

 

[h9826790]

If OP doesn’t need GPU performance, I really won’t recommend Maxwell / Pascal GPU. It just make things complicated for virtually no benefit on a cMP.

IMO, for single slot card, GT120 is the way to go. No aux power required, work 100% OOTB with boot screen, able to power 2x 1080p monitors, reliable, probably cheaper than those powerful new cards as well.

The downside of GT120 is just low performance and old. But in this case, doesn’t really matter.

In fact, some of those new cards don't even have a single DVI port, it just make the connection even more complicated for OP. Also, cost more to buy adaptors.

 

[AlexMaximus]

If you really need a single slot card then a Radeon Pro WX 4100 is probably the best option for under $300. I've seen a used WX 5100 in that price range as well. Both of those cards are supported out-of-the-box in High Sierra 10.13.4 beta. The final release is probably next week. The performance of the WX 4100 sits in-between an RX 550 and an RX 560. A WX 5100 is on par with an RX 560. The relatively mediocre WX 4100 is about 150% faster than a Quadro 4000 while sipping about 1/3 the power. It also offers 2.46 TFLOPS of single precision compute performance compared to 0.486.

You are definitely on the right track, - wasn't there an AMD Fire Pro single slot card that had the exact same internals as the D300/D500 as in the MP 2013 ? I remember there was an excellent "grey" option out there.
Question is who in here actually installed it - back in the day.
Besides that, I think a Quadro 4000 Mac Edition would be for sure the best option in terms of driver support.
In my world, Nvidia always was the best choice out there. One keep in mind -the web driver support, despite Apples resistance behavior towards Nvidia, is worldclass

 

[devon807]

You are definitely on the right track, - wasn't there an AMD Fire Pro single slot card that had the exact same internals as the D300/D500 as in the MP 2013 ? I remember there was an excellent "grey" option out there.
Question is who in here actually installed it - back in the day.
Besides that, I think a Quadro 4000 Mac Edition would be for sure the best option in terms of driver support.
In my world, Nvidia always was the best choice out there. One keep in mind -the web driver support, despite Apples resistance behavior towards Nvidia, is worldclass

W7000 is equivalent (ish) to a D300

 

[deconstruct60]

....

The downside of GT120 is just low performance and old. But in this case, doesn’t really matter.

Depends upon what 'OSX Sierra+" means. The 5,1 MP is already on the Vintage/Obsolete list. So an "even more" vintage GPU card may not make a difference. If Sierra plus just means 10.12-10.13 and the plan is to just sit on those for the rest of the lifetime of the 5,1 then old is probably moot (5,1 probably has seen its last macOS upgrade target window). However, if going to move this system into the "hackintosh" zone by following OS updates after support then a new card may be better. Apple could raise the minimal base to OpenGL 4 functionality and the GT 120 would be stuck.

It also doesn't matter because presuming driving 1080 sized screens. Again if longer term plans are for 2K sized screens then the 5870 referenced above (mac sales) could have more headroom.

 

[MisterAndrew]

I didn't catch that the Mid 2010 5,1 was added to the vintage/obsolete list. Interesting that the 2012 5,1 is not yet on the list, so the 5,1 (including 2010s) are still supported. Just saw it on the list and found an article about it.
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/11/06/apple-obsoletes-mac-pro-airport-time-capsule/
[doublepost=1521236114][/doublepost]

You are definitely on the right track, - wasn't there an AMD Fire Pro single slot card that had the exact same internals as the D300/D500 as in the MP 2013 ? I remember there was an excellent "grey" option out there.
Question is who in here actually installed it - back in the day.

It looks like the card equivalent to a D300 is the R9 270X, which has the same device ID 0x6810. Based on the device IDs, the D500 is equivalent to an HD 7870 with device ID 0x679e and the D700 is equivalent to an HD 7970/R9 280X with device ID 0x6798. Interesting that they're marketed as FirePro in the Mac Pro, but are actually consumer GPUs. And according to userbenchmark.com they lag 20-30% behind the desktop card equivalent in performance (I suppose dialed back to meet the power and heat requirements of the 'trash can').

 

[kwikdeth]

Interesting that they're marketed as FirePro in the Mac Pro, but are actually consumer GPUs.

The FirePros are pretty much always just variations of their desktop GPUs, sometimes with ECC memory and associated controllers. the price difference really comes from the driver support for workstation class apps, which Apple doesnt even rely on since they do all their drivers in-house. They've made changes for OSX and OpenCL and such to optimize performance to a very high degree, but really there's no advantage to using AMD workstation graphics over equivalent desktop cards on OSX other than bragging rights. There's nothing inherently different between the two that Apple is taking advantage of to provide a performance increase.

 

[deconstruct60]

I didn't catch that the Mid 2010 5,1 was added to the vintage/obsolete list. Interesting that the 2012 5,1 is not yet on the list, so the 5,1 (including 2010s) are still supported. Just saw it on the list and found an article about it.
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/11/06/apple-obsoletes-mac-pro-airport-time-capsule/

Vintage (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624 ) is 5-7 years past last manufactured date Apple used the 2012 to technically discontinue the manufacture of the 2010 model. 2012+5 = 2017. ( it is more a configuration change than a model change but the baseline tech is circa 2008-2009 design. ). They 'burned up" the +2 float on the Vintage range during that two year delay gap.

The 2012 model probably stopped being made in July-October of 2013. 2013+5 = 2018. (very real model change, so no hand waving). If Apple doesn't have a new Mac Pro ready for the end of 2018 they may tack on some time to the 2012 ( knowing that 2009-2010 folks clinging on will hack around the difference). That would just be a lifeboat measure. If they do have something it is likely gone (along with software upgrades).

P.S. Apple probably trying to dissuade folks from inferring that the 5,1 had until 2020 ( 2013+7). [ some folks on these forums spun that notion back in 2014 or so. It wasn't well grounded in reality. ] The two models straddling is a neon bright signal that it is going away over the relative near term.

 

[orph]

op wants "cheap as possible. It's for a professional recording studio environment not for video professional use."
so anything more than a low end card that drives two 1080p displays is overkill and wasted money!

 

[kwikdeth]

op wants "cheap as possible. It's for a professional recording studio environment not for video professional use."
so anything more than a low end card that drives two 1080p displays is overkill and wasted money!

there's several fanless GT1030s on the market, that should do the job nicely. you won't have boot graphics but with nvidia drivers it will work fine after bootup.
Gigabyte, EVGA, and Asus I know for certain have them, likely others.
https://www.evga.com/articles/01108/evga-geforce-gt-1030/
https://www.asus.com/Graphics-Cards/GT1030-SL-2G-BRK/
https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-Card/GV-N1030SL-2GL#kf

XFX made a silent RX460, but its hard to find now.
http://www.xfxforce.com/en-us/products/amd-radeon-rx-400-series/rx-460-4gb-heatsink-rx-460p4hfg5-