Trashcan!

[micheledipaola]

Hello everybody,

let's talk about the Trashcan aka MacPro 6,1 and the quirks and issues it could show.

I would start with something that may look like inception: I'm talking about an Intel Mac used about BOOTCAMP windows emulation.

My son uses the Trashcan basically as a gaming PC, but the video drivers for the AMD FirePro cards aren't exactly up to date.
I found https://www.bootcampdrivers.com/ which claims to have more updated drivers, while AMD website has these : https://www.amd.com/en/resources/support-articles/release-notes/Apple-Boot-Camp.html - any hint about how to improve graphics perfomance under bootCamp?

Also: I now have the D300 installed... but I have a spare D700 couple of cards. I have read they are terrible for generating heat etc, so I wonder if I should swap them in or not.

 

[n8blz]

Hello everybody,

let's talk about the Trashcan aka MacPro 6,1 and the quirks and issues it could show.

I would start with something that may look like inception: I'm talking about an Intel Mac used about BOOTCAMP windows emulation.

My son uses the Trashcan basically as a gaming PC, but the video drivers for the AMD FirePro cards aren't exactly up to date.
I found https://www.bootcampdrivers.com/ which claims to have more updated drivers, while AMD website has these : https://www.amd.com/en/resources/support-articles/release-notes/Apple-Boot-Camp.html - any hint about how to improve graphics perfomance under bootCamp?

Also: I now have the D300 installed... but I have a spare D700 couple of cards. I have read they are terrible for generating heat etc, so I wonder if I should swap them in or not.

Good afternoon

I had hopes of using a trash can as a gaming machine, there are many decent titles that run on the various versions of MacOS it supports. However, the heat generated by the D700s basically put me off of ever trying it again. They reached alarmingly high temperatures and, if we're honest, pretty much every game that was available for intel Mac ran better on Windows, annoyingly.

I'm now not really sure what to do with the trash can. I have a decent installation on it with many apps from those days, but I pretty much never dig it out and turn it on. It's a shame because it's easily one of the most beautiful OSX machines.

 

[joevt]

I would start with something that may look like inception: I'm talking about an Intel Mac used about BOOTCAMP windows emulation.

BootCamp is not Windows emulation. It has two parts - one part for macOS for setting up the Windows partition. The second part is drivers for Windows. One does not need to use BootCamp to install Windows. It can be done manually - for when you want to have more than one other partition on the disk.

My son uses the Trashcan basically as a gaming PC, but the video drivers for the AMD FirePro cards aren't exactly up to date.
I found https://www.bootcampdrivers.com/ which claims to have more updated drivers, while AMD website has these : https://www.amd.com/en/resources/support-articles/release-notes/Apple-Boot-Camp.html - any hint about how to improve graphics perfomance under bootCamp?

I don't have any hints for improving graphics performance.
On my machines running Windows, I use Driver Genius from driver-soft.com to update drivers. I don't know how well it works with your setup.

Also: I now have the D300 installed... but I have a spare D700 couple of cards. I have read they are terrible for generating heat etc, so I wonder if I should swap them in or not.

Generating heat means it's working.

Benchmark each?
D700 has 3 times the VRAM, almost twice as many stream processors, almost twice as much memory bandwidth.
3.5 teraflops vs 2 teraflops.

An eGPU might be an option if not for the Thunderbolt 2 bandwidth. Go to https://egpu.io , click "Builds", enter

2013 "Mac Pro" Win

to search for results for your machine using Windows. Click the link in the Build link column for more info.
One of the links is this one:
https://egpu.io/forums/builds/2013-...tb3-exp-gdc-th3p4g3-mac-os-12-6-4-win10-22h2/

 

[quinterro]

I would also recommend Macs Fan Control. With it you can set up the fan based on a variety of sensors or set it to a constant speed.

My trashcan has the D300 cards. Shortly after upgrading the processor to the 12-core Xeon, I took it apart and repasted the processor and both GPUs. So far the fan is quiet, and the heat level is manageable.

 

[Unknown_K]

D300 uses the Pitcairn XT GL architecture, D700 uses the Tahiti XT GL.

So, you are looking at A HD 7870 vs a HD 7970. The 7970 has a TDP of 250W so 2 of those plus whatever the CPU draws is a lot of power usage. I wonder if Apple got crossfire working well on 2 GPUs.

Is the D500 an option?

 

[Byrd]

Trashcan with dual D700 and 12-core Xeon here; not concerned about temps with MacsFanControl running in Sequoia or Windows 11 (find the older version for OS X and Windows, as it doesn't have a shareware nag screen); kept to 1200RPM in Winter and 1500RPM-ish in Summer.

The Windows ATI drivers are designed for workstation/professional use and not gaming and pretty old for newer games that should run OK on it (but poorly optimised). GTA V on a 2010 Mac Pro with Radeon 590 runs so much better than the same game on the Trashcan.