Metal-capable graphics cards for my Mac0Pro5,1

The answer I got was that 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.

You got that answer because Mojave is in beta, and the final specs can always end up being different at the time of the official release.

That said, Apple themselves noted that 2010 Macs that include Metal capable graphics would be getting Mojave support when the OS reached the public beta stage. And it does. I put an EVGA GeForce GTX 680 Mac Edition card in my 2010 Mac Pro (replacing the stock AMD 5770) all of a week before the first public beta. With the EVGA in place, Mojave installed and runs as expected. The beta 2 release was a few days ago.

As Sendil and myself noted, the AMD 9750 Mac version also works, but is expensive. I had purchased one on eBay for $470, but it was bad (video kept blanking out and coming back) and had to return it. Others were difficult to find and all hung around the $500 range, except for the silly people who think you'd pay nearly $1000 for one.

The EVGA Mac version is much easier to find, and much cheaper. I paid $230 from an eBay seller for mine. Works perfectly. Make sure to get the real Mac version, not one of the flashed PC cards Sendil shows an image of. None of those have drivers included with the OS for them. Meaning, you have to try and track down third party Mac drivers to get the card to run properly, and many of those are not well written. Translated - your Mac will be flaky.

The general price the EVGA card is going for on eBay is $240, such as this one. There are many very similar looking cards. If it's not a GTX 680 Mac version, ignore it. There is a PC 680 version with virtually the same name. Do not buy it.

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 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

After much digging, there are only two official cards for a 5,1 Mac Pro that support Metal. That is, cards that were designed for these Macs. Not flashed PC cards.

AMD Sapphire HD 9750 for Mac

EVGA GeForce GTX 680 Mac Editition

The GeForce is much easier to find, and roughly half the price the Sapphire goes for.

I have NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Mac Edition and Mojave works great!

I installed a AMD Vega 64 8Gb and a AMD Vega Frontier Edition 16Gb in my 4,1’s and am running Mohave just fine.

Never mind Nvida GTX 680 Works with Majove!!

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.

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

.

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.

I have a MacPro 5,1 and am keen to be able to install MacOS Mojave on it, so I raised a ticket with Apple Support to ask which Metal-capable GPUs are recommended for use with my system. The answer I got was that 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 found this a very frustrating answer as Apple's statement that MacOS Mojave will be certified on Mac Pro mid-2012 models with a "recommended Metal-capable GPU" suggests that they should be able to say what that recommendation is. I notice that Apple has since released an approved eGPU solution for more modern Macs, see: https://www.macrumors.com/2018/07/18/blackmagic-egpu-hands-on/ I'm hoping that around the time of the Mojave release, something will be announced regarding the formally approved and recommended solutions for older Mac Pro systems.

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?