Which GPU for Mac Pro 5,1 Gamer?

[BillyBobBongo]

I'm looking at one of these for my 5,1 Pro, mostly for Legion and World of Warships. Does that look like it'd work well?

Should take a look at the SuperClocked version. I have one in my Mac Pro at the moment, it's only got an issue that when you wake the system from sleep it has graphical glitches. A quick log out and in again remedies the problem. Really blown away buy the amount of performance with so little power consumption.

 

[Agent OrangeZ]

I am actually having opposite point of view. By considering the GTX1060 is so cheap and it can easily out perform the R9 280x on gaming. I really can't see the reason why go for the old AMD card. The cards which you mentioned are good for flashing, good to have native driver support in MacOS, but not a great candidate for gaming (not even @1080p for today's AAA games standard).

Anyway, I am a 7950 user. I even have 2 of them for crossfire gaming. I can tell how they perform. Not bad, but definitely better to have a single stronger card. Unless OP want a budget choice that can have boot screen. But even in this case, a used GTX680 4GB should be still a better choice.

Since OP clearly stated that he prefer to gaming in Windows, may be @1440P, willing to spend £500, and he is looking for good graphics (but not just "can play"). I personally will recommend GTX 1080. This suggestion is based on a very GPU demanding game (e.g. Witcher 3), max setting. The reference is based on Guru3D's review (everything ON, or max, except Nvidia hairworks OFF).

View attachment 698540
It give's out 82 FPS at 1440P, so if turn Nvidia hairworks ON, the FPS will drop a bit, but should still able to stay at or above 60FPS.


A W3690 can do provide 60FPS in X-plane if you reduce the number of objects. e.g. Cars, trees. You can have extreme graphics (which taxing the GPU), but have to reduce moving objects (require CPU calculation).

Thanks for the mention. I appreciate it.

 

[assoc]

Should take a look at the SuperClocked version. I have one in my Mac Pro at the moment, it's only got an issue that when you wake the system from sleep it has graphical glitches. A quick log out and in again remedies the problem. Really blown away buy the amount of performance with so little power consumption.

Ugh, waited too long. Now I'd either pay 272 for the superclocked version or 253 for the regular.

EDIT: I could get the super-superclocked version for 250.

 

[wickerstick]

I game on my 5.1 a lot. I do not disagree with what has been said however I can add that as of now my system runs games pretty good

5.1 2* x5690s at 3.46 that will turbo up to around 3.73 Ghz, 64gb of ram (way overkill and would be better to run triple channel), windows 10 runs on a sandisk 960 gb ssd And I've been testing gaming performance on several cards

Xfx 7970, msi r9 280x , xfx rx470 running at 1226 MHz , xfx rx480 black running at 1338mhz.

And for monitors I run 2 apple 27" led displays so 1440p gaming is what is tested

If your on a budget get the 280x from eBay often win bids for 80-90 dollars for the card. And flash them for Mac efi pretty easy. Great way to sell a usd Mac Pro too.

If you wanna spend a little more go with a reference rx 480 single 6 pin. on eBay they go around $180.00. Played doom 2016, cs go, rust, ark:, gta5, and a few other all run great. And most can run decent with the rx470.
Basically my testing was 480>470>280x>7970. Currently running the 470 because I'm testing the 480 in another place as it pulls more power than the reference one. In fact I will most likely buy a reference one and put the other cards into a mining rig or sell them. Mining eth would net me an extra 50.00 a week at current rate

If you plan on going over 1440p to say ultrawide or 4K I would recomend the 1080. I'm not sure about running a 1080ti without doing and pixlas mod because of the power draw. My 2€.

 

[Alchemist]

Guys, thanks so much for all the detailed feedback and info. HUGELY useful.

I am leaning towards a 1080 and there is one on sale here in the UK which I can get for £400 after rebates (which is a ridiculously good deal). My only concern is whether the blower design is worth having or whether I should shell out a bit more for another card. I'm inclined to say no as I can spend the saving on SSD/monitor etc. Here's the card:

https://www.novatech.co.uk/products...&utm_campaign=http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/

I'd power this via a 2x mini PCI-E 6 pin to 1x PCI-E 8 pin Y-Cable.

@thornslack - I don't suppose you'd be willing to download the X-Plane 10 demo and run a few benchmarks? Or Witcher 3 if you have it? I could talk you through both and would be hugely thankful!

 

[wickerstick]

I don't have either game but my friend plays whitcher 3 and he has been playing it on my rx480 for about a month. His system is prolly older than my Mac Pro so it plays similar, let me reach out to him and see how playable it is.

The founders edition may use less power but the aftermarket fans on most 1080s will run cooler and may may have higher stock clock speeds, I found a 1080 founders at $489.99 u.s. on amazon yesterday. Think it's a good choice if your going to game at 4K. It's not a new gaming pic but the 5.1 still is the best Mac to game on by far.

Edit: friends reply when I asked him about the 480 running with his first gen i5 on the witches 3
"Flys at 1080p. And 1440p. Can get 30fps at just below 4k"

So there is that. And I guarantee my x5690s are much faster than his i5 even in single core performance

 

[nixsky]

I'm looking at one of these for my 5,1 Pro, mostly for Legion and World of Warships. Does that look like it'd work well?

Hey man! I'm also trying to play Legion on a 5,1. Here's what I'm currently running:

Mid 2010 Mac-Pro
2 x 2.66 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 5650
32 GB 1333 MHz
DDR3 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 2047 MB (EVGA - Not flashed)

Whilst it was most certainly playable, I struggled to get a stable 60FPS. I can't even get 30 on ultra. I like to play arena, so this is a problem for me.... I looked at Activity Monitor and it looked like my CPU was being over-worked. It seems WoW only utilises one core, which leaves the other 11..... doing nothing. According to PassMark. My 5650 has a single core score of 1234. I ran some benchmarks using GeekBench and I got a single core score of 2347 and a multicore score of 25319 (obviously it's not relevant to the PassMark score). I also ran a heaven benchmark, but the results were awful. I was barely getting 10FPS.... Not sure exactly what was going on there.

Anyways, I've recently picked this project back up and I've ordered a pair of X5690s. They have a single core score of 1511 on PassMark. So they should be a significant improvement. Or so I hope... I'm invest in a 1060/1070 if there's no improvement...

 

[assoc]

Hey man! I'm also trying to play Legion on a 5,1. Here's what I'm currently running:

Mid 2010 Mac-Pro
2 x 2.66 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 5650
32 GB 1333 MHz
DDR3 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 2047 MB (EVGA - Not flashed)

Whilst it was most certainly playable, I struggled to get a stable 60FPS. I can't even get 30 on ultra. I like to play arena, so this is a problem for me.... I looked at Activity Monitor and it looked like my CPU was being over-worked. It seems WoW only utilises one core, which leaves the other 11..... doing nothing. According to PassMark. My 5650 has a single core score of 1234. I ran some benchmarks using GeekBench and I got a single core score of 2347 and a multicore score of 25319 (obviously it's not relevant to the PassMark score). I also ran a heaven benchmark, but the results were awful. I was barely getting 10FPS.... Not sure exactly what was going on there.

Anyways, I've recently picked this project back up and I've ordered a pair of X5690s. They have a single core score of 1511 on PassMark. So they should be a significant improvement. Or so I hope... I'm invest in a 1060/1070 if there's no improvement...

I went with the single six-core 3.333 GHz option, and according to GeekBench that's giving me a little over a third more single-core than your system, although certainly less than you'd get with the x5690s.

 

[Norbert Mikołajczyk]

Guys, thanks so much for all the detailed feedback and info. HUGELY useful.

I am leaning towards a 1080 and there is one on sale here in the UK which I can get for £400 after rebates (which is a ridiculously good deal). My only concern is whether the blower design is worth having or whether I should shell out a bit more for another card. I'm inclined to say no as I can spend the saving on SSD/monitor etc. Here's the card:

https://www.novatech.co.uk/products/msi-geforce-gtx-1080-aero-oc-8gb-gddr5x-graphics-card--43-cashback-until-140517/gtx1080aero8goc.html?#utm_source=affiliatewindow&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/

I'd power this via a 2x mini PCI-E 6 pin to 1x PCI-E 8 pin Y-Cable.

@thornslack - I don't suppose you'd be willing to download the X-Plane 10 demo and run a few benchmarks? Or Witcher 3 if you have it? I could talk you through both and would be hugely thankful!

I play witcher 3 on my cMP 2x5690 96gb ram + 2x gtx680 4gb in SLI with uber settings in 1080p.
I've only lowered "Number of Background Characters" and "Foliage Visibility Range" to high.
I also turned off the Hairworks, I find it visually bad.
I play with v-sync on and in the first village and forest I got strong and stable 60fps
I run rivatuner and both gpus are working hard - 99% usage and game scales great and uses every core of both cpus
So I think with gtx1080 you will be safe in 1080p

EDIT: I will try to load save with Novigrad (the biggest city in the game) tonight or tomorrow and I will write here what my min fps are, fingers crossed it will still be 60fps

 

[Theophany]

Has anybody looked into the performance difference between flashed and unflashed cards in bootcamp? The PCI-e speed reduction for unflashed cards seems like it would gimp even top end graphics cards.

 

[Alchemist]

Has anybody looked into the performance difference between flashed and unflashed cards in bootcamp? The PCI-e speed reduction for unflashed cards seems like it would gimp even top end graphics cards.

Interesting point. I was planning to get a non-flashed card as I am really only interested in bootcamp gaming. I've assumed that wouldn't affect anything under bootcamp but not sure I know enough to have actually made that assumption...

Can anyone chime in?

 

[h9826790]

Has anybody looked into the performance difference between flashed and unflashed cards in bootcamp? The PCI-e speed reduction for unflashed cards seems like it would gimp even top end graphics cards.

Real world difference should be almost zero (unless you intentionally install the card in a x4 slot.

A little test on my 7950 shows zero difference between PCIe 1.0 and 2.0. However, if I install the card in a x4 slot, which will make the card run about 2.4% slower than in a x16 slot (all PCIe 2.0). So, it means PCIe 1.0 x16 bandwidth is more than enough for 7950.

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...mac-with-2-d700s.1732849/page-5#post-21722712

Of course, 7950 is not even a mid level card nowadays, however, assuming the performance has direct relationship to the PCIe bandwidth. Unless a card has > 4x 7950's performance (e.g. 1080Ti), PCIe 1.0 x16 should be good enough for that GPU. For 1080 or below, I guess may be few % performance penalty (e.g. 1-2 FPS difference in gaming), but not much. Of course, it still very depends on where is the bottleneck for that particular game

 

[nixsky]

Real world difference should be almost zero (unless you intentionally install the card in a x4 slot.

A little test on my 7950 shows zero difference between PCIe 1.0 and 2.0. However, if I install the card in a x4 slot, which will make the card run about 2.4% slower than in a x16 slot (all PCIe 2.0). So, it means then PCIe 1.0 x16bandwidth is more than enough for 7950.

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...mac-with-2-d700s.1732849/page-5#post-21722712

Of course, 7950 is not even a mid level card nowadays, however, assuming the performance has direct relationship to the PCIe bandwidth. Unless a card has > 4x 7950's performance (e.g. 1080Ti), PCIe 1.0 x16 should be good enough for that GPU. For 1080 or below, I guess may be few % performance penalty (e.g. 1-2 FPS difference in gaming), but not much. Of course, it still very depends on where is the bottleneck for that particular game

I keep hearing people talking about "unflashed" cards. But I haven't really seen any tangible evidence to prove the risk+price is worth it. What exactly are they flashing the card with? And other than the boot screen, what advantages does it actually bring? If it's only 1-2 FPS, then it's probably not worth it in my eyes.

 

[BillyBobBongo]

I've read that the jump from PCIE 2 and 3 is more significant than between PCIE 1 and 2.

The gains seem to be more when you are using multiple GPUs (http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/pci-express-scaling-game-performance-analysis-review,17.html)

 

[shaunp]

The problem with the 1060/1080 is they probably need an external PSU from what I've read on other posts. (If anyone knows better please say so). I would look at the requirements for the games you want and what resolution you are running at. 4K gaming will require a 1080, but if you are only running at HD a lower spec card can do that with lower power requirements. And it will cost you less too.

 

[nixsky]

The problem with the 1060/1080 is they probably need an external PSU from what I've read on other posts. (If anyone knows better please say so). I would look at the requirements for the games you want and what resolution you are running at. 4K gaming will require a 1080, but if you are only running at HD a lower spec card can do that with lower power requirements. And it will cost you less too.

I've read that the EVGA 10 series cards are perfectly safe to use.

 

[h9826790]

I keep hearing people talking about "unflashed" cards. But I haven't really seen any tangible evidence to prove the risk+price is worth it. What exactly are they flashing the card with? And other than the boot screen, what advantages does it actually bring? If it's only 1-2 FPS, then it's probably not worth it in my eyes.

IMO, there is no extra risk to run a card at stock config (unflash). Everything as per factory setting, nothing should go wrong. Either the card work or not.

On the other hand, a flashed card means the ROM has been modified. There is no guarantee that the card can work properly. So, install a flashed card should have higher risk.

For AMD card, it's just the matter of boot screen, or card's ident inside MasOS (cosmetic).

For Nvidia card, it's the matter of boot screen, and PCIe speed (ONLY in Windows). No idea why Nvidia provide a driver than can allow unfleshed cards run at PCIe 2.0 in MacOS, but not in Windows. But if you run a unfleshed Nvidia card in Windows. The card can only run at PCIe 1.0 speed. Base on my own test, and few other review. That virtually nothing for most mid - low level card in gaming. But if you are running the very high end card, or doing some GPGPU that very bandwidth sensitive. This extra limitation may cause issues.

There are few advantages to flash a Nvidia card

1) provide boot screen, which means the user can use boot manager.

2) provide basic display when Nvidia web driver is not yet installed / activated in MacOS (for Maxwell and Pascal card). Without this function, the card will display nothing at all, which makes the user much harder to install / activate the driver (e.g. via remote control). And this is the ONLY way to access recovery partition with an unsupported Nvidia card. Also, the user can boot to single user mode in order to diagnosis / fix some issues. Without this function, the user may only able see a black screen but never able to read the error message.

3) Allow the card run at PCIe 2.0 speed in Windows (we already discuss this)

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/pci_express_scaling_game_performance_analysis_review,9.html

As you can see in this link (thanks BillyBobBongo), the difference for GTX 980 is virtually nothing, only 1-2 FPS (which is true for most of the games).

However, I will assume the 980Ti or 1080 is already the limit. Which may already shows more FPS drop on more games, and once go beyond that, the PCIe 1.1 limitation should become more significant.

The problem with the 1060/1080 is they probably need an external PSU from what I've read on other posts. (If anyone knows better please say so). I would look at the requirements for the games you want and what resolution you are running at. 4K gaming will require a 1080, but if you are only running at HD a lower spec card can do that with lower power requirements. And it will cost you less too.

Definitely not, these cards' power requirement is so low. The cMP can drive them easily without any external PSU.

 

[nixsky]

IMO, there is no extra risk to run a card at stock config (unflash). Everything as per factory setting, nothing should go wrong. Either the card work or not.

On the other hand, a flashed card means the ROM has been modified. There is no guarantee that the card can work properly. So, install a flashed card should have higher risk.

For AMD card, it's just the matter of boot screen, or card's ident inside MasOS (cosmetic).

For Nvidia card, it's the matter of boot screen, and PCIe speed (ONLY in Windows). No idea why Nvidia provide a driver than can allow unfleshed cards run at PCIe 2.0 in MacOS, but not in Windows. But if you run a unfleshed Nvidia card in Windows. The card can only run at PCIe 1.0 speed. Base on my own test, and few other review. That virtually nothing for most mid - low level card in gaming. But if you are running the very high end card, or doing some GPGPU that very bandwidth sensitive. This extra limitation may cause issues.

There are few advantages to flash a Nvidia card

1) provide boot screen, which means the user can use boot manager.

2) provide basic display when Nvidia web driver is not yet installed / activated in MacOS (for Maxwell and Pascal card). Without this function, the card will display nothing at all, which makes the user much harder to install / activate the driver (e.g. via remote control). And this is the ONLY way to access recovery partition with an unsupported Nvidia card. Also, the user can boot to single user mode in order to diagnosis / fix some issues. Without this function, the user may only able see a black screen but never able to read the error message.

3) Allow the card run at PCIe 2.0 speed in Windows (we already discuss this)

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/pci_express_scaling_game_performance_analysis_review,9.html

As you can see in this link (thanks BillyBobBongo), the difference for GTX 980 is virtually nothing, only 1-2 FPS (which is true for most of the games).

However, I will assume the 980Ti or 1080 is already the limit. Which may already shows more FPS drop on more games, and once go beyond that, the PCIe 1.1 limitation should become more significant.



Definitely not, these cards' power requirement is so low. The cMP can drive them easily without any external PSU.

Thanks for your response. I appreciate you taking the time to answer my question and educate me.

So, what you're saying is; if you're only running OS X, and not virtualising Windows, there's no advantage to flashing my nVidia card? I have the stock AMD card, so if I have boot problems, I just switch the cards around.

 

[h9826790]

Thanks for your response. I appreciate you taking the time to answer my question and educate me.

So, what you're saying is; if you're only running OS X, and not virtualising Windows, there's no advantage to flashing my nVidia card? I have the stock AMD card, so if I have boot problems, I just switch the cards around.

Correct. In terms of performance (in MacOS), there should be zero benefit to flash the card.

Also, if you can (and don't mind) to swap your stock AMD back in (when you need it). Then you should not need to flashed your Nvidia card for anything.

 

[shaunp]

IMO, there is no extra risk to run a card at stock config (unflash). Everything as per factory setting, nothing should go wrong. Either the card work or not.

On the other hand, a flashed card means the ROM has been modified. There is no guarantee that the card can work properly. So, install a flashed card should have higher risk.

For AMD card, it's just the matter of boot screen, or card's ident inside MasOS (cosmetic).

For Nvidia card, it's the matter of boot screen, and PCIe speed (ONLY in Windows). No idea why Nvidia provide a driver than can allow unfleshed cards run at PCIe 2.0 in MacOS, but not in Windows. But if you run a unfleshed Nvidia card in Windows. The card can only run at PCIe 1.0 speed. Base on my own test, and few other review. That virtually nothing for most mid - low level card in gaming. But if you are running the very high end card, or doing some GPGPU that very bandwidth sensitive. This extra limitation may cause issues.

There are few advantages to flash a Nvidia card

1) provide boot screen, which means the user can use boot manager.

2) provide basic display when Nvidia web driver is not yet installed / activated in MacOS (for Maxwell and Pascal card). Without this function, the card will display nothing at all, which makes the user much harder to install / activate the driver (e.g. via remote control). And this is the ONLY way to access recovery partition with an unsupported Nvidia card. Also, the user can boot to single user mode in order to diagnosis / fix some issues. Without this function, the user may only able see a black screen but never able to read the error message.

3) Allow the card run at PCIe 2.0 speed in Windows (we already discuss this)

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/pci_express_scaling_game_performance_analysis_review,9.html

As you can see in this link (thanks BillyBobBongo), the difference for GTX 980 is virtually nothing, only 1-2 FPS (which is true for most of the games).

However, I will assume the 980Ti or 1080 is already the limit. Which may already shows more FPS drop on more games, and once go beyond that, the PCIe 1.1 limitation should become more significant.



Definitely not, these cards' power requirement is so low. The cMP can drive them easily without any external PSU.

Thought it would be worth checking as the 980 does require one.

 

[h9826790]

Thought it would be worth checking as the 980 does require one.

NO, the 980 does NOT require any external PSU.

980Ti may be, but none of the 980 I know which cannot be powered by the 2x mini 6pin.

 

[Theophany]

Real world difference should be almost zero (unless you intentionally install the card in a x4 slot.

A little test on my 7950 shows zero difference between PCIe 1.0 and 2.0. However, if I install the card in a x4 slot, which will make the card run about 2.4% slower than in a x16 slot (all PCIe 2.0). So, it means PCIe 1.0 x16 bandwidth is more than enough for 7950.

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...mac-with-2-d700s.1732849/page-5#post-21722712

Of course, 7950 is not even a mid level card nowadays, however, assuming the performance has direct relationship to the PCIe bandwidth. Unless a card has > 4x 7950's performance (e.g. 1080Ti), PCIe 1.0 x16 should be good enough for that GPU. For 1080 or below, I guess may be few % performance penalty (e.g. 1-2 FPS difference in gaming), but not much. Of course, it still very depends on where is the bottleneck for that particular game

Excellent insights, as always. Thanks for that mate, very interesting.

ETA: I run a reference design 980Ti in my 4,1>5,1 powered by the aux PCI power headers on the logic board. Card runs fine, no issues with power.

 

[irked]

NO, the 980 does NOT require any external PSU.

980Ti may be, but none of the 980 I know which cannot be powered by the 2x mini 6pin.

I can confirm as well - the 980 in my machine is powered by 2x mini 6-pin, and has held up just fine under extended heavy load.

 

[Alchemist]

Just to say, that I've pulled the trigger today on this card:

https://www.novatech.co.uk/products...&utm_campaign=http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/

which, after rebate, will cost £399 - a bargain for a 1080. I'm planning to power it via 2 x mini PCI-E 6 pin to 1x PCI-E 8 pin cable and spend the money I've saved on some fast SSD storage. Should all run well hopefully. Will let you know my findings when I have the rig up and running!

 

[nixsky]

Just to say, that I've pulled the trigger today on this card:

https://www.novatech.co.uk/products/msi-geforce-gtx-1080-aero-oc-8gb-gddr5x-graphics-card--43-cashback-until-140517/gtx1080aero8goc.html?#utm_source=affiliatewindow&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/

which, after rebate, will cost £399 - a bargain for a 1080. I'm planning to power it via 2 x mini PCI-E 6 pin to 1x PCI-E 8 pin cable and spend the money I've saved on some fast SSD storage. Should all run well hopefully. Will let you know my findings when I have the rig up and running!

Funny you say that. I just pulled the trigger on this: https://www.scan.co.uk/products/evg...ady-graphics-card-1920-core-1607mhz-gpu-1797m

What else are you running in your Mac Pro? Will be interesting to compare benchmarks