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Re: Sapphire HD 7950 Mac Pro Edition 3GB Video Card

I have some strange issues with the 7950 in my 2008 Mac Pro ... I did some tests the last couple of days:

With Lion (10.7.5, fresh install): no direct support, only 2D and one screen active (DVI). After installation of Sapphire's drivers everything SEEMS fine. Dual monitor support works (DVI + mini-DP), resolution switching etc. Then I started some 3D benchmark testing and it turned out that NONE of them worked. "OceanWave" couldn't find an OpenCL device, "Galaxies" hangs on application launch, "Heaven" and "Valley" would only show some artifacts.

With Mountain Lion (10.8.2) almost the same: Sapphire's drivers SEEM to work at first (2D), but same issues with 3D.

Mountain Lion (10.8.3) comes with build in drivers for the 7950 and the 2D part works "out of the box". 3D issues remain though.

With Mavericks all 2D and 3D tests are working fine. The 7950 ist recognized as OpenCL- and OpenGL device and all 3D benchmark tests are going through ... BUT ... the scores are way to low in comparison to the websites reviews on barefeats, architosh or macrumors.

Can anyone confirm these issues with the Mac Pro 2008 and the Sapphire HD 7950 Mac Edition?

Maybe I just have a broken card ...

Posted on Jan 6, 2014 4:51 AM

39 replies

May 9, 2014 6:30 AM in response to Jason Sansone

Hey Janson,

And word if they ever got more performance out of the AMD 7950 for Macs? 10.9.3 release is about here.

May 9, 2014 7:17 AM in response to daveonthemac

Even though Apple has opened it's beta program to the public, they still frown on discussing developer builds on these forums. I have tried before and my posts were always pulled. If you wish to track the results of each 10.9.3 beta build, I recommend following this thread.

A gambling man would put money on OpenCL performance being lower in 10.9.3 than in 10.9.2.

May 17, 2014 5:56 PM in response to Jason Sansone

Exactly the same problem here with GTX660.. OFFICIAL Nvidia driver installed and half points in benchmarks relating to win. Did you solve the problem Jason??? 😐

May 17, 2014 10:31 PM in response to deejayfrankcesco

Yes. See here - http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,8206.180.html

May 19, 2014 11:19 AM in response to Jason Sansone

OH!! That's very strange!!... we must contact apple technical support because It's a very bad bug. Thank you very much

May 19, 2014 11:58 AM in response to deejayfrankcesco

Apple has known since before 10.9 shipped about issues with 10.8 and has been given bug notices on every single DP, GM, beta, and public release of Mavericks. Good luck getting them to care now.

May 22, 2014 9:55 AM in response to Jason Sansone

It doesn't work with my macpro 5,1, same low performance 😟

It very strange because CPU and GPU (and GPU memory) works at the correct frequency when I run luxmark.

May 22, 2014 10:11 AM in response to Jason Sansone

Do you mean do this:

Ok, so, just remove these two and get fine perf:

AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext:

AppleIntelCPUPowerManagementClient.kext:

¿Does it work that way?

May 22, 2014 4:00 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Yes.. I tried also to do that (of course the cpu stucks at stable clock that it's normal removing those kexts).. and to update the os to 10.9.3 but nothing

😐

Re: Sapphire HD 7950 Mac Pro Edition 3GB Video Card