Best Plug & Play Graphics Cards?

[JaredWard]

Hey guys, looking for some buying advice on graphics cards. Just wondering what the best options are for plug & play cards? Meaning, you just plug them in and they work without any tinkering with drivers etc. - right now I'm using a XFX AMD Radeon 280X which is a fairly good plug & play card but I'm wanting something with a little more horsepower. I've also heard the Sapphire RX 580 Pulse 8GB AMD works as well. Here are my specs if you're wondering...

Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Ultra Gaming
Intel 8th Gen Core i7-8700K
XFX AMD Radeon 280X
EVGA 600W Modular Power Supply
Samsung 960 EVO Series - 500GB NVMe - M.2 Internal SSD
Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB DDR4 Memory
FiiO E10K USB DAC and Headphone Amplifier
StarTech.com 3 Port 2b 1a 1394 PCI Express FireWire Card

Any and all suggestions are welcome!

 

[Gigamaxx]

For Plug and play with a new card you’re on the right track. The pulse is a good card and all RX 470-580 brands and models will work. For Sierra you will need to use clover Rad De Init in graphics settings or Whatevergreen and lilu Kexts. But in the latest High Sierra 13.6 or Mojave they don’t need any fixes for acceleration. However, certain apps for rendering video or compressing may require enabling IGPU or other options.

RX Vega models will give you the most horsepower for MacOS with native drivers. They will require a minimum 750 watt power supply to be safe though.

Pound for pound and price wise the RX 580 is the best performing card IMO.

My Geekbench compute scores for RX 480 8gb are 135,000-141,000 versus the Vega @ 180,000-210,000 depending on system configuration. The cost is about twice that of an RX 580 but it doesn’t reach 280,000 so it’s not 2X performance. If your planning on future 4K and or multi screens then the Vega is a good option. If staying in 1080p RX 580 is best value.

Nvidia cards with native support are limited to older models like the GTX 780 or original Titan series. For ease of use, native drivers and future proofIng AMD makes sense.

 

[JaredWard]

Cool, I'll keep these in mind. I forgot to mention I'm running High Sierra (10.13.3)

 

[Gigamaxx]

Cool, I'll keep these in mind. I forgot to mention I'm running High Sierra (10.13.3)

They will work but you may need rad deinit.

 

[Jamesbond007]

Cool, I'll keep these in mind. I forgot to mention I'm running High Sierra (10.13.3)

If you were to get a RX 580 (say Sapphire Pulse, like my own), then I suggest you upgrade to 10.13.6 before you replace the card. 10.13.6 contains native support for the card.