In our article Apple Announce New Operating System At WWDC 2018 Called Mojave Apple announced that Mojave would be supported on Macs introduced in mid-2012 or later, plus 2010 and 2012 Mac Pro models as long as they had a recommended Metal-capable graphics cards. This triggered questions from a number of you like Karl Mainzer who asked: “Can you recommend a decent Metal compatible graphics card?” Once I started to research this it became clear it would be better to answer this with a dedicated article.
The first thing to be aware of is that neither of the stock graphics cards used in the cheese-graters, the Radeon 5770 or the Nvidia GeForce GT120 graphics cards are metal compatible. If you wish to use a Mid 2010 or Mid 2012 Mac Pro with macOS Mojave then you will need to upgrade your graphics card if you wish to run Mojave on your cheese-grater.
Which leads to the obvious question that Karl and a number of others have asked on social media. Which card should I upgrade to?
Jul 12, 2018 - It comes with a Radeon Pro 580 graphics card with 8GB of video memory. You can also take your standard MacBook Pro charger and put it in.
The reality is that definite information was hard to come by, there didn’t appear to be any Apple recommended Metal compatible graphics cards. In checking the Apple Support site more recently there has been a response from a level 8 responder, which states that…
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 Edition
The GeForce is much easier to find, and roughly half the price the Sapphire goes for.
There was a response is from a Level 9 responder in the Apple Support community who basically quotes a Wikipedia entry...
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 Radeon HD 7000, HD 8000, 200, 300, 400 and 500 series
- Nvidia - Most GeForce 600 series, most GeForce 700 series, and some GeForce 800M series
Our friends from OWC also say that there are a number of other graphics cards available that will work with your Mac Pro and support Metal…
- AMD: Radeon HD 7000 and HD 8000, as well as the 200, 400 and 500 series of cards.
- NVIDIA: Most GeForce 600, 700 and 800 series.
As I have already upgraded my graphics card in my 2010 Mac Pro replacing the ATI Radeon HD5770 1024MB graphics card at the recommendation of UK based Create Pro with an AMD R9 280X 3GB card, which is an AMD 7xxx series card, which is a custom flashed special Mac compatible version. I contacted their tech support and asked them whether my AMD R9 card was Metal compatible and the good news is that it is.
I then asked them for their advice for the situation with other possible cards and they confirmed that neither the ATI Radeon HD5770 and the Nvidia GeForce GT120 graphics card support Metal and so will not support macOS Mojave. Their recommendations are the AMD 5XX series and Nvidia 10XX series. However, they don’t know when Nvidia will release drivers for 10.14 yet so the AMD cards are the best bet as they will work out of the box and they have tested it successfully with the macOS Mojave 10.14 developer beta release.
Looking further afield for information on this Mac Rumours Mac Pro Metal Compatible Card thread there was confirmation of the AMD R9 280X 3GB card that I have as long as it has been flashed for use with a Mac. There are mixed views about the Nvidia GTX680 saying that the 680 Metal drivers are not good, especially with macOS High Sierra, and suggesting that the GeForce GTX TITAN X (Maxwell) or a GTX 1080 (Pascal) are OK with High Sierra,
On another Mac Rumours thread - Best Metal-compatible graphics card for MacPro5,1 (Mid 2010) running High Sierra question again confirmation of the AMD R9 280X 3GB card as well a recommendation to go with AMD cards rather than Nvidia as the AMD cards don’t need drivers.
In the same thread was a recommendation for the Sapphire RX 580 pulse 8gb as apparently, it is plug-and-play in High Sierra, but we have no confirmation of this.
Unfortunately, the AMD R9 280X 3GB card that I have got is no longer a current model but can be found on stores like Amazon and eBay for between £175 and £239 for a custom flashed version for the Mac Pro.
Create Pro are offering the following options in your Create Your Own Cheese-grater Mac Pro page…
- AMD RX 560 4GB (1204 Stream Processors) (OS X 10.13.4+) £245 plus taxes
- AMD RX 570 4GB (2048 Stream Processors) (OS X 10.13.4+) £395 plus taxes
- AMD RX 580 8GB (2304 Stream Processors) (OS X 10.13.4+) £445 plus taxes
- Nvidia GTX 1050Ti 4GB (768 CUDA Cores) (OS X 10.12.4+) £245 plus taxes
- Nvidia GTX 1070 8GB (1920 CUDA Cores) (OS X 10.12.4+) £545 plus taxes
- Nvidia GTX 1070TI 8GB (2423 CUDA Cores) (OS X 10.12.4+) £645 plus taxes
- Nvidia GTX 1080 8GB (2560 CUDA Cores) (OS X 10.12.4+) £745 plus taxes
- Nvidia GTX 1080Ti 11GB (3584 CUDA Cores) (OS X 10.12.4+) £995 plus taxes
So a new AMD RX 560 4GB card looks a cost-effective solution if you want a new graphics card or a secondhand AMD R9 280X 3GB card could be worth considering if you can find one at a good price. Either way, make sure you get one that a custom flashed Mac compatible version. If you don’t, it should still work, but not seeing the boot screen etc could be an issue if you need to select a different startup disk or need to boot on single user mode, or recovery, because these things happen during the startup sequence and before the normal video drivers load. An unflashed PC graphics card won't display anything until the startup sequence is finished.
I hope that helps to answer the question about what maOS Metal compatible graphics card there are out there for Mac Pro 2010 and 2012 cheese-grater computers.
Whilst we are talking about macOS Mojave compatibility if you have any other Mac and you want to know about macOS Mojave compatibility then it would seem that these Macs that should be OK with Mojave are…
- MacBook (Early 2015 or later)
- MacBook Air (Mid-2012 or later)
- MacBook Pro (Mid-2012 or later)
- Mac mini (Late 2012 or later)
- iMac (Late 2012 or later)
- iMac Pro (all models)
- Mac Pro (Late 2013)
- Mac Pro (2010 or later with Metal-compatible GPU)
Because of the need for graphics cards that support Metal with Mojave, the list is even shorter than it was with macOS High Sierra and that rules out the Late 2009 MacBook, the Mid-2010 MacBook Pro, Late 2010 MacBook Air, Mid-2010 Mac mini, and Late 2009 iMac.
As computer components get faster and more powerful, you may find yourself wondering if your once top-of-the-line Mac Pro can be king again with a little help from a hardware component upgrade. I decided to take an early 2009 Mac Pro and see if a GPU upgrade could bring this once beastly computer back to being on top once more. My inspiration came from NVIDIA's announcement for Mac support for their latest and greatest GPU lineup. The 10xx series, with the uber powerful Titan Xp as its flagship, is the fastest gaming GPU on the market today. Even if macOS isn't considered a gaming OS, could I make it hardware-ready enough to play some Mac-native games decently and perhaps run Bootcamp to setup an impromptu VR gaming rig? Let's find out!
Aiming for the sky!
The plan was to go big or go home. I wanted to get a super powerful GPU in the aged Mac Pro and I wanted to be able to compare capabilities with my Windows gaming PC. I use my Windows PC for VR gaming as it's paired with an HTC Vive. Since my home PC has a monstrous NVIDIA 1080 ti, the Mac Pro was destined for the same GPU. I purchased a Founders Edition version of the 1080 ti from MSI. Although the Mac Pro has 2 old but venerable 2.26GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5500 series processors, I figured that even if they weren't powerful enough to keep the 1080 ti fed with data, the 8 cores could make up for some of the performance deficiencies. More on that later. Here are the complete system specs of the Mac Pro.
- Early 2009 Mac Pro running OS X El Capitan
- 2 x 2.26GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5500 series processors
- 12GB 1066MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM
- ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB
- 160GB SSD, 640GB sata HDD
Just plug in the hardware and go! Right?
Wrong. There are a bunch of requirements to be met to get new hardware working on a Mac. Unlike Windows or Linux that can accept hardware ubiquitously, Macs can only use hardware specifically designed for Mac OSes and with Apple's blessing (kind of — again, more on that later). In this instance, NVIDIA has already worked with Apple to create drivers for the 1080 ti in beta form. Just double-click the installer and away we go!
Or not. The beta drivers from NVIDIA require macOS Sierra. Not a problem! Just head to the App store. Search for macOS Sierra. Click download and…
Looks like my Mac Pro is too old for macOS Sierra. I could have just done a search on iMore to discover that the cut off date for Sierra on Mac Pros was 2010.
Never give up!
Not to be deterred, I found a number of tutorials on how to install Sierra on an unsupported Mac! This involves disabling SIP or System Integrity Protection and makes your Mac less secure. Therefore, I do not recommend you doing this if you have sensitive data on your Mac. I, however, decided to press on and after some time… success!
Install the drivers and swap in the GPU. What could go wrong?
Plenty. With my new macOS Sierra freshly installed, I was able to successfully install the NVIDIA beta drivers without issue. I shut down the Mac Pro and proceeded with the hardware installation.
- Flip up the lock.
- Remove the side panel.
- Disconnect the 6-pin power cable from the old GPU.
- Unscrew the expansion card retainer plate.
- Carefully pull out the old GPU.
- Slide in the new GPU.
- Re-attach the retainer plate.
- Plug in the 6-pin and the 8-pin power cables.
Except the 2009 Mac Pro doesn't have an 8-pin power cable. It only has two 6-pin cables. Each 6-pin power cable provides 75W plus the PCI connector bus provides another 75W for a total of 225W. The 1080 ti needs 250W. No matter! It's only missing a measly 25W. I plugged in the two 6-pin power cables anyway and closed the side panel and fired up the Mac Pro and I waited for the login screen… and waited. Nothing but black. The Mac Pro powered on, but it didn't make the familiar Mac 'bing' on start up.
Really. Never give up!
I powered off the Mac Pro and put the old GPU back in and it booted up without issue. I made further google searches and there were a few things I could try, but, frankly, I think that this Mac Pro is just too old to properly power the 1080 ti. After a bit more googling, I came across an excellent tutorial on installing an AMD RX 480. The AMD RX 480 is a recent generation mid-range GPU that is good for 1080p gaming and entry-level VR. This GPU is also not supported on macOS, but at this point I figured I'd try to exhaust all of my options. So instead of going 'big' with the NVIDIA GPU, I pivoted to go 'medium' with an AMD RX 480. I have a second gaming PC on which I run an Oculus Rift running two MSI Rumor RX 480 4GB. I took one of the RX 480's and placed it into the Mac Pro as per a www.theITsage.com tutorial.
Even though the MSI RX 480 needs an 8-pin port, I know that the reference RX 480 from AMD only uses a 6-pin port, so there shouldn't be any problem powering the GPU.
It's alive! Alive!
Although the Mac Pro boots up without the familiar Apple logo boot screen, the login screen popped up and I was able to log in and run a few before and after benchmarks comparing the old ATI Radeon HD 5770 to the new AMD RX 480. Some benchmarks are synthetic while other's are canned benchmarks from games that run natively on macOS. All benchmarks were run at the most complex graphical settings.
Heaven - 1080p
Valley - 1080p
Tomb Raider 2013 - 1200p
Batman Arkham City - 1200p
Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor - 1200p
As you can see, there are some very strange results here. Although the RX 480 has some much better frame rates, the variation of FPS was very high. This means that the Xeon CPUs from the Mac Pro are far too weak to properly supply data to the RX 480 GPU. It would have been worse with the 1080 ti.
Was it worth it?
Hell no! Even though I got a new GPU to work in the Mac Pro, the other components being so weak make this a moot point. There is a reason why Apple decided not support some older hardware from being able to be upgraded to newer OS revisions. Even though the 2009 Mac Pro is capable of running macOS Sierra (as proven by me hacking it onto the system), there are myriad other aspects that also have to be up to spec for full functionality. The lack of proper power cables and the weak Xeon CPUs on this Mac Pro make upgrading the GPU nearly pointless, since gaming with such a highly variable frame rate would prove maddening. This is not to say that upgrading your GPU on other Mac hardware is a lost cause. In fact, I've decided to order an eGPU (likely the AKiTio) so that I can pair it up with a modern MacBook Pro and remove the issues of CPU bottlenecks and power delivery.
So, my attempt at bringing new life into an old Mac Pro wasn't a complete failure. At the very least, I now have the latest version of macOS running on the box.
Have you tried to upgrade your Mac Pro? How'd it go? Let me know in the comments below!
We may earn a commission for purchases using our links. Learn more.