Metal-capable graphics cards for my Mac0Pro5,1

"MacOS Mojave has not yet been released in production and that Apple has no formal recommendation regarding GPUs for Mac Pro 5,1 systems at this time."

I do find that line of dialogue most unprofessional on the part of Apple. Begs a retort, "is there an informal recommendation?"

Unfortunately, the eGPU route requires Thunerbolt3 attached to Bus and CPU, and that upgrade is not feasible on MacPro5,1.

I am equally surprised that vendors have done little on their part, after all, it is they and not Apple which gets to sell the hardware and profit. I found two hardware sites with ample profits and scary prices.

Sapphire 100352MAC HD 7950 Mac Edition Graphics... at MacSales.com

http://www.macvidcards.com/store/c10/Recommended%3A_Mac_Pro_4%2C1_and_5%2C1.html

Starting with KurtLang suggestion... These are the two places I've found new cards with claims of working on MacPro5,1. But the price point is not conducive to random experimentation on (beta) Mohave and MacPro5.1 or flash-forward MacPro4.1 that runs HighSierra. No word on Metal-2 support, and not merely Metal support is yet another monkey-wrench.

Image of possible Metal-GPU for Mac Pro 5,1 systems below from above link:

So am waiting for Apple and its Vendors to clarify this mess they created. Sorry Apple, you're not doing us any favor or charity, that demands us to wait like starving children in Africa for the whitman's largesse. This is Apple's DUTY and they are DERELICT.

I am in need of a new iPad, but this kind of brahmanism that President Nixon once hated, is not going well with me. So, I am not spending a measly $400 on iPad on account of this MacPro5,1-GPU-Issues.

I just don't trust Apple anymore.

"Apple could use a good famine," as Richard Nixon would say.

Sorry no. You wouldn't be able to supply power from the system board to both. There are two power supply outputs from the system board meant to be used for video cards that require extra power to run. The AMD and EVGA cards use both plugs to drive one card.

While you could probably find a cable splitter to turn those two system board outputs into four plugs, I would very much stress not to even think of trying that. You'd be drawing more power through those outputs than it was designed for. That, and there's only one double wide slot. Note below:

The 7950 would go in the slot at the bottom of this shot. It fits because there's more space than typical between that PCI slot and the next. The other three are standard spaced. If you were to try to put a second card in, even if it didn't need the secondary power, you wouldn't be able to seat it because the third slot up from the bottom would prevent you from installing the card.

Edit: Additional info. If what you're trying to do is drive more than one monitor, you can do that from one card. It has two mini DisplayPort, one DVI and one HDMI output.

The requirements are preliminary, and that MacOS has not been publicly released. It may be a mistake to invest money now for requirements that could change before its official release.

On macOS, Metal supports Intel HD and Iris Graphics from the HD 4000 series or newer, AMD GCN-based GPUs, and Nvidia Kepler-based GPUs or newer.

AMD links:

GCN is fabricated in 28 nm and 14 nm graphics chips, available on selected models in the

Radeon HD 7000,

HD 8000,

200,

300,

400and

500 series

of AMD Radeon graphics cards. GCN is also used in the graphics portion of

AMD Accelerated Processing Units (APU), such as in the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One APUs.

NVIDIA links:

Kepler was Nvidia's first microarchitecture to focus on energy efficiency. Most

GeForce 600 series,

most GeForce 700 series, and

some GeForce 800M series GPUs were based on Kepler, all manufactured in 28 nm. Kepler also found use in the

GK20A,

the GPU component of the Tegra K1SoC, as well as in the

Quadro Kxxx series, the

Quadro NVS 510, and

Nvidia Tesla computing modules.

Kepler was followed by the Maxwellmicroarchitecture and used alongside Maxwell in the

GeForce 700 series and

GeForce 800M series.

from:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_(API)

and links therein to other wikipedia pages

Now I'm a bit confused. The Sapphire HD 7950 Mac Edition card is an old card that was released in 2013. It has long been discontinued. The Metal API for MacOS wasn't introduced for macOS until June 2017. After the 7950 had been discontinued. Did AMD implement Metal compatibility 4-5 years before Apple released it for the macOS?

This is a very important question for me. I was looking for a 7950 card (for a realistic price), but stopped looking when I learned that Mojave will require Metal compatibility. I don't expect this requirement to change.

A clarification would be greatly appreciated. Is the 7950 ME card really Metal compliant?

The 5770 already supports Metal. As such, it should also support Metal 2. Right now, 2012 Macs are the oldest listed as compatible with Mojave.

I did a search for 2010 Mac Pro and Mojave. 🙂 Here's are a few results, all mentioning the main specific line:

Mac Pro (late 2013 or newer, or mid 2010 and mid 2012 models with Metal capable GPU)

Here are the Macs that will work with MacOS Mojave - CNET

macOS Mojave will drop support for some older Macs released before 2012

http://osxdaily.com/2018/06/05/macos-mojave-compatible-macs-list/

Obviously, none of these are official Apple sites or statement, but they all seem indicate as long as the video card in Macs a bit older than the 2012 cutoff supports Metal, it should work. That means the AMD 5770 in my 2010 Mac Pro should allow Mojave to run.

From another site, this statement supposedly from the recent developer's conference:

Apple notes, however, that support for 2010 and 2012 Mac Pro models won’t be available right off the bat – instead that support will come “in an upcoming beta.”

So, we can't test to verify Mojave will run on a 5,1 Mac Pro until the public beta. And as mentioned by Grant, this is still preliminary and could change.

The 5770 is not showing as Metal comparable via the API or other tools.

Well, now I'm confused. I looked around last week for information on this, and a couple of sites said the 5770 was Metal 1 compatible, and as such, should support Metal 2.

But, now I'm trying to find that info again and all I can come up with is site after site saying the 5770 does not support Metal.

With all due respect. I'm interested in the 7950, not the 5770, which is an even older card. iunix's screen-shot seems to indicate that the 7950 is Metal compatible. Can anyone confirm this?

Otherwise, are there any newer Mac compatible graphics cards out there. And I mean truly Mac compatible, not just flashed!

form the many wikipedia articles cited above inside the main AMD cite above, this one describes the 7000 series, and affirms that the 7950 is a member of the Graphics Core Next family:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_HD_7000_Series

.

Two pages of tiny unreadable text tangential to the issue at hand does not improve my understanding of this issue.

Could you please call out EXACTLY what is important there, and cite where the information came from, so that Users of all ability levels can get some understanding?

Thanks!

A change to the forums some months back has made embedded images almost impossible to view. When clicked on, you get a scaled down, soft, pixelated view instead of the actual image 1:1. The larger the placed image, the worse the proxy view is. To get around that, drag the image to the desktop and view it in Preview, or other raster image app.

The main point of the first image is the results of an AMD 7950 from the benchmark app, GFXBench Metal. It shows the various results of running Metal APIs on the card, proving it does support Metal while installed in a 5,1 mid 2010 Mac Pro.

I just picked up a 7950 yesterday from eBay. I think they're going to get scarce, quick!

proving it does support Metal while installed in a 5,1 mid 2010 Mac Pro.

thanks, THAT is the essence of the information I was looking for.

next most important is a summary of the information with a little context, maybe a screen shot of PART of that testing.

then a link to the fundamental source to do more research, if needed.