Phase One, addiction: I upgraded the stock ATI video card with an Nvidia 970 in 2014. Although it took a bit of time to find the correct Nvidia drivers (Nvidia's website pretends Macs are niche), it made my video and photo processing apps go significantly faster. For example, processing a CR2 with DxO went from taking 45-50 seconds per photo to 3 seconds per photo showing nearly zero load on the CPU. You could immediately tell if an app took advantage of CUDA and GPU acceleration. Unfortunately Nvidia has made some idiotic engineering decisions, like tying their driver's compatibility check to the system build ID, and Apple has forgotten Mac Pro 5,1 users and video drivers are very much an afterthought in Cupertino. Every minor security update or system update required: shut down, install old ATI card, install the Apple update, find and install the (hopefully updated) Nvidia driver, shut down, reinstall the Nvidia card, reboot. This became a once-a-month-or-more-often activity. This lead to:
Phase Two, compromise: After an unusually excitable time for Apple's updates, I got fed up with card swapping. I bought an Nvidia 780 that had been flashed for Mac. This card was not nearly as fast with the apps I used than the 970; faster than the ATI, to be sure, but disappointing for the cost. For example it could process a CR2 in 30 seconds. But at least it would work with Apple's antiquated default video drivers. Or so I was told. It did no; requiring card swapping on every minor update. By this time I wanted nothing to do with Nvidia's horrible website, closed-source customer-unfriendly attitude, and idiotic driver engineering decisions.
Phase Three, enter AMD: Rumors spread that MacOS Sierra would natively support AMD RX4x0 cards. That rumor was later refined to supporting only RX460 cards without a bit of plist-level system manipulation; something I didn't want to have to do if I didn't absolutely need to. While this manipulation was not difficult, I didn't want to introduce this variable and was concerned about having to redo it on each bootable volume and on each system update. the 460 was rumored to be at least as fast as the 970. I'm happy to say that the card has not needed to be swapped through several system and security upgrades. I'm a little disappointed to report that it's only about as fast as the 780; taking 30 seconds to process a CR2 in DxO. The 'About This Mac" reports the card as "AMD RX xxx 2048 MB" but, as far as I can tell, the card if fully accelerated.
This is, for the moment, the best it gets for Mac Pro 5,1 users who just need to get stuff done and don't want productivity interrupted by needing to fiddle with their hardware and tweak system software at random, and always badly timed, points.
| Memory Speed | 7000 MHz |
|---|---|
| Graphics Coprocessor | gddr5 |
| Chipset Brand | AMD |
| Card Description | Integrated |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 2048 MB |
