9 ms·

It's sad to say but this is the only way to get a decently powerful desktop Mac right now (that's not using server grade Xenon chips, I don't need ECC). One th

It's sad to say but this is the only way to get a decently powerful desktop Mac right now (that's not using server grade Xenon chips, I don't need ECC). One thing that's unfortunate though (about a Hackintosh) I think about to change (maybe already has) is the use of a R9 280x due to driver issues in OS X (i.e. there are no drivers for newer GPUs). I think now you can use, or soon will be able to, Pascal based GPUs which would great for deep learning/CUDA. It's a shame Apple has been relentless in their quest to ship inferior GPUs in Macs. The biggest beef I have with this Touchbar MBP I've got is the GPU is pretty crap compared to NVidia's offerings-- and I think it's somewhere that Apple could dominate. Sure it'd take partnering with GPU manufacturers, innovation, and money in the space but that's exactly what the Mac needs right now and Apple is fully capable of... or someone's god forbid sacrificing a small bit of portability for the power. I really want to love the mac but outside of iOS development I don't have much of a reason to run it these days. Windows + Linux subystem is pretty great, or just booting directly into Linux. To be honest developing in native Linux lately has been wonderful, it's incredibly fast, driver support is pretty damn good, and desktop is attractive enough. I even have Thunderbolt 3 ports on my desktop which have been good, I just wish VNC clients were faster so I could network-in my Macbook Pro's screen better. The latency even over thunderbolt three is pretty atrocious. Edit: Just so I don't SPAM another comment, as the nice folks below have pointed out... PASCAL is supported. Upvoted you all because I'm so happy. Gonna get my hackintosh back in action tomorrow. Edit 2: I'd also like to say NVMe is mind blowingly fast on the desktop I've got and something sorely lacking from Apple's offering adding another downside to the current Mac desktops. Edit 3: Cleared up note about thunderbolt 3 and VNC.

godzillabrennus 10y ago
Mac OS "as it's now called" is a compelling offering because of third party commercial software support including Microsoft and Adobe. Linux is great for some developers who work with stacks that live entirely in Linux. There are still some things though that it doesn't stack up well against like the software available for Windows or Mac. As someone who does front end graphic work to mockup apps before building them as part of my workflow I couldn't see myself switching off Mac OS unless Microsoft drops the registry, replaces NTFS, stops with the spyware being built in, disables the forced updates and finally goes with one UI/UX for everything.
- bostand 10y ago
  Drops the registry? What does that even mean?
  - mathw 10y ago
    The Registry is the centralised configuration store which Windows introduced in Windows 95. Lots of people still don't like it.
    - mintplant 10y ago
      ...because it's an impenetrable tangle of GUIDs, deep hierarchies, and keys left behind by apps long uninstalled.
      - douche 10y ago
        And for all intents and purposes you can pretend it doesn't exist, at this point. I've opened up Regedit in the past year, but I work with a piece of benighted software that supports a weird but useful feature designed fifteen years ago when doing unfathomable things with the registry was something people did.
        bostand 10y ago
        That was my point. The fact that you can fiddle with it to change undocumented stuff should not be brought up as something negative.
      - rnhmjoj 10y ago
        What are the alternatives? The UNIX way of dumping hidden config files in $HOME doesn't look any better.
        vondur 10y ago
        Text files are for the most part readable. The registry can be ugly to work with, if you have to. (which seems to be less and less these days)
mastazi 10y ago
> I think now you can use, or soon will be able to, Pascal based GPUs which would great for deep learning/CUDA. You can use them right now but the driver is still in beta. See https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/04/nvidia-releases-beta-gpu-drivers-for-old-mac-pros-and-hackintoshes/ https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/04/nvidia-releases-beta-g...
johnthedebs 10y ago
> I think now you can use, or soon will be able to, Pascal based GPUs They are supported! I'm writing this comment on a hackintosh running a GTX 1060. Nvidia released Pascal-compatible Mac drivers 2 weeks ago (April 11). Interesting but unverified side story, the drivers were apparently released because of an email from a redditor: https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/65hpc8/funny_story_an_email_i_sent_to_the_ceo_of_nvidia/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/65hpc8/funny_story_a... > Windows + Linux subystem is pretty great, or just booting directly into Linux. I built this new computer recently and gave Windows 10 and Ubuntu 16.04 both a shot. I decided I didn't want to relearn how to be productive with them and turned it into a hackintosh, and I'm very happy with it so far.
- fredoliveira 10y ago
  > They are supported! I'm writing this comment on a hackintosh running a GTX 1060. Nvidia released Pascal-compatible Mac drivers 2 weeks ago (April 11). Same! I was waiting for the pascal drivers to take the 1080 Ti plunge, and I am super happy I did (literally installed it 48h ago, upgrading from a 980). I have a 6700k "mac" that flips to a top of the line gaming pc if I am in the mood for that. Glorious: http://fred.d.pr/FQLuV http://fred.d.pr/FQLuV
  - michelb 10y ago
    I'm looking to build something like that. Did you use a specific guide/golden build?
    - fredoliveira 10y ago
      There's the base guide at tonymacx86 [0], which got me 95% there. Then it was a matter of learning about specific things (like installing and enabling NVidia drivers, etc). It doesn't take a ton of time. I did keep great notes about all the process in hopes I'd have time to write an extensive guide, but still haven't quite been able to come up with the time to write it. [0] https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/unibeast-install-macos-sierra-on-any-supported-intel-based-pc.200564/ https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/unibeast-install-macos-si...
marceldegraaf 10y ago
Well there's good news: nvidia recently announced beta Mac drivers with support for their Pascal video cards[1] That means you can do a Hackintosh build with their latest video cards (GTX1080 or Titan) with full driver support. [1]: https://9to5mac.com/2017/04/11/nvidia-releases-pascal-web-drivers-mac-os-gtx-10-series-cards/ https://9to5mac.com/2017/04/11/nvidia-releases-pascal-web-dr...
- morid1n 10y ago
  I believe there are sleep issues with the new Pascal cards, or has this been fixed?
  - H1Supreme 10y ago
    Last update said that was fixed.
acomjean 10y ago
Its actually really unfortunate this is the only way go to get power/ adaptability. I had a hackintosh for a couple years and while it ran great I was always nervous the next OS upgrade would render it useless. I got a Mac Book Pro and retired it (Linux and sold to a friend). Recently I went to a projection mapping seminar (its kinda like DJing but using video loops), everyone who attended had older macbook Pros (with hdmi to power the projectors). The production machines they use to do the projections live are all microsoft windows machines, as its the only way to get enough video horsepower to run the multiple displays. The artists running the seminar said they couldn't recommend macs anymore, excepting for some backend asset creation. Since most software is mac/windows right now its not a bid deal, I worry if the mac demand goes south, the software won't be ported. I'm hoping linux starts being more viable solution for content creation. Seems like its heading that way.
- sdwisely 10y ago
  This is exactly where I'm stuck right now. Using a hackintosh for mapping/vj'ing as the off the shelf hardware isn't at all practical and I want to keep using OSX only software. Honestly it's a nightmare. I want as many video outputs as possible, enough power to run multiple layers of video, be running game engines at the same time, transcode a video in a pinch and more. Switching to windows is probably the only option going forward.
- glenneroo 10y ago
  I've been VJing professionally for ~12 years with some friends and we have always exclusively used Windows machines because our internal testing showed that Macs were rarely enough to handle high-quality multi-screen projections properly. For the same price as a top of the line Mac, we were able to build a PC with roughly 2x the specs (and always a better GPU). We did however rely on Macs for QT encoding (usually PhotoJPG for best quality/size ratio), because even our fastest Windows boxes couldn't keep up with our slowest Mac (our conspiracy theory is that Apple intentionally crippled QT encoding on Windows). Over the last couple years we have switched purely to content production so we let another external company do the projections + mapping and we don't care what they use because it's doing mostly just video playback.
davnn 10y ago
> a decently powerful desktop Mac That's to be defined. I for example use a MBP with an E-GPU Setup (Sonnet Echo Express-III with a Pascal GPU inside). Put the MBP in my Docking station and I have a decently powerful desktop Mac. I love it, I hope that is the future.
- rubyn00bie 10y ago
  I thought about this but read that the E-GPU setup can have some performance penalties-- though this was with the Razer One and not a MBP. Any real world issues or hiccups, or has it been as good as you make it sound?
  - davnn 10y ago
    The penalty is about 25% for my setup, but I'm still using a TB2 MBP and an external SSD on the same TB port. I think that's fair but of course with TB3 the performance penalty should be less. But there are unfortunately other things to consider. In my case the Echo express enclosure is not made for Graphic cards and you have to modify it to make it work - done in about one hour when you are really careful. The wait for Pascal drivers was sad. Other than that the only other thing that comes to my mind is that you cannot remove the MBP from the docking station before shutting it down. (I have read that sleep should also work but it does not for me) Edit: If things work really depends on the exact setup. I have just seen the video posted in another comment (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yho3rCNfzGE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yho3rCNfzGE) and it looks like I have just been really lucky with my setup.
rcarmo 10y ago
Yes, you can run Pascal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yho3rCNfzGE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yho3rCNfzGE (comparison with AMD, using external GPU enclosure) ...but you might not like the results under MacOS (Edited for typos)
codewithcheese 10y ago
There are lots of alternatives to VNC that are much more efficient and depending on your connection can even stream HD video. Unfortunately many of the alternatives are poorly documented. RDP will give better results and there are tons of implementations. NoMachine is probably the best documented and supported. However is proprietary but they have a free version. I believe it can do streaming video. Spice is poorly documented and seems to not be maintained however it is very efficient and can stream janky video. Have a look at XRDP with libfxcodec for streaming video (need lots of bandwith) otherwise without libfxcodec for decent low bandwidth
- kschiller 10y ago
  I've done some research into streaming video on a remote desktop for a project before and I've never heard of libfxcodec, can you go into more detail about it? I can't find anything about it.
  - j_s 10y ago
    I didn't believe you until this brought up the parent comment as the only result: https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=xrdp+libfxcodec https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=xrdp+libfxcodec Shortest Googlewhack(-ish) I've ever accidentally stumbled upon myself, for sure! try: https://github.com/neutrinolabs/librfxcodec https://github.com/neutrinolabs/librfxcodec
    - codewithcheese 10y ago
      Oops yep, thanks for the correction j_s
    - kschiller 10y ago
      Cheers!
- _jal 10y ago
  I can really only use Spice on Linux. The Mac client is unusable. Haven't tried the Windows build. It would be a nice protocol if there were functional clients, but I fear that train has sailed.
Esau 10y ago
>I don't need ECC We all need ECC. It should be a standard feature by now.
- stuff4ben 10y ago
  While I agree, can you explain more about why you think we all need ECC?
  - _asummers 10y ago
    I'd also be curious of numbers from people who DO run ECC about how many times it's saved them. Some things it's really necessary for (financial transactions comes to mind). That said, it should be much easier to get ECC in consumer hardware. Major props to AMD for their recent chips that allow it. Hopefully Intel follows suit.
    - garaetjjte 10y ago
      Didn't AMD CPUs already supported ECC for many years?
      - StillBored 10y ago
        I had a K6/2 with ECC back in the late 90's. So, yes. But for whatever reason, AMD never seems to put ECC in the bullet lists for why you should buy their parts. I guess as someone else mentioned its because the motherboard manufactures don't enable/qualify it even though its likely just a matter of firmware tweaks ever since the DRAM controller moved on chip. I got it working on a cheap phenom II/gigabyte motherboard (IIRC) some time ago as well. In that case I don't think the motherboard even advertised it, but I had some unbuffered ECC DIMMs lying around and I plugged them in, and they worked. Of course the only real indication besides booting the machine that it was actually working was a kernel blurb during boot about it. I don't think I got the EDAC reporting to give me soft error rates at the time.
    - drewg123 10y ago
      The problem is that it is unsupported, so getting a board where the BIOS can enable it & you can count on it working is a bit of a crap shoot. I had the same problem ~8 years ago when a friend and I built new desktops. You've got to do a lot of manual reading, forum reading and review reading before buying a board. Or buy it locally from a place with a good return policy. This is quite a bit different from server grade kit where ECC is fully supported.
ChairmanPao 10y ago
Actually, you do need ECC, you just don't realize it.
post_break 10y ago
I have a hackintosh with dual 280x's running in crossfire. Not sure what exactly you meant by that sentence.
dahjelle 10y ago
I haven't done any VNC client comparison, and don't use it regularly anymore, but JollysFastVNC[1] was originally written to be a much faster VNC client than the others that were available. Still works on macOS 10.12. [1] https://www.jinx.de/JollysFastVNC.html https://www.jinx.de/JollysFastVNC.html
rsync 10y ago
"I'd also like to say NVMe is mind blowingly fast on the desktop I've got and something sorely lacking from Apple's offering adding another downside to the current Mac desktops." I see that folks are putting nvme cards into their older mac pros: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/pcie-m-2-nvme-on-macpro.2030791/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/pcie-m-2-nvme-on-macpro... Is there a recipe that allows one to boot from an nvme add-in card on an older mac pro ? (in my case, early 2009)
- vondur 10y ago
  I don't think so, the Mac Pro's firmware doesn't understand NVME, you'd need to use an ACHI based M2 SSD with the PCIe card. (so many acronyms!)
- islane 10y ago
  https://www.amazon.com/Kingston-HyperX-Predator-SHPM2280P2H-480G/dp/B00V01C6M8 https://www.amazon.com/Kingston-HyperX-Predator-SHPM2280P2H-... I would suggest this card, it should work, it is SATA based as opposed to NVMe. I have installed a few of these in on several older systems (x58 based and others) and saw a very large performance bump, even versus SSDs connected via aftermarket PCIE SATA-3 controller (running at 500-550mbs). YMMV if attempting to clone an existing drive - I have had this problem with add-in PCIE cards, older motherboards, and various operating systems - a fresh install to one of these drives will likely be easier.
kristianp 10y ago
Xenon is a gas, and is also a chip used in the XBox 360 [1]. The server chip model from Intel is called Xeon. Sorry to be a name nazi, but some people may not be aware of the difference. Its hard to tell online if people don't notice the error or don't know they've made an error. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon_(processor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon_(processor)

godzillabrennus 10y ago

Mac OS "as it's now called" is a compelling offering because of third party commercial software support including Microsoft and Adobe. Linux is great for some developers who work with stacks that live entirely in Linux. There are still some things though that it doesn't stack up well against like the software available for Windows or Mac. As someone who does front end graphic work to mockup apps before building them as part of my workflow I couldn't see myself switching off Mac OS unless Microsoft drops the registry, replaces NTFS, stops with the spyware being built in, disables the forced updates and finally goes with one UI/UX for everything.

bostand 10y ago
Drops the registry? What does that even mean?
- mathw 10y ago
  The Registry is the centralised configuration store which Windows introduced in Windows 95. Lots of people still don't like it.
  - mintplant 10y ago
    ...because it's an impenetrable tangle of GUIDs, deep hierarchies, and keys left behind by apps long uninstalled.
    - douche 10y ago
      And for all intents and purposes you can pretend it doesn't exist, at this point. I've opened up Regedit in the past year, but I work with a piece of benighted software that supports a weird but useful feature designed fifteen years ago when doing unfathomable things with the registry was something people did.
      - bostand 10y ago
        That was my point. The fact that you can fiddle with it to change undocumented stuff should not be brought up as something negative.
    - rnhmjoj 10y ago
      What are the alternatives? The UNIX way of dumping hidden config files in $HOME doesn't look any better.
      - vondur 10y ago
        Text files are for the most part readable. The registry can be ugly to work with, if you have to. (which seems to be less and less these days)

mastazi 10y ago

> I think now you can use, or soon will be able to, Pascal based GPUs which would great for deep learning/CUDA. You can use them right now but the driver is still in beta. See https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/04/nvidia-releases-beta-gpu-drivers-for-old-mac-pros-and-hackintoshes/ https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/04/nvidia-releases-beta-g...

johnthedebs 10y ago

> I think now you can use, or soon will be able to, Pascal based GPUs They are supported! I'm writing this comment on a hackintosh running a GTX 1060. Nvidia released Pascal-compatible Mac drivers 2 weeks ago (April 11). Interesting but unverified side story, the drivers were apparently released because of an email from a redditor: https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/65hpc8/funny_story_an_email_i_sent_to_the_ceo_of_nvidia/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/65hpc8/funny_story_a... > Windows + Linux subystem is pretty great, or just booting directly into Linux. I built this new computer recently and gave Windows 10 and Ubuntu 16.04 both a shot. I decided I didn't want to relearn how to be productive with them and turned it into a hackintosh, and I'm very happy with it so far.

fredoliveira 10y ago
> They are supported! I'm writing this comment on a hackintosh running a GTX 1060. Nvidia released Pascal-compatible Mac drivers 2 weeks ago (April 11). Same! I was waiting for the pascal drivers to take the 1080 Ti plunge, and I am super happy I did (literally installed it 48h ago, upgrading from a 980). I have a 6700k "mac" that flips to a top of the line gaming pc if I am in the mood for that. Glorious: http://fred.d.pr/FQLuV http://fred.d.pr/FQLuV
- michelb 10y ago
  I'm looking to build something like that. Did you use a specific guide/golden build?
  - fredoliveira 10y ago
    There's the base guide at tonymacx86 [0], which got me 95% there. Then it was a matter of learning about specific things (like installing and enabling NVidia drivers, etc). It doesn't take a ton of time. I did keep great notes about all the process in hopes I'd have time to write an extensive guide, but still haven't quite been able to come up with the time to write it. [0] https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/unibeast-install-macos-sierra-on-any-supported-intel-based-pc.200564/ https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/unibeast-install-macos-si...

marceldegraaf 10y ago

Well there's good news: nvidia recently announced beta Mac drivers with support for their Pascal video cards[1] That means you can do a Hackintosh build with their latest video cards (GTX1080 or Titan) with full driver support. [1]: https://9to5mac.com/2017/04/11/nvidia-releases-pascal-web-drivers-mac-os-gtx-10-series-cards/ https://9to5mac.com/2017/04/11/nvidia-releases-pascal-web-dr...

morid1n 10y ago
I believe there are sleep issues with the new Pascal cards, or has this been fixed?
- H1Supreme 10y ago
  Last update said that was fixed.

acomjean 10y ago

Its actually really unfortunate this is the only way go to get power/ adaptability. I had a hackintosh for a couple years and while it ran great I was always nervous the next OS upgrade would render it useless. I got a Mac Book Pro and retired it (Linux and sold to a friend). Recently I went to a projection mapping seminar (its kinda like DJing but using video loops), everyone who attended had older macbook Pros (with hdmi to power the projectors). The production machines they use to do the projections live are all microsoft windows machines, as its the only way to get enough video horsepower to run the multiple displays. The artists running the seminar said they couldn't recommend macs anymore, excepting for some backend asset creation. Since most software is mac/windows right now its not a bid deal, I worry if the mac demand goes south, the software won't be ported. I'm hoping linux starts being more viable solution for content creation. Seems like its heading that way.

sdwisely 10y ago
This is exactly where I'm stuck right now. Using a hackintosh for mapping/vj'ing as the off the shelf hardware isn't at all practical and I want to keep using OSX only software. Honestly it's a nightmare. I want as many video outputs as possible, enough power to run multiple layers of video, be running game engines at the same time, transcode a video in a pinch and more. Switching to windows is probably the only option going forward.
glenneroo 10y ago
I've been VJing professionally for ~12 years with some friends and we have always exclusively used Windows machines because our internal testing showed that Macs were rarely enough to handle high-quality multi-screen projections properly. For the same price as a top of the line Mac, we were able to build a PC with roughly 2x the specs (and always a better GPU). We did however rely on Macs for QT encoding (usually PhotoJPG for best quality/size ratio), because even our fastest Windows boxes couldn't keep up with our slowest Mac (our conspiracy theory is that Apple intentionally crippled QT encoding on Windows). Over the last couple years we have switched purely to content production so we let another external company do the projections + mapping and we don't care what they use because it's doing mostly just video playback.

davnn 10y ago

> a decently powerful desktop Mac That's to be defined. I for example use a MBP with an E-GPU Setup (Sonnet Echo Express-III with a Pascal GPU inside). Put the MBP in my Docking station and I have a decently powerful desktop Mac. I love it, I hope that is the future.

rubyn00bie 10y ago
I thought about this but read that the E-GPU setup can have some performance penalties-- though this was with the Razer One and not a MBP. Any real world issues or hiccups, or has it been as good as you make it sound?
- davnn 10y ago
  The penalty is about 25% for my setup, but I'm still using a TB2 MBP and an external SSD on the same TB port. I think that's fair but of course with TB3 the performance penalty should be less. But there are unfortunately other things to consider. In my case the Echo express enclosure is not made for Graphic cards and you have to modify it to make it work - done in about one hour when you are really careful. The wait for Pascal drivers was sad. Other than that the only other thing that comes to my mind is that you cannot remove the MBP from the docking station before shutting it down. (I have read that sleep should also work but it does not for me) Edit: If things work really depends on the exact setup. I have just seen the video posted in another comment (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yho3rCNfzGE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yho3rCNfzGE) and it looks like I have just been really lucky with my setup.

rcarmo 10y ago

Yes, you can run Pascal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yho3rCNfzGE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yho3rCNfzGE (comparison with AMD, using external GPU enclosure) ...but you might not like the results under MacOS (Edited for typos)

codewithcheese 10y ago

There are lots of alternatives to VNC that are much more efficient and depending on your connection can even stream HD video. Unfortunately many of the alternatives are poorly documented. RDP will give better results and there are tons of implementations. NoMachine is probably the best documented and supported. However is proprietary but they have a free version. I believe it can do streaming video. Spice is poorly documented and seems to not be maintained however it is very efficient and can stream janky video. Have a look at XRDP with libfxcodec for streaming video (need lots of bandwith) otherwise without libfxcodec for decent low bandwidth

kschiller 10y ago
I've done some research into streaming video on a remote desktop for a project before and I've never heard of libfxcodec, can you go into more detail about it? I can't find anything about it.
- j_s 10y ago
  I didn't believe you until this brought up the parent comment as the only result: https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=xrdp+libfxcodec https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=xrdp+libfxcodec Shortest Googlewhack(-ish) I've ever accidentally stumbled upon myself, for sure! try: https://github.com/neutrinolabs/librfxcodec https://github.com/neutrinolabs/librfxcodec
  - codewithcheese 10y ago
    Oops yep, thanks for the correction j_s
  - kschiller 10y ago
    Cheers!
_jal 10y ago
I can really only use Spice on Linux. The Mac client is unusable. Haven't tried the Windows build. It would be a nice protocol if there were functional clients, but I fear that train has sailed.

Esau 10y ago

>I don't need ECC We all need ECC. It should be a standard feature by now.

stuff4ben 10y ago
While I agree, can you explain more about why you think we all need ECC?
- _asummers 10y ago
  I'd also be curious of numbers from people who DO run ECC about how many times it's saved them. Some things it's really necessary for (financial transactions comes to mind). That said, it should be much easier to get ECC in consumer hardware. Major props to AMD for their recent chips that allow it. Hopefully Intel follows suit.
  - garaetjjte 10y ago
    Didn't AMD CPUs already supported ECC for many years?
    - StillBored 10y ago
      I had a K6/2 with ECC back in the late 90's. So, yes. But for whatever reason, AMD never seems to put ECC in the bullet lists for why you should buy their parts. I guess as someone else mentioned its because the motherboard manufactures don't enable/qualify it even though its likely just a matter of firmware tweaks ever since the DRAM controller moved on chip. I got it working on a cheap phenom II/gigabyte motherboard (IIRC) some time ago as well. In that case I don't think the motherboard even advertised it, but I had some unbuffered ECC DIMMs lying around and I plugged them in, and they worked. Of course the only real indication besides booting the machine that it was actually working was a kernel blurb during boot about it. I don't think I got the EDAC reporting to give me soft error rates at the time.
  - drewg123 10y ago
    The problem is that it is unsupported, so getting a board where the BIOS can enable it & you can count on it working is a bit of a crap shoot. I had the same problem ~8 years ago when a friend and I built new desktops. You've got to do a lot of manual reading, forum reading and review reading before buying a board. Or buy it locally from a place with a good return policy. This is quite a bit different from server grade kit where ECC is fully supported.

ChairmanPao 10y ago

Actually, you do need ECC, you just don't realize it.

post_break 10y ago

I have a hackintosh with dual 280x's running in crossfire. Not sure what exactly you meant by that sentence.

dahjelle 10y ago

I haven't done any VNC client comparison, and don't use it regularly anymore, but JollysFastVNC[1] was originally written to be a much faster VNC client than the others that were available. Still works on macOS 10.12. [1] https://www.jinx.de/JollysFastVNC.html https://www.jinx.de/JollysFastVNC.html

rsync 10y ago

"I'd also like to say NVMe is mind blowingly fast on the desktop I've got and something sorely lacking from Apple's offering adding another downside to the current Mac desktops." I see that folks are putting nvme cards into their older mac pros: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/pcie-m-2-nvme-on-macpro.2030791/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/pcie-m-2-nvme-on-macpro... Is there a recipe that allows one to boot from an nvme add-in card on an older mac pro ? (in my case, early 2009)

vondur 10y ago
I don't think so, the Mac Pro's firmware doesn't understand NVME, you'd need to use an ACHI based M2 SSD with the PCIe card. (so many acronyms!)
islane 10y ago
https://www.amazon.com/Kingston-HyperX-Predator-SHPM2280P2H-480G/dp/B00V01C6M8 https://www.amazon.com/Kingston-HyperX-Predator-SHPM2280P2H-... I would suggest this card, it should work, it is SATA based as opposed to NVMe. I have installed a few of these in on several older systems (x58 based and others) and saw a very large performance bump, even versus SSDs connected via aftermarket PCIE SATA-3 controller (running at 500-550mbs). YMMV if attempting to clone an existing drive - I have had this problem with add-in PCIE cards, older motherboards, and various operating systems - a fresh install to one of these drives will likely be easier.

kristianp 10y ago

Xenon is a gas, and is also a chip used in the XBox 360 [1]. The server chip model from Intel is called Xeon. Sorry to be a name nazi, but some people may not be aware of the difference. Its hard to tell online if people don't notice the error or don't know they've made an error. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon_(processor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon_(processor)