Sapphire R9 380 OC 8Go on MacPro 1.1

[TomKlash]

#2966
I need you help,

I've got a Mac Pro 1.1 (2006) 2x2,66GHZ, 6Go RAM. In first time (4 years ago) I mount a graphic card : Sapphire 5770 1Go, I could play racing games on windows 7 (iRacing, Assetto Corsa, PCARS) in correct conditions but not fantastic (low graphism 60-30 Fps).

Recently I install a new graphic card : Sapphire R9 390 OC 8Go. I hope real better performances but I'm really disappointed… No better FPS, impossible to increase graphism in game.


I don't know for witch reason it does work better like that. Something limit performance ? CPU frequencies ? PCI ? Other ?


I need your help.
[doublepost=1458628657][/doublepost]

I assume you are gaming in Windows, I think this card is not working properly (or not working at all) in OSX.

Your FPS may be limited by your CPU (2.66 on an old CPU is quite slow for gaming, dual CPU may even make situation worse), for R9 390, you should able to have much better graphics. If you can use higher setting (better texture, more AA etc) but still the same FPS, that basically means you are CPU limiting. Not much you can do except lower all CPU demanding settings (less moving object on the screen, e.g. people, grass, etc).

Anyway, this thread should be for Nvidia GPU. You better start another thread to discuss this issue.

 

[cmanns]

You are limited by the Dual-Core 2.66 (Quad total) and probably bus in my opinions.

Swap the cpu's to X5365 (I read from a guy that had 980 or so in SLI say that the difference between X5355 and X5365 in HD (4k or so) gaming was huge. Like particle affects and what not really suffered with the 8 core 2.66 ghz vs 8 core 3.0ghz.

Did the R9 give boot screen/old one have it if not? I'd maybe go back to 5770.

My GTX650SC 2GB gets about 10-15% worse performane in 3D benchmarks (and bandwidth, etc by various tests) being in a MacPro 1,1 (2006). Even if I overclock it which gave gains with the previous i5 system, I get no gains.

 

[Machines]

To install a high end graphics card in a PCIe Rev 1.1 slot (as found in your Mac) , will reduce its performance compared to installing it in a Rev 2.0 slot found in more recent cMPs . I'm not certain upgrading your system to an 8 core configuration will improve things as its pretty rare for a game to use more than 4 CPU cores . If you desire to play games on a Mac , you might want to spring for a single processor 2009 cMP, upgrade the CPU to a Xeon X5677 , install your R9 390 and load Windows through bootcamp on a SSD . You should be happy with this configuration .

 

[ActionableMango]

I don't know for witch reason it does work better like that. Something limit performance ? CPU frequencies ? PCI ? Other ?

Yes you are hitting the limits of your computer. Faster video cards will have diminishing returns.

You might get a small boost by upgrading to 3.0GHz CPU, but honestly that's only about 300-400 MHz faster than your existing CPU, so that's why I say "small" boost.

At this point you need a newer computer for better performance. If you are Windows only, get a PC. If you want to use OS X as well, then that 390 video card is not a great choice because last I checked it is not supported well. (I am assuming 390 like you say in the post, but you say 380 in the title, so I don't know which you actually have.)

 

[JedNZ]

Going from a Quad-Core 2.66GHz (or even an 8-Core 2.66GHz) to an 8-Core X5365 3.0GHz isn't a "small" increase in CPU power by any constriction of the imagination.

I did the upgrade on my cMP 1,1 and my benchmark scores have literally doubled, in both single core and multi-core metrics. As per my sig, I've got an R9 380X in my cMP and it works a dream on a 28" 4K screen, plus I'm running a 5770 on a 22" alongside it for boot screens. And I simply could not afford to get such a system if I went straight to a cMP 3,1 (resell value is still very strong in NZ – the cMP 1,1 are quite cheap).

It's true that a newer cMP will give you better performance. I'm wanting to go to at least a cMP 4,1 because I won't get much of a boost going to a cMP 3,1 (even the top 3.2GHz model) – the only bonus going to a cMP 3,1 would be having native 64-bit boot support, so no hassles having to apply the Pike's fix every time there's an update to the OS.

What PCI-E slot do you have your R9 380 in? Have you check the Expansion Slot Utility (System>Library>Core Services) to check you've got the optimal lane-width option? Have you considered increasing your ram? 6GB is probably the bottleneck.

 

[hannibal2]

Maybe I am missing something here but I think TomKlash hasnt specified whether he has 2x Dual Core 2,66 Ghz (x5355) or 2x Quad Core 2,66 Ghz (x5150). There is indeed a huge difference. First of all TomKlash, are you using Windows Home or Premium/Ultimate? I made the mistake in the beginning to go with Win Home and found out that it can only use one processor. That left me with about 2300 Geekbench 3 score (on my x5150). After I installed Win Ultimate I got a 5000 score. A friend of mine has a x5355 (Quad Core) which I ordered couple days ago and he gets around 9500.

If I am not mistaken, Windows Ultimate/Premium uses the cores and just passes the power on to the games? Please correct me if I am wrong. I am saying this because I didn't just follow the geek bench scores but also tried out GTA 5 for example. I might add that I was running a Nvidia GTX 660 before and after the switch from Win Home to Win Ultim. My FPS changed from 16 (unplayable) to 30-50. That is a huge difference and was only accomplished by the use of the additional two cores.

Also TomKlash, you might want to use MSI Afterburner. Youtube will give you some instructions on how to configure it. You can watch the utilisation of your CPUs, GPU, RAM and your FPS. Especially the GPU and the CPUs are quite interesting. Some games are rather CPU some rather GPU needy. You will be able to see that while playing the game. if your CPU is running at 100% the whole time and your GPU is only at 55-65 you should upgrade your CPU and - if you havent done that already - switch to Win Premium/Ultimate. I'd recommend upgrading to 2x Quad Core 2,66 Ghz (x5355). You'll get the best bang for the buck. I just got 2 of them for 30 EUR. And I heard around the world, they are pretty cheap. X5365s are still pretty expensive in my opinion. Considering that I don't want to put a lot more money into the machine because its fairly old.

I hope I could help a bit.

Edit: I can post how my FPS changed within GTA 5 when I will upgrade my CPU tomorrow or the day after. Just so you get an idea how your gaming performance CAN change when upgrading from Dual 2,66 to Quad 2,66 given a fairly decent GPU

 

[orph]

one thing to remember is that vary few apps use more than 2-4 cores so while a 8 core will give you the potential of more power (with a loss of say 10% overhead per core) thats only if the app you use can scale with each new core.
so say handbrake will use all 8 cores when encoding video and give you a big boost in speed most games will not.
most game's will only use 2-3 cores so going from 4 to 8 will give no boost in speed.

i did a quick google and found a setup guide for iracing
https://www.mainperformancepc.com/news/how-to-build-a-computer-for-iracing-and-other-pc-games/
according to this it only uses 2 cores so anything more than 4 will not give any FPS boost, it's a tad old but from my quick google iv seen a few references to it being dependent on cpu speed rather than core count

+ h9826790 is correct on how a cpu dependent game can scale some graphics settings without changing fps.
like in total war shogun 2 im cpu bottle necked so i can change say AA with almost no FPS change but shadows (which are cpu dependent in that game) will drop my FPS by a lot if i set them to high

 

[pastrychef]

Going from a Quad-Core 2.66GHz (or even an 8-Core 2.66GHz) to an 8-Core X5365 3.0GHz isn't a "small" increase in CPU power by any constriction of the imagination.

I did the upgrade on my cMP 1,1 and my benchmark scores have literally doubled, in both single core and multi-core metrics.

It doubled your single core performance???

 

[orph]

the mac pro geekbench scores give you a good idea of the speed change between 4 core 2.66ghz and 8 core 3ghz
8 core 3ghz scores -> single core 1570 ish multi core 10800 ish
4 core 2.66ghz scores ->single core 1410 ish multi core 5000 ish
https://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks

so while the 8 core 3ghz is almost 2x as fast if and only if you can use all 8 cores (which i know no game that can) it only gives a small boost to single core speed
the 3.2ghz will give a slight speed up over the 3ghz but nothing massive.

hannibal2 has a good point if windows can only see one cpu then you will get a speed boost from running a copy of windows that can see both cpu's. (even if the game can only use 2 cores it lets the os run on the outher 2 cores without competing with the game for cpu time)

one thing you can do with a faster gpu with more VRAM is use higher textures and use settings like AA with little to no drop in FPS but it may not boost your FPS if you are CPU limited and like hannibal2 mentioned MSI Afterburner is relay useful for seeing what your bootleneck is and how changing your graphic settings change your fps.
drop all your settings to the lowest, change each one to a higher setting one by one and watch how it affects your fps/cpu/gpu/vram etc things like AA tend to just eat up vram and gpu use while things like shadows can eat up cpu and gpu use + vram etc

but if you just want to do it for fun then go for it

 

[JedNZ]

It doubled your single core performance???

Um, no unfortunately. Oops - sorry for not writing that clearly. Nowhere near doubling - more a modest improvement of about 10% if I remember correctly when comparing the Quad 2.66 with the 8-Core 3.0 in the single and multi-core tests. I can't put my hands on the benchmark scores I got. Will post when I can find them.

I have noticed every-day stuff is faster with the 8-core. When I mount a hard drive all 8 cores are used for Spotlight indexing, which makes it exceptionally fast compared to my iMac 9,1 Early 2009 Core2Duo 3.0GHz. And although I have a fusion drive in my iMac it's nowhere as fast as the SSD in my cMP.

 

[hannibal2]

Alright, to everybody saying games cannot use more than 4 cores: what about this thread and the screenshots?

https://steamcommunity.com/app/271590/discussions/0/611703709830099660/?l=german

Plenty of people state there that their rig is using all 8 cores in e.g. GTA 5 and I guess the screenshot below supports this claim, no?

Edit: tomorrow my x5355s should arrive. I will post a little test of the effect of different core use on fps I think.

 

[h9826790]

Alright, to everybody saying games cannot use more than 4 cores: what about this thread and the screenshots?

https://steamcommunity.com/app/271590/discussions/0/611703709830099660/?l=german

Plenty of people state there that their rig is using all 8 cores in e.g. GTA 5 and I guess the screenshot below supports this claim, no?

Edit: tomorrow my x5355s should arrive. I will post a little test of the effect of different core use on fps I think.

It seems the others said "very few apps", or "rare"... but not "never" or "games cannot"...and OP didn't mention GTA V in his post.

Anyway, the good thing is more and more games optimised for multi thread. So more CPU or more cores may help for some very very new AAA games. However, in general, it won't help at this moment, multi CPU config sometimes may even cause slightly performance degradation.

 

[orph]

h9826790 is right, the most important thing is if the games you play will use more than say 4 cores (as thats what the OP has).
Id relay check to see if your copy of windows can see both CPU's as that might actually help a lot if your only using 1 cpu (even if the game can only use 2 cores it lets the OS and background tasks live on the second cpu)

 

[aronidisd]

so, you say that we can use a R9 390 OC 8GB on a Mac Pro (2008) ? Is there a thread (like the nvidia one) for the AMD support on el capitan?

 

[TomKlash]

Thank for all your answers and help.

I'd finally bought a PC for gaming (assembly parts) and the graphic card works fine ;-) 150-200 FPS with high graphic settings

The mac pro 1.1 was a good alternative solution (during 1,5 years) to play in middle conditions but it had become difficult with a game became more greedy...


Thanks