Mojave Performance on 5,1?

[judino28]

I truly apologize if this has been discussed somewhere else, but after a quick search, I haven't found anything.

What is Mojave performance like on a 5,1? I've read some reports of Mojave running a bit slower or a bit buggy on some older supported systems, so I'm curious to hear some experiences. You can see my setup in my signature but in short: 6c 3.33ghz, 12gb ram, flashed 7950, & SSD.

I'm currently still on Sierra as I've been hesitant to jump on the APFS train, but if Mojave is the last official update for our systems, I'll probably want to do it sooner or later, depending on what performance is like.

 

[nglevin]

Held off on installing any beta versions on my 5,1, but I did put the new firmware on the 5,1 with High Sierra and that combination ran very well.

Mac Pro 5,1 performance so far is mixed. I run my machine constantly through the night doing heavy disk based I/O on an NVMe SSD via PCIe card. I've seen both occasional freezing that requires a reboot and at least one time when I've woken up my Mac to find the graphics output extremely distorted. This on an RX560, the Apple-recommended MSI card which worked great on High Sierra.

FWIW the new 5,1 Mojave firmware + High Sierra was stable and worked great. So I'll chalk this up to Mojave needing a few minor upgrades to get fully there.

 

[Lenny_]

I think it's even faster than High Sierra - not noticeable though: Geekbench (multi core) is at least 1000 points higher than the last time I tested with HS:

 

[PianoPro]

Held off on installing any beta versions on my 5,1, but I did put the new firmware on the 5,1 with High Sierra and that combination ran very well.

Mac Pro 5,1 performance so far is mixed. I run my machine constantly through the night doing heavy disk based I/O on an NVMe SSD via PCIe card. I've seen both occasional freezing that requires a reboot and at least one time when I've woken up my Mac to find the graphics output extremely distorted. This on an RX560, the Apple-recommended MSI card which worked great on High Sierra.

FWIW the new 5,1 Mojave firmware + High Sierra was stable and worked great. So I'll chalk this up to Mojave needing a few minor upgrades to get fully there.

Perhaps you are an exception but the RX-560 (I also use the same MSI card recommended by Apple) is well known to have driver problems (very occasional glitches in non-games, but consistent problems using full-screen 1080p mode in some games - Civ 5 for instance) in HS. Those problems are completely gone in Mojave, which has a proper RX-560 driver.

To the OP. I also have a 6-core, 2010 Mac Pro, with the before mentioned MSI RX-560, 12 GB RAM (like you), 2 SSDs, 3 HDs, and Magic Mouse with Asus BT 4.0 dongle - and Mojave has worked great through multiple beta releases, the release version, and now the 10.14.1 Beta release. I have been triple booting between Win 10, HS, and Mojave, but I'm now using Mojave as my main OS.

 

[nglevin]

Perhaps you are an exception but the RX-560 (I also use the same MSI card recommended by Apple) is well known to have driver problems

Not playing games, period. This is a work machine. Two days ago, I woke the Mac Pro up and saw some horrifying flickering with UI windows redrawn in seemingly random positions on the monitor attached via DisplayPort. "Fixed" after a reboot, but that makes me suspect that the support for this card isn't fully there yet on Mojave. Never saw anything that crazy on High Sierra before.

Do you have a thread to refer to, for the driver problems? Most of the MacRumors discussion centers around the Sapphire RX 580. I have never seen anything on the RX 560.

 

[F1Mac]

Not playing games, period. This is a work machine. Two days ago, I woke the Mac Pro up and saw some horrifying flickering with UI windows redrawn in seemingly random positions on the monitor attached via DisplayPort. "Fixed" after a reboot, but that makes me suspect that the support for this card isn't fully there yet on Mojave. Never saw anything that crazy on High Sierra before.

Do you have a thread to refer to, for the driver problems? Most of the MacRumors discussion centers around the Sapphire RX 580. I have never seen anything on the RX 560.

fwiw, I got the RX 560 not long ago and didn't stay too long on HS with it. But I had no problem - I don't do games either. 10.13.6, unless I'm mistaken, is the only version that properly recognizes the card as "RX 560". No issue in Mojave.

 

[PianoPro]

Not playing games, period. This is a work machine. Two days ago, I woke the Mac Pro up and saw some horrifying flickering with UI windows redrawn in seemingly random positions on the monitor attached via DisplayPort. "Fixed" after a reboot, but that makes me suspect that the support for this card isn't fully there yet on Mojave. Never saw anything that crazy on High Sierra before.

Do you have a thread to refer to, for the driver problems? Most of the MacRumors discussion centers around the Sapphire RX 580. I have never seen anything on the RX 560.

I haven't kept links to a specific threads that mention RX-560 problems in HS, but a quick Google re-found this thread on this forum from t8er8.

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-sapphire-pulse-rx-560.2131835/#post-26422177

After I got an MSI RX-560 I saw rare, but occasional glitches on the HS desktop, and then found it was entirely unusable in Civ 5 1080p full screen mode (the Civ games are the only games I have so that was one of my test cases - my Mac Pro is 95% engineering design work too - but fortunately I run my own company so I can keep a game on my computer to occasionally relax). The RX-560 worked fine in all windowed modes in that Civ 5 game. I also saw a few "glitches" running the Heaven benchmark in HS.

I thought I might have bought a bad video card so when t8er8 mentioned switching to Mojave produced "serious stability improvements on graphics intensive tasks like gaming" and so forth, I asked him about it. I subsequently found multiple mentions on various net sites including a YouTube Mac Pro installation video that actually showed "glitches" occurring after an RX-560 install and referred to that being a known problem. The problems are not serious unless you use it for gaming - which I normally don't.

Anyway, bottom line is that there have been no problems on the Civ 5 game, or that Heaven Benchmark with Mojave, nor have I seen a single glitch with Mojave with its updated video drivers. I've also not seen any problems with the RX-560 using Win 10 (separate boot - not a VM), which of course has different drivers than HS or Mojave.

 

[Porthos38]

fwiw, I got the RX 560 not long ago and didn't stay too long on HS with it. But I had no problem - I don't do games either. 10.13.6, unless I'm mistaken, is the only version that properly recognizes the card as "RX 560". No issue in Mojave.

Why the Anti Gamers always buy the gaming card? non gamers should be buying the Radeon WX series cards.

 

[nglevin]

Some of us just want a build machine that can index text very quickly.

Thanks for the reference, Piano! I'm... sort of evaluating this card for the rest of the office in the event of the inevitable Mojave upgrade. If things look better shaken out for 10.14.1, especially if my monitor doesn't start speaking in tongues or projecting portals to hell, then everything's solid.

 

[h9826790]

Why the Anti Gamers always buy the gaming card? non gamers should be buying the Radeon WX series cards.

Because here is a Mac forum, and most of those "special" features not exist in MacOS.

e.g.
No special optimisation for any software (due to no special driver support).
No 24/7 prioritise professional support. In fact, no support at all (due to no official support of these cards in macOS).
No ECC VRAM support (due to no special driver for it)

 

[ssgbryan]

Because here is a Mac forum, and most of those "special" features not exist in MacOS.

e.g.
No special optimisation for any software (due to no special driver support).
No 24/7 prioritise professional support. In fact, no support at all (due to no official support of these cards in macOS).
No ECC VRAM support (due to no special driver for it)

Most of the folks using those gpus are also using the AMD ProRender Engine - which do have OSX drivers; it is why my next card(s) will be WX series cards.

 

[h9826790]

Most of the folks using those gpus are also using the AMD ProRender Engine - which do have OSX drivers; it is why my next card(s) will be WX series cards.

I was talking about no “special” support. The AMD ProRender Engine work on the gaming card as well. They are officially supported from AMD. So, still the same question, what special treatment can get by those WX card in MacOS.

Same engine, same driver, same GPU architecture, will it work better? I doubt.

Anyway, for others info, just in case someone get too excited. Not all AMD ProRender Engine has MacOS support, only some.

 

[ssgbryan]

I was talking about no “special” support. The AMD ProRender Engine work on the gaming card as well. They are officially supported from AMD. So, still the same question, what special treatment can get by those WX card in MacOS.

Same engine, same driver, same GPU architecture, will it work better? I doubt.

Anyway, for others info, just in case someone get too excited. Not all AMD ProRender Engine has MacOS support, only some.

Better binned parts, 10 year limited warranty

 

[woodenbrain]

Hijacking this old thread here, to ask about current compatibility experiences.

I've had this Early 2009 MacPro (now on 5,1) on Mojave for some time, but am now running into a lot of compatibility headaches. Safari 14 was a no go – crashing all the time. Reverted to a Time Machine backup of the whole OS just before the Safari 14 Dev Preview installation. (Now opted out of Dev Preview). Now I'm getting crashes with Microsoft Office 2019 products (Word, Powerpoint at launch) and with Adobe Photoshop 2020 (certain actions). Attempting re-install of Office.

Now i've left untouched Apple Security Update 2020-05 and the mojave 10.14.6 Supplemental Update and the pro video formats update. Do I dare? Have you all?

 

[Sharky II]

All good here. Safari 14 was a nightmare as webpages kept coming up with error, but reinstalling from the standalone installer fixed that.

I’m fully up to date with all the Mojave updates: 2x 6-core 3.46ghz, pcie ssd, Radeon sapphire rx580 8gb. Opencore installed for bootscreen and h264 encoding/deciding etc

 

[gpatlas]

I’m fully up to date with all the Mojave updates: 2x 6-core 3.46ghz, pcie ssd, Radeon sapphire rx580 8gb. Opencore installed for bootscreen and h264 encoding/deciding etc

I’m assuming youre happy with mojave? Have you noticed any performance issues? My MP is identical to yours and I’m wanting to stay ahead of the update/compatibility curve. About to take the plunge

 

[Sharky II]

Everything is cool in Mojave, it's a solid OS. However, the writing is on the wall for 5,1 Macs/Mojave, as I use Logic Pro and the latest update requires Catalina or upwards

I'm sure FCPX will be the same.

 

[h9826790]

Everything is cool in Mojave, it's a solid OS. However, the writing is on the wall for 5,1 Macs/Mojave, as I use Logic Pro and the latest update requires Catalina or upwards

I'm sure FCPX will be the same.

Latest FCP (no more X) does not support Mojave anymore. This is one of the big reason why I upgraded to Big Sur (Catalina is a big no for me, tried it many times, too buggy for me).

 

[Sharky II]

I have open core installed on my flashed 4,1->5,1 12-core 3.46GHz/48GB/PCIe SSD/580 8GB (thanks for your work there!) and am not sure what to do about upgrading.

I haven't researched how 'easy'/seamless the process of a 5,1 going to Big Sur is, but I'll be sure to do a bunch of research when the time comes. I run with SIP disabled and a PCIe audio card that I'm not sure runs on Big Sur (SSL MadiXtreme64), so can't risk upgrading just yet.

 

[h9826790]

I have open core installed on my flashed 4,1->5,1 12-core 3.46GHz/48GB/PCIe SSD/580 8GB (thanks for your work there!) and am not sure what to do about upgrading.

I haven't researched how 'easy'/seamless the process of a 5,1 going to Big Sur is, but I'll be sure to do a bunch of research when the time comes. I run with SIP disabled and a PCIe audio card that I'm not sure runs on Big Sur (SSL MadiXtreme64), so can't risk upgrading just yet.

If you have time, just get a spare HDD to test Big Sur (of course, if that's a HDD, not SSD, don't expect the system is responsive, but good enough to know if that can work as expected).

If you want to test Big Sur, you may simply install my OpenCore 0.6.3 package (or upgrade to 0.6.3), everything you need to know in this post

Activate AMD hardware acceleration

I created a new "easy to install package" as per many requested (based on the official OpenCore). [The attached package updated to 1.0.0] For those who only need HWAccel, post #594 has everything you need. This new package mainly offer HWAccel + boot screen. Also, this package should work in...

forums.macrumors.com

Once you have 0.6.3, Big Sur can be install / run like natively supported, no other action required.

 

[Sharky II]

Fantastic! Thank you.

I was never sure if one needed to keep OpenCore up to date, but it seems like that's the case!