official Mojave Mac Pro Metal GPU card list finally

[weckart]

They're going to have to change something though. Right now, if you're on a pre-0089 firmware, the Mojave installer will insist on upgrading your firmware before you can install Mojave.

Nothing needs to change. Upgrading to the latest HS with the full installer will install the 0089 firmware. In fact, you don't even need to install HS, just to run the installer. Swap in a Metal supported card and you can install Mojave without the firmware issue.

Realistically, as soon as the MP2019 is released, the cMP is going on the endangered list. I don't expect there to be many more firmware updates, if at all.

 

[h9826790]

2. Run the installer with your GT120 installed and a monitor connected to it. It will prompt you to install the 0089 firmware update. Allow it to do that and proceed with the instructions to flash the firmware.

For info, the minimum requirement is just with the GT120 installed. Not necessary connect the monitor to it.

Of course, it's much better to have a monitor connect to the Mac EFI GPU during firmware flashing. But practically won't make any difference.

The whole process is 100% automatic (after release the power button). And no matter can we see anything on the screen. The only thing we can do is just wait for the auto reboot.

I've tested this by myself.

RX580 in slot 1
GT120 in slot 3
Single monitor connected to the RX580 only
And successfully upgrade to 0089.B00 with completely black screen during firmware upgrade.

 

[MisterAndrew]

Did you see this? What's the sense in this table?
View attachment 772659

It looks like that just means that family 2 GPUs also support the feature sets of family 1 (so family 2 is family 1 + 2).
[doublepost=1532507530][/doublepost]I found this Metal testing Go package. It's able to show info about your GPU and what metal feature sets it supports. However, I'm not a programmer and I don't know how to get it to output. I installed Go and the package.

Link to the Go package installer here: https://golang.org/doc/install#install

Then to install the Metal testing package type "go get -u dmitri.shuralyov.com/gpu/mtl". Link: https://dmitri.shuralyov.com/gpu/mtl

It's located in this test file below (click the Tests checkbox). I can type "go test -v example_test.go" but it just says it passed and doesn't output anything. It looks like it's configured for json pretty printing, but I'm not sure what that is or how it works.
https://gotools.org/dmitri.shuralyov.com/gpu/mtl?tests=#example-test.go

 

[bsbeamer]

Did you see this? What's the sense in this table?

Doubtful, but does this accidentally reference the early iMac Pro's models that were extensively being used for testing for several months before the late 2017 launch? Unsure what GPUs were included in those models and it is nearly impossible to nail down their exact specs.

 

[bookemdano]

Nothing needs to change. Upgrading to the latest HS with the full installer will install the 0089 firmware. In fact, you don't even need to install HS, just to run the installer. Swap in a Metal supported card and you can install Mojave without the firmware issue.

Realistically, as soon as the MP2019 is released, the cMP is going on the endangered list. I don't expect there to be many more firmware updates, if at all.

Of course. But Apple cannot expect that everyone installing Mojave has previously installed 10.13.6. They may have people who skipped HS entirely wanting to jump from Sierra to Mojave (or even earlier releases!). Of course, yes installing 10.13.6 would obviate the need to swap around video cards trying to get the Mojave installer to flash the new firmware but I really doubt Apple would officially endorse that as a prerequisite for installing Mojave.
[doublepost=1532532616][/doublepost]

It looks like that just means that family 2 GPUs also support the feature sets of family 1 (so family 2 is family 1 + 2).

Agreed. Family 2 is a superset of Family 1. Not sure why they didn't write iMac Pro exactly the same way under both headings but if you just ignore that detail then the table makes sense.

 

[MoerBoer]

Problem is people with FileVault, like myself. I can't just insert a Metal enabled GPU and be done with it, it just doesn't start.

 

[bookemdano]

Problem is people with FileVault, like myself. I can't just insert a Metal enabled GPU and be done with it, it just doesn't start.

Yes, I also enable FileVault on all my Macs and its been my biggest bugaboo with the cMP. I just really wonder if Apple is prepared to say that cMP users cannot use FileVault if they want to use Mojave. There would be unofficial ways around it (you can technically enter the FV password blind, but it's a royal PITA. Plus you could buy a 7950 or GTX 680 and flash yourself, or buy a card from MVC), but Apple is not going to be able to recommend any of those options. So it will be interesting to see what they do here.

 

[MoerBoer]

Yes, I also enable FileVault on all my Macs and its been my biggest bugaboo with the cMP. I just really wonder if Apple is prepared to say that cMP users cannot use FileVault if they want to use Mojave. There would be unofficial ways around it (you can technically enter the FV password blind, but it's a royal PITA. Plus you could buy a 7950 or GTX 680 and flash yourself, or buy a card from MVC), but Apple is not going to be able to recommend any of those options. So it will be interesting to see what they do here.

I've got a GT 710 lying around and it's Metal enabled. When I insert it together with my HD 5870, I can use it.

When I just have the GT 710 in, the chime starts, waits about 10 seconds and then chimes again. Then just hangs there. No matter if I type the password or not.

Might be an Nvidia specific issue, but I've had no luck booting into the system with only a non efi Metal card installed with FileVault enabled.

 

[bookemdano]

I've got a GT 710 lying around and it's Metal enabled. When I insert it together with my HD 5870, I can use it.

When I just have the GT 710 in, the chime starts, waits about 10 seconds and then chimes again. Then just hangs there. No matter if I type the password or not.

Might be an Nvidia specific issue, but I've had no luck booting into the system with only a non efi Metal card installed with FileVault enabled.

At least on my systems you have to use the mouse or an arrow key and then enter to select the user, then enter the password. And bluetooth keyboards can take a few seconds to get connected in the EFI environment, so it can be tricky to enter the password blind. Not sure if that's the issue with yours or not--I have no idea if entering the password blind works in all cases, but it has worked for me in the past (but that was with a Radeon 7950).

EDIT: Is this Mojave you're talking about? I have to admit my last experience typing in a FV password blind was back in El Capitan days.

 

[weckart]

Of course, yes installing 10.13.6 would obviate the need to swap around video cards trying to get the Mojave installer to flash the new firmware but I really doubt Apple would officially endorse that as a prerequisite for installing Mojave.

Now watch Apple do just that. HS is free and you don't actually have to install it. Just run the installer and cancel after the firmware is updated. The cMP is on life support until the 2019 is out. I just don't see Apple sinking any more time and money in keeping the cMP going after that.

 

[MoerBoer]

At least on my systems you have to use the mouse or an arrow key and then enter to select the user, then enter the password. And bluetooth keyboards can take a few seconds to get connected in the EFI environment, so it can be tricky to enter the password blind. Not sure if that's the issue with yours or not--I have no idea if entering the password blind works in all cases or not, but it has worked for me in the past (but that was with a Radeon 7950).

Maybe I should try an AMD card. I was thinking of getting a RX 560, but it's not flashable (yet), but will still not have a boot screen.

Just to have some warranty compared to a second hand 7950. Side question, is the 7950 powerful compared to something modern like the RX 560?

 

[bookemdano]

Maybe I should try an AMD card. I was thinking of getting a RX 560, but it's not flashable (yet), but will still not have a boot screen.

Just to have some warranty compared to a second hand 7950. Side question, is the 7950 powerful compared to something modern like the RX 560?

Maybe someone has benchmarks, but I believe yes that the 7950 is decently more powerful than the 560. Consider also that the 560 doesn't require any additional power than what the slot provides, whereas the 7950 would require use of both 6-pin power connectors on the board.

I never pushed the limits of the 7950. Buying it for my purposes was actually a mistake because its EFI would actually prevent the Mac Pro from booting when connected via DisplayPort to a 4K monitor set to DisplayPort 1.2 mode (which is required to get the 60Hz refresh rate). I would have had to settle for 30Hz or disconnect my monitor on every reboot, which was totally unacceptable to me.

If you're not planning on 4K, then I think the 7950 is still a good EFI card for the cMP because you can flash it yourself and it is Metal capable (although it would be Family 1... but so are a bunch of 2015-era Macs that Apple will be supporting for 3+ years).

 

[MoerBoer]

Maybe someone has benchmarks, but I believe yes that the 7950 is decently more powerful than the 560. Consider also that the 560 doesn't require any additional power than what the slot provides, whereas the 7950 would require use of both 6-pin power connectors on the board.

I never pushed the limits of the 7950. Buying it for my purposes was actually a mistake because its EFI would actually prevent the Mac Pro from booting when connected via DisplayPort to a 4K monitor set to DisplayPort 1.2 mode (which is required to get the 60Hz refresh rate). I would have had to settle for 30Hz or disconnect my monitor on every reboot, which was totally unacceptable to me.

If you're not planning on 4K, then I think the 7950 is still a good EFI card for the cMP because you can flash it yourself and it is Metal capable (although it would be Family 1... but so are a bunch of 2015-era Macs that Apple will be supporting for 3+ years).

I only develop on my MacPro, so I'm not too fussy about massive GPU power. No bootcamp with Windows and games etc.

Would ideally like to upgrade to some 4k monitors in the future, which I believe the RX 560 would be able to drive? And yes, the lower power consumption is also great.

 

[bookemdano]

I only develop on my MacPro, so I'm not too fussy about massive GPU power. No bootcamp with Windows and games etc.

Would ideally like to upgrade to some 4k monitors in the future, which I believe the RX 560 would be able to drive? And yes, the lower power consumption is also great.

Both the 7950 and RX 560 would have no problems driving multiple 4K monitors. The only issue with the 7950 in that regard is the EFI, which is not compatible. If you don't flash it with the EFI ROM then it will work fine in 4K, just won't give you boot screens (thus no FileVault). It's really annoying that there is no straightforward solution. The best I came up with was to buy the cheapest MVC-flashed Nvidia Maxwell card (the 750 Ti), as that has an EFI driver that is compatible with 4K @ 60Hz so I get the boot screen and FileVault prompts. But its biggest issue is that the driver isn't built into MacOS so after every OS update (even minor ones) you have to download and install the web drivers from NVIDIA's site (and sometimes they don't update them for a few days so you have to wait to install MacOS updates until they are). It gets old, but at least it works.

But I still hold out a glimmer of hope that Apple is going to figure out something so that their recommended upgrade cards for Mojave don't provide a gimped experience to people who bought Apple's most expensive Mac as little as 4.5 years ago. So if you can hold off a month or two on buying a card, we should have more clarity on what the best options are by the fall when Mojave is released.
[doublepost=1532535276][/doublepost]

Now watch Apple do just that. HS is free and you don't actually have to install it. Just run the installer and cancel after the firmware is updated. The cMP is on life support until the 2019 is out. I just don't see Apple sinking any more time and money in keeping the cMP going after that.

While they could do that if they wanted to, it would be very un-Apple-like for them to do that. They pride themselves on having pretty uncomplicated install and update processes. Hoop-jumping is not something they would usually endorse.

 

[MoerBoer]

Both the 7950 and RX 560 would have no problems driving multiple 4K monitors. The only issue with the 7950 in that regard is the EFI, which is not compatible. If you don't flash it with the EFI ROM then it will work fine in 4K, just won't give you boot screens (thus no FileVault). It's really annoying that there is no straightforward solution. The best I came up with was to buy the cheapest MVC-flashed Nvidia Maxwell card (the 750 Ti), as that has an EFI driver that is compatible with 4K @ 60Hz so I get the boot screen and FileVault prompts. But its biggest issue is that the driver isn't built into MacOS so after every OS update (even minor ones) you have to download and install the web drivers from NVIDIA's site (and sometimes they don't update them for a few days so you have to wait to install MacOS updates until they are). It gets old, but at least it works.

But I still hold out a glimmer of hope that Apple is going to figure out something so that their recommended upgrade cards for Mojave don't provide a gimped experience to people who bought Apple's most expensive Mac as little as 4.5 years ago. So if you can hold off a month or two on buying a card, we should have more clarity on what the best options are by the fall when Mojave is released.
[doublepost=1532535276][/doublepost]
While they could do that if they wanted to, it would be very un-Apple-like for them to do that. They pride themselves on having pretty uncomplicated install and update processes. Hoop-jumping is not something they would usually endorse.

Thanks, sound advice there.

I will wait patiently to see what the official word is from Apple, but that sinking feeling in my stomach tells me the end is near for my beloved machine. My other Mac Pro 1.1 ( own flashed HD 5770 ) is already running Linux Mint 18, and I might just upgrade the 5.1 to Linux Mint 19 if all else fails.

Sad but true ...

 

[weckart]

While they could do that if they wanted to, it would be very un-Apple-like for them to do that. They pride themselves on having pretty uncomplicated install and update processes. Hoop-jumping is not something they would usually endorse.

Apple will have an uncomplicated solution: Buy the new Mac Pro.

At worst, with the 5,1 it will trundle on as long as drivers for recent graphic cards exist and macOS doesn't require processor calls that the Westmere cannot perform. It will just be a pain to dual boot unless Clover or the like can be hacked to act as a bootloader. We're good for a couple more years at least.

 

[MisterAndrew]

Has anyone with a Tahiti or Pitcairn GPU been able to determine if it’s family 1 or 2?

 

[weckart]

Has anyone with a Tahiti or Pitcairn GPU been able to determine if it’s family 1 or 2?

My failing Tahiti card came up as Family 2v1 in System Profiler. It has an R9 280XOC Gigabyte board with a factory overclocked HD7950 BIOS on it. I believe all Tahiti cards show up as 2v1. OpenGL Extension viewer said the same.

 

[MisterAndrew]

My failing Tahiti card came up as Family 2v1 in System Profiler. It has an R9 280XOC Gigabyte board with a factory overclocked HD7950 BIOS on it. I believe all Tahiti cards show up as 2v1. OpenGL Extension viewer said the same.

That’s great news. So AMD cards are better for Mojave than Nvidia cards since those all appear to be family 1. I guess that makes sense that Mojave is AMD optimized. So every AMD card that supports Metal (GCN1 & up) must also support the family 2 v1 feature set, and all family 1 feature sets. It looks like the end of Nvidia support in macOS is now on the horizon.

It will be interesting to see the new feature set tables.

 

[bookemdano]

Apple will have an uncomplicated solution: Buy the new Mac Pro.

That would have been their solution had they decided to drop the 5,1 from the Mojave compatibility list. But they chose to include it, which means that by definition they're not telling you to buy the new Mac Pro. They're telling you to buy a new GPU and run Mojave on your cheese grater.

The gist of it being that they have chosen to support MacOS Mojave on the cMP 5,1. Many (dare I say most) cMP users are not professional IT-type people. They're pros in photography, or design, or video, etc., and use their cMP for real work. People like that are probably not willing nor capable to jump through a thousand hoops just to install and use the newest OS, and Apple has a history of never making people do things like that just to run their new OS on a supported model. It's bad enough asking people to open up their Mac to change out the video card (I'd argue a bunch of cMPs haven't been opened once since they were first built or initially configured). As Mac enthusiasts we tend to forget that we are not Apple's target audience. Things that are trivial steps to us would be major obstacles for someone who isn't tech-savvy.

 

[norda72]

I have Nvidia Geforce GTX970 4 GB in my Mac Pro Quadcore mid 2012. It’s a flashed PC-card which gives me trouble with high spinning fans at start up, black fields in file lists and making the computer slow. I bought it to get better compatibility with my 4K-screen, HP Z27s, and I must have another if I shall upgrade to Mojave. But will this work with these issues? I have latest Cuda and Nvidia Web-driver, it doesn’t work anyway. The seller on eBay promised that everything should work perfectly and all my wishes would come true. He had never heard about any problems with the flashed cards, until I complained. Well, old Mac Pro isn’t made for the world of today. It wasn’t so even when it was new in 2013. And getting a another Mac is almost impossible with the prices nowadays. You have to sell the car to afford to buy a Mac...

 

[weckart]

That’s great news. So AMD cards are better for Mojave than Nvidia cards since those all appear to be family 1. I guess that makes sense that Mojave is AMD optimized. So every AMD card that supports Metal (GCN1 & up) must also support the family 2 v1 feature set, and all family 1 feature sets. It looks like the end of Nvidia support in macOS is now on the horizon.

It will be interesting to see the new feature set tables.

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ard-list-finally.2124795/page-3#post-26191435

 

[crjackson2134]

It looks like that just means that family 2 GPUs also support the feature sets of family 1 (so family 2 is family 1 + 2).
[doublepost=1532507530][/doublepost]I found this Metal testing Go package. It's able to show info about your GPU and what metal feature sets it supports. However, I'm not a programmer and I don't know how to get it to output. I installed Go and the package.

Link to the Go package installer here: https://golang.org/doc/install#install

Then to install the Metal testing package type "go get -u dmitri.shuralyov.com/gpu/mtl". Link: https://dmitri.shuralyov.com/gpu/mtl

It's located in this test file below (click the Tests checkbox). I can type "go test -v example_test.go" but it just says it passed and doesn't output anything. It looks like it's configured for json pretty printing, but I'm not sure what that is or how it works.
https://gotools.org/dmitri.shuralyov.com/gpu/mtl?tests=#example-test.go

Did you ever figure this out?

I'm trying to figure out what level of Metal support my HD7970 has.

System profiler only says: Metal Supported...

Would be nice to know.

 

[MisterAndrew]

Did you ever figure this out?

I'm trying to figure out what level of Metal support my HD7970 has.

System profiler only says: Metal Supported...

Would be nice to know.

It should support all feature sets (family 2.)

There’s this Go package that can tell you that I linked earlier https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...rd-list-finally.2124795/page-17#post-26285037, but I haven’t figured out how to get it to output. Anyone know Go?

 

[h9826790]

Of course. But Apple cannot expect that everyone installing Mojave has previously installed 10.13.6.

I think they do expect us always keep the OS up to date.
[doublepost=1532590829][/doublepost]

Maybe I should try an AMD card. I was thinking of getting a RX 560, but it's not flashable (yet), but will still not have a boot screen.

Just to have some warranty compared to a second hand 7950. Side question, is the 7950 powerful compared to something modern like the RX 560?

The 7950 has roughly the same performance as the RX560. (7950 should be little bit more powerful if only consider raw performance)

I never pushed the limits of the 7950. Buying it for my purposes was actually a mistake because its EFI would actually prevent the Mac Pro from booting when connected via DisplayPort to a 4K monitor set to DisplayPort 1.2 mode (which is required to get the 60Hz refresh rate). I would have had to settle for 30Hz or disconnect my monitor on every reboot, which was totally unacceptable to me.

Yeah, this is the biggest downside of the 7xxx card.

Anyway, once booted, you can set the DP back to 1.2. No need to settle at 30Hz. That 30Hz thing only required in the very initial phase.