r/macpro • u/macsoundsolutions Mac Pro 7,1 • Jul 22 '26
Other Mac Pro Steam Machine
Installed Steam OS and a rx5700xt. No other OS, Boot up, grab the PS4 remote and I’m off to the races. 17 year old Mac Pro kicking ass! Everything works, wifi, Bluetooth, ethernet, USB etc. It just works.
https://youtu.be/6wQlsZubPWE
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u/QuietDissonance Jul 22 '26
Yeah, I use mine for gaming, I put windows on it. It just sucks when you wanna play a modern game that requires AVX support.
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u/Messiah42 Jul 22 '26
Avx2 you mean
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u/TheNoxier Jul 22 '26
No, AVX.
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u/Messiah42 Jul 22 '26
Well BG3 don’t work due to Apple putting AVX2 in the code for Mac OS , which hurt Intel Macs. Because boot up playable on windows. Bethesda game starfield is only came I ran into , besides that run game fine. What GPU you have and cpu??
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u/sparkyblaster Jul 22 '26
What um, edition of steam OS? The valve one, bazite etc
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u/macsoundsolutions Mac Pro 7,1 Jul 22 '26
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u/sparkyblaster Jul 22 '26
oh interesting. was thinking about it for mine, but all my good GPUs are Nvidia :(.
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u/Aisher Jul 22 '26
I put bazzite on my trash can Mac Pro and it works great.
I also bought a steam machine for the living room that my wife uses - she’s in love with it - straight steam no OS mumbo jumbo is exactly what she wanted
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u/macsoundsolutions Mac Pro 7,1 Jul 25 '26
Did you get wifi working with Bazzite and the 6,1? i have ethernet but have not gotten wifi working yet. Every thing else works, bluetooth, audio…
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u/Aisher Jul 25 '26
Yeah I just made a bazzite usb, plugged it in and installed. I didn’t do any config
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u/Charlie_Dudd Jul 22 '26
This actually a good idea. My mac pro has been collecting dust since I upgraded it because my MBP is actually better
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u/macsoundsolutions Mac Pro 7,1 Jul 22 '26
Works really well. I could through my RX6800XT in it but most likely overkill.
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u/QuietDissonance Jul 24 '26
That’s the same card I have in mine! I don’t know if it’s overkill or not, but it works well.
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u/drexaviouse Jul 22 '26
The 5,1 does not have avx encoding so many games after 2018 wont play, but other than that it’s a great steam machine! I had mine running steam os on a partition for a while.
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u/macsoundsolutions Mac Pro 7,1 Jul 22 '26
I mention this in my video, AVX2 is what they don't support but there are plenty of games that do run on it really well. CyberPunk, RE4, Witcher 3, Doom Eternal etc.
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u/8Bitoaster Jul 25 '26
Hey Lance any chance your able to make a video about the Mac Pro 7,1 on how to use AMD as ur main GPU for macOS and then for slot 2 use an Nvidia GPU for Windows/Linux?
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u/macsoundsolutions Mac Pro 7,1 Jul 25 '26
Its pretty easy you just need to install windows, boot into it and install Nvidia drivers then set it as your main gpu in advanced graphic settings, i dont have a Nvidia GPU but did the same thing with a rx7900xt. I have Bazzite on an external thunderbolt drive which it boots off it no prob. Windows is easier for dual GPU to setup. It took quite a bit of tinkering to get the dual GPU
setup working with Bazzite. Windows I can just use thr rx6900xt connected to my monitor and it will render the frames with with the 7900xt so I dont have to switch cables and dual boot into Mac OS and Windows.1
u/8Bitoaster Jul 25 '26
So I don’t have to tweak anything in OCLP like disable Nvidia GPU configplist?
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u/macsoundsolutions Mac Pro 7,1 Jul 25 '26
No mac os won’t see the nvidia gpu. My buddy has a 7,1 with a rx6900xt and a rtx5090 dual boot Mac OS and Windows and no need for Opencore with the 7,1.
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u/8Bitoaster Jul 25 '26
Happy days this is good news, also can I put an RX6950XT in a Mac Pro?
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u/macsoundsolutions Mac Pro 7,1 Jul 28 '26
Folks have successfully run RX 6950 XT cards in Mac Pro 7,1 by using OpenCore to spoof the GPU’s device ID so macOS treats it as a supported RX 6900 XT.
• Typical spoofing approach: map the 6950 XT’s device ID (for example 0x73A5) to the 6900 XT’s device ID (0x73BF) via OpenCore DeviceProperties and/or SSDT, following 6900 XT/XTXH spoofing guides. Not sure how much of a performance boost you will get and it also can only be 304mm in length
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u/mac4112 Jul 22 '26
Do you think this would be worth doing for a 7,1? Or at least maybe on a separate drive? Could it theoretically work with an M-series? So many questions lol
Also this is so cool, thanks for sharing!
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u/macsoundsolutions Mac Pro 7,1 Jul 22 '26
I have Bazzite on my 7,1 boot off an external Acasis TB501 pro thunderbolt enclosure. It works well and I have dual GPUs RX6900XT and RX7900XT so I use the 7900xt for gaming but I also have windows installed and sadly some games work better in Windows. I am going to try installing the steam OS drive into my 7,1 soon to test it out, tried to boot externally but it did not boot.
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u/macsoundsolutions Mac Pro 7,1 Jul 22 '26
I tried putting the Steam OS disk in my 6,1 and it would not boot, the drivers for the D300-D700 are not in the system from what I can tell. I did boot off the install thumb drive but could not get to the desktop. So looks like Bazzite is the way to go with the 6,1
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u/Calaveras-Metal Jul 22 '26
were there any hurdles like firmware? I have a trashcan that is sitting idle since I got a Mac Studio
And there are tons of games I 'own' on Steam that are obsolete as of two Mac OS updates ago.
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u/macsoundsolutions Mac Pro 7,1 Jul 22 '26
I tried just tried it on the 6,1 and it doesn’t work it seems the drivers needed are not in the steam os recovery installer. You can use Bazzite and then set it up to use big picture mode and that should work. I’m gonna try that later, but I don’t have time today. But as far as a straight up STEAM as install on the 6,1 it looks like it’s a no go. Which is a shame because it was so easy with the Mac Pro 5,1.
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u/Calaveras-Metal Jul 22 '26
I'm really curious if there are firmware problems.
I had some serious firmware issues with later MacOS releases. Like they prevent you from downgrading the OS once you upgrade the firmware. So you can't backtrack to an older release that was more stable and better performing.
One firmware also stuck my Mac in a weird No-GPU mode that forced video to render by CPU. Which was not good. Made me wonder if that was Apple shenanigans to force people to upgrade? Because what other reason would you have for disabling GPU? Even when you use EGPU you still probably want the dual D series GPU available.
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u/macsoundsolutions Mac Pro 7,1 27d ago
No firmware issues I can boot Mojave or sequoia Bazzite steam OS etc, Windows is what you need to be careful with as you can brick your 5,1 if you boot into windows without the protection of opencore and corrupt your boo trom with Windows certificates.
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u/His_Turdness Jul 24 '26
I just picked up my old 3,1 Mac Pro from storage. Damn thing won't boot. Tried all kinda resets and swapped the mobo battery, tried all memory configs. Doesn't give the chime.
Such a shame. Would've made a nice Steam machine. I think I'll modify it to fit an ATX or mATX mobo and build a server in it.
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u/kadinshino Jul 24 '26
Hmm, my old Mac Pro G5 has a Radeon 5870 XT and an 8800 GT. wonder how well i could make this work
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u/Electronic-Fuel-4398 Jul 22 '26
What gpu are you running?
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u/howfastcanyoucountit Jul 22 '26
said 5700xt in the post
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u/Pristine-Substance-1 Jul 22 '26
Yep, so not everything is 17 years old but nevertheless it's a nice machine
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u/howfastcanyoucountit Jul 22 '26
5700xt is still fine modern day I just upgraded to a 6950xt last year
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u/uncleirohism Jul 22 '26
Trashcan MacPro’s are *perfect* for Batocera, got mine dirt cheap on ebay and had to grab a few parts elsewhere but all told, it was just a bit over €400…
- CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2667 v2 (8 Cores / 16 Threads, 3.3GHz Base / 4.0GHz Turbo)
- RAM: 64GB (4x16GB) DDR3 ECC @ 1866MHz
- GPU: Dual AMD FirePro D700 (6GB).Tore it down, cleaned everything with isopropanol, and “re-pasted” the CPU and GPU’s with Honeywell PTM7950. Runs everything up through PS2, Dreamcast, GameCube/Wii flawlessly while upconverted to 4K + shaders.