Video card options for Mac Pro
As I’ve blogged about earlier, I am the proud owner of a Mac Pro. I love it. One thing I don’t love about it though, is the video card. My box came with the default nVidia 7300 GT and it’s a dog. I can draw polygons by hand faster than this thing.
So I went to the Apple store and checked out what options I had for upgrading. Turns out there are three options, nVidia 7300 GT (the one I have), ATI X1900 XT and an nVidia Quadra FX 4500. This is a joke. The Quadra is of no use to me and costs a rediculous amount of money, so I’m left with the ATI X1900 XT. Thing is, this card is so old I wasn’t even able to find it in Swedens two largest online PC stores anymore. The closest thing is the successor, the X1950 XT. This card costs about $285 if you buy it for a PC. Guess what Apple charges for the X1900 XT here in Sweden? $550!
Dear Apple. Please get a grip and start to offer some modern video card options for the Mac Pro. How about an nVidia 8600 GTS? It’s dirt cheap and still packs a punch. Just slap on your custom BIOS or whatever and get it out there!
36 comments
Mate I agree completely. I have a MBP right now, and will buy a 8 core Mac Pro as soon as they support the Nvidia 8000 (G80) series cards.
I’ve owned a Mac Pro (2.66 GHz, Dual dual-core) since August 2006, and it’s been a great machine. Of course, I bought the stock configuration, because that was all you could get back then. Within two weeks, I purchased the ATI X1900 XT card (for $499 USD) from the Apple Retail Store, and initially things worked fine. Sure, the fan on the video card was 4x louder than the other six fans in the Mac Pro combined, but performance was excellent and I was happy with World of Warcraft and my other apps.
Then, my X1900 XT started crapping out. After a few weeks, I started getting artifacts such as torn polygons and extending vertices when playing WoW. Reports surfaced on the Blizzard and Apple web sites of similar problems from other users, with the Apple site quickly squelching and deleting threads relating to the issues. The ‘fix’ was to run SMC Fan Control, jack up the PCIe and CPU/RAM fan speeds to the point the case sounded like a jet engine, and lo and behold – the artifacts went away. Clearly a cooling issue. Problem is, after a few more weeks, had to jack up the fan speeds even faster, and faster, and faster, until — it no longer helped at all. Artifacts no matter what, and getting worse!
Yes, the X1900 XT got a regular blast of air to keep the heatsink and cooling fan clear of dust. Yes, I verified the fan was running and blowing air out of the back of the dual-slot cooler that felt like a hair dryer on high. Yes, getting worse.
The card died 11 months after purchase. The Mac Pro was locking up after just a few minutes of use, artifacts so bad you couldn’t play WoW, and desktop image corruption just sitting at a blank desktop in OSX. The card had to come out.
Warranty? Ha! 90-days on parts. The card wasn’t ordered as part of a Configure-to-Order package, so the card itself isn’t covered under my system’s Apple Care. Ignore the fact the card was bought two weeks after the system from a retail Apple Store. You’re in the cold.
My eventual solution was to stick the broken Apple card back in the box, and return to my sloth-slow 7300 GT factory card. Performance is terrible in comparison, but the system works great.
What are my options today? Same as they were 1.4 years ago — nothing. EFS may be the wave of the future, but I have seen no proof of that in the industry. There are no reasonable alternatives. Another X1900 XT for $299 from Apple (at least the price has come down) — but you can’t find one in stock because ATI hasn’t made a X1900 Radeon chip in over 1.5 years – they’re making 3800 series chips, TWO full generations newer now.
Apple – Get on the ball, and produce some BIOS/driver packages for a modern card or two. A 8800 series nVidia, or 3800 series ATI/AMD card would be splendid.
Greg
I agree with you guys 100%! This is bull crap that Apple charges so much for their products and then you can’t even get a decent video card. I have the 1900 XT and I like X-Plane…. I have to keep turning the graphic options down in X-Plane. Hey, I bought a MAC PRO !!!! It should be professional product! The money they charged me for this system, I could have purchase an Alienware bad to the bone, smokin PC!!!!!!
I do love the operating system as far as no spyware or virus problems etc, but that is about it…… Wake up APPLE!!!! Give us a decent video card selection!!!!! The Mac ads got people to start buying, but hey… If they keep this up…. well sales will plumit to the basement. GET US A VIDEO CARD !!!!!
I started to have problems with my 1900 XT (lines and hangs) and started to look around for another card. I have a 2006 Mac Pro with 667MHz memory (6GB). Nvidia make a GeForce 8800 GT 512MB that is designed for 2006 Macs (according to their web site) so I ordered one. It is on the MacPro compatibility list at their web site and of course I cnnot find the URL now.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
Here’s the URL for the card on the nvidia site:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_8800gt_for_mac_us.html
http://325i.org/tag/9800gtx/
It’s kind of amusing that we’re still discussing this, two years later :)
Hola
I am a prepress tech and have set up numerous macpros around the San Diego area, the one i am on now has been getting vertical tears and white and black screens, which a (hard) reboot fixes. it has a 1900 XT, and obviously a video card issue. i am gong to replace it with this (not going to put a customer through the pain of waiting for a replacement, when its their only production machine.)
ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB PCIe Video Card *Mac Pro*
the Link:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ATI-Radeon-HD-4870-1GB-PCIe-PCI-e-Video-Card-Mac-Pro_W0QQitemZ310161429265QQcategoryZ25449QQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp4340.m183QQ_trkparmsZalgo%3DSICDD%26its%3DI%252BC%252BS%252BIA%26itu%3DSI%252BUS-BWR%252BUCI%252BIA%252BUCC%252BPSS%252BCRS%252BIT%252BUA%26otn%3D1%26ps%3D33#ht_4159wt_937
i will post you guys a follow up once it has arrived and installed.
pas
macVato
WOW! TWO years later and this topic is still relevant today as it was years ago. I agree with all of you. The whole Apple situation in regards to video cards (don’t EVEN get me started with audio cards and memory) is downright pitiful. I switched to the Mac three years ago but still use a PC. I miss the convenience of being able to simply swap out my card when the latest and greatest cards come around.
My 7300GT died three days ago and being on a budget, am only able to afford the ATI Radeon HD 3870 (Mac & PC edition). Why can’t more manufacturers create Mac/PC hybrid cards? This is ridiculous. Any way, this is the card I ordered on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/ATI-100-435928-Radeon-3870-512MB/dp/B001CN9EC4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1251518399&sr=8-1
Is there any hope that perhaps with Snow Leopard out now there might be some improvement with this situation?
Nando
I entirely concur with this thread. Struggling here myself seriously. I actually need a secondary card (I’ve had my ATI Radeon HD 2600 die once while still under warranty as it’s death caused my HFS+ header files to corrupt and Alsoft had to fix DiskWarrior to make it repair my array and thus I’m one of the reasons for the wonderful 4.2 release that still needs work to support > 4TB drives… sorry, this is a painful topic. ;) . . .
So yeah, I need a secondary card and I am going nuts. I suppose I’m going to go ahead and buy a stock card and reflash it to work with Mac OS X firmware, but that is just a time intensive process. We should not have to go through that.
Anyone want to help me make a site dedicated to using stock video cards on Mac Pros? Ping me on Twitter. @ylluminate (http://twitter.com/ylluminate) Let’s just pick up the gauntlet ourselves and make it clear what we want.
This is what I just ordered, per recommendation from a friend.
http://www.evga.com/articles/00479/
I have the same issue with my Mac Pro and the ATI X1900XT. I experience problems regarding screen artifacts (dots and sometimes they blink, odd horizontal lines, and locks up when any 3D occurs). The problem was not bad at first but has gotten much worse to the point that I have to use SMC Fan Control with all fans at full speed, and in addition i have the side of the case off. Gaming isnt even an option for me anymore (I know people say Mac’s are made for work and this video card issue really enforces that).
What are my options for a replacement video card? I do not want another ATI Radeon x1900xt it is by far the worse video card I’ve ever owned. Does the nVidia 8800 GTS work in the Mac Pro (3.0 ghz dual core)? I just want my system to be stable since when these video issues occur the entire system locks up and I have to force power it off. You’d think a video card that originally retailed for $499 would perform well.
Thanks for any tips on other video cards that have worked with your Mac Pro 3.0ghz (1333 FSB, 16 lane PCIx)
-Rich
This is the one issue that keeps from buying Apple/Mac products. The fact that what your buying is an appliance not an upgradable computer. I can certainly understand why Apple wants to keep a tight leash on what hardware is allowed or not (i.e. profit and quality control issues) but I think its time they let their Mac Pro users have a choice in what they want to use. That is the reason they bought a mac in a case that opens and not as an all in one appliance (iMac, Mac Mini).
Just my two cents :)
Rich: Have a look at the card Adam C recommended.
Rich
I can’t believe how few options are available for video cards! I had a Apple Care 3 year Warranty when my ATI Radeon X1900 XT bust the first time and was replaced for free. Recently checkered horizontal lines appeared and now I can’t get past login screen. I went to Apple genius bar today and the employee told me to not waste money on the card and find a cheaper compatible one. I went to Fry’s thinking I could just replace it easily and I was told they don’t carry apple video cards?? I’ve been researching my options for hours now (also on budget) and not too happy with results.
I found this link helpful from http://www.xlr8yourmac.com
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/Graphics/ATI_3870_Mac_PC_review/radeonhd3870_review.html#storytop
It looks like these are best options…
ATI Radeon HD 3870 (requires Leopard) approx $219
NVidia GeForce 8800 GT $279
ATI Radeon 2600 XT $129 (from what I’ve read about it this card has a fan that’s as loud as the engine off the latest Airbus A380 aircraft).
I haven’t found a local reseller in OC, wish there was a store I could purchase it from.
It’s a pity if we pay ATI twice because they make bad designed hardware which fail, probably after the guarantee too.
So why not try a NVidia 8800 next time?
I have the same problem. It helped a while to clean the fins. smcFanControl helped too. But now the crashes comes several times every day …
system mac pro-2 x 2.8, 14 gig ram, ati 2600
last night the flippin graphics card died on me. screen flickered off and came on. from the other side of the room i assumed it was some kind of power saving feature or the mac going to sleep. no apple care or warranty. ill double check. when i boot up the apple logo comes up fine then after that the screen goes black however the mac continues to boot as normal. gutted. time to get that extortionately priced ati 4870 or the better mac mechanix one. cant believe apple want £286 for the 4870 yet the xfx pc equivalent is £100 on overclockers.co.uk i really do hope apple make the ati 5000 series graphics cards (the ones hopefully in 2010 mac pro which should land soon) reverse compatible. god knows how much they will charge for it.i am not to impressed either with apples overpriced options.
dav
ignore my previous post except about apples graphics cards being extortionately priced. turned out that there must have been some sort of power fluctuation/surge which bungled up two of my monitors. everything connected via the power conditioner unit was fine. so lucky my mac pro was hooked up to it rather than directly to the wall outlet. you know when you have been stressed out, and still feel stressed out after the situation has been rectified/resolved because you haven’t accepted the fact that its sorted, awesome my mac pro is still alive.
anyone want 8800 GT @ $160 free shipping for mac pro? :)
Sad to see I’m not alone in this situation. I got my Mac Pro late 2006. In 2007, the ATI X1900 started getting the same lines and artifacts and eventually died, the machine wouldn’t even boot, the card was totally dead. It was still under warrantee for parts, so I just had to haul it myself to an apple store and they replaced the card for free. Now, it’s 2010 and it’s getting the same artifacts issue again. Worse, actually, since I think the first one died before it got this bad. It’s only a matter of time before it does die. I also blow the dust out of my system periodically, but still need to use SMC fan control (it’s uncanny how we are all doing the same exact things here) to keep it cool and not lock up while doing something SO graphics intensive, like open terminal. Problem with it being this late in the game is that now my only option, other than calling apple and ordering a third X1900 for full retail (which will die again with their disposable nature) or find a used Nvidia on ebay.
Due to ATI’s heat problems with the x1900XT, I am going to pick up the nVidia 8000 GT 512MB. I found the card on eBay (used and new). It is made for the Mac Pro 2006/2007 (1333FSB) seems it is the other upgrade option back when the Mac Pro was new in 2006. The nVidia has higher 3D ratings than the ATI plus hopefully it’ll rid me of these annoying dots/lines/artifacts (and powering off system every 2-3 days due to lockup). Over the past few weeks now I have “purple shaded boxes” appearing sometimes inside browser window…. very strange. I click to another window and it disappears.
Worst part is I used to have alot of respect for ATI (due to the fact they are big OpenGL supporter) however the x1900XT is a horrible video card.
-Rich
I have a 2006 Mac Pro and a few days ago the graphics card went on it. This post was the only one I could find that was of any help at all.
However, thought you’d like to know that I ended up finding a completely different solution that was not only effective but cheap too.
I live in China, and if there’s one great thing about this place, is that people know how to stretch a dollar. I lugged the computer in to a computer marketplace after it was clear the graphics card was shot. None of the people there had ever seen a mac before much less worked on one, but they knew computers, and knew the fundamentals.
After I’d described the problem (screen turning blue, visual completely freezing up) in about 2 seconds flat the guy pointed to two capacitors on the card and said they needed replacing.
A couple hours later I get a phone call – the computer was working perfectly and my bill came to 13 bucks.
Something to consider in case you run into this kind of thing again – aim for repair instead of replacement.
Tara
There is a solution available: http://tinyurl.com/gforce8800gt June 2010
I have a 2009 quad core 2.93 mac pro with 6GB of Ram and 4 x 1 TB hard drives plus an ATI 4870
The card is good, easily plays top games in Windows and Mac through Steam at 1920 x 1200 res.
But that said it was overpriced as a card and Apple should have at least 6 options on the go keeping up by at least 6 to 9 months behind with the latest ATI or Nvidia cards.
If they did this sales would jump as Windows users and or Gamer’s would buy a Mac for the benefits of a Mac machine (style, build quality, OS , development options – thinking iPhone and iPad, additional professional usage and more…) as well as a fantastic windows machine for development purposes; and not least as an excellent gaming platform. Its a no brainer… but what do I know…
If they want to sell some volume without becoming common (the price will stop that) then ship more upgrade options..
.. but I suppose apple are transfixed by making iPhone and iPad the device arena battle ground.
I have an early ’08 Mac Pro.
I’be run Final Cut Pro on it from day one and have upgraded OS to Snow Leopard.
So now I have 8 processors, 8TB of HDD (upgraded those too, four 2TB drives) and 6GB RAM – and the stinky HD2600XT graphics card is the weak link. I always had to wait for renders when working HD video – very frustrating on such a high end machine.
Part of the reason is software – Apple are VERY quiet about it but while Snow Leopard might be 64 bit but FCP is very much 32 bit.
So I’m considering going back to PC. Adobe CS/5 Premier pro can work native AVCHD (FCP imports and transcodes this under ‘Log and Transfer’) and the graphics cards on windows machines are vastly better supported than those on macs due to higher volumes.
For editing video….well you want the graphics card doing all the work and CS/5 offers that. So does Snow Leopard – but FCP doesn’t implment it.
Bottom line – my HD2600 XT had failed was was replaced under warranty. Apparently the Mac version had a revision which makes it more resilient (great)
Before I give up on my 3 year mac experiment – i would liek to try a ATI Radeon HD4870 – but even mac support cant tell me whether the 1 GB version will work – I know the 512k one does. And that’s what it boils down to really. With Windows, you know it;s going to work. IWth mac – you have to ask them – and the guy was Googling to advise me – - if I had posted that I knew it worked – he would have passed this on as firm knowledge….
What makes this machine worth prevailing with (for video editing – it’s an great machine for everything else) is the low noise level. It would be hard to achieve this on a similar PC – I have tried (and suceeded to a good degree) and know.
SO – does the 1GB ATI RADEON HD4870 – at £100 from Pixmania – work in the mac pro or not?
correction – for the picky – FCP Studio does implement the graphics card working the video (as opposed to the processors) but only in Motion and Livetype – not for the footage itself.
My Radeon 1900XT finally died me as well. I’m trying to find an ATI 3870 Mac/PC Edition. So far, I haven’t had any luck. Does anyone know where I can find one or can give me a good alternative? I have a Dual Core Mac Pro system 1,1. I don’t do a lot of gaming, but mainly video editing with Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, and After Effects. Is a Geforce 8800GT a good alternative? I’m able to find refurbs of these on Ebay. Thanks for any help.
i have a mac pro i bought three years ago mainly for video editing. my video card suddenly gave up on me, i was unable to boot past the apple logo. The tech people did something with it to have it up and running again but the problem still popped up a few days later. still no cheaper alternative to replace the video card?
Hi everyone. I have an original MacPro 1,1 with a recently deceased ATI X1900. I never knew it was so difficult to get a replacement video card.. they still charge over $200 for those pieces of crap? Anyway, I want to replace the card with something cheap (<$100) that doesn't require any hacking to get working. Does anyone know of any that are officially/unofficially compatible? In the meantime, I have a Geforce 8600GTS so I am going to see if I can get that working at all with an EFI injector.
Possible the best find all night. MAc Pro 1,1 and I will be buying the 880GT for my mac still trying to find out how to put them in to sli and is it worth it?
OMG, so many people who are experiencing the same problems with their Mac Pro!
I also have a Mac Pro 1.1 but with a Nvidia Geforce 7300GT and the situation is not better than with a ATI Radeon X1900 XT…
I also have some video artefacts, system freezing, especially when the computer comes back from standby mode.
So if I understand all of you, there is no problem with the RAM, or the hard drive, but it must be a video card issue? What a shame for such a professionnal computer…
I would like to think that Apple has a solution for this problem. I have an early 2006 Mac Pro with 12 gigs of ram and x1900 video card. I have been taking the card out monthly to clean, and even thought about taking the heatsink off completely and turning my fans way up with smc. Has anyone found a working card for this model yet. I see lots of posts about it, but nobody says what has actually worked for them.
I wanted to let you know that I opened my computer and checked the video card. It has some swollen condensators.
After checking many websites, I found that this problem was known by Apple.
I have just called them and actually they agree to repare it for free in an Apple authorized service center, even if I had only 1 year of guarantee (my Mac Pro is 2 years old).
Same thing my x1900 is crap and i cant find a cheap replacment. just bought a Nvidia GT120 from apple store and got a black screen nothing.. Do you guys know about flashing and card would work best with my version MacPro.
Amazing this seems to be the best compendium the subject. I would love to see Steve Jobs do a press conference about this.
Hardware Overview:
Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro2,1
Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 3 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 8
L2 Cache (per processor): 8 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1.33 GHz
Having seen the shared grief above, I count myself amongst the lucky ones. I have a Mac Pro1.1 bought with the X1900 which still works. Currently with 6Gb Ram, running 2 monitors (although the secondary screen often takes ages to wake up). My current quest is to run 3 monitors (Dell U2711′s, which, I believe is the same panel as the new 27inch mac display). The question is what graphics card to run them all at native res (2560 x 1440). Having spent hours searching, advice is conflicting. You cannot have a second X1900 due to power connections required. I have seen reports of conflicts between the X1900 and the 7300GT, making this option unattractive. I am not aware of any single Mac compatible multi headed graphics card that can drive the 3 screens. I have failed to discover if I replace the X1900 with the geforce 8800 GT, and add a second card what that should be either. The quadro FX 4500 does not seem to offer any advantage in this situation.
Main use is video intensive educational presentations, video and graphics editing, along with moderately large databases and spreadsheets. No gaming.
Apologies for the long post.
Any workable solutions welcome.
Well guys, here’s yet another disappointed PC user-switched to Mac with (brace yourselves) a graphics issue. My 2007 Mac Pro has an NVidia 7300 GT that just went dead about two weeks ago. What I get when I turn it on is a distorted white and light blue that looks like Windows Millennium Edition on safe mode. The computer gives me the power on sound and the apple logo and scrolling circle appears on the color-distorted screen, but after a little while, a dark curtain comes down (also looking like Millennium’s safe mode) asking me to hold the power button to shut down and restart.
So, I searched high and low on the net only to find there is nothing to replace the damn thing… except for an NVidia 8800 GT which cost me my precious gems AND my neighbor’s as well (lol), $180 USED!!! Can you guys believe it? But of course you can! We’re on the same boat… Only that when I installed it, nothing comes to the screen. I also tried the different resets (command+option+P+R, SMC) and nada.
What Gives?
I have a mac pro 2006, and I have some issue with the Nvidia 8800GT, after upgrading to snow leopard 10.6.4. The screen now freeze and blinks and do all kind of wild lines. I have read that there are some driver issued with snow leopard latest release and the 8800GT card. I still have my original card just in case I have to use until APPLE find a solution with the driver. So be aware if you use Snow Leopard better keep with 10.6.3 and don’t upgraded to 10.6.4.