HT201805: About graphics-card compatibility between Mac Pro models

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Br0K3n T0y

Q: HD 5870 Black screen fps drop

Hi, I am running a Radeon HD 5870 and normal day to day usage it will run perfectly quiet and with no issue ( normal usage being Photoshop ). I decided to do a bench mark with Unigine Valley demo on extreme hd settings. It runs fine and after about 1-2 mins the fan begins to make its presence felt. Anytime between 3-5 mins the fan is near enough full speed. Then, sometimes it will lag and drop from 24 (ish) fps to around 5 fps and then after not much longer, it will black screen.  I do not get any artefacts on screen and when usage drops ( between demo scenes ) the fan will drop quite quickly according to what is happening on screen, so if it was over heating the fan should really stay full on until it cools. I am at a loss as what is happening. Hopefully someone could shed some light on this.

 

My setup is a Mac Pro 2008,

32 gb 667mhz ram,

2 x 2.8 quad,

2 x 500gb RAID 0 El Capitan install

2 x 21" displays @ 1920 x 1080,

HD5870 running both displays ( non Apple/ non flashed )

HD 2600XT ( Apple OEM ) installed ( but not running any displays ) as back up incase of boot issues.

 

thanks

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on May 15, 2016 9:14 AM

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Q: HD 5870 Black screen fps drop

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  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder May 15, 2016 10:16 AM in response to Br0K3n T0y
    Level 9 (60,976 points)
    Desktops
    May 15, 2016 10:16 AM in response to Br0K3n T0y

    so your display card runs fine in all real-world applications, and you have no complaints.

     

    when you beat on it with artificial tests, it falls over.

     

    Answer:

     

    don't beat on it. Live happily ever after.

  • by Br0K3n T0y,

    Br0K3n T0y Br0K3n T0y May 15, 2016 11:37 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder
    Level 1 (13 points)
    Audio
    May 15, 2016 11:37 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

    I was looking to see if the card has a fault or if it is my system or if there is a workaround if it was a known issue. The 'artificial' test was to push the card to see if it would handle a heavier workload should I need it and maybe play a game and chill. Making do wasn't the answer I was looking for.

  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder May 15, 2016 11:40 AM in response to Br0K3n T0y
    Level 9 (60,976 points)
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    May 15, 2016 11:40 AM in response to Br0K3n T0y

    Making do wasn't the answer I was looking for.

     

    Oh, in that case, your card must be disaster, and you will HAVE to buy yourself a new one!

  • by red_menace,

    red_menace red_menace May 15, 2016 11:41 AM in response to Br0K3n T0y
    Level 6 (15,536 points)
    Desktops
    May 15, 2016 11:41 AM in response to Br0K3n T0y

    It does sound like you have a little bit of a cooling issue - what kind of dust accumulation do you have in there?

     

    When I run that demo, my fans do the same thing - the temperature rises into the caution zone, but drops quickly when the test stops.  The fan speed depends on where the temperature sensors are located - the processor cores will be a lot hotter than their heat sinks.

  • by Br0K3n T0y,

    Br0K3n T0y Br0K3n T0y May 15, 2016 11:52 AM in response to red_menace
    Level 1 (13 points)
    Audio
    May 15, 2016 11:52 AM in response to red_menace

    Hi, system is dust free,  gave it a compressor blast out as soon as I got my mac. System temps are around 30 for all Cores and ram is around 50-60 and psu is 50 degrees. The card will stay silent all day long but after 3-5 mins running at stress it's like hovercraft mode. Nothing covering top of card,  gave the card a strip down and re paste but did last a little longer. It's doesn't artifact, just black screens and eventually fan slows down,  but I have to reboot any way. Is it because it's not flashed?

  • by red_menace,

    red_menace red_menace May 15, 2016 12:09 PM in response to Br0K3n T0y
    Level 6 (15,536 points)
    Desktops
    May 15, 2016 12:09 PM in response to Br0K3n T0y

    The card has its own fan, so it shouldn't matter, although I don't know what the failsafe temperature setting would be.  That test pushes the card pretty hard, so it is going to get hot.  Does it do the same thing with lower settings or resolutions?

  • by Br0K3n T0y,

    Br0K3n T0y Br0K3n T0y May 15, 2016 12:47 PM in response to Br0K3n T0y
    Level 1 (13 points)
    Audio
    May 15, 2016 12:47 PM in response to Br0K3n T0y

    Hi, ran for around 10 mins on lower settings and fan only went up about 3 levels and held. So my card is is dying well i did buy it for a bargain so i can't grumble. Works for the photoshop and web stuff i am doing, havent tried any 3d rendering yet so time for some ninja bids on eBay . thanks guys for your input.

  • by Br0K3n T0y,

    Br0K3n T0y Br0K3n T0y May 15, 2016 1:25 PM in response to Br0K3n T0y
    Level 1 (13 points)
    Audio
    May 15, 2016 1:25 PM in response to Br0K3n T0y

    Ok , getting weird now. Moved card up to next slot, took out hd2600xt card and ran valley again at full. Ran ok for 10 mins then started to drop frames. So i quit that and ran the heaven benchmark for about 15-20 mins on full and fan barely made any noise. Could it be the valley demo just has a problem with my system ? I am running RAID 0 , Am i really benefitting that much from it ? Was thinking of just doing a single drive install and see how that runs, maybe this could be the root of my problems ?

  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder May 15, 2016 1:38 PM in response to Br0K3n T0y
    Level 9 (60,976 points)
    Desktops
    May 15, 2016 1:38 PM in response to Br0K3n T0y

    I am running RAID 0 , Am i really benefitting that much from it ? Was thinking of just doing a single drive install and see how that runs, maybe this could be the root of my problems ?

    RAID gets its speedup only on the second and subsequent large block Read/Written to a single large file, and otherwise it is no faster (but adds lots of unwanted complexity). Any intervening reads or writes eliminates and speedup you might have gotten if you were reading ONE large file.

     

    The boot drive is especially badly suited to RAID, because it reads and write small files all over the place, in random order.

  • by red_menace,

    red_menace red_menace May 15, 2016 1:42 PM in response to Br0K3n T0y
    Level 6 (15,536 points)
    Desktops
    May 15, 2016 1:42 PM in response to Br0K3n T0y

    Those benchmarks just test the graphics, so your drive arrangements shouldn't make any difference unless they are heating things up.  Moving the card may have put it into a cleaner airflow - I've seen topics about the fan going bad, how is it on your card?

  • by Br0K3n T0y,

    Br0K3n T0y Br0K3n T0y May 15, 2016 1:48 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder
    Level 1 (13 points)
    Audio
    May 15, 2016 1:48 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

    Thanks for that grant, I have ran raid before on my windows setup and really benefited from it as working with large photoshop files and video, but since i moved to mac i have been sorely disappointed in the speed. I was hoping for a decent boost as my old system was a xeon quad 3.14ghz 12gb ddr2 and sli gtx 470s, surely with almost 3 times more ram and an extra quad cpu i should see something ? my old system ran way smoother than this mac system. Maybe my view will change if i re-install back to a single drive....? Otherwise i think i may be heading back to pc land :/

  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder May 15, 2016 1:57 PM in response to Br0K3n T0y
    Level 9 (60,976 points)
    Desktops
    May 15, 2016 1:57 PM in response to Br0K3n T0y

    many Mac Pros are I/O bound, not compute bound. (and they are very seldom Graphics card bound for ordinary work.)

     

    Best results are from a really fast boot/System drive (possibly on a low latency SSD Drive) a separate drive for Source, separate drive for Destination, and a separate drive for Scratch. This reduces the amount of time spent fighting over and moving the single drive head all over the place to get to Source, Destination, Scratch, and the worst offender, Ssystem.

  • by Br0K3n T0y,

    Br0K3n T0y Br0K3n T0y May 15, 2016 2:14 PM in response to Br0K3n T0y
    Level 1 (13 points)
    Audio
    May 15, 2016 2:14 PM in response to Br0K3n T0y

    So out of the 4 drive slots i should have the following ?

    1 boot drive

    2 program installations - dest drive

    3 Data ( music,photoshop files, work files etc ) source

    4 Scratch for project temp files - preferably ext hdd ?

  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder May 15, 2016 2:45 PM in response to Br0K3n T0y
    Level 9 (60,976 points)
    Desktops
    May 15, 2016 2:45 PM in response to Br0K3n T0y

    Applications will perform their best when Installed on the Boot Drive.

     

    But you get the general idea. The "traffic jam" around the single Rotating drive in a capable computer like these ends up being the bottleneck.

     

    Putting the Boot/Applications onto a low-latency SSD (and moving other stuff OFF to reduce competition for that drive) makes it seem like you got a brand new computer.

     

    User Tip: Creating a lean, fast Boot Drive


    .

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