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MP 1,1-5,1 Upgrading 1-slot GPU to another

ptr22

ptr22

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 19, 2013
26
1
Hi,

I'm considering upgrading my graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce GT 120) to something better that, ideally, also helps with video work (so far only full-HD under FCPX but will probably also learn Premiere). I mostly do audio work, so the card doesn't need to be high-end but had a few situations where I'm sure it could have helped. After checking the GPU list here on the forum, it seems that there are not so many 1-slot cards (I'm using all PCIe for other things). Unfortunately, I also need Windows under Bootcamp, so it needs to be possible to do that via the Bootscreen. If I understood this right, this seems to be the best card with one slot that can do that, is that correct?

14. Nvidia Quadro 4000 2 Gb

All others such as the ones listed below wouldn't have any advantages for video?

17. Nvidia Quadro K4200 4 Gb
7. Nvidia Geforce 8800GT 512 Mb

Apologies if that sounds obvious to you, I'm still figuring it all out.

Thanks!
 
ptr22 said:
Hi,

I'm considering upgrading my graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce GT 120) to something better that, ideally, also helps with video work (so far only full-HD under FCPX but will probably also learn Premiere). I mostly do audio work, so the card doesn't need to be high-end but had a few situations where I'm sure it could have helped. After checking the GPU list here on the forum, it seems that there are not so many 1-slot cards (I'm using all PCIe for other things). Unfortunately, I also need Windows under Bootcamp, so it needs to be possible to do that via the Bootscreen. If I understood this right, this seems to be the best card with one slot that can do that, is that correct?

14. Nvidia Quadro 4000 2 Gb

All others such as the ones listed below wouldn't have any advantages for video?

17. Nvidia Quadro K4200 4 Gb
7. Nvidia Geforce 8800GT 512 Mb

Apologies if that sounds obvious to you, I'm still figuring it all out.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

The Quadro 4000 is a very old card, - which is the reason why the card should cheap. With FCPX and Adope Premiere, I would recommend a card with a lot more punch if you want to future proof your system. Think about if Mojave will ever become more important for you in the distant future or not. If yes, you may want to have a look on eBay for the Radeon FirePro WX7000 or WX7100. If you have time to wait and scoop out your eBay market, you may can get one for a very reasonable amount. This card would be good for Mojave as well.


What is your budget?
 
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if you relay need the boot screen an MVC RX 580 is one option

but do you relay need boot screen? i have not had it for years and easly use win 10 and osx

i use a normal PC RX 580 sapphire pulse 8GB, it's one of the ones recomended by apple.
works relay well when editing video.

if not you may want to look at a GTX680 and DIY flash it with a mac rom.

https://www.apple.com/uk/final-cut-pro/specs/
'AMD Radeon RX 580 graphics card recommended for best performance.'
:rolleyes: i may have taken it out of context but i suspect it holds true

Radeon FirePro WX7000 or WX7100 are vary good cards & worth a look and single slot, just tend to cost a bit more.

and RX 560 is also a good option if you want a small card
 
AlexMaximus said:
If yes, you may want to have a look on eBay for the Radeon FirePro WX7000 or WX7100.
Click to expand...

@AlexMaximus Oh, that looks great indeed. And it's possible to boot Win with that too? Maybe the reply underneath will give me another clue in case I misunderstood something completely. Thank you already!!


orph said:
if you relay need the boot screen an MVC RX 580 is one option

but do you relay need boot screen? i have not had it for years and easly use win 10 and osx

i use a normal PC RX 580 sapphire pulse 8GB, it's one of the ones recomended by apple.
works relay well when editing video.

if not you may want to look at a GTX680 and DIY flash it with a mac rom.

https://www.apple.com/uk/final-cut-pro/specs/
'AMD Radeon RX 580 graphics card recommended for best performance.'
:rolleyes: i may have taken it out of context but i suspect it holds true

Radeon FirePro WX7000 or WX7100 are vary good cards & worth a look and single slot, just tend to cost a bit more.

and RX 560 is also a good option if you want a small card
Click to expand...

@orph First of all, thank you! I'm not sure I understand the part about the boot screen...is there another way to get into Win? With starting OSX and rebooting into Win 7/10 or how else can I get there without it? Sorry if that may sound stupid. :D

Thanks!!
 
ptr22 said:
@AlexMaximus Oh, that looks great indeed. And it's possible to boot Win with that too? Maybe the reply underneath will give me another clue in case I misunderstood something completely. Thank you already!!




@orph First of all, thank you! I'm not sure I understand the part about the boot screen...is there another way to get into Win? With starting OSX and rebooting into Win 7/10 or how else can I get there without it? Sorry if that may sound stupid. :D

Thanks!!
Click to expand...


Regarding the boot screen, here is how I came to underpants it in the past. The issue here is basically the political debacle between Apple and Nvidia, - they have an ongoing battle. For us users this meant there is actually a two split world right now. Till MacOS HighSierra, one could use an Nvidia card anytime. You could use an Nvidia Card and the system could start by pushing C/D to get to the HDD boot selector to either boot from Win or MacOS.
This does not work anymore from Mojave and on. High Sierra was the last hybrid system because of missing Nvidia web drivers. Apple shifted to AMD and Metal architecture. They declined newer Nvidia Web drivers till this day. This means adios to Nvidia cards in the Post HighSierra world. So- Everyone of us needs to make a choice to be stuck on HighSierra for ever and use Windows, or move on to Mojave and eliminate the Windows boot selector screen. There are however some exceptions to the rule, because of Nvidia contracts, so there are one or two cards remaining that still work in Mojave because of a certain Mac Editions. (Nvidia Quadro K5000 (dual slot card) - is one of that rare exception I think)

However, there is a third party program out there that can be used to replace Apple original boot selector screen.
This one here:

http://twocanoes.com/products/mac/boot-runner/

This is part of the whole mess we are in, and this makes Nvidia cards for Mac Pros a bad invest in the long term.
Apple is now heavy on the Metal AMD platform, that's the reason a FirePro might be better if you want to move to Mojave later on. Thats why I replaced a perfectly fine Nvidia 980Ti card from MVC with a Vega card to have Mojave.
 
Alex Maximus

Have you tried "Boot Runner" ?

I emailed the site asking whether ( using eg: an RX 580 ) one could hold down a designated key to bring up their bootscreen when booting out of Windows 7 ( for example ) . . they didn't seem to understand what I was getting at.

I couldn't find any decent videos of Boot Runner in use.
 
orph,

No, I'm talking about BOOTING OUT OF Windows .. . back into Mac OS eg : Mojave.
 
I don't ( gave up on ) use Bootcamp. I have Win 7 installed on it's own spinner HDD.

At present, if I quit Win 7 I have to do an NVRAM reset to get back into Mojave.

I used to have a Win app that ( installed to Win 7) allowed me to select OS X as a re-start option from within Win 7. I'm still hunting my archives for it.

Anyway, I'm OFF-TOPIC for this thread.

I have time to wait for a reliable non-Bootcamp solution . .. or .. send my RX 580 to MVC for flashing.

No need to reply.
 
it's not using bootcamp it's just the drivers they let win 10 see the mac formated drives and boot in to osx from windows
 
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Thanks for all the info and the advice on that program, I'll check it all out!

@AlexMaximus Is the 7000 or the 7100 able to boot with the screen or would it need e.g. BootRunner as well, do you know? I've tried to find info on that but somehow couldn't. Any idea what the situation is? Thanks!
 
Ha, just opened my Mac again to have a look and realised I got it wrong the whole time...there's not GPU + 4 PCIe slots as it looks from behind the Mac (looking at the slot covers), the standard card is already using the bottom 16x slot but one space above doesn't have an actual PCIe slot but the space for a double height card. Oops.

That way I might be able to get any card if it doesn't affect the DSP card's cooling but have to think about PCIe enclosures or ditching one of my PCIe cards. Thanks for everyone's help and still considering the 7000 if that makes sense.
 
Read thru the sticky threads at the top of the Mac Pro Forum. You will learn a lot.

It would also be a good thing if you created a signature with basic gear specs so folks know what system you are running.
 
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ptr22 said:
Ha, just opened my Mac again to have a look and realised I got it wrong the whole time...there's not GPU + 4 PCIe slots as it looks from behind the Mac (looking at the slot covers), the standard card is already using the bottom 16x slot but one space above doesn't have an actual PCIe slot but the space for a double height card. Oops.

That way I might be able to get any card if it doesn't affect the DSP card's cooling but have to think about PCIe enclosures or ditching one of my PCIe cards. Thanks for everyone's help and still considering the 7000 if that makes sense.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I don't have any experience with the W7100 or W7000 card. I did come across those cards years ago because I pondered the option to have dual GPUs with a Crossfire link just like in the Mac Pro 2013 with dual GPUs.
As it turned out, most test/tech sites such as barefeets tell the story that it's a real bad idea. Its way way better to have one strong GPU than multiple weaker ones in the 5.1 tower. Crossfire does not work with MacOS. Since your underpinning reason for a single slot card is gone now, I would advise against it. My personal recommendation for you would be a Radeon Vega 56 Red Dragon card.
This way you really would feel a substantial speed boost in FCPX compared to an old W7100 or W7000 card. Don't forget,the W7100 is basically a AMD 7870 or something of that nature from the year 2014/15-ish with Pro drivers. You would be far, far away from a modern Vega performance.
On top of that, a Vega would also be worth it to put it inside a cheap external eGPU case later on. This way your upgrade could live on with a use of a TB3 MacBook Air/Pro or an iMac with weak GPUs
 
Last edited:
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MIKX said:
Alex Maximus

Have you tried "Boot Runner" ?

I emailed the site asking whether ( using eg: an RX 580 ) one could hold down a designated key to bring up their bootscreen when booting out of Windows 7 ( for example ) . . they didn't seem to understand what I was getting at.

I couldn't find any decent videos of Boot Runner in use.
Click to expand...

(Un) fortunately I did not install it so far. I used to use Windows primarily for Games only. But since I don't have much time anymore I try to limit the gaming by not installing it in the first place. There have been some rare users here on this forum that reported it as a real good solution. I have heard this software is used more often from educational authorities where multiple people / user group's use the same machine. Thats all I can tell you at the moment.
 
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for FCX or davinci resolve a RX 580 8GB or VEGA 56 are relay good options for editing video.

they both have real strong compute power
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...ve-14-NVIDIA-GeForce-vs-AMD-Radeon-Vega-1213/

the RX 580 is about as fast as a GTX 1070 and the vega 56 faster than a GTX 1080

there relay good value options for FCX or davinci resolve.

do any of your PCI cards use aux power from the 6 pins?

for a light video use a RX 560 is also worth a look and can be powered from just the PCI slot

in PP nvidia tends to be better but not relay an option in osx
 
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@DPUser Thanks, good advice, will add the specs!

@AlexMaximus Thank you, and yes, a 2-slot card will be the better option then. Also thanks for the Bootrunner comment, I'll try it out and see how I get on once a card came in.

@orph Thanks again for your input too! So far it's all default 6-pin and the bottom optical is still unused. I was planning on using it for another SSD but could also do with power from there. Seems like there are a lot of RX 560 version, which one do I check out or do they all work?
 
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208898
'MSI Gaming Radeon RX 560 128-bit 4GB GDRR5'
i gess?
not sure not used one, i have the SAPPHIRE Radeon PULSE RX 580 8GB and it works fine for me

i think most work to be fair apple lists a lot that they think work

'Some other third-party graphics cards* based on the following AMD GPU families might also be compatible with macOS Mojave on Mac Pro (Mid 2010) and Mac Pro (Mid 2012):

  • AMD Radeon RX 560
  • AMD Radeon RX 570
  • AMD Radeon RX 580
  • AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100
  • AMD Radeon RX Vega 56
  • AMD Radeon RX Vega 64
  • AMD Radeon Pro WX 9100
  • AMD Radeon Frontier Edition '
buy from somewhere that lets you do retruns like amazon is the simple solotion
 
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Update! I've tried three different cards over the last few weeks and am back to the GT120 for now. The unexpected reason is that all cards I've had were A LOT louder than the GT120 (the fans going even loud just in standard application use like finder, preview etc, no video editing, animation etc). However, I cannot put (and do not want) my computer outside my room just to take the noise levels it suddenly creates.

No idea what now. I've read some 4.1 Mac Pros (also flashed to 5.1) can have issues with fans going crazy and trying the other 16x slot might help. For now I need to research more unless someone can point me into a direction for a quiet card that does what I need. :)

Good one was a ATI Radeon 5770 as it was single slot and just one power aux. The more powerful ones were AMD Radeon 7970 and a Gigabyte version of the same card (last one sounded like a little jet). All worked with boot screen though.

Thanks!
 
what are the 3 cards you tried?

5770 & two 7970?

what kind of cards where they, blower, dual/tri fan?

if you want maximum quiet then you may want to look at bios mods.

im using a RX 580 pulse and half the time when doing light work the cards fans are not spinning or only doing about 800rpm (silent effectively as the PSU fan makes more noise in my 5.1).
in windows most the time i limit it to 1000mhz when playing games, it maintains near silent fan noise (ill check fan speeds later) so a bios mod with gpu speed limited to 1000mhz may work well (and same thing will work with the 7970 tho you will have to find the most effective speed for that card)

one option is a dual bios card, one normal bios for when you want speed with video and one 'silent' bios for normal use.
custom make a bios and stick to that most the time.

you mention 'fans going crazy', was that a problem you had? what fans where the problem GPU or the case fans?
 
ptr2

Do you have any " fan speed control" apps installed eg : "Macs Fan Control " ?

If you do .. send us a grab of your fan settings.
 
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