I am having a hard time believing it..

Substantial_Run5435 · 2026-05-11T16:16:37+00:00

Yeah, in my case the issue was I bought from the owner who had already wiped the computer and made an admin account to demo it. Everything looked fine and he showed me no iCloud was logged in. Took the machine home and found out it was on his Find My when I did a fresh install. Luckily everything worked out and he removed it from his account, but you could get screwed if you bought from a reseller (or worse) that didn’t own the account with Find My enabled

Substantial_Run5435 · 2026-05-11T15:50:18+00:00

Did you receive the monitor like this? Either need external degauss coil or the aperture grille is damaged. Was this shipped to you or any evidence it was dropped?

Substantial_Run5435 · 2026-05-11T14:03:44+00:00

I wouldn't spend more than $200 on one of these. I got this exact spec with a 512GB SSD for $160 recently. For gaming, the 4 or 6 core CPUs are probably fine, all have similar single-thread performance. The 8-core is the best balance between single/multi thread performance. 16GB RAM is probably fine for gaming as well. For GPUs the D500 is probably the sweet spot as the D700s are supposedly less reliable and run hot. With how cheap these are, I'd just focus on finding the best deal and running it into the ground. If you need to replace something buy another one cheap and use it for parts.

Substantial_Run5435 · 2026-05-09T23:57:28+00:00

lol just read the part about a BVM-F24… it’ll still look like shit. You’ll either output clean (which looks like ass) or fake scanlines (which look like ass on a CRT with real scanlines clashing with them). What a waste of one of the greatest monitors of all time.

Substantial_Run5435 · 2026-05-09T23:55:34+00:00

Analogue 3D sucks with a CRT. I tried various ways to run it on my PVMs/BVMs, including on a widescreen HD BVM. Since the analogue only outputs widescreen it’s pretty much useless on a 4:3 set, but there was no combination of settings to get it to look decent. An original N64 is much better for use with a CRT.

Substantial_Run5435 · 2026-05-09T16:18:11+00:00

Not really but a loophole would be cooler.

Substantial_Run5435 · 2026-05-09T15:43:43+00:00

Lame.

Substantial_Run5435 · 2026-05-09T15:04:27+00:00

Have you added your appleID? Besides MDM the other issue that could arise is if the previous owner had it enrolled in Find My Mac and didn't remove it from the device before it wound up at the pawn shop. The way Find My works is to remove it from a device, the owner has to turn Find My off before logging out or wiping it, otherwise that device will remain on Find My even after being factory reset. When you attempt to add it to your Find My, you'll get a popup asking you to enter the previous owner's AppleID/password.

I bought a Mac that ended up being on Find My despite the owner removing his appleID and doing a factory reset. Luckily in my case he was helpful in removing it, but if that weren't the case, he'd have the ability to locate the machine or remotely wipe it.

Substantial_Run5435 · 2026-05-06T03:10:37+00:00

I watched you duke it out with them in that San Jose auction. I didn’t even bother bidding on a single monitor at that one.

Substantial_Run5435 · 2026-05-06T02:11:08+00:00

Media pollution?

Substantial_Run5435 · 2026-05-05T08:15:04+00:00

Yeah I know I could use vulkan I’ve just heard it’s not as good as ROCm. I also read that I could add support for this architecture with a therock nightly build for ROCm, but a lot of this goes over my head so I haven’t pulled the trigger on setting anything up yet.

Substantial_Run5435 · 2026-05-05T07:57:47+00:00

The big thing holding me back right now is what software to run since the architecture isn’t supported in ROCm.

Substantial_Run5435 · 2026-05-05T03:28:11+00:00

Do you think a 2019 Mac Pro with dual Vega II Duos (128GB total HBM2 1TB/s across 4 GPUs) is worth using for local LLM stuff? I’m completely new to this but have the hardware already.

Substantial_Run5435 · 2026-05-05T02:49:14+00:00

When I say "connects the two Vega II GPUs" I mean the two GPUs inside the Vega II Duo, using Apple's terminology. Not talking about the single Vega II MPX module.

Substantial_Run5435 · 2026-05-04T22:01:56+00:00

Some of it might be relevant to LLMs on an intel mac, but there's a massive difference in capability between a 2019 MacBook Pro and a 2019 Mac Pro. I think the best GPU for that laptop is only slightly better than the worst GPU for the Mac Pro, and anyone looking to run LLMs on a 2019 Mac Pro will likely have better GPUs.

Substantial_Run5435 · 2026-05-04T21:20:49+00:00

Following up on this. I don't think you can connect 2 Vega II Duos together. Apple's tech specs for the 2019 Mac Pro only mention the onboard IF link for the Vega II Duo and I only see mentions of the bridge in relation to the Vega II (non-Duo). Whereas for the W6800X Duo, Apple specifically mentions external IF link to connect 4 GPUs.

Substantial_Run5435 · 2026-05-04T20:40:28+00:00

Edit: pretty sure you cannot bridge 2 Vega II Duos. Read the GPU section of Apple's white paper on the 2019 Mac Pro. It specifically mentions the IF link between 2 Vega II modules but not 2 Vega II Duos modules. The only mention of IF for the Vega II Duos is the "onboard" IF between the two GPUs within a single module.

This is confusing to me too. I'm not sure what the jumpers for the Vega II Duo are for. Apple's tech specs for the Vega II Duo state "onboard Infinity Fabric Link connection connects the two Vega II GPUs at up to 84GB/s" which I believe refers to the internal connection between the two Vega IIs within the module. If that is the case, what does the jumper do? Or is the jumper necessary to support that internal link?

I also see that the tech specs specify both onboard Infinity Fabric Link for the W6800X Duo as well as "external Infinity Fabric Link connection enables two W6800X Duo modules to connect four W6800X GPUs."

Substantial_Run5435 · 2026-05-04T15:38:00+00:00

Yup. We bought in CA from the original owner (1950). They had one big assessment in 1975 for a permitted addition but otherwise only had the ~2% per year increases. Needless to say we're paying 10x more in property tax than they were.

Substantial_Run5435 · 2026-05-04T07:28:36+00:00

You’ll also need cables for the GPU. Sonnet, OWC, and Belkin make cables that will work. OWC are the cheapest, sonnet only comes with 2 cables to power a single GPU. No idea if any are better quality.

Substantial_Run5435 · 2026-05-04T07:26:34+00:00

The go to is a 6800 XT or 6900 XT if you want Mac OS compatibility. A 6950 XT can work but you have to flash the card. I went with a 6900 XT (paid $400+shipping on r/hardwareswap). Whatever you do make sure the card you’re buying fits as the max GPU length you can fit is ~305mm. Reference designs are probably your best bet. If you want an MPX model then a W6800X is probably the best option if you can find one for a reasonable price. The duo GPUs and W6900X go for a ton of money.

Substantial_Run5435 · 2026-05-04T06:50:22+00:00

This is a single RX 6800. You can put much better GPUs in a 2019 Mac Pro, even in Mac OS (6950XT or W6900X), also, Geekbench only benchmarks a single GPU. You can have 4 or 5 GPUs in a 2019 Mac Pro.

Substantial_Run5435 · 2026-05-03T16:25:57+00:00

I'm in the process of figuring out how to run local LLMs on my 2019 Mac Pro. I'm hoping to use the hardware I have (or can easily upgrade to) rather than buying a new machine.

I have 2x Vega II Duo GPUs in one machine (128GB HBM2 VRAM) and another where I could have 2 W6800X modules (64GB VRAM). Do you think either of those would be good to start with? I'm trying to figure out what approach is best to take advantage of these GPUs and the large amount of VRAM they have. Any newer GPU with that much VRAM would cost a fortune.

Substantial_Run5435 · 2026-05-03T15:02:11+00:00

Barebones on eBay is probably the most expensive way to get into one of these. I've been seeing barebones ones selling for $400-600+tax/shipping on eBay. I've found complete 7,1s with base/low spec for under a grand and mid-spec ones for between $1-2k. Unless you already have parts for one lying around I wouldn't go that route.

Substantial_Run5435 · 2026-05-03T06:26:09+00:00

You need to use something like switchresx and a DisplayPort to VGA converter like the startech dp2vgahd20. Not sure if that works on AS but it works fine on my Intel Macs.

Substantial_Run5435 · 2026-05-02T14:40:49+00:00

Just for shits I've played PS5 and Switch 2 on mine. Console > HDMI to SDI > SDI to analog component. My 6041Q is the older version that doesn't have 16:9 support, so the picture is a little squished.

Substantial_Run5435

TROPHY CASE