MP 7,1 Mac Pro with Nvidia A6000

[strangerthanlight]

Installed this beautiful 48GB card in slot 3 today. PCY version included a 8 pin to dual 8 pin connector, and simply use 2 Belkin 8 pin to 8 pin cables. Will snap more photos later.

I disabled AMD W5700X in Windows Bootcamp and installed Nvidia driver.

To connect to XDR display, I used belkin VR cable and the display works perfectly!

Performance is bonkers. Geekbench CUDA compute ~225,850 and OpenCL compute ~201,500

The blower design is quite a good fit for the Mac thermo design.

 

[Oval]

so this PCI 4.0 card just works on PCI 3.0 Mac Pro 2019?

 

[strangerthanlight]

so this PCI 4.0 card just works on PCI 3.0 Mac Pro 2019?

Yep works very well, barely hears the fan noise as well. On PCIe 4 boards this will be even better of course

 

[DFP1989]

so this PCI 4.0 card just works on PCI 3.0 Mac Pro 2019?

You know PCI-e is backwards and forwards compatible, right? You’re just limited by the slowest piece of the puzzle.

 

[impulse462]

This is pretty great! Do you only use windows with this gpu or are you considering also using it with linux?

 

[strangerthanlight]

This is pretty great! Do you only use windows with this gpu or are you considering also using it with linux?

Yes using windows only. Gonna miss bootcamp when M1 is the only option in the future…

 

[strangerthanlight]

As promised:

From top to bottom

• Pegasus J2i cage with two SATA 4TB SSDs
• Apple I/O
• Sonnet M.2 4x4 Silent PCIe card with four 2TB M.2 SSDs in RAID 0 (x8 so read /write speed is about 5GB/s - unfortunately no more x16 slots as I need to give top & bottom clearance to the graphics card)
• Universal Audio UAD-2 OCTO PCIe DSP Card
• Sonnet Allegro 4-Port USD 3.2 Gen 2 Type C PCIe Card
• (PCY) Nvidia RTX A6000!
• Apple afterburner
• AMD W5700X (MPX)

 

[strangerthanlight]

Swap in the 28 core W3275M today (was using the 16 core CPU), a lot of fun upgrading this machine! Yeah it’s old processor by now but still incredibly powerful. Only spent 2200 dollars for it, surprised that apple didn’t lower processor upgrade price along with the older GPUs.

 

[strangerthanlight]

Oops, I said that too early. Ran cinebench after replacing the new CPU chip and got this panic, anyone could help me understand why?

panic(cpu 0 caller 0xfffffff018727bc8): x86 CPU CATERR detected
Debugger message: panic
Memory ID: 0x6
OS release type: User
OS version: 18P4759a
macOS version: Not set
Kernel version: Darwin Kernel Version 20.6.0: Tue Jun 22 21:55:04 PDT 2021; root:xnu-7195.141.2~1/RELEASE_ARM64_T8010
Kernel UUID: 70B8CF2F-8FF6-38CB-8B83-1369255E8A6D
iBoot version: iBoot-6723.140.2
secure boot?: YES
x86 EFI Boot State: 0xb
x86 System State: 0x0
x86 Power State: 0x0
x86 Shutdown Cause: 0xec
x86 Previous Power Transitions: 0x70707060400
PCIeUp link state: 0x89271611
Paniclog version: 13
Kernel slide: 0x000000001081c000
Kernel text base: 0xfffffff017820000
mach_absolute_time: 0x4b58eaea
Epoch Time: sec usec
Boot : 0x61146570 0x0002c15c
Sleep : 0x00000000 0x00000000
Wake : 0x00000000 0x00000000
Calendar: 0x611465a1 0x000af32b

CORE 0 is the one that panicked. Check the full backtrace for details.
CORE 1: PC=0xfffffff017f48080, LR=0xfffffff017f4806c, FP=0xffffffe810e63ee0
Panicked task 0xffffffe199ff0630: 2298 pages, 164 threads: pid 0: kernel_task
Panicked thread: 0xffffffe19a2a6600, backtrace: 0xffffffe810e73700, tid: 374
lr: 0xfffffff017f1b4f0 fp: 0xffffffe810e73750
lr: 0xfffffff017f1b348 fp: 0xffffffe810e737c0
lr: 0xfffffff018046d90 fp: 0xffffffe810e73890
lr: 0xfffffff0185415fc fp: 0xffffffe810e738a0
lr: 0xfffffff017f1b07c fp: 0xffffffe810e73c20
lr: 0xfffffff017f1b07c fp: 0xffffffe810e73c80
lr: 0xfffffff018e83200 fp: 0xffffffe810e73ca0
lr: 0xfffffff018727bc8 fp: 0xffffffe810e73cd0
lr: 0xfffffff018715f58 fp: 0xffffffe810e73d30
lr: 0xfffffff018717e54 fp: 0xffffffe810e73dc0
lr: 0xfffffff0187155fc fp: 0xffffffe810e73e50
lr: 0xfffffff01861a17c fp: 0xffffffe810e73e80
lr: 0xfffffff018496338 fp: 0xffffffe810e73ec0
lr: 0xfffffff018495bb8 fp: 0xffffffe810e73f00
lr: 0xfffffff01854c5a0 fp: 0x0000000000000000

 

[dabotsonline]

Swap in the 28 core W3275M today (was using the 16 core CPU), a lot of fun upgrading this machine! Yeah it’s old processor by now but still incredibly powerful. Only spent 2200 dollars for it, surprised that apple didn’t lower processor upgrade price along with the older GPUs.

From where did you buy the https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...n-w-3275m-processor-38-5m-cache-2-50-ghz.html so cheaply?

Could it be a 'seconds' unit, and this is what caused the Panic?

 

[strangerthanlight]

From where did you buy the https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...n-w-3275m-processor-38-5m-cache-2-50-ghz.html so cheaply?

Could it be a 'seconds' unit, and this is what caused the Panic?

Bought on eBay. All is good now - turns out you really need to tighten the screws (10 and a half turns) to secure the heat sink to the board. Working without any problem now and even cooler than my 16 core with some good thermo paste application.

 

[dabotsonline]

Bought on eBay. All is good now - turns out you really need to tighten the screws (10 and a half turns) to secure the heat sink to the board. Working without any problem now and even cooler than my 16 core with some good thermo paste application.

$2200 USD is a bargain for a 2-year old processor with a launch price of $7453 USD.

Are you willing to disclose the eBay seller, @strangerthanlight ? Thanks.

 

[strangerthanlight]

$2200 USD is a bargain for a 2-year old processor with a launch price of $7453 USD.

Are you willing to disclose the eBay seller, @strangerthanlight ? Thanks.

mcllz0011