6600 XT Mac Pro 5,1 Upgrade - Building the Ultimate Mac Pro 5,1 in 2024 with new CPU, Airport & more
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- Опубликовано: 11 июн 2024
- Bit of an update to my last video basically. Drop any questions in the comments btw
Specs are now...
CPU: X5690
GPU: 6600 xt
RAM: 48 GB 1333Mhz DDR3
Airport: BCM943602CDP
Display: Dell U2719D
- Links I mentioned (These aren't affiliate links, and I don't get paid to talk about anything in this video) -
- RAM:
www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1344893873...
- Airport Upgrade:
www.intriguingindustries.co.u...
I make videos about older tech - mostly Macs, almost every week. Subscribe and I’ll see you in the next one!
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TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Intro…
00:13 CPU
01:37 RAM
02:22 Graphics
04:19 OS/Storage Drives
05:26 Airport (BT and Wifi)
07:36 Display 
Хобби
I am fully onboard with the Mac Pros 4,1 and 5,1. I have a 4,1 flashed to a 5,1 and dual 5690 processors, 128GB of RAM, RX580 Graphics card, 2 GB of NVME boot disk, dual 8 TB Raid drives running Sonoma 14 (not 14.1 due to potential issues). This is my daily driver and I absolutely love it.
Excellent! You’ve gone about as far as it’s possible to go into upgrading those things. A 2009 machine as a daily driver in 2023 is such an achievement.
I have a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 2 GB Graphics Card, plus 128 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 Memory, 2 x 3.46 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon Processor, Mac Pro (Mid 2010) with Mac Pro - 10.14.6 Mojave Operating System. I'd love to know how you got Sonoma 14 as your Operating System, and what I might or should do to get Sonoma? Your help would be appreciated, thank you in advance.
@@user-uo7mz6es9x I’m not the commenter obviously, but I can suggest the only straightforward way of going past Mojave is by using OpenCore Legacy Patcher. Greg Gant (known as ‘Definitive Mac Upgrade Guide’ on RUclips) has some really good videos on this, so definitely search his channel to get yourself in the right direction.
@@montaguebarnabasltd I think you meant going past Monterey. Martin Lo's OpenCore works up to Monterey, and you don't have to have a patched or hacked OS. If you go past Monterey, then you need OCLP.
@@fleonard4 Monterey is still going further than the default Mojave OS. They were asking about upgrading from Mojave, so I explained how to get past that.
Good points, and not wrong about OCLP!
Man the fact Open Core has kept so many older macs alive to this day is amazing. They just wanted to cut clean from intel systems IMO so that is why a lot of it stopped getting supported.
Absolutely. Yeah until there’s no support for Intel whatsoever, opencore should be viable
I don't think that's you're opinion, that is literally what they did. Completely and objectively true.
Kinda reminds me of TPM 2 support with Windows 11.
You definitely squeezed performance out of that box. Nicely done.
Nice upgrades!
I have one of these and I need to upgrade like this, thanks
Thank you very much!!!!Coll upgrade👋👋👋
Great job
inspiring. thank you.
That’s such a powerful GPU for that machine. Amazed with what you can put in it
What else could I use?
@@Eruditealex4 I'm using RX580's in mine. It just depends on what you want to spend.
Great stuff. Similar to one of mine. Mac Pro 5.1 is really holding up if you carefully select upgrades and follow through. Surprisingly fast in windows 11 aswell as Ventura/Sonoma. :D
Hell yeah, great to hear of another 5,1 running strong.
TNX: _Hell yes they run strong. all year around. ;) i believe i posted about a mac pro 2.1 running strong here aswell. But that comment seems to be lost or deleted :P@@montaguebarnabasltd
very very cool build you are able to boot windows and mac so you get best of both worlds great video
Appreciate it!
good video so I liked ❤
Much obliged geeze
Bom trabalho com seu mac pro. Posso usar qualquer placa de vídeo disponível nesses mac pro? Quais consegue rodar jogos fps acima de 100? Agradeço desde já em responder. 👏🏾🙏🏾
trying to do this with the A1186. any suggestions?
I see that you used a Crucial P3 500Gb NVMe for booting, could I use a Crucial P3 2Tb NVMe for booting without problems???
I got rid of mine with this spec except a rx580 back in 2018. Was too slow then can’t imagine that cpu being useful now. The M1 runs circles round these in all tasks but gaming. Good for you for making it work in 2023
My use case is 50% gaming and 50% editing 1080p video. Thankfully not anything it struggles with in the CPU dept! True about the M1 though
Not true the 12 core 3.46 is as fast or faster than the m1 base in multicore cinebench and other apps that can use multiple threads.
Geekbench does not measure multiple threads so its makes these seem slower than they really are.
This blows away the base m1 gpu.
Even in metal
Where apple wins is its special encoding and rendering media engines and m1 single core speed if the app can use those me base wins but is limited to 16 or 32 GB and then uses the ssd as a scratch disk.
In short video and photo editing.
Meaning once that ssd goes the m1 machine is a brick.
Obviously this wins at games and some 3d as well plus can do windows natively Linux and older versions of osx and also some 32bit plugins and apps.
I think the rx6800 is the sweet spot up to the 6950 which even beat the mac studio and pro ultra in many gpu tasks for $3_$700 since GPU prices have come down.
The faster cards need a pixlas power mod 6800xt and higher.
For everydaythings I doubt any one can tell the difference when both have fast ssd.
The m2 base unit have slow ssd
this was ok thanks i got some useful info about airplay.. but you should have brought a reg 6600xt and use Syncretics Patcher tool to flash on your own.. you would have saved some coin. im runnin dual cpus and a 6600xt with boot screen. dual booting windows 11 and Monterey. ventura wont boot on the 6600xt.
Appreciate it!
My guy if I knew that were an option I’d have done it. Ah yeah, well glad to see you’re running one anyway.
Have you tried installing an RX 6800 in that machine? I have the same GPU and Mac Pro 5,1, booting exclusively into Windows 11 via Opencore Legacy Patcher and have been thinking of upgrading. I heard the 6800's TDP of 250W works in the machine as well (unigine ultra quality benchmarks draw about 25W from the backplane, and 100W max per MB power connector). With an EVGA powerlink, you can further stabilize the power draw. With 16GB of VRAM, the RX 6800 is about as powerful of a GPU as you can get without doing a pixlas mod.
I agree. It should work fine, but I haven’t tried myself. From what I’ve heard the 6800 is runnable without any modification. RUclips and Reddit threads are a good place to check people’s individual experiences though.
Could you please share a little more detail on your HD configuration
I’m specifically interested in which NVME adapter you used to get it to boot into Mac OS
I previously saw where there are compatibility concerns with PCIe cards booting Mac OS.
Also how are you booting into windows?
Ie do you have a separate drive for windows that is on the SATA (2.0 iirc) connector on the motherboard?
For the NVME adapter I actually don’t remember the one I bought. I’m not going to be able to check until early Jan because I’m away from home. Sorry to not be more helpful!
As far as Windows goes, I keep it on a 240GB SSD on one of the motherboard SATA sleds with no other OSes on, as I’ve heard that helps the Mac play nice (both to make sure it sees the windows installation, and so it doesn’t mess with any current MacOS versions).
Confusingly, despite everyone saying I’d need to use a DVD disc, or find a complex workaround, I just put the windows installation tool onto the same 240GB SSD, then made it write windows to itself, plugged into the Mac via USB. It’s worked flawlessly ever since, and since I have a flashed 6600XT card, I can view a bootscreen and choose windows or any one of my MacOS versions to boot into.
Hi great video, can you run unflashed nvidia cards like a 2070super? also do you have a full seprate windows & mac set ups or do you share across the mac? thanks
Thanks!
Both windows and macOS run on the same hardware setup.
Nvidia cards won’t run past macOS High Sierra. That’s why most go with AMDs.
Thanks for an incredibly interesting work. I wanted to ask you if the MacPro 5.1 PSU can work with a video card AND a Radeon RX5700XT 8gig? I need it to edit video in 4k.
Thanks for the comment! I considered the 5700XT, but found it was very likely to need the PSU mod, depending on the model I got. If you’re not willing to give it a shot (I wouldn’t blame you), I would try the 6600XT, which offers better performance, or perhaps the 5600XT for something slightly weaker and less power demanding.
great video bro, how much years you think that this Mac can will work actually?
Cheers mate
Realistically, I think it’ll be 2025/26 they will no longer be worth using for me, but depending on what you do, I can see these working as windows PCs for another 5-6 years, best case scenario.
@@montaguebarnabasltd there's no knowing how long these can be used, how long will they be viable, no idea if some new innovation can again refresh it.
@@thehighestsoapbox7561 very true. He did ask for my opinion to be fair though lol
x58 Never dies
Released another video on it 28 mins before you typed that lmao
Great video! Did you have to replace the ROM on the video card to get it to boot? Everywhere I look it says the ROM has to be replaced to "fix" the 6600 XT to allow the classic Mac Pro to boot.
Thanks for watching!
Yes, I actually bought a custom ROM 6600XT from MacVidCardsEU over the summer. It’s doable at home, though, with enough expertise.
GOP Flash, and ant PC card should work. Still, ALWAYS use OpenCore (not OCLP, unless you're going past Monterey). OC protects your Mac from getting bricked by windows and many other benefits, even if you've done the GOP or GPU flash.
Hi there nice video. Can you please like to the graphic card? And what about a game like Microsoft Flightsimulator.... would it run smoothly?
Thanks!
www.macvidcards.eu/products/amd-radeon-rx-6600-xt-8-gb-gddr6-2
Flight simulator should be fine, you’ll be playing comfortably at medium to high settings.
Ill Hobble along for 2 years or so and get a mbp or macstudio base model. Monterey seems the limit now.
Having the boot screen would be cool, but I can make do without photoshop (affinity photo) and word/excel (pages / numbers) on mojave
Yup! there’s a lot of workarounds at this point. Worth keeping it until the Apple silicon prices come down in my opinion.
I've got one of old mac pros and just bought a new mac stuido.
Where is the best place to start with upgrading the old mac pro. I've never done anything like this, so wondering if there's more of a how to guide out there of what to put in the machine?
Nice! Google ‘Definitive Mac Pro upgrade Guide. It’s an incredible source for info on this machine.
@@montaguebarnabasltd Thanks for the reply. I'll have a look. 👍
meanwhile my main desktop is a 2008 emachine with a 3ghz core2 duo, 4gb of ddr3, which is unusual for socket 775 i guess, normally they use ddr2, anyways i have a nvidia geforce gtx 950 gpu and it plays all the games i want to play just fine. seems increasingly only the gpu matters. if i had money i'd probably just get a new system. i found that gpu in a dumpster shockingly, the only thing wrong with it was that it needed to be cleaned.. the only mac i have btw is a 2006 imac which i've managed to install mac os 10.8 onto as well as win10.. though i'd think anything newer might run slow as molasses, had to trim win10 down on both the imac and emachine, just so much bloat.
Nice setup!
Honestly you’re right about the GPU/CPU reliance. Gaming is mostly a GPU stressy task.
Which one is the MVMe adapter for Mac Pro 2009? Where can I buy it?
Apologies for the late reply. It’s something like this.
www.ebay.co.uk/itm/313607461893?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=1TB4-8qVS1m&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=hJ_-LATyTsm&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
Will make a great proxmox server or give it to your kid eventually lol. It runs everything and its built like a tank
Absolutely. I’m not gonna be moving on from this machine any time soon lol
Do you need to flash the card even when you have opencore?
In order to see a bootscreen, yep.
did you test any gaming?
I go over gaming performance in this video:
ruclips.net/video/Pmy9o3qrxxk/видео.htmlsi=KdtlS20jV6dYKeKH
Does this card need flashing or does it work plug and play on mac pro 5.1?
Needs flashing for a boot screen unfortunately.
Why Bluetooth and WiFi need to be upgrade? Is it not compatible in newer OS?
Speeds things up and makes airdrop and handoff work smoothly
What was the total cost to upgrade. I’m considering grabbing one for a project build.
Thanks for watching!
It was about £350 in total, or $450. That’s not including the £75 I paid for the machine itself
@@montaguebarnabasltd nice work!
Dual CPUs would be a night and day difference for you. I just did the GOP flash on my 3 Mac Pros, so any PC GPU will work with a boot screen. Still, ALWAYS run OpenCore. It will protect your Mac from getting bricked by Windows, as well as give you a boot selector, even if you don't do the GOP Flash. Flashing the GPUs is no longer necessary. Flash the Mac.
All solid advice. Yeah OCLP is the saviour of all old mac users at this point, I just find opencore takes a little too much work to sort out.
I think dual CPUs may fix my editing problem, but definitely won’t make a difference in gaming. When I’m going to be forced to upgrade anyway because of the latter problem, it’s not sensible to buy a dual CPU tray to fix only the former.
@@montaguebarnabasltd idk, I use one of mins for gaming, and it's way faster then my son's gaming PC, and he has an RX580 as well. Also, I wrote a script to automatically flip the flags in OC (or OCLP) for hardware acceleration and updating. let me know if you would like to see it. OC is pretty simple, once you understand it and get comfortable with it. With OC, unlike OCLP, you don't gave a patched or hacked OS, It runs natively, up to Monterey, If you're not going beyond Monterey, you should us OC, not OCLP. I do use OCLP on my Mini, and I will use it if I go to Ventura or Sonoma. I have nothing against it, other than keeping my OS native, and unpatched for Monterey and below.
OC also protects your Mac from getting bricked by windows. OCLP may do the same, but I think I have seen people with OCLP having problems with hardware acceleration. That may be resolved by now.
@@fleonard4 Tbh it’s just illogical to me that a machine that probably has half the memory speed, 1Ghz lower clock speed, more than likely a slower SSD ETC can beat a modern gaming machine of this decade.
Saying that, you seem pretty well informed about OC/OCLP. Thanks for the info, and I will more than likely be looking further into it in the future. I’ll let you know if I do want a look at that script!
@@montaguebarnabasltd well, again, it's benchmark and numbers watchers, vs real world. I can tell you, the dual CPU is night and day. I wouldn't even mess with a single CPU system. IF I got one for free, I would play around, but end up using it for spare parts. I have heard you can put an i7 in the single CPU systems. Still, unless you are just laying around, the x6590's are the way to go. The thing about benchmark watchers, is they get debunked. People have done the comparisons triple channel vs filling all the slots, and you can see a difference in the benchmarks, but real world, you won't see it. The same with GPUs. People say the PCIe is slower, but in reality, it makes no difference. You may see it very slightly in benchmarks, but not in use.
How loud is the fan though??
Not particularly. It’s far less noticeable than laptops up until M1.
Stupid question, do I need one CPU? I go on eBay and I see listing for “matched pair”
Go to about this mac from the apple logo on the desktop’s top left. If you have a dual CPU Mac you need a matching pair, if you have a single CPU one you need one. I hope I’ve understood your question correctly…?
@@montaguebarnabasltd answered perfectly, thanks man!
I’m running windows on that machine using rx580. Is it possible to plug and play unflashed rx6600xt nitro, if I don’t need a bootscreen? Love your videos!
Thanks so much!
Yes as long as you don’t need to actually see a bootscreen you can boot into your usual OS.
If you own a mac pro it is extremely simple to inject enableGOP into the firmware of the mac which allows it to boot ANY card that supports uefi with a native boot screen.
Please stop buying specific mac flashed gpu's its absolutely not needed anymore.
Thanks for pointing that out. Wasn’t aware of enableGOP at all until now. Perhaps I’d have been better off using it, had I known better. Saying that, I prefer the simplicity of a straight up flashed card. Obviously they’re still good for UEFI on Windows ETC. I wouldn’t say I got a bum deal.
I guess if you’re reading this considering what GPU path to take, have a look at enableGOP! While you can get half decent prices on MacVidCards sites, you’d probably save a fair bit of money, as Marc’s pointed out.
@@montaguebarnabasltd you can add uefi to non uefi capable cards (or at least most of them. Using an app called GOPupd. In which case it will happily work in windows under uefi mode (case and point is my current hd 7770 placeholder card. Added uefi to it)
Once uefi is added to the card you will get a native boot screen apon booting with enablegop injected into the firmware itself (while also retaining native boot screen for all other uefi factory capable cards)
Remember the driver for gop output for native boot screens on mac (the one that is injected into the vbios of a card) is identical to the one that we inject into the firmware. Just that the mac applies it to the card apon boot rather than each card having to have it injected into firmware. (This also solves the issue of cards that dont have the space for the gop driver)
Edit: should add i didnt mean to come across as you got ripped off or anything. Macvidcards provide a service that you CAN do yourself for the most part as a package for those that are inexperienced or dont want to deal with the issues flashing can cause. Just that injecting the gop driver into the bios of your mac is simple especially if you have a backup of your clean original one (which all mac 4,1 to 5,1 flashed units need to be aware that they suffer from bootrom corruption over time)
Just to add to this further. The reason i suggest adding the GOPenable driver to the firmware of the mac pro itself is because of the hard 128kb limit of amd firmware files (in certain cases) adding uefi to these cards if they dont support it already is easy using the above meantioned tool however certain versions of enableGOP wont fit onto the bios within the given space.
I assume macvidscards is either making custom bios's for their cards to enable the native output or they are upgrading the physical eeprom chip on the graphics card in order to fit what i assume is a proprietary enable GOP alternative.
Either way the money they charge is absolutely acceptable for the work involved in making sure that it A: works and B: they can give a warrenty on a modified card. They obviously stand behind their work and each to their own just wanted to make it known.
is it more powerful than m2 max laptop?
In some areas (graphics, ram and storage size) yes, others (cpu, memory speed, and more) no.
@@montaguebarnabasltd you can repair you own computer m1,m2,3 you have take to apple for repair$$$$$
@@macgamer1973 you mean take to apple to fully replace?
@@montaguebarnabasltd Memory? Le's see a M2 take 256GB RAM.
@@fleonard4 I’d like to see 1333mhz ram beat DDR5/latest apple speeds lol. Realistically there is no competition.
Do you use photoshop on this machine by any chance ?
Yup. That’s pretty significant for me in any computer.
@@montaguebarnabasltd Cool. Are you getting GPU acceleration when using Raw details in camera raw by any chance? Specifically denoise. (My 5,1 running Ventura with a RX580 will not use the GPU and I’m stumped!)
@@benclucas4375 sorry to be of such little help, but I very rarely use photoshop for photography/real camera RAW files anymore. These days I’m mostly graphic designing on it, using low quality files for thumbnails ETC.
I would check Reddit for answers, maybe ask in the MacPro thread. Otherwise potentially try a different version of Photoshop if possible. For example I have a Ps 2019 installation I still go back to, which I find solid as a rock on these older machines.
Best of luck
@@montaguebarnabasltdthanks for getting back 👍🏼
The demand for AI will kill this machines… Never had one, always wanted one. I maxed out a Imac 2011 including a firmware flashed Dell graphics card. Now i have a M1 Mac mini and it‘s the best mac ever. Next will be a M4 machine since this CPU includes AI capabilities.
Always a good idea to stay somewhat current.
Thanks for watching!
A very good video, thanks. Of course none of this type of upgrade-ability/repair-ability exists in current Apple products which guarantees Apple continued sales. Failed flash storage, sorry, buy a new Mac. Need more RAM or internal storage, sorry buy a new Mac. Long live the Open Core developers!
Absolutely agreed. Thanks for the comment!
OMG, an old Mac running Windows and a Keyboard from the last Millennium! Are you kidding me? This Dinosaur is slower, then the cheapest M2 Mac Mini.
Idk if this is an ironic comment lmao
Need my parts from used PC space to get real value I wouldn't have guest apple users are that hungry for frames haha 😂😂
thank you for not showing pic of Tim cook, the worst CEO of Apple
Not intentional lol. Still, you’re welcome.
This resonates with me.
I can care less about all those games...😅
I think you should care less, then
"couldn't" care less, is how the expression goes; otherwise you're saying the opposite of what you intend.
my x299 & 6900XT Hackintosh is much better
Happy to hear it, buddy
@@montaguebarnabasltd😂
Great vid man
There’s always something better…