Mac (Windows) gtx770 to gtx1070Ti

samplaire

Member
For a very long time (9 years?) I have my Trainz (TRS2006 to TRS19) installed on my MacPro (desktop) initially on W7, now w10. The computer evolved from 4core Xeon W3520 2.66GHz, geforce GT120 with 512MB, 3GB of 1066MHz RAM and a HDD to 6 core Xeon X5670 at 2.93GHz, flashed 4GB gtx770, 28GB of 1133MHz RAM and an SSD. TRS19 runs quite fair on the machinę however I’d like to make it faster. Upgrading the CPU is too expensive for now (I know I can have a 12 core Xeon at 3.33) but a new graphics is tempting and the price is quite fair. Do you think that changing the graphics card alone from GTX770 to GTX1070Ti will apparently speed my machine in terms of TRS19?
 
From my experience, buy a 8gb RX580 Sapphire nitro , I have a mid 2010 hex core mac pro . the AMD drivers work directly in High Sierra . In my experience after trying a gtx 970 4gb which DID NOT work in any of the most recent mac osx releases due to dodgy drivers, I would not touch nvidia with a barge pole. Also as the gtx is not a supported mac card you wont get ANY help from NV3 if you have problems. the nitro works perfectly and gives me excellent performance in Tane sp3 , you even get a boot screen .
 
Might be better results with the 10XX series of cards than 9XX, might not, however better to check on a Mac forum as to if it's possible, from a quick Google it would appear they do work with Nvidia's drivers.

Suggest some research needed as to how well.
 
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My gtx770 is stable as hell both in MacOS and Win. Literally no issues. Booting 100% with the apple logo etc. I now have a 2560x1080 monitor and it is supported in both systems and the apple logo while booting is not stretched (meaning the right resolution is is use). As I see the RX580 is something in between the geforces... the mentioned gtx1070ti is from MacVodCards meaning they know what they sell.
 
You won’t have any probs with NVIDIA in windows, but from very very long experience , I know that a gtx 970 will not work in a Mac with TANE even when using the 2018 drivers,it just freezes under high sierra, Sierra and El Capitan.my 4gb gtx 680 worked fine as it was supported, but if you try to use the NVIDIA cards that arent supported you could be in trouble. I’ve been trying to find somebody who has had one working with TANE and have so far come up with nothing and I repeatedly asked tony Hilliam if they would work and got nowhere, check my posts about this, I tried to get it to work over and over since 2016, with zero luck.
the Rx 580 isn’t as fast, but it does work and with 8gb trainz is smooth as silk at high res, but by all means try a non supported GTX , but only do it if you can return it, because from my experience nv3 won’t help you as it’s not a supported card and nobody here has any idea why they act up either.
 
My gtx 970 worked fine for every program EXCEPT tane, so Googling is useless because you won’t find a gaming review of a vintage Mac Pro running trainz using a NVIDIA card , I know cos I’ve tried repeatedly on every gaming forum and Mac advice forums for years , perhaps yoUr best bet is to go and ask NV3 if their game will work using a gtx 1080 on a Mac Pro with all your mods using current Mac OS, the might help you but they never helped me a jot in that regard as they don’t have such a machine set up to test it and they only support “official “cards.
 
I dont even try to play Trainz in MacOS. The only purposes I have Win on my mac is trainz and all the creation tools like gmax and pev apps. I have Trainz Mac and Trainz Mac 2 but their performance comparing to TS12 (win eqivalent) is poor. So I stay with Windows.
 
I dont even try to play Trainz in MacOS. The only purposes I have Win on my mac is trainz and all the creation tools like gmax and pev apps. I have Trainz Mac and Trainz Mac 2 but their performance comparing to TS12 (win eqivalent) is poor. So I stay with Windows.

In that case, go for the GTX . However , if you aren't using it to run trainz on the mac ,why not just buy a standard card ? ,macvidcards aren't cheap ( and have come under a bit of a cloud in the past year ), and it shouldn't need flashing to work with mac OS.

I've actually found TANE works better on Mac in surveyor, proviing that you have a decent amount of vram., I have windows but I always end up working in mac os as the program is less buggy and I cant stand content manager in windows, 2012 was appalling on windows in my experience , I gave up with it and moved to TANE . After reinstalling it a week ago to try on a fresh windows setup to run some legacy assets, I've had nothing but trouble trying to get it to accept many assets and its endless snail like rebuilding of its database is exceptionally annoying . so back to the mac yet again :-(.
 
In that case, go for the GTX . However , if you aren't using it to run trainz on the mac ,why not just buy a standard card ? ,macvidcards aren't cheap
you mean having 2 cards at the same time, one for mac and the latter for win purposes? Hmmm, not a bad idea... my monitors have 2 inputs so there won’t be the hassle of reconnecting each time I swap a system...
 
you mean having 2 cards at the same time, one for mac and the latter for win purposes? Hmmm, not a bad idea... my monitors have 2 inputs so there won’t be the hassle of reconnecting each time I swap a system...

That's possible but I don't think trainz can take advantage of two theres no real advantage , and your power supply might be insufficient. what i meant was skip getting a flashed card from macvidcards as they aren't really necessary unless you want to run trainz. my GTX 970 was fine ou the box and straight into the mac pro for any other program apart from trainz, it just froze every time I launched trainz. the downside of the non flashed card is you don't get a boot screen and you have to chose which os to boot into from system preferences but other then that it was very fast .
 
I used to have a non flashed card in the mac. As n the worst case scenario I once faced a situation when I couldn’t launch my current os and without the bootscreen it was impossible to launch the comp. I had to put my old card in to resolve the problem. So thank you for the advice, I won’t go for it ;-)
 
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