Mac Pro 2019 GPU Upgrade Guide in 6 minutes

The Mac Pro 2019 might the last Mac ever to have GPU upgrades internally and may be the most upgradeable Mac Apple ever releases with the way Apple Silicon is headed.

While upgrading the GPUs on the Mac Pro 2019 is as easy as any Mac ever there's still considerations to cover. This video covers how all the you need to know about upgrading the Mac Pro 2019, with MPX GPUs vs off the shelf GPUs, size constraints, cabling and even unsupported GPUs.

I've tried to keep this quick and simple. Anyone who's looking to buy a Mac Pro 7,1 may not know all the limitations/considerations for the Mac Pro 2019.

0:00 Intro and Guide
0:32 MPX vs PCIe
1:14 Consumer GPU size consideration
1:50 Powering GPUs
2:41 Installing the GPUs
3:09 Direct Access PCIe lanes
3:28 GPU compatibility
4:57 Max GPUs
5:06 A word about Windows and MPX
5:18 What GPU should you get?

Since I burn through the size considerations:
A dual height GPU is 40mm and the longest GPU the Mac Pro 2019 supports is 305mm. Many of the 6900 XTs will block an additional PCIe slot due to the coolers. There are several 6800 models that are only 40mm and probably a few 6800 XTs.

The 6900 XT is a funky card as the cooler vary a lot. I didn't mention the GPU I used by name, but it is a GIGABYTE Radeon RX 6900 XT GAMING OC. The OC version comes slightly pre-overlcocked, but has triple power cables instead of the reference two for people looking to push their GPU hard. I left the stock ROM on the card as I'm more interested in reliability and less noise but in WIndows, the AMD software lets you at a click change your profiles: voltages, fan curve, clock speeds etc. The reason I selected this card was price and it fit my Mac Pro, as I bought this early last year right when the GPU crisis ended and picked it up for $800 after a rebate.

The 6950 XT is a super overclocked 6900 XT hence why OpenCore can spoof the device ID. The 6950 XT probably isn't worth the extra effort of having a natively supported card as the performance gains are extremely modest generally 3-4% and it's hotter and louder but for a certain group looking to extract every single ounce of performance, it is the performance king.

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Mac Pro 2019 Upgrade Guide
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