Will a Raedeon 290X work in an early 2009 Mac Pro with dual boot

[Imposter101]

MISTAKE RAEDEON 280X NOT 90

Hello, I'd like to check if I'd be able to run a Raedeon 280X on an Early 2009 Mac Pro running OSX 10.9 with a dual boot. I'm new to this kind of stuff, and just wanted to check if it's possible.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3gb-...gddr5-gpu-1000mhz-2048-cores-dvi-d-hdmi-dport

 

[benjobe2513]

I bought a Radeon 280X from MacVidCards on Ebay which was flashed with EFI and clocked to require the standard power supply in a Mac Pro. I had no trouble installing it in my 2010 Mac Pro running 10.9.3 / 10.9.4 It worked right out-of-the-box without any drivers needing to be installed. Buying a pre-flashed, clock-adjusted card like this is a bit more expensive but was worth it to me. I hope this info helps.

 

[willtothewong]

I bought a Radeon 280X from MacVidCards on Ebay which was flashed with EFI and clocked to require the standard power supply in a Mac Pro. I had no trouble installing it in my 2010 Mac Pro running 10.9.3 / 10.9.4 It worked right out-of-the-box without any drivers needing to be installed. Buying a pre-flashed, clock-adjusted card like this is a bit more expensive but was worth it to me. I hope this info helps.

I was thinking of going with the MacVidCard route.

Are there bootscreens with your 280x?

I am debating on waiting for them to carry the 970 or simply go with the 280x.

 

[benjobe2513]

Yes, I get bootscreens with the 280X from MacVidCards.

I recently upgraded to a 290X (unflashed, no boot screens) that has 4GB onboard memory thinking that it'd have better performance. The 280X was great for editing HD footage within Adobe Premiere Pro but when I began editing UHD footage it began to choke on it. But the 290X hasn't shown better performance within the Adobe apps, so I'm thinking of going with the GTX 980 too. Except it looks like it could be a few months before they crack that card, so I may have to go with a Titan in the mean time. Decisions, decisions...

 

[kennyman]

Yes, I get bootscreens with the 280X from MacVidCards.

I recently upgraded to a 290X (unflashed, no boot screens) that has 4GB onboard memory thinking that it'd have better performance. The 280X was great for editing HD footage within Adobe Premiere Pro but when I began editing UHD footage it began to choke on it. But the 290X hasn't shown better performance within the Adobe apps, so I'm thinking of going with the GTX 980 too. Except it looks like it could be a few months before they crack that card, so I may have to go with a Titan in the mean time. Decisions, decisions...

Similar results here in Adobe apps and latest FCPX;

HD 5770 - Decent performance
280X - Good performance

290X - poor performance in Adobe and FCPX (even lower than HD 5770)
GTX 980 - performs worse than a 5770 (it depends on how the app was written too and it depends on the set of instruction used)

I guess we will have to wait and see, it really sucks sometimes as the latest GPU cards have excellent GPU processing power but the latest apps are not optimized to tap into this and to use the GPU cores.

 

[benjobe2513]

Similar results here in Adobe apps and latest FCPX;

HD 5770 - Decent performance
280X - Good performance

290X - poor performance in Adobe and FCPX (even lower than HD 5770)
GTX 980 - performs worse than a 5770 (it depends on how the app was written too and it depends on the set of instruction used)

I guess we will have to wait and see, it really sucks sometimes as the latest GPU cards have excellent GPU processing power but the latest apps are not optimized to tap into this and to use the GPU cores.

I think that I may have discovered why the 290X doesn't out-perform my 280X. Since I got my 280X from MacVidCards it came flashed with EFI, so upon booting up my 2010 Mac Pro recognized the card and enabled PCIe 2.0 capability with it. Because my 290X doesn't have EFI I don't get that PCIe 2.0 capability, therefore it's slower.

Here's a forum thread that discusses this limitation, although they're talking about Nvidia PC cards, I think that the concept still applies to my 290X.

In the first post look at point #17:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1440150/

If this is true then I need to either wait until someone from Netkas discovers how to flash EFI onto a 290X, or move on to a card that already has that feature.

Thank goodness Amazon accepts returned graphics cards.