gaming mac - a project too far?

Somnambulist · 17 Jun 2019 at 12:29

Bluecube said:
Regarding the eGPU idea (which I think is a very good option for the OP), I’m sure I read somewhere that Apple have dropped driver support for Nvidia cards. Nvidia may provide their own though.

Apple and Nvidia hate each other now, it won't happen. The main reason for using Nvidia cards in a professional setting is CUDA. Apple don't want to be locked into someone else's standard, so their solution to this has been to get companies whose software uses CUDA to start adding support for Metal. They seem to be having some success with that strategy and hence why the new Mac Pro also ignores Nvidia. It's easy to think of GPUs in terms of gaming, but Apple has never really shown much interest in desktop gaming compared to mobile (and more recently on Apple TV) and dedicated gaming rigs are a relatively niche thing these days, so...

Hades · 17 Jun 2019 at 22:09

233 said:
yes it can,

although personally i'm looking at a 580x 8gb

that and running off nvme should see my quite happy for a few years to come,

although the want is still quite high for a 12 core 3.46ghz model

This guy is maxing out a 5.1. Interesting to follow. For modern GPU's he talks about a PSU mod.

https://youtu.be/rz9M_epdtxI

233 · 18 Jun 2019 at 00:08

Known as the pixlas mod

It's a brilliant community the classic Mac pro one

People really tinkering and getting the absolute best out of the limited hardware at their disposal

It's great to see what 10 ye old kit can actually achieve with s bit of work or modernisation

Is new GPUs or nvme drives etc

Feek · 18 Jun 2019 at 09:29

This thread makes me sad my old Mac Pro was destroyed by lightning.

233 · 18 Jun 2019 at 15:41

sorry Feek

loving mine,

just need to try and get a tasty gpu in there and i'm set, although the urge is now even stronger for a dual tray 5.1 12 cores of 3.46ghz goodness really does appeal.

Hades · 21 Jun 2019 at 11:18

Getting quite tempted myself.

Apple have got so much wrong recently with the Macbook, the trachcan Mac pro and the most recent Mac pro being so expensive. But I think Apple got the iMac right and they got this Mac Pro right. These older Mac pro's are actually looking good value for the power they can provide nowadays.

Hades · 21 Jun 2019 at 11:23

I've never used Windows on a Mac/Macbook before. Is it easy to do as there would still be more games available for Windows.

FishFluff · 21 Jun 2019 at 13:51

Hades said:
I've never used Windows on a Mac/Macbook before. Is it easy to do as there would still be more games available for Windows.

It's incredibly easy. The BootCamp tool needed to install Windows is even part of MacOS.

MrRockliffe · 21 Jun 2019 at 13:57

Hades said:
I've never used Windows on a Mac/Macbook before. Is it easy to do as there would still be more games available for Windows.

Super easy peasy

Hades · 21 Jun 2019 at 14:24

Thanks. If you have Mojave installed then you need a metal supporting GPU. That means you need a modern GPU which won't show the boot screen because it doesn't have Apple firmware. So would that be an issue when installing Bootcamp and Windows?

NickK · 21 Jun 2019 at 16:32

Hades said:
Thanks. If you have Mojave installed then you need a metal supporting GPU. That means you need a modern GPU which won't show the boot screen because it doesn't have Apple firmware. So would that be an issue when installing Bootcamp and Windows?

No because you can set which OS with bootcamp before exiting the Desktop. Also possible with Disk Utility IIRC.

Hades · 21 Jun 2019 at 16:43

Thanks.

233 · 23 Jun 2019 at 15:28

The bugs bitten hard

On the hunt for a dual CPU Mac tonsit alongside my 6 core

God help me

MacMan003 · 4 Jul 2019 at 23:23

Classic mac pro is excellent value (apart from electricity consumption!)

Hades · 5 Jul 2019 at 01:34

233 said:
The bugs bitten hard

On the hunt for a dual CPU Mac tonsit alongside my 6 core

God help me

Needz more updatez

233 · 5 Jul 2019 at 10:55

nothing to add atm unfortunately,

rocking my 6 core quite happily with a 680 and 24 gig of ram

holding off on adding a new gpu until the 7th for obvious reasons,

plans at the moment are keep the 6 core for a while until the bank balance recovers from buying it then add a 12 core 3.46ghz monster

but for the 6 looking at adding an NVME boot drive and a gpu and thats about it

for the games i play its actually pretty decent had a good couple of hours of cities skylines yesterday and a bit of fm2019 this morning,

might try some F1 later see how it runs under osx

Hades · 6 Jul 2019 at 20:26

233 said:
nothing to add atm unfortunately,

rocking my 6 core quite happily with a 680 and 24 gig of ram

holding off on adding a new gpu until the 7th for obvious reasons,

plans at the moment are keep the 6 core for a while until the bank balance recovers from buying it then add a 12 core 3.46ghz monster

but for the 6 looking at adding an NVME boot drive and a gpu and thats about it

for the games i play its actually pretty decent had a good couple of hours of cities skylines yesterday and a bit of fm2019 this morning,

might try some F1 later see how it runs under osx

I thought the only GPU's that Mojave supported were current AMD ones? If so then that rules out nVidia and I guess it would take a while for the MacOS drivers to be updated for the new AMD Navi cards?

Bluecube · 6 Jul 2019 at 20:51

I could be out of date here but nVidia did/ does make available drivers for MacOS.

233 · 6 Jul 2019 at 21:38

Bluecube said:
I could be out of date here but nVidia did/ does make available drivers for MacOS.

only a handful of cards support Metal and work under the current osz mojave, theres a bit of a spat between apple and Nvidia thats resulted in nvidia being frozen out also affects them for egpus as well.

pretty much anything from amd seems to work though, right up to Radeon VII albeit these require external power suppliers or power supply modifications

Hades · 7 Jul 2019 at 01:25

233 said:
only a handful of cards support Metal and work under the current osz mojave, theres a bit of a spat between apple and Nvidia thats resulted in nvidia being frozen out also affects them for egpus as well.

pretty much anything from amd seems to work though, right up to Radeon VII albeit these require external power suppliers or power supply modifications

Any AMD GCN card seems to work, including the Vega line (which also includes the VII of course). Blackmagic released their Vega 56 based eGPU so I would expect any vega card to be fully supported. But I don't think the Navi situation is so clear. The drivers do appear to be different. In the case of Linux there is OpenGL support for Navi cards already in the recent driver updates. But Vulkan support isn't there yet. As Metal is even more niche than Vulkan I would be surprised if Metal support is there yet (but obviously I might be wrong).