General Graphics Card Question

[AnneOminous]

I have an ASUS Z97-Pro (Wifi AC) with Intel i7 4790k.

I had Mojave running on this board with my GTX 680 graphics card, which is Metal-compatible.

Then I had a hard drive issue, and have had problems getting the system running again using the GTX 680.

I want to upgrade to Catalina. And no doubt the OS will get a new version later this year.

I understand that because of disagreements, Apple is no longer officially supporting Nvidia cards in Mojave and later.

So my question is this: is there a way to continue to use my 680, which is still a good card, or would I be better to go with Radeon from this point (Catalina) forward?

And if I should go with Radeon, what is a good (but not terribly expensive) card to use? I want to drive 3 monitors, each 1920 x 1200, but I am not a heavy gamer.

 

[jaymonkey]

@AnneOminous,

The Nvidia GTX 680 has a 1st generation Kepler GPU core which is still supported in MacOS Mojave and Catalina using the native Apple Nvidia GPU driver kext's built into MacOS.

Installing Lilu + WhatEverGreen should allow you to use your Nvidia GTX 680 in Mojave and Catalina.

That said the GTX 680 is getting old and is not particular powerful when compared to current generation, mid-range AMD GPU's so you may want to consider an update if you have GPU intensive workloads.

The last iMacs and MacBook Pro's that used Nvidia GPU's where released way back in 2013 and all of them have now been officially discontinued by Apple so I personally don't think Apple will be supporting any Nvidia GPU's much beyond Catalina.

Right now AMD RX 580 / 590 and Vega 56 / 64 GPU's are a good buy as they are heavily discounted due to being superseded by the Navi GPU's and there are some really good used deals on them on eBay, Craig's List .. etc.

Running three monitors can be problematic if you choose a GPU that does not follow the AMD reference design, although Lilu + WEG will do it's best to configure and enable all the monitor connections.

I run a Sapphire Vega 64 LC GPU on my desktop system with three monitors it works just fine.

The new Navi based GPU's offer very good performance for the price but if you follow the Navi threads it's clear that some users are having issues with them such as the VRAM filling up and occasional reboots. It is hoped that Apple will fix these last few Navi issues in the next Catalina update.

Cheers
Jay

 

[slim.jim]

I can attest to the occasional reboots using a NAVI card. Haven't figured out what is causing it but it happens on real macs with NAVI gpus as well.

 

[AnneOminous]

Thanks for the considered response. If I can install Catalina on a new drive with Lilu + WEG I might just go with my old card for now, and wait and see about the rest. Pretty obviously I'm going to have to upgrade before long.

And the fact that the NAVI cards are causing problems on native Macs is probably a good thing, from my point of view, because that means Apple will fix it.

 

[slim.jim]

Thanks for the considered response. If I can install Catalina on a new drive with Lilu + WEG I might just go with my old card for now, and wait and see about the rest. Pretty obviously I'm going to have to upgrade before long.

And the fact that the NAVI cards are causing problems on native Macs is probably a good thing, from my point of view, because that means Apple will fix it.

I agree that Apple will likely fix it since they are using NAVI gpus in their machines. Although I also have a 16” MacBook Pro and don’t have the crashing issues with it’s NAVI GPU. Who knows, lol.

 

[AnneOminous]

@jaymonkey

Looks like I'm out of luck. I got my third monitor. So far I have only been able to get 2 to work at a time in Mojave. From what I've been reading, getting all three requires Nvidia webdrivers, but there are no webdrivers for Mojave. If anyone has a fix for this problem, I'd sure like to know about it.

To repeat: MacOS Mojave with an Nvidia GTX 680. The 680 is an early Kepler card that supports Metal.

[UPDATE] Never mind, all. I just bit the bullet and bought a "new-to-me" RX Vega 64. When it gets here I'll update.

 

[itwas]

@jaymonkey

Looks like I'm out of luck. I got my third monitor. So far I have only been able to get 2 to work at a time in Mojave. From what I've been reading, getting all three requires Nvidia webdrivers, but there are no webdrivers for Mojave. If anyone has a fix for this problem, I'd sure like to know about it.

To repeat: MacOS Mojave with an Nvidia GTX 680. The 680 is an early Kepler card that supports Metal.

[UPDATE] Never mind, all. I just bit the bullet and bought a "new-to-me" RX Vega 64. When it gets here I'll update.

I can use all 3 video ports (DVI, DVI, HDMI) with GT 640

 

[AnneOminous]

@itwas

Maybe it's a combination of my card + motherboard. I don't know. But it's a 2GB card, yet MacOS is only seeing 1GB.

I've tried DVI, DVI, HDMI and DVI, DVI, Display Port.

Conceivably I could drive 2 DVIs from the Dual Link DVI socket, with a Y adapter, giving me 3 DVIs.

But I got tired of the hassle and bought a Radeon RX Vega 64. I'm confident it will be natively supported for a while.

On that one, though, since it's all Display Port, I'm going to have to drive my Princeton monitor through a Display Port to DVI adapter.

It's my oldest monitor, but still arguably the best. Faster response time than the others (3ms), better colors. But it only has DVI and VGA.

 

[slim.jim]

@itwas

Maybe it's a combination of my card + motherboard. I don't know. But it's a 2GB card, yet MacOS is only seeing 1GB.

I've tried DVI, DVI, HDMI and DVI, DVI, Display Port.

Conceivably I could drive 2 DVIs from the Dual Link DVI socket, with a Y adapter, giving me 3 DVIs.

But I got tired of the hassle and bought a Radeon RX Vega 64. I'm confident it will be natively supported for a while.

On that one, though, since it's all Display Port, I'm going to have to drive my Princeton monitor through a Display Port to DVI adapter.

It's my oldest monitor, but still arguably the best. Faster response time than the others (3ms), better colors. But it only has DVI and VGA.

There are a lot of differences between a 640 and a 680. One of the biggest is DDR3 vs DDR5.

 

[AnneOminous]

@slim.jim

Yes, I know. I also know it's supposed to be possible, and others have made it work. But it just isn't working for me right now. In fact this card seems to be an edge case... it has really been a hassle the last few years when I've gone to upgrade OS X or MacOS. So I'm switching it out.

It worked in the beginning OOB because it was a Kepler, Metal card. But it's getting old and Apple's support has been going bye-bye.