Hi, I post this threat mainly want to recommend GPU option for those people who want to update GPU of their cMP 5,1. That is AMD RX 5700 reference card (note that its not xt, just 5700)
I found that people rarely discuss this card. There is few information about how this card performs on mac pro. It seems like Radeon vii and RX 5700 XT attract more attention. But I don’t want to recommend these two for the following reasons:
1. The performance of 5700 is quite good, which is only slightly lower than radeon vii and almost same with the RX 5700 XT. Buy its much cheaper than RX 5700 XT. I installed both macOS catalina (with opencore) and windows 10 latest version on my mac pro. I tried video editing and used this card to play GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2, no any problem with 1080p 60fps. I didn’t try 4k because currently I dont have a 4k display.
2. No extra power supply is needed. You may found that the max power supply for mac pro is 225w. And the TDP of RX 5700 XT is exactly 225w. I did some research and found that sometimes RX 5700 XT may reach the peak higher than the TDP. So generally it is recommend to use it with the Pixlas modification. But this issue is not exist in RX 5700. The TDP of 5700 is only 180w. At least in my usage in the past month, I haven’t found any problem on its power supply, even when I run the benchmark or play games for long time.
3. The design of this card (reference version) is beautiful, which I think fit perfectly of the design of mac pro. I really don’t like the “bending design” of the 5700 XT, and I also don’t like the red “R” logo in the radeon vii. I think the red “R” logo itself is beautiful, but its weird to see the red light through the holes in the front and back face of mac pro.
To sum up, RX 5700 works perfectly in my mac pro. The only issues are that the 1 Opencore is needed to have the boot screen, 2 Opencore is needed to get the gpu hardware acceleration, and 3 the minimum macOS required is Catalina. Other than these issues, everything is perfect. So I write this post and want to help the people who selecting the GPU for their mac pro
I found that people rarely discuss this card. There is few information about how this card performs on mac pro. It seems like Radeon vii and RX 5700 XT attract more attention. But I don’t want to recommend these two for the following reasons:
1. The performance of 5700 is quite good, which is only slightly lower than radeon vii and almost same with the RX 5700 XT. Buy its much cheaper than RX 5700 XT. I installed both macOS catalina (with opencore) and windows 10 latest version on my mac pro. I tried video editing and used this card to play GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2, no any problem with 1080p 60fps. I didn’t try 4k because currently I dont have a 4k display.
2. No extra power supply is needed. You may found that the max power supply for mac pro is 225w. And the TDP of RX 5700 XT is exactly 225w. I did some research and found that sometimes RX 5700 XT may reach the peak higher than the TDP. So generally it is recommend to use it with the Pixlas modification. But this issue is not exist in RX 5700. The TDP of 5700 is only 180w. At least in my usage in the past month, I haven’t found any problem on its power supply, even when I run the benchmark or play games for long time.
3. The design of this card (reference version) is beautiful, which I think fit perfectly of the design of mac pro. I really don’t like the “bending design” of the 5700 XT, and I also don’t like the red “R” logo in the radeon vii. I think the red “R” logo itself is beautiful, but its weird to see the red light through the holes in the front and back face of mac pro.
To sum up, RX 5700 works perfectly in my mac pro. The only issues are that the 1 Opencore is needed to have the boot screen, 2 Opencore is needed to get the gpu hardware acceleration, and 3 the minimum macOS required is Catalina. Other than these issues, everything is perfect. So I write this post and want to help the people who selecting the GPU for their mac pro
