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What video card would you suggest?

cornedejong

cornedejong

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 8, 2015
4
0
Hi Guys

I have a Mac Pro 2.1 and i wanna update my graphics card so i can run osx 10.10 and have (at least) 2 displays, preferably 3. What card would you suggest?

Love to hear your suggestions!

And as we say in dutch: Groetjes Corné! :)
 
I suggest AMD HD 7950, future proof for El Capitan, no extra PSU needed (as higher end GPUs need) and you are good with all updates without any driver installation.
 
Definitely nothing better than a GTX 660. Your CPUs will bottleneck the hell out of performance. You could go from a GTX 660 to a 980Ti and you'll only get like a 10% boost.
 
If you don't want to play games, anything starting from a HD 5770 will be fine, they all support up to 3 displays. I'd avoid Nvidia on a 1,1 or 2,1 as they can't be flashed for bootscreens.
 
bladerunner2000 said:
Definitely nothing better than a GTX 660. Your CPUs will bottleneck the hell out of performance. You could go from a GTX 660 to a 980Ti and you'll only get like a 10% boost.
Click to expand...

Lmao

What a laugh. My GTX980 in 5,1 scores only a little less than all the reviews of that card on new machines. In compute tasks there is no loss at all. I have videos on YouTube...GTA V and other benchmarks. I can put more.
 
Talking about a 5,1 I'd totally support you, but this thread is about a ancient 2,1... :D
Something up to HD 7870 or 7950 would be okay I guess, something more powerful would be a waste of money.
 
SoyCapitanSoyCapitan said:
Lmao

What a laugh. My GTX980 in 5,1 scores only a little less than all the reviews of that card on new machines. In compute tasks there is no loss at all. I have videos on YouTube...GTA V and other benchmarks. I can put more.
Click to expand...

Yeah, because you're on a 5,1 system... your processors have hyperthreading on top and aren't ancient like the 2,1 Mac Pro. Even a 3,1 Mac Pro doesn't benefit much. I tried going from a GTX 660 to a GTX 960 4GB and only got a 5% performance boost in Battlefield 4.

Waste of money.
 
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SoyCapitanSoyCapitan said:
Lmao

What a laugh. My GTX980 in 5,1 scores only a little less than all the reviews of that card on new machines. In compute tasks there is no loss at all.
Click to expand...
bladerunner2000 said:
Yeah, because you're on a 5,1 system... your processors have hyperthreading on top and aren't ancient like the 2,1 Mac Pro. Even a 3,1 Mac Pro doesn't benefit much. I tried going from a GTX 660 to a GTX 960 4GB and only got a 5% performance boost in Battlefield 4.

Waste of money.
Click to expand...

Ah ok I thought you referred to all Mac Pro cMP. Sorry and thanks for clarification.

4,1 and 5.1 will probably show noticeable bottlenecking on the high end cards that come out by end 2016/start 2017. But that will still be an improvement over today.
 
The 3,1 also has some non-CPU-related performance issues (as I've said in another thread, the CPU themselves are perfectly fine for most games nowadays). This thread at netkas shows that even a 1,1 is smoking the 3,1 in some benchmarks using the same GPU, this is a OSX-only bug though. Might explain some of the problems you've experienced on your 3,1.
Also keep in mind the PCIe 1.1 problem with Nvidia cards in 3,1.
 
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