So I got the GTX 980 "Mac Edition" from MacVidCard

[edenexposito]

What is this bugfix and how install it?

 

[Zodi4c]

It's done by MVC, they changed something in the bios

 

[edenexposito]

then you need to return it for repair to MVC ? I dont see any fix announced from MVC but I have problems booting sometimes when I change boot from bootcamp to OSX and reverse.

 

[mrt209]

I have a ATI Radeon HD 5870 in my mid-2010 mac pro. If I just want something better for gaming on windows using bootcamp, could I just buy a gtx 980 in addition to my ATI Radeon HD 5870 or would I still need the mac version for it to run properly?

Basically I'd like to continue to use the Radeon for osx and a second card for gaming on windows. Thanks!

 

[Zodi4c]

Hi,

the GTX980 is extrem fast and work smoothly under OS X 10.10.2 or 10.10.3
that means you don't need the HD5870 anymore, but...
an unflashed GTX980 will run in windows only on PCI1.0 (not 2.0) ist maybe faster as your HD5870 anyway, but the fun starts with the MVC flashed card.

I've a MacPro 2009 and I'm able to play Call of Duty AW on a 4K (60Hz) smoothly or Far Cry 4 is also nice in 4K.

----------

then you need to return it for repair to MVC ? I dont see any fix announced from MVC but I have problems booting sometimes when I change boot from bootcamp to OSX and reverse.

Yes, I had maybe the same problem and I sent my card back to MVC!
You should ask Chris..

 

[Claywd]

Dump rom...

... and installed on my MP5,1.

Booted up, full EFI screen and everything including the Bootcamp works like a charm.

Want to hook that bad boy up to bootcamp and dump the rom for the rest of us?

 

[troy14]

... and installed on my MP5,1.

Booted up, full EFI screen and everything including the Bootcamp works like a charm.

Want to hook that bad boy up to bootcamp and dump the rom for the rest of us?

You can get the ROM already from macvidcards.com

 

[Claywd]

You can get the ROM already from macvidcards.com

By "get", you meant purchase their flashing service, send off the card and wait a few weeks to get the card back right?

I just want the rom by itself, I can flash the EVGA GTX 980 from my own pc. If they have the ROM available then how do I go about getting it?

 

[JesterJJZ]

By "get", you meant purchase their flashing service, send off the card and wait a few weeks to get the card back right?

I just want the rom by itself, I can flash the EVGA GTX 980 from my own pc. If they have the ROM available then how do I go about getting it?

Just sounds like you want free stuff. You might want to rephrase yourself and ask if you can buy just the ROM separately.

 

[netkas]

By "get", you meant purchase their flashing service, send off the card and wait a few weeks to get the card back right?

I just want the rom by itself, I can flash the EVGA GTX 980 from my own pc. If they have the ROM available then how do I go about getting it?

You may just install uefi sdk, spent few monthes (or more, depends on brains) and get your free version of rom, then share it with anyone.

 

[Claywd]

Just sounds like you want free stuff. You might want to rephrase yourself and ask if you can buy just the ROM separately.

Well I paid for the card... I really just want the best bang for my buck which has already been spent. However, I see where your getting at.

You may just install uefi sdk, spent few monthes (or more, depends on brains) and get your free version of rom, then share it with anyone.

And this is the challenge actually. I have been looking into the sytax of EFI. I am a c++ programmer so back-tracking to C sounds little boring but I'm up for it. Have you any good tutorials on getting started in UEFI?

I've googled and got a few "pieces" but something structured would be wonderful. If I can come up with the solution I'll post it back for anyone to use. We already face the challenge of Apple discontinuing their best products, I'd like to see the remaining Mac Pro community overcome the challenge of paying inflated prices to get performance on what should be supported machines.

PS: If the rom was for sale for $10 or $20 I wouldn't bother doing it myself, I'd pay macvidcards and get it over with. At $180 I think I can afford to learn the syntax and program EFI/UEFI for my future benefit and the benefit of the community.

 

[jelockwood]

Well I paid for the card... I really just want the best bang for my buck which has already been spent. However, I see where your getting at.

And this is the challenge a
PS: If the rom was for sale for $10 or $20 I wouldn't bother doing it myself, I'd pay macvidcards and get it over with. At $180 I think I can afford to learn the syntax and program EFI/UEFI for my future benefit and the benefit of the community.

You may be experiencing 'pain' over the cost of $180 but imagine the 'agony' people outside the USA have to experience by either paying to ship a card all the way to the USA and back with shipping duty and sales tax charges on top, or buying a card from the USA from MacVidCards with again shipping, duty and sales tax on top. Then imagine the recent hassle any non-US customers would have had to go through to get the card re-flashed to fix an issue on top of that.

I really wish MacVidCards would sort out a European partner which he has been talking about doing for a couple of years.

I maybe wrong but it maybe that in order to add EFI to these cards it also involves fitting a bigger capacity flash chip.

As it is so 'painful' to get a card from the US to Europe, I am currently waiting to see how good the soon to ship AMD R9 300 series cards will be.

Perhaps if it is just a matter of flashing cards MacVidCards should write his own flash tool which requires a license code entering to 'activate' it, then this could be simply downloaded and run align with entering a purchased license code to enable it. This would save all the agony of international shipping. If hardware changes are also required then unfortunately we non-US customers remain screwed.

 

[Pressure]

And this is the challenge actually. I have been looking into the sytax of EFI. I am a c++ programmer so back-tracking to C sounds little boring but I'm up for it. Have you any good tutorials on getting started in UEFI?

I've googled and got a few "pieces" but something structured would be wonderful. If I can come up with the solution I'll post it back for anyone to use. We already face the challenge of Apple discontinuing their best products, I'd like to see the remaining Mac Pro community overcome the challenge of paying inflated prices to get performance on what should be supported machines.

PS: If the rom was for sale for $10 or $20 I wouldn't bother doing it myself, I'd pay macvidcards and get it over with. At $180 I think I can afford to learn the syntax and program EFI/UEFI for my future benefit and the benefit of the community.

I tip my hat to you, good sir!

 

[TzunamiOSX]

Question:

Is a hardware modifikation needed for the 980 gtx EFI version.

I ask because of the loss of the manufacturer's warranty.

 

[Pending]

Question:

Is a hardware modifikation needed for the 980 gtx EFI version.

I ask because of the loss of the manufacturer's warranty.

A hardware mod is usually required to achieve pci 2.0 speed.
'Flashing' is usually required to re-programme a certain chip for a boot screen.
I would assume you were voiding a warranty with either mod.

 

[Demigod Mac]

I was hoping we'd see nMP at WWDC with Quadro options but it looks like these will be a FirePro refresh based on drivers in 10.10.3.

Guess Macbook Pro is our only hope now for new native OS X Nvidia drivers, and Maxwell architecture should be tempting for Apple. How do the GTX 9xxM series compare to the R9 M2xx series re: battery life and heat?

 

[philliplakis]

I was hoping we'd see nMP at WWDC with Quadro options but it looks like these will be a FirePro refresh based on drivers in 10.10.3.

I might be wrong here

Isn't the only Maxwell quadro the M6000 and K620

The current K line is all kepler,
K4200 = GTX680 chip
K5200 = GTX780 chip
K6000 = GTX780ti chip

Its not like apple to use the latest line of cards, So if we are to see quadro's in a nMP my opinion would be that they are going to be from the K series hence no inbuilt Maxwell drivers.

 

[Pending]

I was hoping we'd see nMP at WWDC with Quadro options but it looks like these will be a FirePro refresh based on drivers in 10.10.3.

Guess Macbook Pro is our only hope now for new native OS X Nvidia drivers, and Maxwell architecture should be tempting for Apple. How do the GTX 9xxM series compare to the R9 M2xx series re: battery life and heat?

Here is worth a look - http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-980M.126692.0.html

 

[galushales]

780 running well?

Hey Steve -- is your 780 from MacVidCards still running fine -- and what OS are you still on? Also, what was the turnaround from the time you ordered as I am considering one.

 

[Surrat]

I might be wrong here

Isn't the only Maxwell quadro the M6000 and K620

The current K line is all kepler,
K4200 = GTX680 chip
K5200 = GTX780 chip
K6000 = GTX780ti chip

Its not like apple to use the latest line of cards, So if we are to see quadro's in a nMP my opinion would be that they are going to be from the K series hence no inbuilt Maxwell drivers.

According to http://www.anandtech.com/show/8374/nvidia-refreshes-quadro-lineup-launches-5-new-quadro-cards there are 3 quadro maxwell cards: K2200 K620, and the super M6000

 

[bloemetje]

@stevedusa

Do you have FCPX? Could you please run the BruceX benchmark and post your time? Many thanks

I got amazing result with the Cuda accelerator enabled in Davinci Resolve. However, Final Cut Pro X doesn't show a substantial increase in render speed when I compared my old Radeon 5870 with the GTX 980 TI, hardly 10% increase. FCPX showed even a great decrease in render time when I compared my old Radeon 5870 with the new GTX 980.

I did not used flashed GPU's, but that shouldn't make a difference, since Barefeats.com didn't use flashed GPU's either in their tests. (and they do have better test results for FCPX with a GTX 980 TI).

My setup:
Mac Pro (mid 2010, 2x2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon, RAM 24GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC, Yosemite 10.10.4 (14E46), nvidia webdriver 346.02.02f03 (up to date), Cuda driver version 7.0.52 (during the test proces I switched to latest version 7.0.61, but it didn't make any difference)

The Graphic cards I tested (each at least 3 times):
980TISC= EVGA GTX 980 Ti (6GB), SuperClocked
980TI= EVGA GTX 980 Ti (6GB)
Radeon = AMD Radeon HD 5870 GPU Mac Edition (1GB)
980SC = EVGA GTX 980 (4GB), SuperClocked
Cuda/DR= Standard lantern in Davinci Resolve 12 (Beta)
FCP= BruceX in Final Cut Pro X 10.2.1



My results (Time in seconds):
980TISC FCP 49.85
980TI FCP 51.2
Radeon FCP 57.73
980SC FCP 71.09 (slower than my old Radeon 5870)

980TISC Cuda/DR 12.03
980TI Cuda/DR 13.11
980SC Cuda/DR 15.63
980TISC OpenCL/DR 32.73
980TI OpenCL/DR 33.04
980SC OpenCL/DR 35.54
Radeon OpenCL/DR 46.21


So I am puzzled about my poor FCPX render results ( and playback). This is what might be part of the problem:

-I cannot enable Error Correcting Codes (ECC) in the Nvidia driver manager.
-I cannot perform a successful Luxmark benchmark test: "Image validation: Failed (633261 different pixels, 98.95%)
-The only thing I can think of that my FCPX results are poor, while Barefeats test results for FCPX showed an huge improvement, is that I used a different brand GPU. I used EVGA, and Barefeat used PNY (to be precise: PNY GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Graphics Cards VCGGTX980T6XPB-CG, so they emailed me)
-rendering BruceX benchmark in FCPX doesnt startup the fans of the 980 card. So probably it is not really used?

 

[jelockwood]

I got amazing result with the Cuda accelerator enabled in Davinci Resolve. However, Final Cut Pro X doesn't show a substantial increase in render speed when I compared my old Radeon 5870 with the GTX 980 TI, hardly 10% increase. FCPX showed even a great decrease in render time when I compared my old Radeon 5870 with the new GTX 980.

I did not used flashed GPU's, but that shouldn't make a difference, since Barefeats.com didn't use flashed GPU's either in their tests. (and they do have better test results for FCPX with a GTX 980 TI).

So I am puzzled about my poor FCPX render results ( and playback). This is what might be part of the problem:

Adobe software is written to use CUDA and hence works best with Nvidia cards. Apple's Final Cut Pro is written to use OpenCL and Apple are responsible for writing drivers for AMD cards. So historically Final Cut Pro works better with AMD cards. Nvidia cards can support OpenCL as well but typically do not provide as good performance for OpenCL as AMD cards. The new Mac Pro as an example uses a pair of AMD cards.

 

[bloemetje]

Adobe software is written to use CUDA and hence works best with Nvidia cards. Apple's Final Cut Pro is written to use OpenCL and Apple are responsible for writing drivers for AMD cards. So historically Final Cut Pro works better with AMD cards. Nvidia cards can support OpenCL as well but typically do not provide as good performance for OpenCL as AMD cards. The new Mac Pro as an example uses a pair of AMD cards.

Yes, but I used the same non-flashed 980 TI card as Barefeats.com used in their test (http://barefeats.com/gtx980ti.html), and they do have much better test results for FCPX with a GTX 980 TI on a classic Mac Pro.

 

[pastrychef]

Could the fact that his Mac Pro is running at 3.33GHz vs your 2.93GHz causes such a big difference?

 

[MacVidCards]

-I cannot enable Error Correcting Codes (ECC) in the Nvidia driver manager.

Only Quadro and Tesla cards can use this. They should include a note on screen about this, at least once a month I get an enraged email about a broken GPU.