Comments on: Video card options for Mac Pro

By: pablo

pablo — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 01:54:46 +0000

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

By: malcolm

malcolm — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:29:44 +0000

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).

By: Matthew Ross

Matthew Ross — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:16:52 +0000

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.

By: malcolm

malcolm — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 09:19:38 +0000

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…

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 14:02:18 +0000

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?

By: bvac

bvac — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 01:46:04 +0000

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.

By: elothean

elothean — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 08:39:25 +0000

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?

By: Derick

Derick — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 22:07:24 +0000

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.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 13:08:45 +0000

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.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 13:06:15 +0000

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?