Sep 7, 2017 - It has been flashed to work on the Mac Pro 2008 (MacPro 3,1) - Mac. Of the flashing procedure for a newer (but same family) of video cards.
Over the course of writing guides to boosting Mac and hard drive speeds, I’ve discussed the incredible performance improvements Macs can get from simple upgrades —, choosing a or, and even. But there’s a common question that comes up when considering upgrades: how can you tell in advance how big of an improvement you’ll actually see? The answer: benchmarking tools. Many apps help you measure the speed of various components of your Mac, and with a little help, you can estimate the performance jumps you’ll see after an upgrade. Below, I’ll introduce three of the best free Mac benchmarking tools, and explain how they work For Hard Drive Speeds: BlackMagic Disk Speed Test Measuring the speed of your hard drive is the easiest benchmarking process around, and the best tool I’ve found for that task is the. Completely free to download from the Mac App Store, this app has only a single window and very few settings to worry about. If you have only one hard drive, you can just hit the Start button after you’ve quit all of your other apps; otherwise, you can access settings by pressing the gear button between the two speedometer circles, or use the File and Stress menus at the top of the screen.
Here, you can choose the right hard drive to test, and the level of stress for the testing (1GB is least, 5GB is most). BlackMagic designed this app to help video editors determine whether their hard drives could handle various video files, ranging from basic, low-bandwidth NTSC videos to more demanding 1080p videos with higher frame rates and color depths. Unless you’re editing video, those details (summarized in the Will it Work? And How Fast?
Charts below the speedometers) won’t matter at all to you. You only need to focus on the two big gauges. The drive’s Read speed is on the right, with the Write speed on the left, respectively giving you a sense of how fast apps and videos will load, and how fast things you create will be written to the drive.
Speeds in the 25-30 Megabyte per second (MB/s) range are slow — what you’d expect from an external hard drive connected via USB 2.0. The same drive placed inside an iMac, or connected via USB 3.0, could reach four or five times that speed — around 100-120MB/second. But pop an SSD like the into the same iMac, and these are the kind of speeds you can see: around 500MB/second, five times faster than a traditional hard drive. This is the sort of speed difference that’s dramatic, instantly noticeable, and likely to really improve your day to day Mac experience. Outstanding SSD performance is the key reason Apple has, and is beginning the same process with its desktop machines. For Overall Computer Performance: Geekbench 3 Although there are a bunch of different “total computer benchmarking” apps out there, the one that’s easiest to recommend is, since it’s partially free, works across multiple platforms (including Macs, iOS devices, PCs, and Android devices), and lets you compare one computer’s results to other computers and other users.
Like Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, Geekbench 3 is designed to be simple to use — choose one setting, make sure your other apps are closed, and hit the “Run Benchmarks” button shown above. There’s only one hitch: the only runs older (“32-bit”) benchmarks on your Mac; to see the superior performance you’d get from newer (“64-bit”) apps, you’ll need the. I could go into a lot of detail regarding Geekbench’s results, and there are a lot of them, sorted into three main categories, each with multiple tests. But the key numbers you need to know are the big two at the top: Single-Core Score and Multi-Core Score. Compared against results from other machines, Single-Core gives you a relative sense of how fast your Mac performs under most situations, when only one processing core is handling all of the Mac’s work.
Multi-Core shows you how the Mac does when it’s being pushed to its limits and all of its processing cores are sharing a bigger workload at once. The scores above show how my 2011 four-core iMac compares to my 2013 two-core MacBook Pro; under most circumstances, they’ll feel identical (3166 is only 3% faster than 3078), but when given big tasks to perform, the four-core iMac will deliver nearly twice the performance of the two-core MacBook Pro. Your numbers will vary a little bit from test to test; running the test multiple times will give you an average. Geekbench offers a that lets you compare performance between your own machines, as well as the key hardware components found in each computer. You can see above that the differences between my iMac and MacBook Pro aren’t merely in their numbers of processor cores; look closely and you’ll note that each iMac core is faster, and the iMac has more memory. On the other hand, the MacBook Pro’s processor is newer, and its memory is faster.
The critical benefit Geekbench offers is the ability to compare your results against ones submitted by other users. Doing a would let you see how various 27-inch iMacs compare with your current computer. That way, if you’re going to, you can get a sense of the Single-Core and Multi-Core performance other users are getting from their machines. Do a little math (divide the new machine’s Single-Core number by your old machine’s Single-Core number) and you’ll get a sense of the performance boost. A with a score of 3980 would be around 26% faster than my current machine (3166) at most tasks. That’s a big jump by Mac standards, and unlike the 5%-8% benefits typically seen in annual Mac updates, one worth paying for. Buying an all-new Mac is a big step, though, so you might prefer something simpler and cheaper, like.
Although that can deliver excellent performance improvements at a relatively low cost, Geekbench’s Memory test doesn’t show you the improvement you’d get from more RAM — its benchmark only shows the RAM’s raw speed, which typically can’t be improved over the top-specced RAM Apple ships in its Macs. Whatever RAM you buy as an upgrade will match the existing RAM’s speed, but the performance improvements you see will be real, including much-reduced hard disk accessing and better CPU utilization. For Video Card Performance: Cinebench R15 Last but not least is, a free tool that tests two things: graphics card performance using OpenGL, and CPU performance.
![Card Card](/uploads/1/2/5/6/125638619/728188439.jpg)
The CPU test shown above checks how fast your computer’s main processor can render a photorealistic 3-D scene containing 2,000 objects with lights, reflections, shadows, and shaders. This test starts with a black window and fills out the image square by square over the course of several minutes; the higher the “point” total, the faster your CPU is. Like the other benchmarks, speeds in Cinebench R15 can be reduced if other apps are running. The more distinctive benchmark is the OpenGL test, which uses three complex 3-D cars interacting on dimly-lit city streets to test your graphics card’s ability to handle nearly 1 million polygons at once with various special effects active. It’s a cool demo to watch, and the results will be displayed in frames per second (fps). My iMac hit around 68fps, versus around 23fps on my MacBook Pro. Doing a little research online, I found scores suggesting that the demo Mac Pros in Apple Stores were getting around 77fps last year.
That’s the major hitch with Cinebench: it’s hard to meaningfully compare your numbers against other Macs unless you search Google for “Cinebench R15 score” and the specific Mac you want to compare with. Maxon does include a small sampling of different OpenGL scores within a “Ranking” box, but all that tells you is that your machine (in orange) with X cores (C) and Y threads (T) running at a given GHz speed with a certain graphics card achieved Z frames per second. This isn’t “actionable information” in that you can’t do anything with it — most people won’t even be able to tell which Macs those specs pertain to. And unless you have a Mac Pro, the only current Mac with a replaceable video card, your only option to improve graphics card performance is to. My advice: if you’re interested in improving your current Mac’s performance, consider and/or.
CPU and GPU improvements call for, and Geekbench is the best way to determine whether the performance differences will be meaningful enough to justify the added price. More Great Ways To Improve Your Mac To make the most of your Mac (or pretty much any other Apple device), I’ve written quite a few How-To and Best of guides, as well as reviews of worthwhile accessories.
Read more of my (and don’t forget to click on Older Posts at the bottom of the page to see everything)! Author, lawyer, and award-winning restaurateur Jeremy Horwitz started his journalism career in the early 1990’s, covering video games as a freelancer for numerous publications before creating and running Ziff Davis’s Intelligent Gamer magazine. A graduate of Cornell Law School, he previously ran editorial for the Apple-centric site iLounge and created the historic iLounge Pavilion at CES before joining 9to5Mac and 9to5Toys as a Senior Editor. A lifelong consumer electronics expert and gourmet, he now focuses on the changing ways people work, play, eat, and travel.
His Spanish restaurant Aro Bar de Tapas won Best New Restaurant (Opened 2015-2016), Best Charcuterie, Best Craft Cocktails, and Best Desserts awards.
I need a recommendation for a video card for a MacPro5,1 that supports Metal for the new Mojave OSX and also supports 4k. I don't need the top of the line card but preferably the cheapest one. I've heard the AMD Radeon cards can be less of a hassle than Nividia.
I also want bootscreen support. I'm a little nervous about flashing, but this place will flash video cards so the bootscreen support shouldn't be the dealkiller for a stock PC video card. The Sapphire should work but I'm not 100% sure enough to spend almost 500 bucks for a GPU for an 8 year old computer Edit: MacVid claims all their video cards support Mojave.
One of the reviews at OWC claims the Radeon Sapphire is supported on Mojave. So am I better with Nvidia or AMD? Issue of future of future driver support among other things. (OSX has built in driver support for AMD Radeon.) The issue remains can I get away with spending only a couple of hundred bucks for a GPU.
I would think a lot of pilgrims went bust on cryptocurrency mining and flooded the market with used GPUs. A few extra details/specifics: As far as I know, Apple has only ( too). I've heard people saying that Vega works to some extent and maybe that'll be even better in 10.14 down the road, but it's probably iffier, and if there are issues Apple may feel less motivated about fixing them. Polaris compromises the Radeon 400 and 500 series cards, Vega was the successor. They should also be available more cheaply of course since they're older. Sapphire cards, particularly the Pulse ones, seem to be the best overall, but Apple also mentions MSI and I've seen other reports they could be fine. Radeon RX 460, 465, 470, 480, 550, 560, 570, 580, & Pro 580 at least all have device IDs in Mojave.
Be careful of power usage in higher end cards, the upper tier of AMD's last few gens have been a lot thirstier then Nvidia's equivalents. It's not the MP PDU that's the issue but the rails can be. Easiest just to go for something lower power, but there are various solutions available too with varying degrees of elbow grease and elegance. At the lower-end I'd honestly just look at something 560 based and call it a day. A Sapphire Pulse RX 560 is available for like $140, an MSI probably a bit less (like $100-130). They should all be low power, requiring either no cable at all or at most a single 6 pin which the cMP can supply itself.
Not amazing gaming cards or anything but the cMP is kind of past the mark there anyway, and that seems like about the level of investment it justifies at this point. Worth emphasizing (somebody running something right now with the most recent Mojave could correct me if it's changed) that unflashed cards, AMD or not, do not support any EFI visual functionality.
The biggest common sticky point there would probably be FileVault (stuff like TDM less likely to be used on an MP, though I know many people use rEFInd or similar to manage multi-boot and other features). However I have successfully blind typed a password there, so while the experience is hack-y it can still work, and MPs seem likely to have long uptimes (or maybe most people just don't run FV on their cMPs, even there though I like the future ease of disposal). Perhaps Apple will somehow throw folks a bone there but hey, 'hack-y' is pretty much where anyone still pushing along a cMP is at now yeah? An EFI card is also not needed for Recovery Mode (though you won't see any initial boot screen), although some level of native OS driver support is probably required. I used to consider this utterly unimportant but SIP has made it a bigger irritation.
quote=' Here's the one I'm going with Sapphire PULSE Radeon RX 580 8GB Are there any places that have detailed directions on how to flash? Is it worth flashing just to get the boot screen? I've been told under normal use it is no longer necessary. Thanks to this thread, I just installed this card in my MP 5,1.
I think I am not bothered by not seeing the first steps of the boot process (I don’t use Filevault). Anyway, just confirming that this was truly plug and play./quote/quote/quote/quote While I'm glad that you got a decent card and it is working for you (in its current form) - so that others who are following this thread can learn from your experience, that is not 'truly plug and play'. Not having access to Terminal, Netboot, and some other pre-boot functions, eliminates your access to significate capabilities of the OS. Not being able to encrypt your data, which I believe everyone should be doing (desktop or not), also eliminates a significant security option for you.
Most people (and I'm not just singling you out), would not stuff a hard drive in your computer, not format it correctly and then expect it to work correctly or to its full capacity. Also with any other piece of hardware you would attach to your computer (or install through the PCIE slots), not install the correct drivers, and then expect the hardware to work properly. Video Cards in a Mac are no different.
To use the card to its full capacity, it should be 'formatted' (flashed) properly. Its unforunate that Apple decides to restrict its users choice because of some political/pride bullshit issues with Nvidia, and/or control issues with AMD - but there you have it. Not having access to Terminal, Netboot, and some other pre-boot functions, eliminates your access to significate capabilities of the OS. By 'Terminal' I assume you mean EFI Shell, which AFAIK Apple never offered native trivial access too anyway, rEFIt/rEFInd is niche of niche and not at all significant for normal Mac operation. Netboot and Net Homes and similar were wicked cool technologies that to this day I wish Apple had continued to support and develop, but they weren't, they're nearly/totally dead. Even when not they were niche amongst individual users, and at this stage in the life cycle of the old Mac Pros, 8 years on, on the scale of sacrifices that inevitably comes with hacking ancient semi-baroque and obsolete hardware they're pretty minimal issues.
All this could be quite a different story if Apple had released a real 2012/2013 MP with modern vanilla UEFI but there it is. Finally, lots of boot stuff works reasonably or entirely headless, you can just hold command-N to do a default netboot startup for example which these days should be fine. You even make different computers have different defaults if you want, via VLANs if nothing else. Which leads to. Not being able to encrypt your data, which I believe everyone should be doing (desktop or not), also eliminates a significant security option for you. FileVault works fine headless, just have to give it a minute until you know it's booted and then enter the password blind.
But it's not like it shows you the password anyway normally it's a bunch of dots, and I think MPs tend to have long uptimes for most of us. This isn't the level of polish I'd hope for from Apple hardware, but I'm happy to be able to run Mojave at all. Most people (and I'm not just singling you out), would not stuff a hard drive in your computer, not format it correctly and then expect it to work correctly or to its full capacity. Also with any other piece of hardware you would attach to your computer (or install through the PCIE slots), not install the correct drivers, and then expect the hardware to work properly. Video Cards in a Mac are no different. To use the card to its full capacity, it should be 'formatted' (flashed) properly. Or maybe yes if like HDDs it was 'buy anything, insert into computer press button/enter command once for free completely reliably', but that's not it fro EFI particularly for Nvidia.
MPs aren't worth major investments at this point. Its unforunate that Apple decides to restrict its users choice because of some political/pride bullshit issues with Nvidia, and/or control issues with AMD - but there you have it., Yeah, though the EFI is a different issue and more due to a host of other factors that have been rehashed ad nauseam in the Ach. At this point though anyone still clinging to the machines understand the compromises that exist there. Stick in card and push button and everything works beyond EFI, including after system updates, really is pretty much plug-and-play. quote=' Here's the one I'm going with Sapphire PULSE Radeon RX 580 8GB Are there any places that have detailed directions on how to flash? Is it worth flashing just to get the boot screen? I've been told under normal use it is no longer necessary.
Thanks to this thread, I just installed this card in my MP 5,1. I think I am not bothered by not seeing the first steps of the boot process (I don’t use Filevault). Anyway, just confirming that this was truly plug and play./quote/quote/quote/quote/quote While I'm glad that you got a decent card and it is working for you (in its current form) - so that others who are following this thread can learn from your experience, that is not 'truly plug and play'. Not having access to Terminal, Netboot, and some other pre-boot functions, eliminates your access to significate capabilities of the OS. Not being able to encrypt your data, which I believe everyone should be doing (desktop or not), also eliminates a significant security option for you. Most people (and I'm not just singling you out), would not stuff a hard drive in your computer, not format it correctly and then expect it to work correctly or to its full capacity.
Also with any other piece of hardware you would attach to your computer (or install through the PCIE slots), not install the correct drivers, and then expect the hardware to work properly. Video Cards in a Mac are no different. To use the card to its full capacity, it should be 'formatted' (flashed) properly. Its unforunate that Apple decides to restrict its users choice because of some political/pride bullshit issues with Nvidia, and/or control issues with AMD - but there you have it.,/quote Heh with an old MacPro you could just leave the original video card plugged into a different port on your monitor and lose nothing and gain a lot of performance. quote=' Here's the one I'm going with Sapphire PULSE Radeon RX 580 8GB Are there any places that have detailed directions on how to flash? Is it worth flashing just to get the boot screen?
I've been told under normal use it is no longer necessary. Thanks to this thread, I just installed this card in my MP 5,1.
I think I am not bothered by not seeing the first steps of the boot process (I don’t use Filevault). Anyway, just confirming that this was truly plug and play./quote/quote/quote/quote/quote While I'm glad that you got a decent card and it is working for you (in its current form) - so that others who are following this thread can learn from your experience, that is not 'truly plug and play'.
Not having access to Terminal, Netboot, and some other pre-boot functions, eliminates your access to significate capabilities of the OS. Not being able to encrypt your data, which I believe everyone should be doing (desktop or not), also eliminates a significant security option for you. Most people (and I'm not just singling you out), would not stuff a hard drive in your computer, not format it correctly and then expect it to work correctly or to its full capacity.
Also with any other piece of hardware you would attach to your computer (or install through the PCIE slots), not install the correct drivers, and then expect the hardware to work properly. Video Cards in a Mac are no different. To use the card to its full capacity, it should be 'formatted' (flashed) properly. Its unforunate that Apple decides to restrict its users choice because of some political/pride bullshit issues with Nvidia, and/or control issues with AMD - but there you have it.,/quote/quote/quote Heh with an old MacPro you could just leave the original video card plugged into a different port on your monitor and lose nothing and gain a lot of performance./quote Serious question.
Would that work? I have the old card and room in the tower. Upsides and downsides?
Yes, you could run two video cards in your MacPro, but why go to so much trouble for boot screen? It might be easier just to switch cards. I would think your machine would run hotter with 2 cards. But others might weigh in on that. In any case, here is a page on installing the Radeon video card that mentions running 2 cards. If you'd like to use your Mac compatible graphics card alongside your RX 580 for boot loader support, you can always use power from a SATA port from the hard drive bays convert that into a 6 pin with a SATA to 6 pin adapter.
![Video Video](/uploads/1/2/5/6/125638619/438757561.jpg)
See the full graphics card review for more information. Yes, you could run two video cards in your MacPro, but why go to so much trouble for boot screen? It might be easier just to switch cards. I would think your machine would run hotter with 2 cards. But others might weigh in on that.
In any case, here is a page on installing the Radeon video card that mentions running 2 cards. If you'd like to use your Mac compatible graphics card alongside your RX 580 for boot loader support, you can always use power from a SATA port from the hard drive bays convert that into a 6 pin with a SATA to 6 pin adapter. See the full graphics card review for more information: Thanks! Power would be the problem before heat. The old card needs 2x6-pins, and all my SATA bays are full.
Historically I’ve rebooted this machine about 4 times a year. The boot screen does not play a big roll in my life. Well that's a shame.
Even though in previous versions of macOS FileVault worked 'fine' with blind entry (as in it could be entered and afterwards worked without issue albeit you'd probably want to perform some user optimizing to make it more feasible), apparently now that Apple is officially recommending vanilla PC cards and doesn't feel like doing anything to enable boot screens with them they're forcefully disabling all cMP FV usage under Mojave, it just won't let you. I've seen one report saying this is the case even for official Mac EFI Metal cards, even ignoring flashed cards with an EFI boot screen, so Apple must have hard coded some simple conditional if-MP-then-FU in there.
That their feud with Nvidia is such they can't be bothered to even allow an official solution like the GTX 680 Mac Edition to work despite supporting Metal is stupid but modern Apple, but even the 7950 Mac Edition is apparently no good. Can't let all those non-technical grandmothers running Mac Pros and upgrading their graphics cards to then have to type in a password without being able to see the dots I guess. But seriously that's a real bummer, and staryoke I apologize, if you knew that the Mojave GM was different from previous releases you should definitely have just corrected me. I don't mind a 'here there be dragons' at this point in the lifespan of the computer but I don't think actively blocking support that worked was justified here, they could have had a warning dialog on 'you'll have to go blind, you could mess things up, you should set it to only have a single user and no guest to make things easier or use a flashed card.' Or even at least just flagged those rare official Mac Metal cards, lumping them in too is just super lame. I'm rolling back to 10.13.6 on my systems and will stay there for a bit, given it must be some new check maybe it can be patched out in some trivial way the same way their barring support for older systems in previous OS versions has been fixable.
Even more excited now to hear about armwt's ESXi tests, if it's at all as positive under longer use as my brief test was or others have reported that'd be an even better option to have now. Well that's a shame.
Even though in previous versions of macOS FileVault worked 'fine' with blind entry (as in it could be entered and afterwards worked without issue albeit you'd probably want to perform some user optimizing to make it more feasible), apparently now that Apple is officially recommending vanilla PC cards and doesn't feel like doing anything to enable boot screens with them they're forcefully disabling all cMP FV usage under Mojave, it just won't let you. I've seen one report saying this is the case even for official Mac EFI Metal cards, even ignoring flashed cards with an EFI boot screen, so Apple must have hard coded some simple conditional if-MP-then-FU in there. That their feud with Nvidia is such they can't be bothered to even allow an official solution like the GTX 680 Mac Edition to work despite supporting Metal is stupid but modern Apple, but even the 7950 Mac Edition is apparently no good. Can't let all those non-technical grandmothers running Mac Pros and upgrading their graphics cards to then have to type in a password without being able to see the dots I guess. But seriously that's a real bummer, and staryoke I apologize, if you knew that the Mojave GM was different from previous releases you should definitely have just corrected me. I don't mind a 'here there be dragons' at this point in the lifespan of the computer but I don't think actively blocking support that worked was justified here, they could have had a warning dialog on 'you'll have to go blind, you could mess things up, you should set it to only have a single user and no guest to make things easier or use a flashed card.'
Or even at least just flagged those rare official Mac Metal cards, lumping them in too is just super lame. I'm rolling back to 10.13.6 on my systems and will stay there for a bit, given it must be some new check maybe it can be patched out in some trivial way the same way their barring support for older systems in previous OS versions has been fixable. Even more excited now to hear about armwt's ESXi tests, if it's at all as positive under longer use as my brief test was or others have reported that'd be an even better option to have now. I need real confirmation that a 7950 Mac edition, a card that was fully supported as an official Mac card, no longer works with Mojave and filevault or even any boot screen support. Is that really true? If so, it's absolutely astonishing. EDIT: I opened a bug with Apple.
Radar #44784918. I need real confirmation that a 7950 Mac edition, a card that was fully supported as an official Mac card, no longer works with Mojave and filevault or even any boot screen support. Is that really true? I don't have one myself, I can only confirm they definitely seem at least to have changed previously 'working though suboptimal' behavior with other cards with what appears to be a machine model block, and I'm seeing a lot of people who say they have 7950s say it's not working there either.
But since I can't test or play with it myself I honestly don't know whether that's correct or we're missing something. Apple's own support documents aren't definitive either, they talk about needing to disable FileVault to install but nothing about it not being able to be reenabled. It really would be great to be wrong, if you or another Arsian can try it out it'd be a nice data point. I really want it to be a mistake. Sometimes replying on the internet is like - why bother? Sometimes people need to learn on their own. I do fully support your spirit of work-arounds though.
/tinfoil had on/ I think this is a step towards them bringing the security of Mac OS inline and inhouse. Meaning that Mojave security is one step closer towards the complete implementation like iOS. On a secure chip (like the T2.) Yes, the Mac 6,1, and a few other supported older Macs dont have that chip, but they all soon will. I think by next year (when and even if there is a 7,1 Pro), the cMPs support will be dropped altogether. I think this is killing two birds with one stone - the older Macs and Hackintoshs. I think eventually as features are being stripped (in the name of security) from older and 'not true' Macs, we'll see the field of compatible hardware narrow.
This could be my tinfoil hat speaking and a small part of me hopes that you could be right (that this could just be a bug), but I see the graffiti on the wall slowly appearing. Honestly I think some engineers deep inside Apple still have a softspot for the cMP and thats why we're seeing these machines still supported (graphically-wise) - but that group is a dying breed. /tinfoil hat off/ Side-note: With my Mac 7950s and GTX 680s, I havent been able to get filevault working with Mojave yet. Is there anything cheaper that doesn't need a power cable that is also 'kinda' plug and play?
I was hoping to spend less than $270. That 580 sapphire seems a little too 'metal' for me. I don't mind used, or hacked, just wondering if anyone has had any luck with a cheapie card and how it runs with mojave. The MSI RX-560 is officially recommended and supported by Apple, and costs about $130 brand new. It doesn't even need a separate cable. However, some RX-560 cards have less performance (very slightly) and do require a separate cable (not really a problem, but just nice to not need one), so if you choose one other than the MSI card you might want to look closer at it's specs and requirements.
I've been using the MSI for a couple of months with Mojave. If you want more performance than the RX-560, then the Sapphire PULSE RX-580 is also officially recommended and supported by Apple. But it consumes a lot more power, requires a dual mini 6-pin to 8-pin cable (or combination of cables to do the same thing), and takes up more room in PCI slots. Again, if you go with other RX-580 cards be careful of power requirements (especially the Sapphire Nitro RX-580) and size (the latter card is 2+ slots wide). These cards will not produce a boot screen, but there are multiple solutions for double or triple booting without it. (I triple boot including Win 10).
Is there anything cheaper that doesn't need a power cable that is also 'kinda' plug and play? I was hoping to spend less than $270. That 580 sapphire seems a little too 'metal' for me. I don't mind used, or hacked, just wondering if anyone has had any luck with a cheapie card and how it runs with mojave. The MSI RX-560 is officially recommended and supported by Apple, and costs about $130 brand new. It doesn't even need a separate cable.
However, some RX-560 cards have less performance (very slightly) and do require a separate cable (not really a problem, but just nice to not need one), so if you choose one other than the MSI card you might want to look closer at it's specs and requirements. I've been using the MSI for a couple of months with Mojave. We got a few of the MSIs, and just to expand a bit on the 'some 560 cards have less performance' bit: AMD launched the 560 as a fully enabled Polaris 11 part, so 16 Computer Units (CUs) rather then the 14 CUs of the general 400 series. However, in a scummy move AMD later silently allowed manufacturers to start selling 14 CU units again also under the plain 560 branding, rather then something specific like 560D. The only way to tell which is which is dig into the specs, where it should list either the CU count or (directly equivalent) the SP count, 14 CUs mean 896 SPs while 16 CUs means 1024 SPs.
Not a huge deal sure, but 12% straight reduction in compute power isn't entirely irrelevant either particularly when it doesn't actually save you any money. This isn't something that happened anywhere else FWIW so a 580 is a 580 for example, any overclocking aside. MSI didn't play this game, but Sapphire did. So if you're interested in a 560 (you want a nice cheap card) I'd suggest the MSI Aero ITX. Sapphire briefly made a full powered version but I couldn't find it anywhere in stock anymore, there current one is lower powered and it costs more and it still wants a 6 pin.
They're both official recommendations by Apple so I don't see any point in paying any more for less. If you're getting a 580 then the Sapphire Pulse is fine. ^^ In all honesty, this makes me even more interested in trying to get OS X working under VMWare (ESX). I don't want to spend the $$ on a cMP now, upgrade the video card, only to find out that they killed support for it in the next OS.
Same, particularly since I just realized for the first time that the Mac Pro is for up to ESXi 6.0. Though 6.5 isn't on the HCL I saw a few people saying it was working on 5,1s too. I definitely still want to hear your results, but if I can find the time I now really want to try out ESXi on a cMP itself, because it would be tremendously amusing if the Mojave experience was superior on a cMP virtualized then on bare metal.
It should also be possible to use stuff without hacks that normally is troublesome like NVMe, because it'll just be a PCIe device and if it was passed through and Nexenta/illumos/FreeBSD/whatever recognized it then it could be virtually shared after and macOS on top would never know, it would just see a standard storage system. And for that matter it wouldn't even be a license violation, we're explicitly permitted to run macOS virtualized so long as it's on real Mac hardware, which this would be. (Considering I already have the office (which the SO spends FAR more time in than I do!) torn apart while I build my new ESX box. I'm sure I'm going to get 'a look' if I pull the xserve out, but.
If it helps me sell it, I'm one step closer to getting rid of the rack in the office, which she'll definitely appreciate Yes, reductions are a win here as well. Although suddenly though mine is looking like a potential rabbit hole project with more money temptations so I'm going have to be careful! I realized that I'd want to get an extra NIC at least to dedicate to a VM, no big deal by itself because I could just move that into any future combined system and it's not much. But then I realized I've saturated my 24 port switch including both SFPs. The next size up is pricey itself. But hey, I could grab a 10G switch instead, free ports by moving systems onto that, and it's kind of an efficient use of money. Ok that's going to be harder to swing.
Except then literally like 20 minutes ago got a mail from my network gear sales rep saying the new tariffs that went into effect on the 24th hit all their Ubiquiti products too and prices will be going up, but anything they've already got in stock they'll sell at existing pricing to their existing accounts. That said I do have stuff I could work to get rid of earlier, which would make this part of a general clean up and consolidation plan.
Throwing old stuff out and reducing clutter automatically earns a certain amount of plaudits, and some of it might still be worth some cash. The ultimate plan is similar, while I'll be keeping my rack (in my case it's got its own small room so not in the way) I'd be cutting down the number of separate machines. Trying it out before spending a penny on any real hardware upgrade is a good idea anyway. An additional consideration is that macOS Server is clearly utterly dead as doornail at this point with Mojave, even more so then High Sierra, and despite using other stuff elsewhere I've been kind of trundling along with it at home on a system still running 10.12. I just plain have to look at alternatives now. If I switch to ESXi though then I can look into something else there, wonder what the best replacement would be? That too is something of a bummer, Server in the past wasn't a bad GUI on top of a lot of solid basic functionality, even if more advanced cases needed something else.
It was never really in Apple's DNA at the end of the day I guess, but I still think they missed a bit of an opportunity there, in computer centralization/decentralization seems to happen in cycles and right now there is a growing awareness and worry about cloud dependence, and Apple could potentially have another avenue for their angle of attack on Google and the rest in terms of 'privacy/security/no dependencies'. In a SoHo setting Apple has left a certain amount of Mac marketshare on the table, it's not the 90s or even 00s when it was a push to even get it considered, but it feels like Apple never really got over the scars there. I'm using a Dell R710 as my ESXi box- doesn't eliminate the need for a rack compared to an Xserve (well, not necessarily a rack; mine is on some portable modular shelving I got from Home Depot), but it does have some benefits over building your own. For me, the biggest is iDRAC, so I can do complete lights out management. Even attaching ISO files remotely to boot off. Massive amounts of RAM capacity, which is great for virtual machines: it supports up to 288GB, but I have 120GB at the moment. I'd say that dual sockets is pretty cool in terms of getting a lot of core density (I have 2x6 for 12 physical cores, x2 more with hyperthreading, for 24 logical cores), but something like Threadripper makes high core count very attainable with consumer level hardware.
Yeah, it's a server and power hungry, but it's actually significantly quieter than the Xserve. I just stuck it in the basement, out of the way, and nobody ever hears or notices it. The Xserve is just to play around with. I don't really need it. Dragging this further OT, but.
Yeah I haven't run either my xServe or my file server in the past year due to noise. Not that they. 'loud', but wife spends FAR more time in the office (dissertation) than I do, and they're not silent. Built new box, currently with 1x8-core (16 thread) Xeon. I'll drop a 2nd CPU in if I see the need for another $75 or so. Currently at 96GB ram. Only NET cost after selling some older hardware has been the 3x8TB drives I bought to go with it.
Whole thing idles basically silently. My switch (with Noctua fans) is louder than the server. If I drop the 2nd CPU in, I'll have 32 threads and 128+ GB of RAM. And potentially able to run OS X as a VM with GPU passthrough. And yes - IPMI and remote KVM support totally rock.
If you haven't, take a look at Synology. I've read some good articles on replacing OS X server with Synology's DSM. I love my old single-disk Synology box, enough so that my 1st goal is to get the equivalent of a 'Hackintosh Synology' running on it. Googling xpenology might be a rabbit hole to save for when you have a bit of time. Really a fantastic little OS that can handle anything from basic home office all the way up to 'enterprise-y' levels, about as close to the modern equivalent of OS X server as anything else I've seen. So you're suggesting running the Synology DiskStation Manager directly as a VM? I'll look into that, but really I should just make a new thread on this.
Edit: hah, yeah we had the same thought on maybe drifting just a bit too far. BTW slightly more on topic (at least to the extent it's back to cards of some kind), armwt did you ever decide/finish your Infiniband vs 10GbE experiment? I wonder how virtual adapter support is under macOS, there must be at least some since Fusion exists. If ESXi can take care of the interface then I assume there'd be no need for pass through and any old Intel SFP+ NIC would work, and of course those could work for passthrough anyway to another system.
That'd open things up a lot since Mac drivers for 10G cards seem restricted/flakey. Also hestermofet, to your earlier question, that Aero ITX 560 isn't officially fanless, but it is small form and it.
I knew one guy and read about a few more who had defective fans on 560s and just plain removed them and it was fine, granted they were never straining them much. Assuming ambients aren't crazy, slapping on any roughly minimal heat sink might be enough since the rest of the system cooling in an Xserve should be decent, that GT120 you've got now is 50W. Another 10W seems like it could be within margin.
Is there anything cheaper that doesn't need a power cable that is also 'kinda' plug and play? I was hoping to spend less than $270. That 580 sapphire seems a little too 'metal' for me.
I don't mind used, or hacked, just wondering if anyone has had any luck with a cheapie card and how it runs with mojave. The MSI RX-560 is officially recommended and supported by Apple, and costs about $130 brand new.
It doesn't even need a separate cable. However, some RX-560 cards have less performance (very slightly) and do require a separate cable (not really a problem, but just nice to not need one), so if you choose one other than the MSI card you might want to look closer at it's specs and requirements. I've been using the MSI for a couple of months with Mojave. We got a few of the MSIs, and just to expand a bit on the 'some 560 cards have less performance' bit: AMD launched the 560 as a fully enabled Polaris 11 part, so 16 Computer Units (CUs) rather then the 14 CUs of the general 400 series. However, in a scummy move AMD later silently allowed manufacturers to start selling 14 CU units again also under the plain 560 branding, rather then something specific like 560D.
The only way to tell which is which is dig into the specs, where it should list either the CU count or (directly equivalent) the SP count, 14 CUs mean 896 SPs while 16 CUs means 1024 SPs. Not a huge deal sure, but 12% straight reduction in compute power isn't entirely irrelevant either particularly when it doesn't actually save you any money. This isn't something that happened anywhere else FWIW so a 580 is a 580 for example, any overclocking aside. MSI didn't play this game, but Sapphire did. So if you're interested in a 560 (you want a nice cheap card) I'd suggest the MSI Aero ITX. Sapphire briefly made a full powered version but I couldn't find it anywhere in stock anymore, there current one is lower powered and it costs more and it still wants a 6 pin.
They're both official recommendations by Apple so I don't see any point in paying any more for less. If you're getting a 580 then the Sapphire Pulse is fine. Thanks for writing all that out. I was too lazy to explain the CU differences. And again, I will mention (since the OP asked for it) that the MSI does NOT require a separate power cable, while some 560 boards do. Also the MSI RX-560 4GB is the ONLY 560 actually recommended by Apple. Probably worth mentioning that they call it the MSI Gaming RX-560, which is a product that doesn't exist by that name.
It is the MSI Aero ITX. They include the Sapphire 560 and all non-MSI 560 cards in the list of 'might also be compatible with macOS Mojave' products.