The R9 380 has now been discontinued but you could probably pick one up second hand or try a 280 or a Vega type card – check out macrumors. As of writing, ive been using the AMD R9 380 in my 2010 5,1 MacPro for 25 months and its been great – slightly quieter than the 7950 and about the same power in FCPX (when the 7950 worked that is). Soon after sending back I decided to buy a bare PC card from Amazon uk because you can send it back if faulty and not loose any money. So overall, I was unlucky by receiving a dud – perhaps something went pop in transit as it did travel a very long distance. Something miners started to notice was as the DAG increased in size AMD Radeon 400/500 series cards took a performance hit, whereas the GeForce 10 series and older AMD Radeon 200/300 series cards. I received a full refund from MVC but this didnt include my expenses in shipping the item back (around £20) and I also wasnt refunded the £9 customs ‘admin’ fee – though I got the customs charge refunded (cant remember how much this was).
How to flash Bios R9 290X Based on 120,856 user benchmarks for the AMD. I bought a flashed AMD 7950 from Mac Vid Cards in December 2015 – I received this (from LA to UK) in Jan 2016 – soon after I discovered it was faulty with glitches, kernal panics and random restarts. MSI Radeon R9 290X Lightning 4GB GDDR5 PCIe R9 290X LIGHTNING reviews, pros and cons.
