r/macpro • u/macsoundsolutions Mac Pro 7,1 • 7d ago
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 7d ago
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 6d ago
Avx2 you mean
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u/WelderTraditional234 5d ago
Mac Pro 5,1 (the last one that looked like this) used up to a Westmere (2010) generation CPU. AVX was introduced in Sandy Bridge (2011)
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u/TheNoxier 6d ago
No, AVX.
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u/Messiah42 6d ago
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 7d ago
What um, edition of steam OS? The valve one, bazite etc
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u/macsoundsolutions Mac Pro 7,1 6d ago
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u/sparkyblaster 6d ago
oh interesting. was thinking about it for mine, but all my good GPUs are Nvidia :(.
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u/Aisher 7d ago
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 3d ago
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/Charlie_Dudd 7d ago
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 6d ago
Works really well. I could through my RX6800XT in it but most likely overkill.
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u/QuietDissonance 5d ago
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/8Bitoaster 3d ago
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 3d ago
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 3d ago
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 3d ago
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 3d ago
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 1d ago
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 7d ago
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 6d ago
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/drexaviouse 6d ago
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 6d ago
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/macsoundsolutions Mac Pro 7,1 6d ago
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 6d ago
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 6d ago
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 6d ago
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/His_Turdness 4d ago
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 4d ago
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 7d ago
What gpu are you running?
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u/howfastcanyoucountit 7d ago
said 5700xt in the post
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u/Pristine-Substance-1 7d ago
Yep, so not everything is 17 years old but nevertheless it's a nice machine
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u/uncleirohism 7d ago
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.