Hi there,
I think that the title says it all already, but anyways...
Is the new R9 390 compatible with the Mid 2010 Mac Pro (5,1) running Yosemite 10.10.3?
Im thinking about making an upgrade and if this one is not compatible, I will be going with the R9 290x from Saphire. That should be solve my R9 290 not running on Yosemite, problem.
Thanks
Mac Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.4), Intel Xeon 3,3GHZ AMD Radeon R9 290
Howdy!
You need to flash the card, it's not so easy, but there are some tutorial in Internet, just type in Google and "voila"!
Just more one thing, the beta-version of El Capitan is totally compatible, this does mean that next OS of Apple, you will have a big and powerful card - Congratulations! Amazing!!! Unfortunately, I have old Mac Pro 1.1 and I can not have this pleasure!!! 🙂
Best Regard,
Otto
Yes. If is not flashed for Mac nothing will show on the screen until the drivers load and thus Recovery mode and some other startup keys options are not useful since you can't see the screen
So what you are saying is that it is NOT compatible out of the box and only if it is flashed?
If not flashed for a Mac nothing will show on the screen until the drivers are loaded.
You are not being clear. Will it work if I put the card inside my mac and turn it on?
Yes it will work, if you put it inside your mac, hook up its power cables, plug a monitor into it and turn it on. you won't see a picture on your screen until the video drivers are loaded. So if something goes wrong with your Mac and you need to see stuff on the screen to diagnose and fix a a problem, such as which hard drive to choose to boot from, then you could have a bit of a problem. However, if you can live without it, go for it
John B
No. It works if there are drivers, and drivers get loaded at point after the kernel is loaded, generally where login happens.
So the reason my R9 290 did not work is because there are no controllers. Because the same thing as you described, happens, but osx does not boot... ever. even having the black screen on for ages, nothing comes on afterwards
My card is locked, flashing it did not solve this problem
What do you mean by locked?
If you insert a Mac flashed card does it boot?
Try booting with everything disconnected except monitor, mouse and keyboard, and power plug.
Remove all HDs except startup drive, all USB devices other than mouse and KB, all PCle cards except graphics card, all FW devices
Lock meaning I cant flash it.
I wouldn't know since I have only one card (R9 290) and Im already booted up in Windows. My last card worked fine OTB (GTX 670). I have a BootCamp and cant really leave it to go to the Mac side in fear of not being able to get back to Windows.
Overall, Im stuck in Windows with a Card that turns my screen black when I try the Mac side and after various minutes, nothing shows up on (booting on Mac side)
Hey Otto,
I have sold my R9 290 because I could not wait for El Capitan. I have a new GTX 970 EVGA Superclocked and for my surprise, it also does not boot up, gives me a black screen. I have already installed the Web Drivers for 10.10.4 and made sure that the driver manager is set to load web divers, but nothing. Now what?
What happens when you have both the 970 and a Mac card installed?
You do have the necessary power connector connected to the 970, right?
If a video card is not specifically labelled as Mac compatible then this almost certainly means it does not have Mac compatible firmware as standard. This does not mean it will not work, it means that it will not show anything until the Mac has finished booting and loaded the drivers needed to use it. Until it has finished booting and loaded the drivers you just get a blank screen. This also means you have to have the right drivers installed on the Mac before fitting the card.
For Nvidia cards like the GTX 980 you need to yourself download and install the drivers before fitting the Nvidia card. The latest Nvidia drivers which are needed for the GTX 980 and 970 only work with Yosemite.
For AMD cards like the Radeon 7950, the Radeon 7970, the R9 280, and the R9 390 the drivers are only available from Apple and will only be included in a version of OS X that post-dates the video card. So the Radeon 7950 and 7970 are now quite old cards and Apple added drivers for them a long time ago - I believe this was with OS X 10.8.3. The R9 390 will likely require a much newer OS X version.
It is possible to 'flash' both Nvidia and AMD cards to add Mac firmware. With Mac firmware you will see something on screen as soon as you turn the computer on, and you will then also see the boot process.
For the Nvidia GTX 980 and 970, you need to get a company called MacVidCards to do this for you - see http://www.macvidcards.com/store/c2/Nvidia_GPUs.html
For AMD video cards like the Radeon 7950, 7970, the R9 280 and the R9 390 you can in theory do-it-yourself. This involves using utilities in Windows and could be done in a 'real' PC but most often is done using Boot Camp. It maybe that you need to have a second older properly Mac compatible video card fitted at the same time to use while flashing the new card.
So as has been said many, many times in these forums, if you just buy an off the shelf video card it will initially not show anything on a Mac until you have the drivers loaded which presumes you have the drivers already installed.
Hi John,
This is really great advice, what's the best way to determine if an AMD card pre dates the OS to ensure the drivers are installed.
I'm working on Yosemite and I have no desire to upgrade to El Capatain as I edit on AVID and it's not supported yet.
But my eyes have been drawn to an Radeon R9 390 card with 8gb of ram and I wanna figure out if it's gonna work for me in my 2009 Mac Pro.
Thanks
R9 390 Mac Pro mid 2010 compatibility
