Best GPU options for Mac Pro 2009/2010

hey guys Im Cinema4D and Photoshop user, currently there is stock graphics card (120GT) on my 2009 Mac Pro. Im thinking of upgrading it, because this card doesnt suit my needs. What would be best I could get for my use? Should I stick with something like ATI Radeon HD 5770 or 5870, or should I go beyond that? Also I found a great deal on ATi Firepro V8800 which is PC card. What dissadvantages will be if Ill go with a PC card?

If you really and truly want to know what AMD GPUs are supported in a specific version of OSX, AMD and Apple have been kind enough to let you check.
S/L/E to the AMD family.
Start with "AMD7000Controller.kext" and right click it.
Show contents leads you to the "info.plist"
Open in an editor, then expand "iokitpersonalities"
Then "controller"
Here you will see "IOPCIMatch"
These are the device ids that the 7000 driver works on.
"0x26001002 0x22001002 0x67901002 0x67981002 0x679A1002 0x679E1002 0x67801002 0x68201002 0x68211002 0x68231002 0x68251002 0x68271002 0x682D1002 0x682F1002 0x68391002 0x683B1002 0x683D1002 0x683F1002 0x68001002 0x68011002 0x68061002 0x68081002 0x68101002 0x68181002"
"1002" identifies AMD
The other number is the Device ID. Each GPU has a specific one. (except for 7970 and D700 which share one and 7870 and D500 and R7 somethingorother and D300)
Anyhow, looking at the list I know two by heart.
"6798" is the AMD 7970 and "679A" which is the 7950 (underlined and BOLDED)
So, you need to go to the GPU Database at TechPowerup and find the cards you want to know about and look through that list.
Note that being in that list doesn't GUARANTEE that a driver is complete. (The R9 290x is in one of them and it doesn't work) But, on the other hand, if it isn't in any of the driver lists, I can ABSOLUTELY, 100% GUARANTEE that it WON'T work.

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Any updates on the ATI Radeon HD 5870 upgrade kit for Mac Pro 2009/2010?

So,
while the card is shipping without delay in new BTO Mac Pro units, there still is no sign of the kit posted on on the online store months ago (day/date with current Mac Pro release). To date, the card hasn't shipped (to anyone - no 3rd party store has received it), Apple still shows 'currently unavailable' - without even an 'add to cart' button (like the Quadro 4000); and even AppleCare is in the dark (you'd assume they can send units for replacement. Yet, while they can be setup in the GSX system, there is apparently no 'cost' shipments available even from support).
I suppose not - but does anyone have any more insight into what's going on here? This looks suspiciously like this card is not going to see the light of day as an upgrade kit; for either 2010 or 2009 Mac Pro.....
Cheers,
Dan

Ugh.
That rhymes with what we are seeing.
After about a week of there being an 'order' button for the 5870 (it remained 'currently unavailable' though), the 'add to cart' option has, today, disappeared again. I assume anyone who ordered the card during the window will not see the card, and there seem to have been no purchase confirmations (usually sent within 15 minutes of processing) sent to anyone who ordered.
All this, as well as you report, points to the 5870 being EOL; apparently only a contingent was made for the Mac Pro, and now even AppleCare is running down on inventory for replacements.
That begs the question; once inventory runs out - assuming it does - to even supply the Mac Pro BTO, there has to be some replacement ready; assumingly something with better yield.
BTW - the 5870 cards for the Mac Pro are made by AMD (they are identical to the reference boards), and are stamped as such in Mac Pros. Whatever Apple does with them, they still get them from AMD, not a third party....
And, the Quadro 4000 isn't a good replacement - apart from the cost (which is reasonable for a productivity card) as for non-optimized apps (i.e. users that would usually buy a 5870) it'll likely be much slower due to the low clock and memory speed on the card. And, WOW isn't CUDA aware
Oh well
Dan

Mac Pro 2009-2010 firmware tool

Has anyone tried the Mac Pro 2009-2010 firmware tool hack that is floating around out there? It seems to work with no problems. A cheap way to turn your 2009 quad core into a 2010 hexacore. The price on the Xeon W3680 3.33Ghz Westmere has come down out of the stratosphere into the $500 range. $500 for that kind of speed improvement and the ability to run 1333Mhz RAM seems like a no brainer if one were thinking about upgrading. Have other people tried this?

This is not the place and no I have not heard, if there is/was it would be talked about on MacRumors, netkas or others. And I don't think it would be just firmware update. OWC Turnkey program involves more than just firmware change.
The W33680 was $590 but has gone up (popularity and supply/demand) to $620. Not $500 (though if you sell your cpu later then the out of pocket might be more like $400).

Hi,pls cnf memory options for Mac Pro Part # MD770HN/A in india

hi,pls cnf memory options for Mac Pro Part # MD770HN/A in india
Amit
Nagpur MS
India

If you can, you want MATCHED, TRIPPLE CHANNEL, ECC registered ram with the same timings as the original ram. I found that 1333mhz ram of that type is a bit easier to find these days (any faster ram will work in the your macpro). Anyhoo, I found 12 GB of ram 3x4gb (oh yeah, and tripple channel ram likes to be installed in three's so if you can stick with only 3 chips of ram unless you are making it out or something.) for like $150. If you keep your eyes pealed you can get a great deal.

Extra hard drive for mac pro 2009

I have bought an extra 2.5 inch solid state drive for my mac pro (2009). I have tried it in all 3 spare slots and its not being seen at all. Where am I going wrong?

oliverswan wrote:
Studio K, can you point me in the direction of instructions for your suggestion?
Go to this link and you sill see a picture showing the SSD in the lower DVD drive bay.
Just scroll halfway down and you'll see......
http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-InstallingSSD.html
To access the DVD drive bays, open the Mac Pro case and simply pull the drive bay assembly out by the handle. Don't pull all the way out, because the drive is connected to a cable.
Icy Dock is problematic for some people. OWC MountPro is a nice drive sled solution.

HD 7970 video card for Mac Pro 2009

I just wanna buy one HD 7970 3GB for my 2009 MAC PRO. Do you guys flash the card or does 10.9.2 natively support HD 7970 diver? I've been looked at some HD 7970 cards on ebay, just confused with the power cables, some has one 6 to 6 pin and 6 to 8 pin cables. Others has two 6 to 6 pin cables. I don't know which one to buy is safe.
Here is the link:
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/141058814...84.m1438.l2649
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/231169142...84.m1438.l2649

yes-i agree with what kaz-k has written. As long as you get the correct power cables for your graphics card you should be okay. I think the Mac Pro has 2 6pin sockets. We don't flash the card ( thought I'm assuming it could be done elsewhere) , and Apple doesn't support anything other than a few graphics cards anyways, and it doesn't really read what's been posted here. here's the takeway: The card will probably work, however, due to the lack of a Mac EFI (basically a boot rom), you won't see a startup screen should you choose to install the card into your mac pro 2009. As the OS gets going you will see graphics. Should you need to do basic troubleshooting, eg choosing which drive to start up from
(command R on startup, I believe), the lack of a boot screen could be troublesome. If you don't care about that, by all means go ahead. 10.9.2 should have support for this card. If it helps, I bought a Sapphire 7950 for my Mac Pro 2008 (3,1) and although it doesn't run at quite full speed, it was a breeze to install, and it beat the 8800GT which was in that slot
good luck
John B

Best video card for mac pro

Mac Pro Info:2x2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
MacPro1, 1
It says my mac pro (2006-2007) model had PCIe slots, but it doesn't mention PCI 2.0 slots. i'm looking to upgrade my video card to one of the better ones for this computer. currently i have a radeon x1900 XT 512 card. it can get clunky at times. I've been reading a lot about the Radeon HD5770, but it says it works with PCI 2.0. i've been reading that a lot of people that currently have the x1900 XT upgrade to the HD5770. but I don't want to buy an incompatible one. I just did that on my RAM and had to return it.
Does anyone know if this card will work? and will both mini display ports work as well?
or do you have a better suggestion for an upgrade?
i don't do a whole lot of gaming, but i like having a junky desktop with 30 browser windows open and 10 other programs open at the same time. i would like a card that is good for that. thanks again!

OpenGL 3.2 support15
Image quality enhancement technology
Up to 24x multi-sample and super-sample anti-aliasing modes
Adaptive anti-aliasing
16x angle independent anisotropic texture filtering
128-bit floating point HDR rendering
http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/ati-radeon-hd-5000/hd-5770/Pages /ati-radeon-hd-5770-overview.aspx#5
X1900 http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/other/Pages/x1900-specifications .aspx
not all ATI Radeon graphics cards are HDCP ready.
Complete feature set also supported in OpenGL® 2.0
Barefeats: adding the Radeon HD 5870 or 5770 to your 2006 Mac Pro won't cause it to "leap tall buildings in a single bound." But these new cards will help you "clear low buildings with a running start."
OpenGL 2.1 Released on July 2, 2006. Where is the 4.2 support, or even 3.2 support??
Apple lags by over half a decade and has not done much to modernize graphic driver support to current available standards.
OpenGL 4.2 Released on 8 August 2011[33]
Supported Cards: Nvidia GeForce 400 series, Nvidia GeForce 500 series, Nvidia GeForce 600 series, ATI Radeon HD 5000 series, AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series, AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series
Support for shaders with atomic counters and load/store/atomic read-modify-write operations to a single level of a texture.
Capturing GPU-tessellated geometry and drawing multiple instances of the result of a transform feedback to enable complex objects to be efficiently repositioned and replicated.
Support for modifying an arbitrary subset of a compressed texture, without having to re-download the whole texture to the GPU for significant performance improvements.
Support for packing multiple 8 and 16 bit values into a single 32-bit value for efficient shader processing with significantly reduced memory storage and bandwidth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL
OpenCL 1.1 was ratified by the Khronos Group on 14 June 2010 - "Hello, that is full two years ago." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCL#cite_note-11
OpenCL 1.2 On 15 November 2011, the Khronos Group announced the OpenCL 1.2 specification,[13] which added significant functionality over the previous versions in terms of performance and features for parallel programming. Most notable features include:
Device partitioning: the ability to partition a device into sub-devices so that work assignments can be allocated to individual compute units. This is useful for reserving areas of the device to reduce latency for time-critical tasks.
Separate compilation and linking of objects: the functionality to compile OpenCL into external libraries for inclusion into other programs.
Enhanced image support: 1.2 adds support for 1D images and 1D/2D image arrays. Furthermore, the OpenGL sharing extensions now allow for OpenGL 1D textures and 1D/2D texture arrays to be used to create OpenCL images.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCL
OpenCL is a trademark of Apple Inc.

Best graphic card for Mac Pro + CS6

Hi everyone,
I'm sorry if this question has been asked several times... But it seems technology moves so fast... And also I found lots of cards that seem to me being PC only... That's why I'm having this question for Mac only.
I'm on a Mac Pro, Snow Leopard CS5.5 , and I want to re-instal a clean new system with Lion and CS6... mostly to edit 5K footage from the Epic (+ VFX and grading)... So it is mostly about PPro and AE (not quite sure about Speed Grad, still have to try it out).
What are my best options, as of today, in terms of graphic cards... ? I'm talking about boosting the Mercury Playback Engine through CUDA, as well as supporting the softwares as much as it can in term of OpenCL and OpenGL...
In this chart from nVidia's website, I only see the quadro 4000 and 4800 being available for Mac...
http://www.nvidia.com/content/PDF/product-comparison/product-comparison-master-revised.pdf
But we do have a GTX 285 in one of our computer at the office, and it works too...
Then I know some CS6 users are referring to other cards, like the GTX 570... and there is probably more to the list.
I'd like to to be able to compare what card gives you the best performances, at which price point.
Thanks in advance for sharing

Julien_deka wrote:
First think strange... I used to run my Wacom Cintiq from a second graphic card - NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 - through mini-dispaly port, and this stoped to work... I have to use another port (DVI) from this same card to have a display on my Cintiq.
Second thing: I have 4 ports on the GTX570 (2 DVI, 1 HDMI, 1 Dipslay Port)... I plugged my 2 main screens for UI into each DVI but only one worked (the bottom one). For my second screen I had to use the Display Port and use a bunch of adaptors.
I can't really help you out regarding the GT120 and why the DP went dead. I suspect it has something to do with the Mac not wanting to power more than 1 DP, but I'm not 100% sure of that. With the GTX570, only 2 of the ports are going to be active, as you found out: the first DVI and the DP. It has to do with the EFI on the card and the driver, I believe. The MacVidCards guy can explain it more thoroughly. He's fairly responsive via email and PMs on the MacRumors forum.
I actually bought this card for CUDA performances inside of CS6, so it would be disapointed to realise it's not working...
EDIT: I think I need to change something in a file to add the name of the card in order to get Premiere use its CUDA technology... I will dig into that a bit more
Right, you need to edit the CUDA text file and add it in as:
GeForce GTX 570
mrfreeze$ cat /Applications/Adobe\ Premiere\ Pro\ CS6/Adobe\ Premiere\ Pro\ CS6.app/Contents/cuda_supported_cards.txt
GeForce GTX 285
Quadro CX
Quadro FX 4800
Quadro 4000
GeForce GTX 570
jas

Correct Internal HD for Mac Pro 2009

Is this one of the proper ones for 2009 Mac Pro?
WD Caviar Black 640 Model WD6401AALS.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319
I just noticed it said SATA and not SATA II. Apple manual says SATA but some sites say SATA II...
Did i order the wrong one?

In addition to power cycles and inadequate cooling, the main source of added wear and tear to a hard disk drive is head movement, or "seeks". Other than defragmenting or optimizing, the main activity that causes a lot of extra head movement is partial secure erasure, such as with Finder's Secure Empty Trash or Disk Utility's Erase Free Space options. Simple erasure of an entire volume (or repartitioning of a disk without moving files beforehand) doesn't involve a lot of extra head movement, as you can tell from the fact that it doesn't take much time or produce much "thrashing" noise from the drive. Secure erasure of an entire volume takes a long time but doesn't result in as much movement of the heads back and forth as partial secure erasure does.

Best benchmarking info for Mac Pros and MacBook Pros?

I'm looking for benchmarking information that compares recent-model Mac Pros against recent MacBook Pros. I'd also love to be able to compare the performance of both to my current dual 2.5-GHz PowerMac G5.
Where is the best place to look for this kind of info?
Thanks!

Yes, there are benchmarks. Why not be specific.
Barefeats, MacWorld, Geekpatrol, Geekbench, Primatelabs.
I really think Barefeats has done a lot to help answer questions.
It depends. Maybe you want Photoshop benchmarks? or... iMovie?
http://www.barefeats.com/harper10.html
http://www.barefeats.com/imp02.html
http://www.geekpatrol.ca/2006/08/mac-performance-from-the-g3-to-the-xeon/
http://www.barefeats.com/harper.html
http://www.primatelabs.ca/blog/2008/04/
http://www.primatelabs.ca/blog/2008/01/mac-pro-performance-january-2008/
http://www.macworld.com/article/133467/2008/05/imaccomparison.html
How can you compare a system with 6 native SATA drives, 8-cores, 32GB RAM if needed, better and multiple graphics and other RAID controllers and add-ons, even dedicated FW800 and USB2 controllers if needed? except to other workstations.

Graphics card upgrade options for Mac Pro (early 2008) Model 3.1

Hi,
What are my options if I wish to upgrade the stock graphics card? I seem to remember there being one that was about £80 but I can no longer check as the site is only listing the 2009 mac pros now.
Any assistance would be gratefully received!

Your current options are:
ATI 2600
Nvidia 8800
Nvidia 5600
Or third-party ATI 3870 Mac/PC Edition.
Presumably the new ATI 4870 will work in the Early 2008 MP, but requires OS X 10.5.7 which is not yet released. You can find benchmarks at Bare Feats.

Best graphics card for mac pro 1,1 Intel

Can anyone tell me the best graphics card to buy for a mac pro 1,1 intel for use with Cinema 4D R12?
Many thanks.

This is the iMac forum - try the Mac Pro forum for faster response https://discussions.apple.com/community/desktop_computers/mac_pro

Best graphics card for Mac Pro Early 2008?

I have a Mac Pro Early 2008 with the default graphics card (ATI Radeon HD 2600), and would like to make an upgrade to a better graphics card that will run games smoothly. I'm not an expert with computers at all, but all I know is I would like to buy a graphics card for around $200-$300 (If it's more expensive then that's ok, but preferrably this price range) that will get me the best performance possible. I play games like Minecraft, Skyrim, and Team Fortress 2. Thank you for any help/recommendations you can provide!
Also, I wasn't sure which section to post this in, but feel free to move this thread.

Also, to provide more information (not sure if needed), I have dual monitors and the following specs:
Processor 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Memory 16 GB 667 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM
Graphics ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256 MB
My two displays are LG ULTRAWIDE Display (2560 x 1080) and LED Cinema Display (24-inch, Late 2008, 1920 x 1200)

RAID harddrives for Mac Pro 2009

Hello,
I'm planning to build a software RAID for a MacPro4.1 that offers me a quiet solution with reasonable performance. I would like to create a RAID 10 with four 2 or 3 TB drives.
I found the Western Digital Cavier Green 2 TB drives WD20EARS very tempting at first because of price and specs, but I read there are problems when using them in a Mac. It seems the problem is clicking, performance lags and final drive failures after a couple of hundret days. The specs page outline that these drives can be used for desktop RAID, but not for business critical RAID applications. So what does this mean? WD makes the 2 TB WD2003FYYS Raid Edition 4 drives with different features, but they are also 3 times more expensive.
If the WD20EARS drives are indeed a problem, how about the WD blue and black drives? Information from WD outlines that non of the desktop drives have the TLER features, which is necessary for RAID, among other things.
How about drives from other manufacturers like Seagate Samsung and Hitachi?
Thanks!

You want quiet, otherwise I would have said go for hardware RAID controller and external drives, and look at RAID6.
Software can't - though some have with very mixed results - used Disk Utility but the overhead of 10 isn't conducive. And not worth the risks and limitations.
If Apple implemented hardware motherboard RAID, yes, but when you get into 2TB size drives forget RAID3/5 and others.
Just have redundant sets and good backup strategy.
Keep the boot drive to OS-only (and apps of course)
There are, have to be, one or two controllers with internal drive support, but harder to do on Mac Pro with its wiring of cables and such.
WD RE are meant for hardware RAID. Black edition are fine for software based. And if you want a better RAID mousetrap, I'd invest in SoftRAID 4.0 even for stripe or mirror (and a much better feature set to help protect your drives and data).

Best graphics card for mac pro

I am getting a Mac Pro in the very near future. I would like to buy a very high level graphics card. I have been looking at the Nvidia Quadro fx 4600. Does anyone know if this is comapatable with the mac pro and if not what would be a better card than the Nvidia 4500 for around the same amount of money as the 4600.
p.s.
I do not want to run windows.
Thanks for the help.

In that case what would you suggest?... I intend to get heavy into shake and 3d modeling... I already use final cut a lot and I eventually want to have an hd ready set up. Is the nvidia 4500 really better for this sort of work than the x1900? because i heard some reviews that its shading wasnt better.. I also heard that the x1900 is more for gaming than with working with digital content. maybe you could shed some light on this subj.
Thank you in advance.

Best GPU options for Mac Pro 2009/2010

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