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New AMD cards in Mac Pro 4.1-5.1. Go or no go?

HiroThreading said:
But as Fl0r!an mentioned, Apple is the one that writes the AMD drivers/kexts for macOS. So it still remains to be seen...

It should be fine for Windows however.
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I agree, however it does not rule out Nvidia. The reason I quoted AMD is due to Nvidia not getting back to me yet. I am also still waiting to get a reply from the DisplayPort people.
 
William Payne said:
I just asked AMD regarding what actually allows Display Port 1.4 to work. Now I did not ask from a Mac perspective just a general computer perspective.

They said that as long as your monitor supports DisplayPort 1.4 and your GPU has those ports and your GPU drivers are current then it should work at 1.4.

I asked also whether it needed operating system drivers to work, they responded that GPU drivers are enough to allow use of 1.4
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That's not necessarily true for macOS. Mac drivers are linked to certain Apple frameworks, e.g. CoreDisplay or IOKit, which can determin the behavior of your ports, e.g. by limiting the maximum pixel clock.

Two examples:
  1. Nvidia Maxwell GPUs introduced HDMI 2.0 about 3 years ago. HDMI 2.0 support in macOS is still missing when using the WebDrivers.
  2. AMD introduced HDMI 2.0 with Polaris last year. Again, HDMI 2.0 doesn't work in macOS.
 
Fl0r!an said:
That's not necessarily true for macOS. Mac drivers are linked to certain Apple frameworks, e.g. CoreDisplay or IOKit, which can determin the behavior of your ports, e.g. by limiting the maximum pixel clock.

Two examples:
  1. Nvidia Maxwell GPUs introduced HDMI 2.0 about 3 years ago. HDMI 2.0 support in macOS is still missing when using the WebDrivers.
  2. AMD introduced HDMI 2.0 with Polaris last year. Again, HDMI 2.0 doesn't work in macOS.
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I think the only way this is going to be figured out is to just try it and see what happens. I mean if I was to buy say a Pascal Quadro even if 1.4 doesn't work ill still get all the other nice quadro features I want.
 
Exactly. There's still not a single DP1.3 or 1.4 display available as far as I know, so we can't test it.
 
There's virtually no benefit of using a workstation GPU in macOS, so unless you're doing your work in Windows I'd safe the money and go for a similar consumer level GPU.
 
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William Payne said:
I just asked AMD regarding what actually allows Display Port 1.4 to work. Now I did not ask from a Mac perspective just a general computer perspective.

They said that as long as your monitor supports DisplayPort 1.4 and your GPU has those ports and your GPU drivers are current then it should work at 1.4.

I asked also whether it needed operating system drivers to work, they responded that GPU drivers are enough to allow use of 1.4
Click to expand...

99.999% that they were talking about Windows, with the AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition ReLive Graphics Driver, which doesn't exist on MacOS.
 
William Payne said:
Define no benefit?
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The main reason for buying a workstation GPU are their highly optimized OpenGL drivers, which will give an enormous performance boost in professional CAD software such as Catia, Creo or NX.
Those optimized drivers (and most of that CAD software) don't exist in macOS, so AMD FirePro or Nvidia Quadro GPUs won't perform any better than their cheap consumer brothers.

The only remaining difference is ECC VRAM, which many (not all) workstation GPUs have. This is important in high-accuracy compute applications (mostly scientific stuff). It doesn't matter for most other applications. Apple's FirePro GPUs don't have ECC VRAM btw.

If you don't need those features a workstation GPU isn't more than a heavily overpriced, downclocked consumer GPU.
 
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Fl0r!an said:
The main reason for buying a workstation GPU are their highly optimized OpenGL drivers, which will give an enormous performance boost in professional CAD software such as Catia, Creo or NX.
Those optimized drivers (and most of that CAD software) don't exist in macOS, so AMD FirePro or Nvidia Quadro GPUs won't perform any better than their cheap consumer brothers.

The only remaining difference is ECC VRAM, which many (not all) workstation GPUs have. This is important in high-accuracy compute applications (mostly scientific stuff). It doesn't matter for most other applications. Apple's FirePro GPUs don't have ECC VRAM btw.

If you don't need those features a workstation GPU isn't more than a heavily overpriced, downclocked consumer GPU.
Click to expand...

I appreciate the reply. I will definitely take that into consideration.
 
OP
I tried the WX7100 to no avail (Maybe a hackers heaven) but not for me.
Tried the MVC GTX1080-8GB and it worked but too much power draw. (Kept for one adobe system)

The WX7100 and P4000 both are single-6 pin. (and my theoretical Ideal choice for 5,1 AvidHDX).
so now I need to test a P4000.

I am mainly an Audio platform person keeping multi-display systems using 5,1 SSD filled Mac Pro's
Display example 1080P - 1444p-4k - 1080p (24"-32"-24")

btw the Sapphire Mac edition 7950 is my fall back champ.
 
So it sounds like the WX7100 isn't compatible in a cMP? I was looking at getting one for the optimized OpenGL drivers for CAD/rendering.

Earlier someone mentioned altering the kext, is that best left only for the "well experienced"?
 
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