Does Sapphire RadeonHD 7950 Mac Edition require drivers updates for MacPro5,1 and El Capitan?

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Level 1

23 points

Does Sapphire RadeonHD 7950 Mac Edition require drivers updates for MacPro5,1 and El Capitan?

Installed Sapphire RadeonHD 7950 Mac Edition in MacPro 5,1 2010 running El Capitan.

There is a drivers disk enclosed, but of course it would be dated by now, since it's no longer produced.

Does the card require newer driver updates for El Capitan?

Card boots and appears to run fine, although PhotoShop CC 2015 states "Photoshop has encountered a problem with the display driver, and has temporarily disabled enhancement which use the graphics hardwire... check the manufacturers' website for the latest software". Checking Photoshop's prefs, it has Performance / Use Graphics Processor checked OFF (which is where the Graphics Processor to Accelerate Computation and OpenCL settings are)

I see threads from 2014 about OpenCL compatibility with the 7950, but those are dated and reference Lion and Mavericks.

Anyone have recent experience with the 7950 and MacPro5,1 in this regard?

Tony

Posted on Mar 22, 2016 8:55 PM

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Answer 1

GC_Media

Level 1

4 points

Oct 18, 2017 2:58 PM in response to fausttiger

It is not required. Go here and click the "OS X Version" tab to verify: http://www.macvidcards.com/i-want-the-best-graphics-card-for-my-mac-pro-where-do -i-start.html

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Answer 2

fausttiger Author

Level 1

23 points

Mar 22, 2016 9:04 PM in response to fausttiger

Updated info... SapphireTech only has drivers for Windows... no updated OS X drivers.

The enclosed driver disk has "RADEON HD 7950 for Mac.kg) but no indication of driver edition.

OS X sees:

AMD Radeon HD 7950:

Chipset Model: AMD Radeon HD 7950

Type: GPU

Bus: PCIe

Slot: Slot-1

PCIe Lane Width: x16

VRAM (Total): 3072 MB

Vendor: ATI (0x1002)

Device ID: 0x679a

Revision ID: 0x0000

ROM Revision: 113-E2080C-101

EFI Driver Version: 01.00.624

Not sure if these are more recent than the CD drivers, but I would expect drivers were updated by Apple after Mavericks?

Tony

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Answer 3

lllaass

Level 10

210,513 points

Mar 23, 2016 12:49 AM in response to fausttiger

Per

http://www.macvidcards.com/store/p12/AMD_Radeon_7950_3_GB.html

no drivers required

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Answer 4

fausttiger Author

Level 1

23 points

Mar 23, 2016 12:54 AM in response to lllaass

thanks...

any knowledge about Photoshop 2015 CC and Graphics Processor and/or OpenCL support?

Tony

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Answer 5

fausttiger Author

Level 1

23 points

Mar 23, 2016 1:14 AM in response to fausttiger

... and Adobe lists the 7950 as compatible (but of course I got the warning message which turned off graphics co-processing, but ran afterwards)

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/photoshop-cc-gpu-card-faq.html

And their link concerning the warning message

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/error-photoshop-has-encountered-a-problem-w ith-the-display-drive.html

Tony

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Answer 6

Mar 23, 2016 4:43 AM in response to fausttiger

All video cards require drivers and this includes the Radeon HD 7950. However in the case of AMD cards including the Radeon HD 7950 the drivers are only available from Apple and are built-in to OS X. Therefore El Capitan already has the driver for this card built-in and you cannot get a driver elsewhere.

Note: The Radeon HD 7950 is now an old card although still a good one it for example does support 4K monitors (even on a Mac) and does support Deep Color (sadly not in OS X). The drivers that came with the Sapphire Mac edition card were only for use with Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5 and Mountain Lion up to 10.8.2, all subsequent versions of OS X came with Apple provided drivers built-in.

A lot of people would argue however the the quality of Apple's drivers are merely 'adequate' and not brilliant. They do not deliver all the features these cards do support and deliver mediocre performance compared to AMD drivers under Windows. Some features that Apple do not provide for the Readon HD 7950 that the cards does support are -

Audio via the HDMI port
Deep Color aka. 30bit aka. 10bit per color support
AMD Crossfire

PS. Apple's new 'Metal' API can be viewed as a replacement for OpenCL, OpenGL, and CUDA. It shows a lot of promise performance wise even on AMD cards. Sadly Adobe seem to have back tracked on plans to add support for Metal.

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