MP 7,1 Nvidia’s RTX 3090/ 4090/ 5090/ A6000/ 6000 Ada/ Pro Blackwell in a Mac Pro (2019)

[joevt]

Up to 300W auxiliary power via two 8-pin connectors.

That is for each MPX bay. There are two MPX bays.

The PC has one power cable from the PSU to the GPU. And der8auer mentions that the issue might be mitigated if one use more than one power cable from the PSU.

The Mac Pro will be using 4 separate cables connecting to the GPU. And draw power from a few locations. And I would assume Apple designed the motherboard with ability to deliver full power on all connectors.

For some reason, the current was not divided evenly between all the connectors in der8auer's setup. I suppose having more sources may mitigate the issue. But it's not 100% guaranteed.

 

[raffetazarius]

I finally opened up and installed RTX3090 Founders Edition on my Mac Pro 7,1. It was hard to put it in as you do need to push the backside's plastic bracket where the 3 fans are. Once it's pushed then you also need to align your card properly beforehand so the slot can be fit in as the GPU slides down. Due to the bracket flexing a little, you will not be able to screw either the back cover or the front cover. I just left them as-is but it works fine.

Overall, I haven't played it on Mac OS yet but at least on Boot Camp Windows 10 it works flawlessly and sleeps perfectly fine (I bought a Gigabyte GTX1050Ti before and when I put it to sleep on Windows 10 the fan will blow furiously).

Just FYI, if you're worried about the plastic fan bracket, it is a one-piece item and that also has some sort of circuitry on 3 sides, meaning it's connected to Mac Pro without wires (just like other Mac Pro parts). Unfortunately, you cannot buy just that part yet so you would probably need to wait until 3rd party starts selling official Mac Pro parts.

For Geekbench 5, the score on OpenCL Compute was about 3 times higher than W5700X and 4 times higher than GTX1080 FE that I used to own.

I still have both installed, and connected 1 display to Nvidia whilst other 2 displays are connected to W5700X (otherwise you cannot turn on Nvidia Control Panel). The games work flawlessly (I have 4k 144hz triple monitors) and on Davinci Resolve you can choose both GPU's on OpenCL mode.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Hi @LEOMODE @RyanFlynn !

I'm trying to get a 3090 FE (yes it's squeezed in but fits) going in my Mac Pro 2019. The problem is the computer will not boot into Windows 10 at all with the Nvidia card in there either (a) alone (with no MPX, I also have the W5700X) or (b) with the MPX, so I can't complete the rest of the process. How were you able to get the computer to boot with only the Nvidia card? I just get a endlessly spinning little circle of white ray lines (the Windows "loading..." icon usually visible just before the basic blue Windows logo appears).

I have the 3090 installed in slot 4 as it offers the most "bend" at the back of the Mac Pro case for it to squeeze in (don't care about PCIe bandwidth allocation as I only have the I/O card installed with nothing connected to it). Do I have to put the 3090 in a certain slot when using alone?

1. Which slot do you have the 3090 FE in? (I didn't want to put it in slot 3 as there would be no airflow underneath).
2. Did you have to remove your MPX after installing Windows 10 with Bootcamp and boot with only the Nvidia card installed? Did you have to install it in a specific PCIe slot?
3. Which Nvidia driver version are you using in Windows Bootcamp with your 3090 FE?

MacOS boots up with the MPX and the Nvidia card installed, and just detects the Nvidia card as a generic VGA-compatible card.

Windows boots up with only the MPX card installed, but not in scenario (a) or (b) mentioned above.

I've re-done the end-to-end process of formatting the Boot Camp partition and installing Windows 10 fresh twice now!

Thanks for any help/guidance you can offer! Really detailed instructions would be great!

I'm using Windows 10. My Mac is on MacOS 14.7.2 (did Apple make this more difficult to do? or block using Nvidia GPUs completely with Sonoma?). Did you have to rename MacHALDriver.sys to get your Mac to boot into Windows with the Nvidia card in it?

 

[raffetazarius]

I finally nabbed a 4090FE and put it in my 7,1 2019 Intel Max Pro. In the picture, I have a 3 pcie power plugs going to the 4090 and one going to a 3060. I removed some pcie slot covers so the hot air from the GPU can be pushed out. Works quite well in windows (obviously). I haven’t gone back to MacOS yet though. For that I usually just use my laptop.

How did you get Windows to boot with the Nvidia card installed? Windows 10 Bootcamp will not boot up for me if the Nvidia card is installed in slot 4 (either on its own or with the MPX also installed). My MPX W5700X is installed in slot 1.

I'm using Sonoma 14.7.2 on a Mac Pro 2019, trying to get a 3090 FE going!

Thanks!

 

[LEOMODE]

Hi @LEOMODE @RyanFlynn !

I'm trying to get a 3090 FE (yes it's squeezed in but fits) going in my Mac Pro 2019. The problem is the computer will not boot into Windows 10 at all with the Nvidia card in there either (a) alone (with no MPX, I also have the W5700X) or (b) with the MPX, so I can't complete the rest of the process. How were you able to get the computer to boot with only the Nvidia card? I just get a endlessly spinning little circle of white ray lines (the Windows "loading..." icon usually visible just before the basic blue Windows logo appears).

I have the 3090 installed in slot 4 as it offers the most "bend" at the back of the Mac Pro case for it to squeeze in (don't care about PCIe bandwidth allocation as I only have the I/O card installed with nothing connected to it). Do I have to put the 3090 in a certain slot when using alone?

1. Which slot do you have the 3090 FE in? (I didn't want to put it in slot 3 as there would be no airflow underneath).
2. Did you have to remove your MPX after installing Windows 10 with Bootcamp and boot with only the Nvidia card installed? Did you have to install it in a specific PCIe slot?
3. Which Nvidia driver version are you using in Windows Bootcamp with your 3090 FE?

MacOS boots up with the MPX and the Nvidia card installed, and just detects the Nvidia card as a generic VGA-compatible card.

Windows boots up with only the MPX card installed, but not in scenario (a) or (b) mentioned above.

I've re-done the end-to-end process of formatting the Boot Camp partition and installing Windows 10 fresh twice now!

Thanks for any help/guidance you can offer! Really detailed instructions would be great!

I'm using Windows 10. My Mac is on MacOS 14.7.2 (did Apple make this more difficult to do? or block using Nvidia GPUs completely with Sonoma?). Did you have to rename MacHALDriver.sys to get your Mac to boot into Windows with the Nvidia card in it?

My Mac Pro is for sale now. I gave up on this. It is so slow since it's a workstation and now overrun by Mac silicon. It was pretty substantial when I compared against either the latest Windows desktop or Mac silicon Mac's. Anyway, I'm just using Windows desktop and will go either Mac Mini M4 or my current M1 MBP works fine.


To answer your question, it sounds like it's not plugged in properly. It should detect it just fine. If it also doesn't detect is on Mac OS as an unknown graphics card, then that means it's not plugged in properly.

1) I put it on slot 3 and it worked fine. Don't worry about it.

2) No, installing both is fine. I just turned AMD MPX off in Device Manager to drain less power. But it still works fine and you can still use MPX for video output too.

3) Latest version always worked fine. No issues.

Good luck but I highly recommend you just get a Windows desktop and Mac Mini, Mac Studio, or MacBook's. It will kill Mac Pro 7,1 any day.

 

[raffetazarius]

My Mac Pro is for sale now. I gave up on this. It is so slow since it's a workstation and now overrun by Mac silicon. It was pretty substantial when I compared against either the latest Windows desktop or Mac silicon Mac's. Anyway, I'm just using Windows desktop and will go either Mac Mini M4 or my current M1 MBP works fine.


To answer your question, it sounds like it's not plugged in properly. It should detect it just fine. If it also doesn't detect is on Mac OS as an unknown graphics card, then that means it's not plugged in properly.

1) I put it on slot 3 and it worked fine. Don't worry about it.

2) No, installing both is fine. I just turned AMD MPX off in Device Manager to drain less power. But it still works fine and you can still use MPX for video output too.

3) Latest version always worked fine. No issues.

Good luck but I highly recommend you just get a Windows desktop and Mac Mini, Mac Studio, or MacBook's. It will kill Mac Pro 7,1 any day.

Thanks @LEOMODE for replying. Gonna keep my Mac Pro just to play the video when I'm composing music, so it doesn't have to do much. Was hoping to just do a little AI and gaming in my downtime on it since I can use CUDA on the Intel machine. I have an M3 Max 128GB 8TB MBP and it's a beast but still not touching Nvidia on fps or it/s!

 

[Romanesco]

Does anyone know if the RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Generation (Workstation or Workstation Max-Q) is compatible with the Mac Pro (2019)? As in fit, power connectors and such.

I’m currently running an A6000 alongside a Vega II Duo and considering replacing the A6000 with one of the newer RTX 6000 variants.

 

[Rimmsi]

RTX 5090 works well in MP7.1, I don't see a reason why another Blackwell card wouldn't work.

 

[impulse462]

Does anyone know if the RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Generation (Workstation or Workstation Max-Q) is compatible with the Mac Pro (2019)? As in fit, power connectors and such.

I’m currently running an A6000 alongside a Vega II Duo and considering replacing the A6000 with one of the newer RTX 6000 variants.

Where are you buying it from?