MacVidCards cracks the GTX5xx cards – Fastest Mac EFI card EVER !!!

[Knut Jansohn]

See that the bandwith of HD, 2k and 4k is clearly below 2,5 GT/s potential which is 4000 MB/s at x16, each way.
So as I unserstand it, it should not make a difference for real time playback.

K.

[David Pirinelli]

It is quite possible that for what most of you are doing, the difference would be small.

It may require cards in a Cubix to make a big difference. But I am very hard pressed to imagine a situation where it would be BETTER to have the PCIE interface running at half speed.

In any case I have now gotten GTX570 with DIsplayport and DVI working as well as GTX580 3 GB and GTX580 3GB Ultra Classified. All 3 cards run perfectly and at full PCIE 2.0 5.0 GT/s speed.

They all can show boot screens on either port (including Apple 27″ MDP)

They all sleep and wake perfectly. ANd they will show boot screens or work with System Install and Recovery Disks, something the PC cards can’t do. They also work in all released versions of 10.8, something the PC cards can’t do with out some hacking.

In addition, as a result of the fact that they are integrated at EFI level, the “PCI Cards” section of System Profiler actually WORKS, allowing you to see all of your cards, how they are being identified, and what speeds they are running at. I imagine that might help when trying to troubleshoot issues.

I don’t know how cards function in a Cubix or Cyclone because I don’t have one. It would be interesting to find out if the 2.5 bug from Non-EFI cards carries over to those. It would be interesting to know if the 580 classifieds fit into one of those and if there is enough power. (they require 2 @ 8 pin and 1 @ 6pin…EACH !!!) but they are quite a bit faster than standard GTX580. 3 of them in a Cubix would be capable of quite a lot. I think the Cubix by itself kills the “PCI Cards” section so to find out what speed the link is, we would need to use CUDA-Z or the lspci app I mentioned.

Using PC cards OOTB the box works in the current OS, I am offering a better implementation.

[David Pirinelli]

It was difficult to find a direct comparison of PCIE 1.0 to PCIE 2.0 since the tech update was in 2008 and everything else has moved on.

So the test was done with the best GPUs of 2008.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/…-2.0,1915.html

“From this standpoint, we clearly recommend PCIe 2.0 to anyone, because it has no disadvantages.

But is PCIe 2.0 really necessary yet? As long as a graphics solution can operate with data that is stored within its local video frame buffer memory, both the reasonably mainstream Radeon HD 3850 and the hardcore GeForce 9800 GX2 will operate close to their maximum performance, even if the PCI Express link width is limited to x8 or x4. Once larger textures need to be accessed, as is the case in Crysis or Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X, interface bandwidth becomes a crucial element. Any link width below x16 will noticeably limit these games’ playability.”

PCIE 2.0 8 lanes = PCIE 1.0 16 lanes

So, only if you are doing high bandwidth transfers or loading lots of complicated textures will you see a large difference. I would imagine that this would include GPU CUDA stuff, but YMMV.

The above tests only found a big difference when used with Crysis and Microsoft Flight Simulator.

They were testing with ATI 3850 and Nvidia 9800GX2, I would imagine that progress has been made with GTX570 and other modern cards over the bandwidth needs of cards in 2008. But perhaps not.

When using a display, most people like having a card that makes the screen pop up the second you hit the power button. If you don’t mind waiting, any PC GTX570 will work. You should just keep an EFI card somewhere handy, should you ever need to install system software, or troubleshoot OS issues, a non-EFI card will NEVER fire the screen up.

For Resolve the need to see boot screens is reduced, but I can’t imagine a situation where limiting the bus speed could be seen as a “good” thing.

SO feel free to buy your 570 from Newegg or TigerDirect or whoever. If you find that your needs include a boot screen and/or high bandwidth transfers, get in touch.

[Nathan Clark]

Hi David,

Im looking into breathing some fresh air into my Mac Pro ’08 (before retiring it in a year or so).
I would love to run 2 x 3GB GTX 580’s.

Originally I had planned on capitalizing on the new driver and running the cards natively, But this thread and you knowledge have convinced me that I would be much better off with the cards you offer.

Can you please tell me how to get in contact with you so I can make this Cuda dream come true?

Thanks!

[Reuben Fink]

Can I send you a GTX 570 to be modded? If so can you convert it to PCIE 2.0?
How would I send it to you and what would it cost?

[Greg Jones]

Does anyone have an idea of how to get a hold of MacVid Cards Dave? I own a PC GTX570 that I would be interested in getting flashed to a Mac version. Does anyone have his email? I’ve searched the internet and the only contact I could find was for MacVidCards on ebay.

Greg Jones

Greg Jones
Orlando,Fl.
https://www.d7-inc.com

[Reuben Fink]

I’m looking to mod my 570. Anyone with MacVidCard’s contact info please send me a message. Much thanks.

OSX 10.6.4
Equipment: 2.8 ghz 8 core Intal Mac Pro, 20 gig of ram
Aps: CS5 Production Bundle, FCP Suite 2, Avid Media Composer

[Elizabeth Rodriguez-zuniga]

I bought a PC version EVGA GTX 560 (2GB) video card by mistake for my Mac Pro 3, 1 (early 2008 – 8core). I’m stuck with it, and researched a bit to see if I had options and I found that Macvidcards might be able to flash it to work with my hardware config.

I have OSX mountain Lion (latest vers.) and I just need to know how much it would cost to make this happen for me and how to get in touch with Macvidcards via email or some other means.

Please Advise,
Lisa

[Rohit Gupta]

Are you having any problems with the card is OS X 10.8.2?

It should just work although the specific card you bought is not on our supported list, but I expect it should work.

Don’t expect to see the boot screens though with a non-EFI card.

[Elizabeth Rodriguez-zuniga]

Yes, the problem was that the card just didn’t work…the screen was blank and I waited a LONG time. So, anyways I had to sell it and get a Quadro FX 4800 (no problems).

Thanks,
Lisa