Upgrading 2010 Mac Pro Cheese-grater video card to RX 580 to enable Mojave update...

[Justin1524]

It is with some trepidation that I just spent $223 on Amazon for a Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 580 8GB GDDR5 graphics plus Dual Mini 6 Pin to 8 Pin PCI Express Video Card Power Adapter Cable. Why? Because my stock ATI Radeon HD 5770 card is not Metal compatible and therefore I can't update High Sierra to Mojave. I run 3 monitors in my studio and this card will run even more. I successfully updated to the latest Pro Tools Ultimate 2019.5 running on High Sierra 10.13.6 and performance is good. So why do it?

I'm betting that the increased video performance may impact the overall performance of Pro Tools somewhat, albeit possibly not very much. I have no idea if Pro Tools 2019.5 takes advantage of Metal or other video/screen redraw technologies employed by the graphics card/OS. I mean, it's not like were playing high powered video games. Seemed like a relatively inexpensive way to boost a little more life out of my 8 year old computer. It has 12 cores (6x2 CPUS), 22 virtual cores, 64bg of RAM and a a Samsung SSD M2 boot drive. And yes, I am aware I'll be losing the Boot Screen, not really a problem for me.

Anyone else have any thoughts to add? I considered the lower priced, less power hungry RX 560 card but figured why not spend $50 more for the added performance.

[BScout]

Moving to a Metal compatible card (first Nvidia 680 and now Nvidia 980) improved performance (GUI) by a lot. So yes, it does help. And this was when going to the first Metal supporting macOS (Mojave is Metal mandatory but Metal has already been in use with macOS). [The 680 to 980 change was due to need for more 4k monitors and not because it helped performance]

Screen redraws are screen redraws -- it doesn't have to do with 3D/gamer graphics. That level meter on every track is taking up GPU power to do. As is scrolling while seeing waveforms.

[danms66]

I have a similar system, but an HDX card with the 5770. I'm trying to figure out if there's a video card that uses a 6 pin aux power, or if there's some other way to power these newer video cards. The HDX card is using one of the 6 pin power connectors, so I can't use the 2-6 pin to 8 pin adapter.

[gsharp]

Nvidia Quadro K5000 (either original mac edition or pc model flashed for mac) is metal compatible and only uses one power cable.

Another option would be an Nvidia GT640 flashed. It uses no power cable.

[BScout]

Originally Posted by danms66

I have a similar system, but an HDX card with the 5770. I'm trying to figure out if there's a video card that uses a 6 pin aux power, or if there's some other way to power these newer video cards. The HDX card is using one of the 6 pin power connectors, so I can't use the 2-6 pin to 8 pin adapter.

I run the HDX power (for multiple cards) from the optical drive bay since I don't use the optical drives anymore. You remove the optical drive bay cage and then snake the power cable up there through the frame of the Mac Pro and then you need a little adapter cable to pull power off of the SATA connection.

Then all the onboard motherboard power goes to the video card down in the lower section.

[massivekerry]

I've had a Radeon 7950 in my flashed/upgraded 4,1 for a few years (since I got an Ultrawide display) and I upgraded to PT 2019.5 and Mojave (10.14.5) this week, and it's been fine. No more problems than before. A little snappier, and seemingly a little more stable.

[GS-DK]

I have a 580 card on my MacPro 2012. I am afraid to update to Mojave if I will get in trouble with the card. Is it safe to upgrade for me with the card in the machine?