GTX 980 in a Mac Pro
Yeah, I ought to post this on a Hackintosh forum, but I know you guys.
I want a 970. It has the best cost/performance ratio right now. nVidia has a driver for OS X that works just fine and Windows will obviously work where the 4870 doesn’t (support was dropped in Windows 8/10 and it boots to 640x480). Plus there might be a deal on Black Friday.
Has anyone followed Hackintosh instructions and put a(ny) non-standard card in their Mac? Did you run into voltage issues with 8-pin to 6-pin power adapters?
Oh, and for Windows users with a Cinema Display (do they exist?), should the display work fine with a DisplayPort to Mini DisplayPort dongle off a regular PC card? Because there aren’t any 970s with Mini DisplayPort.
EDIT: And on the subject of Cinema Displays, I’m sick of these things burning in. That’s right, it’s an LCD and I have a window shadow burnt into it. It’s plasma and CRT all over again...
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It works under Windows 8. Installation instructions are here with details of the extra power cable:
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I expect the Cinema Display will work ok. This guy here used a displayport to mini-dp adaptor but I don't see why a displayport to mini-dp cable wouldn't work:
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I saw that and left him some of the same questions on that video; just covering my bases.
Oh, lovely. I hadn’t seen that. I think that may clinch it for me. I love my 4870, but it’s time to move on. I’m just glad the existence of the new Mac Pro hasn’t completely killed graphics card developments for OS X.
Will I run into voltage/wattage problems by getting a 2x6pin to 8 pin adapter for the card I pick? The Radeon 4870 uses the standard 2x6-pin that comes with the Mac Pro, but the 970 I’m after uses a single 8-pin...
I forget, is it 250 or 150 watts that the Mac Pro can handle on a single slot?
All right, here’s something else I can’t find. It says the card needs 38A pushed to it. Can the Mac Pro do this? All I can find is people trying to run a 6xx card in older Mac Pros and needing an external PSU. That doesn’t exactly instill me with confidence.
Also, I apparently need a power cable adapter that doesn’t exist. 2x 6-pin female to 1x 8-pin male. I can’t find one, at least.
Dunno if this helps... but one of my clients just bought an EVGA GTX 970 and popped it in a Mac Pro 3,1 (2008) with no issues. It was not a Mac-branded card or anything. He said it worked great right out of the box.
It’s good to know. Unfortunately I’m after an ASUS Strix, which uses a single 8-pin cable rather than two 6-pins like my 4870. I want this model particularly because its cooling system is not only the only model that isn’t plagued with overheating failures (don’t panic your client, but maybe keep an eye on that), it’s rated as one of the best on any card ever made.
This wouldn’t be a problem except that it seems the adapter I need (2x6-pin female to 1x8-pin male) seem stop be difficult to find and they don’t ship one in the box. I also have questions regarding it carrying the full 150 watts from both plugs. I figure it does, yeah?
Did you get anywhere with your Strix - I've got the same card but it doesn't seem to be working at full power.
Ah, sorry. I wasn’t able to purchase it before my self-worth fell to where I didn’t deserve it again. So I can’t answer any questions definitively; I only know what I was told in asking my own.
Every time I asked someone knowledgable about power draw and voltage, I was always warned against 2x6-pin to 1x8pin. I wanted a Strix 970 because of the cooling complex, but their personal experiences with the other cards made me think that I’d be okay with a standard 970, and thus a card with a normal 2x6-pin setup.
And now that it has come out that nVidia lied about the cards (and with the subsequent lawsuit), I imagine 970s will be cheaper in the very near future.
Did you buy an actual Strix 970? If so, how did you set it up? Maybe I can still help.
I’m told by nVidia, finally, that this is the result of Windows 10 not being supported on Macs before 2011(12?), and my Mac Pro’s a 2009. Windows 10 has always worked perfectly on my Mac Pro, but apparently it’s installing “unsupported” drivers and that’s messing things up.
My question: How? could that be screwing anything up, that is.
My followup: Can anyone run me through (or point me to a site that tells me how to run through) uninstallation and reinstallation, one by one, of every driver that might be installed on my machine? without having to reinstall the OS or switch to Windows 7 because I just don’t want to have to reinstall all my Windows software again. I want to diagnose the claimed problem, see if it’s true, and if it’s not throw it back in their faces (I’m feeling that it’s not, but hey, what else could it even be?)
EDIT: Probably because it was started in Huddler, but I can’t edit the title to reflect that it’s a 980. Just a niggle, I suppose.