MP 1,1-5,1 GPU Compatibility List for cMP

[tsialex]

Yeah, I know this behavior exists with genuine Mac cards as well. There's a thread somewhere on this forum that goes in to great detail about the cause of this behavior, and I think the key difference was that the original HD5870 starts spinning up fast at boot (and draws more current) while the GTX680, for instance, starts in low power mode.

So, maybe, if there's a metal card that does boot in "high consumption mode" (or something) it would get rid of this behavior...?

I was just hoping someone here would have first hand experience with such a card. I know it might seem strange obsessing over this instead of just accepting the software workaround. But I can't help it, when something's not working the way it's supposed to I just can't relax. ? And then I'd rather stick with an older OS version.

(Actually, I'm one of those who'd love to stick with Snow Leopard, if only it was more widely supported. Every OS update since then has introduced new ways of handling things that require me to change how I work, which I don't like. Duplicate instead of Save as, showing MP3 tag titles instead of filenames in spotlight search, replacing ftp with sftp, making "natural scrolling" the default . Although, I really enjoy iCloud drive, and auto-save can be nice sometimes, though sometimes it can be bad.)

You understood the problem completely backwards. It's the high power draw at the startup that triggers the racing fan bug. Btw, the GPU fan rotation has nothing to do it and it's not only GPUs that can cause it. Even fan less cards like some NVMe switched cards or some SDI ones can trigger it. It's the power draw from the PCIe slot that triggers the PCIe fan ramp up at the startup. Another thing, it's a common problem of SMC 1.39f5 (early-2009) and it's not so common with 1.39f11 (mid-2010/mid-2012) Mac Pros.

If you have two displays connected to an AMD GPU, AMD GPUs with two or more displays draw much more power than NVIDIA GPUs with two or more displays, it's almost certain that you will trigger it, while with NVIDIA GPUs only some high end cards like TITAN have it. Mojave and newer macOS releases usage of METAL since the driver startup makes this undesirable behaviour more apparent then with High Sierra or earlier macOS releases - more power draw, more chances of triggering it.

 

[klover137006]

You understood the problem completely backwards. It's the high power draw at the startup that triggers the racing fan bug.

If you have two displays connected to an AMD GPU, AMD GPUs with two or more displays draw much more power than NVIDIA GPUs with two or more displays, it's almost certain that you will trigger it, while with NVIDIA GPUs only some high end cards like TITAN have it.

Btw, the GPU fan rotation has nothing to do it and it's not only GPUs that can cause it. Even fan less cards like some NVMe switched cards or some SDI ones can trigger it. It's the power draw from the PCIe slot that triggers the PCIe fan ramp-up. Another thing, it's a common problem of SMC 1.39f5 (early-2009) and it's not so common with 1.39f11 (mid-2010/mid-2012) Mac Pros.

Are you sure about that? Because the stock AMD 5870 spins up loudly at boot for a few seconds (indicating some sort of stress on the GPU) and then goes down. The GTX680 on the other hand is completely silent at boot, but with that card, the PCI and PS fans spins up above normal speeds. And the only way to solve it is to stress the GPU (which is exactly what the AirOut application does). And I'm sure I read that using SSD's can make the problem worse (since they are low power) whereas using a bunch of regular HDD's can help.

 

[tsialex]

Are you sure about that? Because the stock AMD 5870 spins up loudly at boot for a few seconds (indicating some sort of stress on the GPU) and then goes down. The GTX680 on the other hand is completely silent at boot, but with that card, the PCI and PS fans spins up above normal speeds. And the only way to solve it is to stress the GPU (which is exactly what the AirOut application does). And I'm sure I read that using SSD's can make the problem worse (since they are low power) whereas using a bunch of regular HDD's can help.

Fan spin has nothing to do with power draw. Only cards connected to PCIe slots 1 and 2 can trigger the racing fan bug. SATA drives has nothing to do with it.

The firmware code for the SMC has a matrix that determines the PCIe FAN rotation accordingly with the power draw from PCIe slots 1 and 2. With 1.39f5, this happens with almost any high power draw PCIe card, Apple tweaked it with 1.39f11.

Some GPUs initialise with high fan rotation, others with zero fan rotation and ramp-up based on temperature, but this has nothing to do with the PCIe fan racing bug.

 

[klover137006]

Fan spin has nothing to do with power draw.

OK, but surely the fan spins when the GPU is under load? And I just figured a GPU under load draws more power, so I thought the fan spin indicated some sort of stress on the card. But I might be completely wrong about that, I'm no expert. It just seemed logical.

 

[tsialex]

OK, but surely the fan spins when the GPU is under load? And I just figured a GPU under load draws more power, so I thought the fan spin indicated some sort of stress on the card. But I might be completely wrong about that, I'm no expert. It just seemed logical.

GPU fan rotation has nothing to do with the SMC or PCIe fan. macOS can't even read the GPU fan rotation, the GPU sensors are not exposed and Apple don't have an API for it, only Windows can do it and for some cards Linux can do it too.

Some GPUs at power up start with high fan rotation by default, others like Sapphire Pulse RX 580 have a firmware that if the card is below some temperature threshold, the GPU fans are completely still and will continue until the temperature set by the firmware occur, but if you reset your PC immediately after using the GPU, the firmware reads the temperature and if it's over the threshold it will ramp up the fans - this is automatically controlled by the GPU hardware, not by the Mac Pro firmware or macOS.

GPU fan rotation has nothing to do with the PCIe racing bug. You can trigger it even with a Mac Pro without a GPU. Two HighPoints SSD7101A-1 installed simultaneously will trigger it every time.

 

[tsialex]

SMC can't read the temperature from the PCIe cards, so, Apple used the next best thing to have fan management, a combo of the ambient temperature and the PCIe power draw to control the PCIe fan rotation.

The problem it's that the SMC firmware code reflects a 2009/2010 reality - today PCIe cards that draw a lot of power are commonplace while back then it was very rare. Since Apple never updated the SMC of MP4,1 and MP5,1, we have to overcome it.

 

[klover137006]

GPU fan rotation has nothing to do with the SMC or PCIe fan. macOS can't even read the GPU fan rotation, the GPU sensors are not exposed and Apple don't have an API for it, only Windows can do it and for some cards Linux can do it too.

Some GPUs at power up start with high fan rotation by default, others like Sapphire Pulse RX 580 have a firmware that if the card is below some temperature threshold, the GPU fans are completely still and will continue until the temperature set by the firmware occur, but if you reset your PC immediately after using the GPU, the firmware reads the temperature and if it's over the threshold it will ramp up the fans - this is automatically controlled by the GPU hardware, not by the Mac Pro firmware or macOS.

GPU fan rotation has nothing to do with the PCIe racing bug. You can trigger it even with a Mac Pro without a GPU. Two HighPoints SSD7101A-1 installed simultaneously will trigger it every time.

Ah, OK, I see what you meant, sorry. Well, I know the GPU fan rotation has nothing to do with the PCIe fan and that I can't control it from macOS. I just meant that the GPU fan might be an indicator that the card drew a lot of power on boot, in contrast to the GTX 680, and that it caused the SMC to react in a certain way.

But that was, I gather, a false conclusion. This racing fan bug is even more confusing for me now. So, do you happen to know of a card that usually won't trigger the bug? I'm on a Mid 2010 Mac Pro with SMC 1.39f11.

 

[tsialex]

Ah, OK, I see what you meant, sorry. Well, I know the GPU fan rotation has nothing to do with the PCIe fan and that I can't control it from macOS. I just meant that the GPU fan might be an indicator that the card drew a lot of power on boot, in contrast to the GTX 680, and that it caused the SMC to react in a certain way.

But that was, I gather, a false conclusion. This racing fan bug is even more confusing for me now. So, do you happen to know of a card that usually won't trigger the bug? I'm on a Mid 2010 Mac Pro with SMC 1.39f11.

It's not just GPU that triggers the racing fan bug, you can trigger it with a Mac Pro Server without GPU. A high power draw card installed on slot two like some Sonnet USB3.0 cards will trigger it even if you have a NVIDIA GT710.

GPUs don't draw a lot of power at power on, you are mistaken. Unless you have a multiple monitor config, you won't have a GPU drawing the power level of any high demanding graphical or compute job since the computation units are off. GPU fan rotation at power on is not related to power draw.

NVIDIA has some very low power GPUs, like GT710/730 that work with Mojave and draw almost nothing from the PCIe slot, but the performance is very poor. The recommended by Apple MSI RX560 AERO (and the RX550 with the Baffin binned GPU) has a very good performance and didn't trigger it - a lot of people use this cards with audio studios, but it's practically an unobtainable card today.

 

[klover137006]

It's not just GPU that triggers the racing fan bug, you can trigger it with a Mac Pro Server without GPU. A high power draw card installed on slot two like some Sonnet USB3.0 cards will trigger it even if you have a NVIDIA GT710.

GPUs don't draw a lot of power at power on, you are mistaken. Unless you have a multiple monitor config, you won't have a GPU drawing the power level of any high demanding graphical or compute job since the computation units are off. GPU fan rotation at power on is not related to power draw.

NVIDIA has some very low power GPUs, like GT710/730 that work with Mojave and draw almost nothing from the PCIe slot, but the performance is very poor. The recommended by Apple MSI RX560 AERO (and the RX550 with the Baffin binned GPU) has a very good performance and didn't trigger it - a lot of people use this cards with audio studios, but it's practically an unobtainable card today.

Woho, great! Thanks for the tips! I will have a look at those cards.

 

[eRecords]

My favorite one! It works in Mavericks through Mojave

Gigabyte R9 280X 3GB Upgrade 1,1-5,1 Apple MAC PRO 4K, METAL, Catalina Support | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Gigabyte R9 280X 3GB Upgrade 1,1-5,1 Apple MAC PRO 4K, METAL, Catalina Support at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

 

[klover137006]

My favorite one! It works in Mavericks through Mojave

Gigabyte R9 280X 3GB Upgrade 1,1-5,1 Apple MAC PRO 4K, METAL, Catalina Support | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Gigabyte R9 280X 3GB Upgrade 1,1-5,1 Apple MAC PRO 4K, METAL, Catalina Support at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

Interesting! You mean that this does not trigger the "racing fan" bug?

Or maybe you weren't replying to me, haha sorry! ?

 

[flaubert]

My favorite one! It works in Mavericks through Mojave

Gigabyte R9 280X 3GB Upgrade 1,1-5,1 Apple MAC PRO 4K, METAL, Catalina Support | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Gigabyte R9 280X 3GB Upgrade 1,1-5,1 Apple MAC PRO 4K, METAL, Catalina Support at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

I was just looking at some of these on ebay, since bitcoin mining has killed affordable new cards. Question: you say 'through Mojave'; of course Mojave is the last supported release for a 5,1 cMP, but is there any reason that you know of that it can't work in a Catalina or Big Sur cMP with OpenCore? And while I'm asking, does it block the adjacent PCIE slot, or can you still use all four of the regular slots? Thanks in advance.

 

[juanxer]

I just adquired a second hand Sapphire Pulse RX 560 4GB for a Mac Pro 5.1 that has the officially supported Gigabyte version already, in order to support some five monitors and be able to migrate to Mojave. Upon install I found out that it needed extra power to be recognized, which was a little surprising as it was supposed to not need that. I solved that with the old 5770 card's cable, anyway.

Everything seems to work OK (it reports Metal compatibility, etc.), but I've found an oddity: the system reports this card as using a single PCIe lane ("x1") while hooked to the PCIe Slot-1 (lowest).

I used to have a little PCIe USB3x4 card in Slot-4 (the top one), but for this setup I had moved it down to Slot-2 to better space the graphic cards and facilitate air flow. My question is: are Slot-1 and Slot-2 related in some way that has this little x1 card forcing both of them to run at x1?

 

[burnthefires]

I'm running Pulse RX 5600 XT and 5,1 with Opencore, with only MP7,1 board ID (HWaccel is working natively) and since upgrading to Big Sur the card has been working flawlessly (in Catalina DisplayPort outputs didn't work). But lately even before 11.2 update and without any other software or hardware changes some strange behaviours started.

-Sometimes when booting into macOS the system reboots twice(looks like a failed boot) and after the second reboot everything works fine (forgot to check logs then).
-Few days ago after reboot i got a green screen instead of desktop and rebooting didn't help - it just booted this way again and again. What helped was changing to HDMI, system booted correctly, and then i could change back to DP and it's been working fine ever since.
-It's not much of an issue but those lines appear in console repeatedly when I open an app that uses hardware acceleration:

Feb  2 14:44:45 konrads-mac-pro Music[4599]: getattrlist failed for /Library/GPUBundles/AMDRadeonX6000GLDriver.bundle/Contents/MacOS/ATIRadeonX6000SCLib.dylib: #2: No such file or directory
Feb  2 14:44:45 konrads-mac-pro Music[4599]: getattrlist failed for /System/Library/Extensions/AMDRadeonX6000GLDriver.bundle/Contents/MacOS/ATIRadeonX6000SCLib.dylib: #2: No such file or directory
Feb  2 14:44:45 konrads-mac-pro Music[4599]: getattrlist failed for /System/Library/Frameworks/OpenGL.framework/Resources//GLRendererFloat.bundle/GLRendererFloat: #2: No such file or directory
Feb  2 14:44:55 konrads-mac-pro Music[4599]: getattrlist failed for /Library/GPUBundles/AMDRadeonVADriver2.bundle/Contents/MacOS/AMDRadeonVADriver2: #2: No such file or directory
Feb  2 14:44:55 konrads-mac-pro Music[4599]: getattrlist failed for /System/Library/Extensions/AMDRadeonVADriver2.bundle/Contents/MacOS/AMDRadeonVADriver2: #2: No such file or directory

Sometimes it's just the VADriver, sometimes it's just the X6000, here it's an example of Music app, but it also happens with Safari or even the screen saver. Don't know if there's something to worry about here.

 

[juanxer]

I just adquired a second hand Sapphire Pulse RX 560 4GB for a Mac Pro 5.1 that has the officially supported Gigabyte version already, in order to support some five monitors and be able to migrate to Mojave. Upon install I found out that it needed extra power to be recognized, which was a little surprising as it was supposed to not need that. I solved that with the old 5770 card's cable, anyway.

Everything seems to work OK (it reports Metal compatibility, etc.), but I've found an oddity: the system reports this card as using a single PCIe lane ("x1") while hooked to the PCIe Slot-1 (lowest).

I used to have a little PCIe USB3x4 card in Slot-4 (the top one), but for this setup I had moved it down to Slot-2 to better space the graphic cards and facilitate air flow. My question is: are Slot-1 and Slot-2 related in some way that has this little x1 card forcing both of them to run at x1?

Looks like the PCIe USB3x4 card was the culprit. Once I moved it back to slot 4 and put both graphic cards in slots 1 and 2 their bandwidth switched to x8 for both.

The clearance between both cards is fairly narrow, but I guess it'll be enough. I put the power cable-fed Sapphire on top, just in case it is the hotter one out of the extra power demands, with more free space above its fan.

 

[h9826790]

My question is: are Slot-1 and Slot-2 related in some way that has this little x1 card forcing both of them to run at x1?

No

Looks like the PCIe USB3x4 card was the culprit. Once I moved it back to slot 4 and put both graphic cards in slots 1 and 2 their bandwidth switched to x8 for both.

The clearance between both cards is fairly narrow, but I guess it'll be enough. I put the power cable-fed Sapphire on top, just in case it is the hotter one out of the extra power demands, with more free space above its fan.

Most likely the "re-seating" fixed the issue, but not the USB can't cause the graphic card to populate at x1.

 

[juanxer]

No



Most likely the "re-seating" fixed the issue, but not the USB can't cause the graphic card to populate at x1.

Hmmm. I'll do a last test, then, putting it on slot 2 again.

 

[Technotragic]

Hi Guys,

Great GPU compatibility list and thread that now is of particular interest since my standard Radeon 7970 is now only displaying horizontal red/yellow lines and won't boot! Lots of info. online on using hair dryers, heat guns and ray guns etc but probably only be only a temporary fix at best!

I've the option to get a pre loved gigabyte hd 7970oc 3gb which as per the list should work and have the following questions as I thought 'flashing' was just exposing oneself in public!

1. Will it definitely need flashing to work in my cMP 5,1 with HS/ Mojave or only if boot screen required (which it is)?

2. What/where is the simplest step by step flashing procedure for the card, preferably not requiring Win/Dos as I don't have the S/W or access to PC tower?

Look forward to any and all ideas, suggestions and solutions to my GPU issue and update plan so as I can get my good old cMP booting up and working again!

Thanks in advance,

TT

 

[h9826790]

Hi Guys,

Great GPU compatibility list and thread that now is of particular interest since my standard Radeon 7970 is now only displaying horizontal red/yellow lines and won't boot! Lots of info. online on using hair dryers, heat guns and ray guns etc but probably only be only a temporary fix at best!

I've the option to get a pre loved gigabyte hd 7970oc 3gb which as per the list should work and have the following questions as I thought 'flashing' was just exposing oneself in public!

1. Will it definitely need flashing to work in my cMP 5,1 with HS/ Mojave or only if boot screen required (which it is)?

2. What/where is the simplest step by step flashing procedure for the card, preferably not requiring Win/Dos as I don't have the S/W or access to PC tower?

Look forward to any and all ideas, suggestions and solutions to my GPU issue and update plan so as I can get my good old cMP booting up and working again!

Thanks in advance,

TT

1. Only for boot screen

2. You can use Linux LiveUSB if you don’t have Windows.

 

[Technotragic]

Thanks for that but as mentioned I really need a step by step guide and preferably in Unix if possible:-

2. What/where is the simplest step by step flashing procedure for the card, preferably not requiring Win/DOS as I don't have it or access to PC tower?

 

[h9826790]

2. What/where is the simplest step by step flashing procedure for the card, preferably not requiring Win/DOS as I don't have it or access to PC tower?

This link is in the sticky discussion thread. Anyway, here you are.

Guide to Flash XFX Double D HD 7950 Black Edition Card for Mac Pro

How to Atiflash on a Mac Pro without Windows or boot screen Things you need: Mac Pro with PC graphics card installed Live Linux installation DVD USB dongle with Atiflash for Linux There is a version of Atiflash available for Linux (now renamed amdvbflash). The flash tool will not see the PCIe...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[juanxer]

Most likely the "re-seating" fixed the issue, but not the USB can't cause the graphic card to populate at x1.

You were right: a more careful re-seating of the small USB card in slot 2 gave me correct speeds for all cards involved

 

[chris-snd]

Does any "manufacture brand" Nvidia quadro k5000 4 gb or any "manufacture brand" Ati radeon hd 7950 3 gb work without flashing in a mac pro 3.1?

There are a lot of brands making those cards and i dont want to buy a lot of cards to find out which one wil work.

And without flashing the only thing i will miss then is the boot screen? I could hold on my ati 2600 xt for when i need the boot screen.

I have a option on both (quadro k5000 or hd 7950) cards and following the startpost it looks like they work in a mac pro 3.1. I can't flash them yet since i don't have a win pc.

I narrowed the choice down between these cards because of 2 x (mini)displayport and availability.

 

[Technotragic]

Hi All,

Just got a PC Sapphire HD 5870 (dual DVI, HDMI & Display Port) to use as an emergency GPU card in my 5,1. Shows as Radeon 5800 in Sys. info.

Boots OK via DVI but no go via Display Port with MDP adapter to my Apple LED Cinema display?

Question: Anyone got this GPU working with this display configuration? Will flashing the EFI etc. do it?

Look forward to any and all ideas, suggestions and solutions to this Mini/Display Port issue so as I can it hopefully get working with my Cinema display!

Thanks,

 

[Witti2]

Hello, I have a Mac Pro 5.1 and a Radeon RX580 DUAL 4GB. Unfortunately, the computer with this card does not boot under Big Sur. Graphics card seems to work, however, because the OC bootscrenn and the Apple start logo only appear, the system only loads halfway and then it does not go any further. If I put my GTX 680 back on, everything works fine. Can't the 4GB version of the card be used with Apple and do I have to get an 8GB version, or has someone already had such a problem and knows how to get it to work?
greetings