Radeon R9 280x on Mac pro

No, it came with one 6-pin and one 8-pin. The card doesn’t work at all with only one cable. I thought one should be enough when I installed it, but the fans didn’t move at all then. When I use another cable, a white hdmi-minidisplayport it works fine, but then I only get 30 Hz, which gives you flickering when you move windows on the screen. I have bought another cable with minidisplayport in both ends, ready for 4K and 60 Hz, maybe it will be better with that.

Hi nfoo, The card came with a 8 pin that splits to two 6 pin cable see pic. It also came with a duel molex to six pin cable.

So maybe I could use the duel molexs from the DVD bay and put that in the six pin input on the card.

And take the 8 to duel six pin and plug that into the two motherboard six pins inputs?

Do you think that would give it enough power.

It requires more power than the two 6-pin cables (you would have to buy at least one assuming you have one already).

check out the 7970 which I assume is more commonly being used - though still only a small handful % of users.

Cards that need an 8-pin power cable often can mean needing a small but extra 450W PSU.

All these cards require flashing for boot screen and full for full 5GT/s linkspeed they require flash and removal of a small resistor. http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1547340

You can go for a 6 pin to 8 pin adapter for these cards. A lot of people report that these cards run fine like that and won't damage your Mac's power supply or mainboard.

To be on the safe side you could do this:

- get 2 x SATA power to 1 x 6 pin power adapter

- 2 x 6 pin to 1 x 8 pin power

This way you will get full power requirements for these cards without going over the specs of Mac Pro PSU and Mainboard power connections. But you will lose 2 x SATA ports on the board.

Visit netkas.org etc. for more information before you do any of this 😉

I got a XFX R9 280x Black OC addition. Could not get it to work in my 2009 mac pro. It comes with an 8 to two 6 pin cable. I also bought a 8 to 6 pin adapter. So far I have had no luck, I have a second video card installed so I can get the boot screen and get a system report. The fans spin on the new card but it never shows up in the report. I have been on netkas and searched around. Barefeats got a 280x from a different manufacturer using the Eight to six adapter and the other six to six. But that has not worked for me with this card, so I am returning it.😟

I new it was a bit of a test and it might not work. You can buy a flashed one from MACVIDCARDS on ebay, but its pricey compared to the stock card and there is only a slight speed bump according to barefeats having it flashed.

So back to the drawing board. The R9 is cheaper than the older 7970 but they are essentially the same card.

The black addition may be the reason it doesnt work and maybe the cheaper version would... don't know.

Still wainting to here back from a few folks before I retun it.

Just thought I would share my experience so far.

What other gpu you said you have in there? I assume it does not use any extra power which would mean GT120 OEM likely.

Also - the assumpion is you have OS X version to support this card too (10.9.2+)?

Ideal would be to hook it up to a 450W external PSU $35 from Newegg or Amazon.

You can send the card to Macvidcards and have him handle flashing etc and maybe even test - but at least ask him . Then decide if you need to exchange it (or return outright).

Barefeats probably is using an added power supply or not?

Hi Hatter, Barefeats used the internal power supply, and macvidcards states his flashed card works with two 6 pin cables, which I dont get but maybe he provides a 8 to 6 pin modded cable and aonther 6 pin to 6 pin. They run both run them off the internal power suplly.

I have emaild macvidcards about flashing it for me and about my issues, waiting to here back from him.

Also I have been testing it under 10.9.2 but no luck.

My other card in slot 2 is the ATi 2600xt which needs no power.

Ah, yeah, have seen your post on Netkas.

There's only two, no three possibilites, as far as I can see:

1. Your card is broken. Dead on arrival 😉

2. It doesn't get enough power ...

3. or it doesn't detect power on one of the cables correctly.

So either your 6 pin to 8 pin adapter is not the right one. Not the right setup of power lines and grounds.

Or it doesn't get enough power in, which should not be happening in Desktop / 2D only. It should at least boot up.

Be advised that, also a lot of people say they run their 280x / 7970 from internal power only, your are OVER the maximum the Mac Pro can safely supply. The Mac Pro gives you 1 x 75 from Slot, 2 x 75 Watt from 2 x 6 Pin on the board. Thats 225 Watts. The 280x can easily draw 250 Watts and spike to even more. The card is designer for 2 x 75 Watts = 150 Watts: 300 Watts.

The Mac Pro has the power lines as traces ON THE MAINBOARD. So if they overheat / fry: there goes your whole board. And I've already read that a couple of times from people. Or the Mac Pro just gives you the hard "shut down" as a safety measure.

I advise to either go for an external PSU, which you would have to hook up to internal power to make it switch on / switch of with Mac Pro.

Or, to get it to run safely with internal power, do it like this:

1. Get a 2 x 6 pin to 1 x 8 pin adapter to give the 8 pin port on the card the requires 150 Watts.

2 . Get a 2 x SATA two 1 x 6 pin adapter and connect to 2 SATA ports on the board. Gives you the 75 Watts for the 6 pin easily.

That way you'll lose two SATA Ports, but you still have 4 in total for drives (Two Bays and 2 from the optical bay).

Enough power, no danger for motherboard. No external PSU needed.

A lot of threads I see, people specifically look for a reference card that only uses two 6-pin aux power cables also.

Those 2600's - install for emergency but otherwise keep it out, it could also affect your testing and ability unless.you.need early boot screen to debug and troubleshoot.\

Built a low cost $800 (sans GPU, SSD/HDD) PC wtih PCIe 3.0 and 8 x SATA III ports is a whole lot easier and then using a PSU with 2 x 8-pin and 2 x 6-pin that meets your needs. I like Asus but some like other boards for various reasons.

Dang I was changing my post above and got kicked out while editing for some reason.

I guess the molex cable is useless.

My current setup is.

Slot one 5870

slot 2 2600xt

slot 3 pro tools native

slot 4 OWC accelsior.

I guess I am drawing a fair amount of power as is.

The esata sounds like a good way to go. Going to wait and see what macvidcards have to say about

flashing this card and his thoughts on the power issue.

thanks! Will pst back if I get something working here.

I think that is exactly the way I'd power it.

Get the 150 Watts for the 8 pin from 2 x 75 Watts 6 pin.

Get the 75 Watts for 6 pin from SATA. Get a 2 x SATA to 6 pin cable for that.

Two SATA ports give you 9 amps at 12v, that's about 100 Watts. Max.

The Mac Pro PSU gives you 980 Watts.

First it is important to not pull more from one each individual power lane than it can provide.

After that you can add all components together and see if it's under 980 Watts in total.

Which I guess it still is 😉

I never got my xfx r9 280x black double d addition card working without it being flashed, I sent it to macvidcards and he flashed it and modded it so it runs at pcie2 speeds and has the boot screen. Only one of the dvi port works, and two mini display ports, not sure about the hdmi yet. But I am able to run my 30 inch apple display off the dvi, and two monitors off the display ports, so three monitors at once. If the hdmi works I would be able to run, one dvi, one mdp, and hdmi. I am using the 8 to 6 pinn cable that came with the card and one 6 to 6. He had issues flashing it because the xfx card came with MSI rom, which is really odd as it came from newegg new. I will do some testing and benchmarking to see how it compares to my old 5870, hopefully it will kick its but and post in a few days.

Well its been a long road and I originally got my card a XFX R9 280x double D black addition.

I got it flashed by macvidcards. My card is working with 10.8.5 and 10.9.2 with three monitors, one dvi and two mdps work. Everything is great till I run a game. My frame rates are about half of what they should be even via bootcamp and the screen goes black after a few minutes of play but the mac stays on but I have to force shut down and reboot then everything it back to normal , If I up the speeds on the fans via macsfancontrol I am able to play a game without blacking out in Mavericks and Windows but not in 10.8.5 it will still black out. Not blaming macvidcards for this, he said the card actually had a MSI bios instead of XFX which was wierd and he did have some issues flashing it at first, but said it did not black out on him. I have tried the card in two mac pros and it happens in both. This version of the card is overclocked, and I am wondering perhaps it just starts sucking too much power as it seems like the card is working under ok temperatures. But again raising the fans to 2000 rpms seems to keep the card functional so if anything I am using more power when doing that and it doesnt black out.

Maybe just got a bad card or perhaps when it kicks into a game it is drawing to much power, but again with the fans cranked up it does not black out. Too late to retun the card😟. I am running it with the 8 to 6 and the 6 to 6 cables.

I guess I could buy an external psu, but maybe that wont fix the issues and I will just be waisting more money.

Live and learn I guess. As we know this card did not work at all except in Windows until flashed in OSX unfortunatly I did not have a bootcamp setup when I got the card which I should have to test it out and make sure it was good before sending it our to be flashed. Not sure what to do at this point, maybe buy another one perhpas not the overclocked version and just take the loss on this one. Just putting this up for others to ponder and learn from if they are thinking of going the XFX R9 route, I would def first make sure it is finctioning 100 percent in windows befor falshing it. The good news is I upgraded my CPUs in my 2009 2.26 8 core to Xeon 2.66 12 cores and all went well with that upgrade, though its not easy. My geek bench multi core is a hair faster than the new Mac Pro 8 core, 26397 which is pretty sweet, total cost for my 12 core mac pro 1350.00 including 32 gigs of 1333 ram but not the video card upgrade.🙂 Now to just figure out this video card ordeal, I really dont like the idea of buying one of the older Apple approoved cards as they are way overpiced and three years old. I have a 5870 and its still a pretty good card... but I want more speed for FCP rendering etc. check out my CPU install video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAdgT-hJuXU

You would require something like this for supplemental power

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...82E16817101044

hum, if that link doesn't work, blame Evernote. Newegg tends to have a number of them, low cost, designed for GPU and have 2 x 8-pin plus 2 6-pin cables. The cabling can be where it gets to be fun, and messy.

It would power your GTX 780Ti safely, without messing with your motherboard dedicated power.

How to do this, here are couple of useful posts;

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1520765

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1472518

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1684482

I'm running a GTX760 in my Mac Pro 3,1 and the stock Radeon 2600XT.

The nvidia card is stock, not flashed, and boots fine. The nvidia drivers (mavericks default and the nvidia supplied one) are 100% on it. Got the GTX760 because this specific one had 2 6-pin inputs, no need to muck around with any 8-pin adapters.

I keep the 2600XT around for my 2nd monitor and because the GTX760 doesn't show any video until the system has boot into the Finder.

I had a 5870 that I flashed before getting the nvidia card and that worked OK but never seemed to be that much faster (poor drivers?) than the 2600XT.