Graphics card recommendations please

[bendelaurence]

If you want Mojave then it will have to be AMD atm

 

[Gigamaxx]

Last time I wrote, we had not yet stressed the system with heavy-duty graphic duties, and had not encountered any problems with noisy fans - in fact this card seemed less noisy than my son's previous graphics card, a Gigabyte Geforce GTX 660. However, I told my son to be on the look-out for strange fan behaviour.

Today he tried some extreme shading options in Minecraft. Strangely, he achieved better FPS with higher quality settings than with lower quality settings, but also the graphics card seemed to overheat - and once it caused a sudden, otherwise unprovoked, restart of the system. He wisely chose not to push the envelope any further and turned off the computer to let it cool off.

So, unfortunately (but also predictably), like everyone else using these Vega cards in a Hackintosh (without all kinds of hacks described here), we do experience some heat/fan issues.

Another thing we notice is that it almost seems there is a delay in the revving up of the fans - sometimes they seem to rev up _after_ you've stopped the heavy-duty graphic stuff.

Edit: about the "sudden, otherwise unprovoked, restart of the system" - it could also be due to the fact that the Power Supply Unit is only 500W (Corsair CX500M). Sapphire recommends 750W. I did use this tool to calculate system energy consumption and it came up with a load wattage of 428W and a recommended PSU wattage of 478W...

The Vega card has a small switch on the opposite side of the power plug in connectors towards the HDMI ports. There are OC mode and quiet mode. In macOS there is not a big difference in performance so set it to quiet mode and test again for power consumption and performance. Also, go to @pastrychef's build guide at the bottom is the VGATab application to generate better settings for the card so it doesn’t overheat or throttle down from overloading.

 

[worldcitizen]

Also, go to @pastrychef's build guide at the bottom is the VGATab application to generate better settings for the card so it doesn’t overheat or throttle down from overloading.

Thanks Gigamaxx, I will be looking into it next time I have a long enough block of time to do this kind of stuff. I hadn't seen pastrychef's build-post, but I've read pretty much every post in the thread started by jaymonkey (and had linked to it in my post).

Right now the machine runs without WhatEverGreen, so I could avoid the conflict between that and the VGTab kext, but the setup with a headless IGPU sounds enticing, as it adds extra graphic processing resources and also is closer to how a real iMac does things. I think I will do it in a two-step procedure - first step being just getting the fans to behave with the VGTab kext and without WhatEverGreen. Second step, at some later time, would be getting it to work with a headless IGPU as well.

 

[mildredrounds]

Thanks for sharing some hardware. I want to upgrade my PC, but I didn't know what to choose. There are so many different stuff, but the prices are pretty high though. So these suggestions are great!

 

[nib01]

If you want Mojave then it will have to be AMD atm

Can you explain to me why AMD is a better choice than the other gpu manufacturers?

 

[Feartech]

Can you explain to me why AMD is a better choice than the other gpu manufacturers?

as mac's tend to use AMD's more at the moment. people are still waiting for nvidia web drivers for Mojave. every update to macOS means waiting for nvidia to update drivers, seems to take longer on each update.

 

[bendelaurence]

Yh, you cannot use Nvidia with Mojave at the moment. Ive actually been thinking about making a change. From what I see see you have the following options:

-If you want Mojave - you need an AMD GPU but you will more than likely have to do some fiddling if you want the fans to work correctly
-If you are happy with High Sierra - Nvidia seems to be the better choice, the divers are pretty stable. The only issues I've come across is if you use 2 nvidias cards in the same machine. The issues aren't to bad if they're not connected in sli. But if they are connected in sli, some apps such as chrome browser simple do not display correctly.
-If your are happy with high Sierra and you want an AMD card, some work flawlessly, others have fan problems.

Also consider what you are going to be doing with the cards. Some apps perform better with one make or the other.

I hope this helps.

FYI - I've stayed with Nvidia, I just won't be upgrading to Mojave until a good working driver is released.

 

[Bgusto]

I use my build mostly for Adobe programs, which Nvidia has the lead on. However, it means being content with High Sierra. It also makes using the LG Ultrafine 5k almost impossible, that's my next challenge, however at least one user has it working.

I start to get worried web drivers will never come.