Graphics Card Update

I gotta agree with what BDAqua said. currently, a good video card for your Mac Pro would be the Sapphiretech 7950 which even works in the 2008 Mac Pro

(but at a reduced speed). Seeing as how you have a 2009 Mac Pro, you should be able to get full speed. The AMD R9 280 or 290x cards are supposed to work fine, too. **

I suppose it also depends on your budget. If you're willing to buy a good PC graphics card and get it flashed to work on Mac, well, then you will have something better, that's compatible, for sure, but it won't be cheap. Them's the breaks, I guess.

**nVidia are supported as well-the GTX 780 Rev B, GTX 780 Ti, Titan Rev B/Titan Black . grab the quadro certified web driver from nVidia. GTX 980 could work, but I'm not 100% sure on that. Might have to be flashed, too. No sure reply from Apple on what works and what doesn't work, especially here.

Pretty annoying... The best I have is that they ought to work, maybe straight out of the box, maybe they need help, which doesn't do you a whole lot of good

If you can find a flashed card at a good price, I'd say go for it, otherwise the 7950 will work okay with no messing about

JB

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Answer 3

Jul 28, 2015 9:53 AM in response to Washac

PC specific video cards will work if you have the drivers installed and the Mac has finished booting and hence loading the drivers but many PC specific video cards can be 'flashed' to have Mac firmware. Without Mac firmware nothing will show until the Mac has finished booting, with Mac firmware you get to see the boot process and can do things like holding down Option to select a boot drive.

The minimum AMD card that might be considered better is the Radeon 7950 as mentioned by others here, this for example is supported for the new 'Metal' programming API that will be included in El Capitan. (Your current card will not be supported for this.)

The minimum Nvidia card that would be similarly supported for Metal is the GTX 680. (Strictly speaking the minimum is a GTX 400 but you would be mad to try buying anything lower than the GTX 680 for use in a Mac Pro.)

Higher i.e. newer models of both Nvidia and AMD cards would generally have increased performance.

The top card potentially at the moment is the Nvidia GTX 980 but while the GTX 680 and (all) Radeon cards can be potentially flashed as a DIY job via Windows utilities, the GTX 980 currently is only flashable by a reseller called MacVidCards. The GTX 980 or GTX 970 can even be used with the Dell 5K resolution monitor.

Historically if your predominantly using Adobe applications then the Nvidia video cards are a better choice, if your predominantly using Apple software e.g. Final Cut Pro, then AMD cards are a better choice.

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