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Level 1

10 points

What is the best Video Card I can get for an Early 2009 Mac Pro?

Hi everyone,

I'm looking to upgrade my video card in my early 2009 Mac Pro. I currently have two cards in there and I want to update one of them. - An ATI Radeon HD 4870 with 512mb VRam, and an NVidia GeForce GT 120 with 512mb VRam, neither of which produce very impressive numbers in Cinebench.

I do a little video edititng (FCP, AE, Premiere, Motion, etc) , dabble in 3d (Blender), and game a little. I would like to know what is the best video card I can currently get that can handle these three things and give me a decent boost in performance. I'm looking to spend between $300 and $1000, but cheaper is better.

I researched it a little and looked at what Mac Pro's currently come with (The ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB, available seperately here:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=726539&Q=&is=REG&A=detail s)

and was wondering if...
1. This is the BEST card I can get? And...
2. Will it work in my machine?

I see ATI has some nice cars out now like the Fire Pro Series:
http://www.amd.com/US/PRODUCTS/WORKSTATION/GRAPHICS/ATI-FIREPRO-3D/V8800/Pages/v 8800.aspx

Do these work with our Mac Pro's? I can't find platform compatibility specs. (I know these are crazy expensive, but I would like to know if they work)

Thanks for any and all feedback

K-

Mac Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2), 2.66 Quad Core

Posted on Oct 3, 2012 10:47 AM

Best reply

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

Posted on Oct 3, 2012 10:53 AM

The Apple 5x70 support 3 monitors.

The 5870 requires 2x6-pin power cables.

GTX 570 2.5GB or GTX 670 work with CUDA and 10.8.2 and would be another option.

http://www.evga.com/products/moreInfo.asp?pn=025-P3-1579-AR&family=GeForce%20500 %20Series%20Family&sw=

http://junipermonkeys.com/putting-a-geforce-gtx-670-in-a-mac-pro

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1365904

http://www.barefeats.com/gam12.html

http://www.barefeats.com/

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119 replies

Kevin808 Author

Level 1

10 points

May 22, 2014 11:32 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

The (Latest) versions are:

NVIDA: NVIDA WEB DRIVER: 331.01.01f04

CUDA: 6.0.46

If you have the web driver and CUDA installed from thier site it will show up in your system prefs at the bottom:

http://bit.ly/1pgJzL6

And they will tell you have an update or not when you go in them and you can update them from right there.

May 22, 2014 11:51 AM in response to Kevin808

Also if you have the NVIDIA Driver manager installed it makes things a lot easier.

amathie

Level 1

14 points

Jun 9, 2014 8:33 AM in response to Kevin808

I would be grateful for some help. I've got an early 2009 MacPro with a GeForce GTX570 with is working on OS10.7.5

I want to upgrade my OS to Mac OSX10.9 (Mavericks) so that I can install Final Cut Pro X and Resolve 11 when it comes out shortly.

Do I just install Mavericks or do I have to install new drivers for the card? If so, where do I get them from (the NVIDIA website only seemed to show Windows bases options when searching) and is there anywhere to find instructions on how to do this?

Thanks for any help or advice.

Jun 9, 2014 8:45 AM in response to amathie

You can still install Mavericks. It will default to the OS X graphic driver. At some point they will come out with Mavericks support, then you can download the NVIDIA driver. That's what I did with the GTX680.

I didn;t see any Mac drivers at all for the 570..what are you running it with now?...

Kevin808 Author

Level 1

10 points

Jun 9, 2014 8:47 AM in response to amathie

FYI, Be careful... I'm running 10.9.2 right now and there is an update to 10.9.3 that I hesitated to install knowing it would overwrite my nVidia web drivers and I'm lucky i hesitated because some googling has revealed that the 4K graphic drivers Apple put in the update are causing some people issues and I'm not sure nVidia has responded with a web driver update yet. So, if you can update to 10.9.2 go for it, otherwise I might wait.

Anyway, Link to Alt Drivers:

Link to Thread:

http://www.tonymacx86.com/mavericks-desktop-support/130794-alternate-nvidia-web- drivers-updated-331-01-01f04.html

Drivers For Mac:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/macosx-313.01.01f03-driver.html

My version says it's 313.01.01f04 despite what the link says, but think that will get updated when you install the driver wizard thingy and it updates on it's own inside that. See my bitly pic above and you can see how it installs itelf inside your sys prefs.

Good luck!

Jun 9, 2014 8:50 AM in response to Kevin808

I am running that exact same driver on 10.9.3. (334.01.01f01.) without issue. For the record, I am on a 2009 mc Pro (4,1).

Kevin808 Author

Level 1

10 points

Jun 9, 2014 10:06 AM in response to Rick Lavon1

Awesome, thanks for the update Rick. So what was your sequence of events? You ran the Mac OS update to 10.9.3, and then did you have to update the nVidia Web Drivers? Or are you running the standerd Mac OS driver?

Jun 9, 2014 10:13 AM in response to Kevin808

I updated to 10.9.3. At the time there was not a compatible NVIDIA driver, so I ran it off the OS X driver. I was running FCPX and it worked fine. Then there was an update to the card and I updated and installed the NVIDA pref pane. This gives you option of switching between the NVIDIA driver and the OS X driver.

BTW, I also just did this again with a clean install of 10.9.3 on a SSD card. Same thing...install the OS, then download the NVIDIA driver ( if there is one for your card). If you need CUDA download that as well ( for After Effects if you use it).

Kevin808 Author

Level 1

10 points

Jun 9, 2014 10:23 AM in response to Rick Lavon1

Good info, TY.

amathie

Level 1

14 points

Jun 9, 2014 3:10 PM in response to Kevin808

Rick and Kevin, thanks for your input.

Three more questions

1. About the drivers; so, are there two different drivers that might work, one built into the Mac OSX and another "proper" driver from nVIDIA?

2. What are "alternate" drivers? and what are "Web drivers"?

3. Kevin, how did you find the link to the Mac drivers on the nVidia website? I can access the link but cant find out how to navigate there myself to check for drivers.

Thanks

Jun 9, 2014 3:19 PM in response to amathie

1- Yes

2- alternate drivers are probably either meant for other cards and will work with the 680 or they are modified in some way. I would guess web drivers are the drivers found on the Nvidia website. As I said, the card worked fine with the OSX graphic driver. Maybe for some apps the Nvidia driver is preferred. Depends on what you are using it for.

Kevin808 Author

Level 1

10 points

Jun 9, 2014 4:23 PM in response to Rick Lavon1

3 - I belive I found the link in the TonyMac thread (The other link) You can find it via google as well but nVidia almost hides them. I don't think you can find them if you were to go to nVidia's sight and try to drill down. Either way it legit, it's what installed and am using now. Does that answer your question?

Kevin808 Author

Level 1

10 points

Jun 9, 2014 4:25 PM in response to Rick Lavon1

IMHO you are always get better performance with nVidia's proprietary drivers. I leat that is what my foggy memory tells me from the info I pcked up through my interweb travels, and my intuition in general. 🙂

M-323

Level 1

28 points

Aug 3, 2015 7:43 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

hi folks, I hope Im not too late to resurrect this thread. I also have 2009 mac pro. Its got lots of processing power, fast read/write with SSD and lots of ram but apparently bottlenecked at the card (currently a 512mb card)

went and bought geforce gtx 960...

there are two 6pin plugs on the board and the power cord is comes with would only pick up one of the 6pin connection. Tried that, wouldn't even boot. Im assuming because its not getting enough power.

I have a 2nd power cord on order but First question: Is this cars compatible with my system? Some told me it may have to be "flashed"? is this true?