MP 1,1-5,1 Fastest GPU for 2009-2012 Mac Pro if I'm only running Windows 10 for gaming?

[matthewpomar]

I have a spare Mac Pro (2009-2012 era). I want to set it up as a gaming PC and I'm only going to run Windows 10 on it. It does not need to be MacOS compatible.

Any recommendations on the fastest Windows GPU the Mac can support without crazy power mods? I have seen using one of the SATA ports for getting more power, which is fine if necessary.

Thank you.

 

[zgagato]

So you can run almost any gpu as long as the tdp is <250W (i might not remember correctly) so not to overload the motherboard's gpu power connectors. Choose some geforce 2000 or 3000 series but not the top ones.

 

[Yebubbleman]

I have a spare Mac Pro (2009-2012 era). I want to set it up as a gaming PC and I'm only going to run Windows 10 on it. It does not need to be MacOS compatible.

Any recommendations on the fastest Windows GPU the Mac can support without crazy power mods? I have seen using one of the SATA ports for getting more power, which is fine if necessary.

Thank you.

You're going to hate this, but my recommendation is to not use that machine for Windows. First off, you aren't going to have driver support for anything newer than Windows 8.1, which has already been out of support for 13 months. You will certainly not have proper driver support for any version of Windows 10 (not even anything based on v1507). Secondly, while that Xeon was a beast in its day and was a beast for a decade after launch, it's not anymore. You can cobble together an 8th or 9th Gen Intel based desktop (or AMD equivalent) and have WAY faster RAM, WAY faster storage, and the option for even low-end video cards that beat anything you could comfortably throw in that Mac Pro and what you'll be left with is a MUCH faster Windows machine than that Mac Pro could ever be (plus, you'd be able to run Windows 11 which, unlike Windows 10, will be supported past October 2025). You're much better off tossing Mojave on it and installing every single 32-bit Intel macOS game you have, alongside every 64-bit Intel macOS game that is cool with that old of a machine (which probably is a modest handful at best).

 

[crjackson2134]

First off, you aren't going to have driver support for anything newer than Windows 8.1, which has already been out of support for 13 months. You will certainly not have proper driver support for any version of Windows 10 (not even anything based on v1507)

Can you please elaborate? I’m asking because I’m running WIN10 and I’m not aware of having any driver issues. It’s smooth, fast, and it all works fine for me. Possibly because I don’t use games?

 

[mcnallym]

Can you please elaborate? I’m asking because I’m running WIN10 and I’m not aware of having any driver issues. It’s smooth, fast, and it all works fine for me. Possibly because I don’t use games?

bootcamp support for 5,1? As opposed to just downloading and installing self.

 

[crjackson2134]

Downloaded and installed independently. University licensing. On its own SSD. I did have to download a couple of drivers after installing, but it was no trouble. It’s not like they didn’t exist.

 

[StuAff]

Win 10 works on a 5.1. Yes, you'll need a newer Realtek driver for sound as one included with the 5.1.5621 driver package will cause a BSOD, and your GPU will want newer drivers as well. Hardly a problem.

 

[chrfr]

Can you please elaborate? I’m asking because I’m running WIN10 and I’m not aware of having any driver issues. It’s smooth, fast, and it all works fine for me. Possibly because I don’t use games?

It's very standard Intel hardware for the most part and Windows 10 works fine, although you need to be careful if you're doing an EFI installation because you'll eventually wreck the boot ROM on the computer that way. I have no idea why someone would say that it only works with 8.1 or earlier.

 

[crjackson2134]

Yeah, I don’t do EFI. I’ve known about that issue for years. I installed the sound driver, etc …
I was looking for an answer for the statement you mentioned, but just didn’t want to sound argumentative.

 

[haralds]

I am running Windows 11 with the latest driver. It does mean disabling some checks.

 

[chrfr]

Yeah, I don’t do EFI. I’ve known about that issue for years. I installed the sound driver, etc …
I was looking for an answer for the statement you mentioned, but just didn’t want to sound argumentative.

For what it's worth I have Win 10 installed on a 2008 Mac Pro, and it has full driver support too and required no special efforts to get it running. Sure, it's not fast and it's not power efficient but for the very minimal use I have it's better than buying another PC.

 

[matthewpomar]

The RTX 4070 Maximum Power Consumption is 200W according to this site and beats out my current gaming machine having an RTX 2080-Ti. I had a 2070 Super before in this machine and it would cause the overload protection to kick-in until I got one of those EVGA Power Link connectors and then it worked fine. The 2070 Super is purported to have a maximum power consumption of 215W, so I should be safe with the RTX 4070.

 

[Rastafabi]

There are several considerations to be made: First of benchmark performance from current cards vs older generations ones won’t reflect actual performance. The reason is that newer cards are build to work best under the PCI 4 spec (with PCI 3 fallback in mind), while older ones were build for the PCI 3 spec (with PCI 2 fallback in mind - which these Mac Pros have). Due to PCIs inherent backwards compatibility current cards will work in older Computers, but performance might be heavily tanked and a PCI 4 card could performance worse than an theoretical inferior older generation card. This shouldn’t happen, but it cannot be ruled out for sure without either finding such tests or conducting them yourself.

Additionally I’ve somewhat got a bell ringing that in BIOS mode these Macs don’t even advertise (full) PCI 2(.1) compatibility as they do with later (and the current) EFI firmware. For best ACPI compatibility (and performance) running Windows in EFI mode will hence probably increase performance, especially with newer (than the Mac itself) GPUs. Regarding the firmware corruption issue that is related to this, OpenCore (when used as the boot manager for chainloading Windows) has protection mechanisms against this then configured correctly.

All that so far is rather theoretical and hypothetical. That said, I still think, the best possible GPU should be a current one (due to performance per watt ratio) fitting into the Mac’s power budget. This means that per spec it would be a dual 6 pin or single 8 pin Powered GPU. However as Macs are beautifully over engineered in my experience a 6+8 pin powered GPU works great, though I’d highly recommend distributing the load between the two mini Molex connectors: meaning dual 6 pin mini Molex to dual standard 6 pin Molex -> dual female 6 pin Molex to single 8 pin Molex Y-cable -> female 8 pin Molex to 8+6 (or 8+8, mind the TDP!) pin Molex. I ran that configuration for years without any issues (including coilwhine) whatsoever. (295W RX Vega 64)

So to sum it, reflecting upon my own experience any GPU with up to a 300W TDP should work, if they are build with a 6 pin (75W) and a 8 pin (150W) connector (providing the additional 75W needed through the PCI port itself, as per spec).

As newer GPUs only come with a 12 pin or dual 8 pin Molex connectors those should better not exceed 225W as it’s not clear (unless somewhere found?) wether they actually draw the remaining 75W solely through the PCI port. Thus performance wise some RTX 4070 Supers are within that save limit without additional modifications to the Mac. The absolut safest bet within the Mac’s per spec would be the most powerful single 8 pin GPU. There are some RTX 4070 variants.

That said I’d recommend going with a admittedly slower, but usually not by to far AMD RX 6800 which with a TDP starting at 250W is just 25W over the working limit (outside spec) with a rather save assumption that the remaining 25W will be drawn from the slot. The great advantage of that GPU is, that it will work with macOS as well (GPU firmware patch required) while not being that much slower in many scenarios. Feeling adventurous an RX 6800 XT equals an GTX 4070, and is TDP wise still below 300W which can work.

In any case I really recommend to balance the load between the two mini Molex connectors. I hope this helps.

 

[tsialex]

The RTX 4070 Maximum Power Consumption is 200W according to this site and beats out my current gaming machine having an RTX 2080-Ti. I had a 2070 Super before in this machine and it would cause the overload protection to kick-in until I got one of those EVGA Power Link connectors and then it worked fine. The 2070 Super is purported to have a maximum power consumption of 215W, so I should be safe with the RTX 4070.

RTX 3xxx and 4xxx require UEFI 2.3.1 HII support and when installed to a MacPro5,1, the Mac Pro does not power on. EFI 1.10 does not have HII support, it's the same reason that unpatched RX 6xxx AMD GPUs do not work with a MacPro earlier than 2019 Mac Pro.

 

[seefees]

RTX 3xxx and 4xxx require UEFI 2.3.1 HII support and when installed to a MacPro5,1, the Mac Pro does not power on. EFI 1.10 does not have HII support, it's the same reason that unpatched RX 6xxx AMD GPUs do not work with a MacPro earlier than 2019 Mac Pro.

Interestingly this guy managed to install an rtx 4060 to Mac Pro 5.1

Although he admits maybe not every rtx 4060 is able to work.

 

[tsialex]

After injecting EnableGop into the BootROM, some NVIDIA cards may work. Some cards have been found to work with the legacy Mac Pro EFI firmware, once EnableGop is injected. Notice that I've wrote some cards twice, this is higly GPU firmware dependent.

Anyway, if you are interested into Windows gaming, most new AAA games are starting to require TPM2.0 and no Mac can provide it. Even people with 2019 Mac Pro are finding that new games are unfortunately not allowed to run.

If you are interested into gaming old titles, batch video converter via NVENC or running some app that require a Quadro and does not require AVX, then you'll be very happy if you find a NVIDIA GPU that works once EnableGop is injected to the BootROM.

 

[keksikuningas]

if it's only for gaming sell the mac pro and buy someone's gaming PC from 6-7 years ago. It will perform much better with a GPU you were planning to buy for your cMP, especially if yours is a dual CPU

 

[seefees]

After injecting EnableGop into the BootROM, some NVIDIA cards may work. Some cards have been found to work with the legacy Mac Pro EFI firmware, once EnableGop is injected. Notice that I've wrote some cards twice, this is higly GPU firmware dependent.

Anyway, if you are interested into Windows gaming, most new AAA games are starting to require TPM2.0 and no Mac can provide it. Even people with 2019 Mac Pro are finding that new games are unfortunately not allowed to run.

If you are interested into gaming old titles, batch video converter via NVENC or running some app that require a Quadro and does not require AVX, then you'll be very happy if you find a NVIDIA GPU that works once EnableGop is injected to the BootROM.

Just to be clear — my main digital obsessions are video editing in DaVinci Resolve and 3D modeling in Blender. But since this is more of a hobby than a paycheck operation, I’m constantly on a quest for the cheapest way possible to keep my system alive and kicking. Honestly, I wish I had the cash for a shiny Mac Studio M3 Ultra so I could stop wasting half of my life with juggling firmware updates, driver versions, and the eternal CPU vs GPU wars.

 

[tsialex]

Just to be clear — my main digital obsessions are video editing in DaVinci Resolve and 3D modeling in Blender. But since this is more of a hobby than a paycheck operation, I’m constantly on a quest for the cheapest way possible to keep my system alive and kicking. Honestly, I wish I had the cash for a shiny Mac Studio M3 Ultra so I could stop wasting half of my life with juggling firmware updates, driver versions, and the eternal CPU vs GPU wars.

You are better served with a Windows (or even Linux) render PC.

A 2nd hand Ryzen 5 3xxx + a recent mid-range NVIDIA GPU likea 2060 will be relatively cheap if you take your time searching and a lot more poweful than your Mac Pro and you can always improve your PC overtime.

I dearly love my Mac Pros, but even I can't honestly recommend a MacPro5,1 for anything that not require legacy versions of macOS. Great for old FCP versions, bad idea for Resolve.