Comments on: Video card options for Mac Pro

By: Richard

Richard — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:33:25 +0000

I’ve a 2009 quad 2.93 mac pro. 4 x 1tb drives, and the hd 4870 card.

I’m on this blog today because I want a new card. Its Feb 2012 and I’m not paying £377 pound for a 2 year old card from Apple – 5870!

I’m hoping they up date the mac pro this year and issue new cards, but even then they will be 9 / 16 months behind.

Someone could set up a nice business flashing cheaper (in terms of retail) cards with efi and bios firmware… Seen some guys selling on Ebay mainly the 68x series.

I’m thinking of maybe running two cards, my original 4870 which is still pretty much sterling in its ability and a newer card for Windows that will only work in boot camp. I would need a switch box for my two monitors so both operating systems could connect to each of my two monitors and I’d need a power splitter.

Pros: Latest cards for windows applications and games.
Cons: Heat / power consumption of unused card whilst booted into “other” os, plus having to switch a button when switching between windows or lion. Further all those additional cables for the switch box.

The problem is most people when buying a mac or going for the imac and not the mac pro. There is no market!

By: Dark0

Dark0 — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:17:44 +0000

Jay Roberts: Only one DVI can recognize signal from VGA, try to switch them, and look in the manual of the projector, your projector also have to recognize the signal

By: Rickard

Rickard — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 12:59:48 +0000

Flash: We’re quite aware of that. However, there are people that have put a lot of money into buying a Mac Pro and for them, being able to upgrade the video card is important.

By: Flash

Flash — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 03:31:17 +0000

Guys, Apple is no longer interested in the “professional” application of it’s products. Look at the whole FCP X debacle, the abandoning of Logic Pro in studios, and what Apple is focused on – iPhones and iPads. Yes, it’s sad but true, if you want a smoking hot computer, you have to build it yourself. Then you can install windows, linux, or hackintosh onto it and enjoy top of the line components.

By: Jay Roberts

Jay Roberts — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:07:11 +0000

I have more of a question than a comment. I recently acquired a Mac Pro 1.1 tower. I attempted to connect a lcd projector to the auv dvi with an adaptor dvi -vga cord. The MAc is not recognizing the projector. Can anyone offer assistance?

By: chris murdock

chris murdock — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 18:25:08 +0000

hey i’ve ben a fan of macs my whole life but im not a wis when it comes to upgrading i have 13-inch Late 2006 Processor 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Memory 2.5 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM Graphics Intel GMA 950 64 MB and im running it on lion 10.7 and i havent had problems before but i went to download a game that i got for christmas and it sais failed to detect supported video card but i have played WoW and mant other games is it because something went bad or is it because it is not a good enough card and if i need to buy a better one wat one do i get and do u know how much that would cost me

By: Nick

Nick — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 15:50:18 +0000

Hey Robert, supposedly you can use a PC video card in your mac pro, you just have to keep the stock card in it. On the second video card (one you want to use), u won’t see the apple screen, but when it goes into osx, the screen will pop up. Done with an injector from the hackintosh world, go to http://www.kexts.com and look for graphics driver/injectors. Supposedly a friend is using a gt240 1gb in his mac pro, unaltered bios, with only an injector.

By: Robert Baker

Robert Baker — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 23:35:13 +0000

I have a 2008 Mac Pro running Windows 7 Pro 64 bit. My Nvidia 8800 Gt has stopped working so I’ve started looking for a replacement and have been surprised to find out that this is not an easy task!! I figured I would just order a card I wanted and be done. I can’t believe that in 2011 Mac has to have a specialty card. I was looking at the GTX 560 Ti for my work in 3DS Max.

Has anyone tried putting a standard video card in to see if it works? I need to find something soon!

By: dcouzin

dcouzin — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 01:51:26 +0000

I’ve a MacPro 1,1 with the nVidia 8800GT. The graphic card’s firmware is rev. 3233 for the early MacPro’s, and all was well until I jumped from OSX 10.5.8 to 10.6.8. Then the screen colors weren’t to my liking and attempts at color profiling went weird. Color profiles behaved as expected in the icons and text areas, but were useless in picture areas (such as the desktop background). A simple experiment shows this: System Preferences > Displays > Color > Calibrate > Expert Mode > Continue > Continue > Continue > Continue > Continue > Continue > Continue > move gamma slider to 1.0 > Continue > Continue > Continue > Continue > Done. When the slider is moved to 1.0 the screen becomes very pale. Then four Continue’s later the screen reverts to “normal” gamma. But look at the icons. They’re still blanched. Even weirder things occur using Grab. The distinctions between differently generated screen regions implicates the graphics card. Color calbration is impossible both by the eyeball method and by instrumental methods.
All’s well again when booting to OSX 10.5.8.
Is there something screwy with my MacPro 1,1 or with my nVidia 8800GT or with my OSX 10.6.8 causing the color profile problems? Or is there an incompatibility in that trio (which should have been noticed by lots of users)?
nVidia does provide a driver for the 8800GT for Snow Leopard, but it wouldn’t install on my MacPro 1,1. “Unsupported System / This computer will not support this NVIDIA graphics solution.” Again, if the trio {MacPro 1,1; nVidia 8800GT; OSX 10.6.8} is incompatible then lots of users must have encounterd this before.
It will help in the full appraisal of this graphics card (and help in my trouble shooting) if other users share their experiences, perhaps after repeating the simple experiment.
Thanks.
dcouzin

By: mike

mike — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 07:57:34 +0000

…the video card HD577- works fine in my old mac pro. FCP 10 stinks. Hangs, stalls, spinning ball of death, useless interface, initially imports metadata (dates) from DVC – which impressed me – then stopped – which didn’t – then a mate says his imovie has done it all along….hmmm)

FCP 10 – if you’re upgrading from imovie it’s (probably) worth the expense; if your moving from FCP7, go AVID, go Adobe Premiere, don’t go FCP 10 for your 64 bit editing solution – especially if you are also shelling out to upgrade your mac video card – it’s definitely not worth the money. (Oh and remember – I started out very impartial and full of optimism)