Help deciding which video card to get for my Mac Pro 2012 to gain Metal Support to Upgrade to Mojave

[scharfshutze009]

I need help deciding which video card to get for my Mac Pro 2012, so that my Mac Pro 2012 will be able to support the Metal Graphics API to allow it to upgrade to Mojave.

Here are the choices:

This is the Radeon Pro WX7100 that has 8GB of video ram and is single din on Newegg for $499:

https://www.newegg.com/amd-100-505826/p/N82E16814105069?&quicklink=true

and

Here is the same Radeon Pro WX7100 from dells website for $399:

https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/sho...MIhsajh7br5wIV0MDACh2ypgH7EAAYASAAEgKb8PD_BwE

Here is the Sapphire Radeon 7970 HD officially for Mac with 3 GB of video ram on Newegg, but it's out of stock now:

https://www.newegg.com/sapphire-rad...ion-_-9SIAFVFB3S1579-_-Product&quicklink=true

Here's the Nvidia Quadro K5000 for $599 used on Newegg, but I don't how it supports metal and I don't if it's also compatible with the thunderbolt card from HP that I also want to get to add thunderbolt 2.0 support to my Mac Pro 2012 because I don't if the Mac Pro 2012 supports the HP Thunderbolt 2.0 card and I don't know if it will work with the Quadro K5000 officially for Mac either:

https://www.newegg.com/nvidia-vcqk5...Mac-_-9SIAE8D6HM9910-_-Product&quicklink=true

The same goes for the Nvidia Quadro K4000 in the link below too as with the Quadro K5000 considering I don't how it supports metal and I don't if it's also compatible with the thunderbolt card from HP that I also want to get to add thunderbolt 2.0 support to my Mac Pro 2012 because I don't if the Mac Pro 2012 supports the HP Thunderbolt 2.0 card and I don't know if it will work with the Quadro K4000 officially for Mac either. Also I don't know if the Nvidia Quadro is compatable with Metal because Apple doesn't mention it in their knowledge base about Metal Support for Mac OS X Mojave, but this card might support the thunderbolt card from HP if the thunderbolt card from HP supports Mac in order to add thunderbolt support to my Mac Pro 2012:

https://www.newegg.com/pny-vcq4000m...Mac-_-9SIAE8D7F10124-_-Product&quicklink=true

Then there's this card the AMD Radeon Pro WX9100 for about $1500 that should definitely support metal:

https://www.amazon.com/AMD-Radeon-9...CAVMC6YXP37&psc=1&refRID=8EQ2318FNCAVMC6YXP37

Then there this card the Sapphire PULSE Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5 on Newegg for $179, which is a really good deal for making it possible to ugrade to Mojave:

https://www.newegg.com/sapphire-rad...B_GDDR5-_-14-202-278-_-Product&quicklink=true

I'm surprised that this AMD Radeon Pro WX2100 isn't on the list from apple to unless there's something I'm not seeing:

https://www.newegg.com/amd-100-506001/p/N82E16814105071

Apple's knowledge base is as follows:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208898

and here are the list of compatible video cards, but some of them cannot be found in stock if at all anymore:


Make sure that your graphics card works with Mojave
Next, check to see if the graphics card in your Mac Pro is compatible. You can use System Information to find out which graphics card your Mac has:

1. Press and hold the Option key while choosing Apple () menu > System Information.
2. In the sidebar, select Graphics/Displays. If your graphics card is compatible, you see "Supported" next to the Metal entry. You can also note the name of your graphics card and see if it's in the list below.

These specific third-party graphics cards are Metal-capable and compatible with macOS Mojave on Mac Pro (Mid 2010) and Mac Pro (Mid 2012):

• MSI Gaming Radeon RX 560 128-bit 4GB GDRR5
• SAPPHIRE Radeon PULSE RX 580 8GB GDDR5
• SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 7950 Mac Edition
• NVIDIA Quadro K5000 for Mac
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Mac Edition

Some other third-party graphics cards* based on the following AMD GPU families might also be compatible with macOS Mojave on Mac Pro (Mid 2010) and Mac Pro (Mid 2012):

• AMD Radeon RX 560
• AMD Radeon RX 570
• AMD Radeon RX 580
• AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100
• AMD Radeon RX Vega 56
• AMD Radeon RX Vega 64
• AMD Radeon Pro WX 9100
• AMD Radeon Frontier Edition

If the graphics card in your Mac Pro isn't listed above, you need to install one that's compatible with macOS Mojave. If you need additional help, contact Apple Support.
* Third-party graphics cards vary, so you should check with the vendor of your specific graphics card for compatibility details.

Which card should I get though?

 

[UnknownSouljer]

The best bang for the buck for performance is likely the 5700XT (the 5700XT requires Catalina 10.15.1 in order to be supported in macOS). The top dog to get is still the Radeon VII. The RX580 is likely your best plug and play option, especially considering its very low cost. If you don't do a lot of GPGPU or things necessitating high graphics, it's probably the way to go. The WX7100 is basically the same card as the RX480 (which in turn is pretty similar to the RX580).

The big thing to note with cards like the Vega 56, Vega 64, and Radeon VII is that it will require the Pixlas mod in order to give the card enough juice to run.

EDIT: Just to be clear, all of those cards that you list at the bottom support metal. Supporting Metal is a pretty low standard. Basically any card past 2012 supports Metal.
EDIT 2: I should also mention shopping for a graphics card on Mac is the same thing as PC (get the fastest thing you can for the money or best bang for the buck or whatever your criteria is). Other than that you're limited to AMD based cards. Past that, the other thing to mention is that Big Navi will likely be out within 6 months. So there should be a decent price drop on current cards or new performance leader (depending on which is more important to you) inside of that time. If you can wait, do so. If you can't, then my suggestions above stands. Although generally you didn't really say what if anything you need to use this graphics card for (other than running Mojave/Catalina).

EDIT 3: I just reread your post and your info about wanting to run Thunderbolt on the Mac Pro 2012. I'll save you the time and effort: you can't. Thunderbolt requires support on the motherboard, Thunderbolt cards basically just adds ports. There isn't a way to add Thunderbolt to the 4,1 or 5,1 Mac Pro. There is no combination of video card that will get you there. If you need expansion options, the best ones are installing a 10 GB/s Nic for server storage (if you have an at home server) or using USB 3.1 Gen 2 for 10GB/s external storage. You can also get an Apple Raid card and raid the four drives bays in hardware RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, JBOD. In that configuration I would recommend using a Samsung AHCI sm951 SSD on a PCI-E expansion card for boot (making sure you get the AHCI card is important, as the Mac Pro can't support NVME for boot drives as it doesn't support it in it's EFI. You can use NVME drives for storage etc though).