Mac Pro take apart

i'm actually a little disappointed in it. :(

4 x 2.66GHz Core2 chips would run F@H pretty well i imagine...
 
anyone know if you can just drop a regular PCI-E nVidia card into these things? or do they still have a different firmware on the Apple cards?
 
felix88 said:
anyone know if you can just drop a regular PCI-E nVidia card into these things? or do they still have a different firmware on the Apple cards?
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You can't. You have to take what you are given. You aren't allowed to run any other video cards, they won't work.
 
felix88 said:
anyone know if you can just drop a regular PCI-E nVidia card into these things? or do they still have a different firmware on the Apple cards?
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Maybe with a ROM flash.
 
Black Morty Rackham said:
Allowed!?
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Yep. They only provide driver support for the cards they sell in thier systems. So far it's the Intel 900/950, ATI X1600, Nvidia 7300 and FX4500. No other card works. You can't buy an off the shelf card, plug it in, and expect it to work. Well the only thing you could plug it into is the Mac Pro but it won't work. Rather dissapointing.
 
Archer75 said:
Yep. They only provide driver support for the cards they sell in thier systems. So far it's the Intel 900/950, ATI X1600, Nvidia 7300 and FX4500. No other card works. You can't buy an off the shelf card, plug it in, and expect it to work. Well the only thing you could plug it into is the Mac Pro but it won't work. Rather dissapointing.
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+ ATI X1900 XT

And BMR was making fun of your choice of wording. I think he understands the graphic card issue :)
 
Man I'm glad I don't have to do mac repairs anymore. Removing the logic board out of that thing does not look fun. Kinda figured that as the liquid cooled g5s were a bitch as well(well all of the g5s). Other then that the layout seems pretty good.
 
This would defeat the purpose of a Mac, but if you ran Windows on it (I've never tried it, but I've heard you can) you could put whatever PCIe graphics card you wanted I would think.
 
ryan_975 said:
This would defeat the purpose of a Mac, but if you ran Windows on it (I've never tried it, but I've heard you can) you could put whatever PCIe graphics card you wanted I would think.
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I wonder about that. I'm thinking that the EFI would not support it so maybe if you got windows loaded then switched cards and booted the machine maybe windows would pick it up when it went into the gui but I still think it would not work. Don't have a mac pro though so I can't try it.
 
Doesn't Windows probe for hardware anyway, so you may not see anything until the Welcome screen, but you should IF I'm right.
 
ryan_975 said:
Doesn't Windows probe for hardware anyway, so you may not see anything until the Welcome screen, but you should IF I'm right.
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Hmm maybe you could keep the Mac video card in and just install a PC compatible card right along side it?

Have it set so when its boot up in OSX it uses the Mac video card and similar with Windows.
 
well, i know for a fact my 7600GT works in OSX, just don't know if it would work in Mac Pro.
 
i guess making people use the cards + drivers, means less headache and tech support.

Also can you put in a different version of the same card, lets say a different 7300GT then the one apple provides?
 
sitting here with a x300SE and a 6800GS waiting for the FedEX guy to show...I'll have an answer soon :D Plan on putting the 7300 in my Dell to check that too.

One of these better work dammit. The nVidia site shows OS X support for the 7x series. Really, why would either company write card-specific drivers when they have universal windows drivers?
 
ryan_975 said:
The drivers probably wouldn;t work.
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they do work actually. i'm not going to go into how i tested this, but you can PM me if you're curious.

i just know for a fact that my 7600GT does not work in a PCI-E G5 tower.
 
mrweasel said:
sitting here with a x300SE and a 6800GS waiting for the FedEX guy to show...I'll have an answer soon :D Plan on putting the 7300 in my Dell to check that too.

One of these better work dammit. The nVidia site shows OS X support for the 7x series. Really, why would either company write card-specific drivers when they have universal windows drivers?
Click to expand...

The 6800GS won't work. There's no Intel drivers for it, but I guess it may run in VESA mode. I believe the X300 will work, though you may need to flash the card's BIOS (see Strangedogs for more info on that).
 
felix88 said:
they do work actually. i'm not going to go into how i tested this, but you can PM me if you're curious.

i just know for a fact that my 7600GT does not work in a PCI-E G5 tower.
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That's probably due to the firmware. I don't know if it's a big endian vs little endian issue, or just an OF issue, but Mac Pro's have a differente architecture and firmware system, so it MAY work for it with some driver support from NV or the community.

And drivers for OS X (PPC) and OS X (x86) aren't compatible with each other. The only way they'd work is if they were fat binaries written to support both versions of cards and OS. It's kinda similar (but different) to the sutuation for drivers under 32bit Windows and x64 Windows

btw. It wouldn't suprise me in the least if OS X 10.5 doesn't support PPC architectures anymore. if it does, than 10.6 definately won't.
 
yeah, the x300 didn't work:mad:, but the 7300GT DID work in one of our Dells. Hmmm

It looks like the PCIe power connector is gonna be somewhat proprietary as they're a bit smaller than the ones that are on the actual cards. The good news is there are 2 of them, so dual x1900s is very doable, as are dual Quartros
 
it's the same power connector as the PCI-E G5 towers. they had an extension from that small plug to a normal PCI-E power connector. Apple was even shipping ASUS cards in those computers, which is why i questioned if my 7600GT would work.
 
mrweasel said:
yeah, the x300 didn't work:mad:, but the 7300GT DID work in one of our Dells. Hmmm

It looks like the PCIe power connector is gonna be somewhat proprietary as they're a bit smaller than the ones that are on the actual cards. The good news is there are 2 of them, so dual x1900s is very doable, as are dual Quartros
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you ought to try the 6800GS and see if it works...

mrweasel said:
oh, didn't have a PMG5 :(
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i didn't either, but i've worked with them quite a bit. ;)
 
felix88 said:
you ought to try the 6800GS and see if it works...
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It won't. I can confirm that there are no NV 6XXX-series drivers for Intel.
 
CEpeep said:
It won't. I can confirm that there are no NV 6XXX-series drivers for Intel.
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i've seen reports of 6800GS cards working on Intel OS X(PM me for a link, if you must). it would probably just take a few minutes to test it.
 
felix88 said:
i've seen reports of 6800GS cards working on Intel OS X(PM me for a link, if you must). it would probably just take a few minutes to test it.
Click to expand...

I contributed to a project that was trying to write an open-source driver for OS X Intel for the NV 6800 Series cards because there was no support for them. To clarify, the cards may "work" but only in VESA mode with no acceleration because they do not have drivers. Apple and Nvidia wrote drivers that work with the 7300 for Intel, and perhaps even more cards, but as of yet, there are no accelerated rivers for the 6800 cards, official or otherwise.
 
CEpeep said:
I contributed to a project that was trying to write an open-source driver for OS X Intel for the NV 6800 Series cards because there was no support for them. To clarify, the cards may "work" but only in VESA mode with no acceleration because they do not have drivers. Apple and Nvidia wrote drivers that work with the 7300 for Intel, and perhaps even more cards, but as of yet, there are no accelerated rivers for the 6800 cards, official or otherwise.
Click to expand...

macvidia.starchaser.org ?
 
Archer75 said:
Yep. They only provide driver support for the cards they sell in thier systems. So far it's the Intel 900/950, ATI X1600, Nvidia 7300 and FX4500. No other card works. You can't buy an off the shelf card, plug it in, and expect it to work. Well the only thing you could plug it into is the Mac Pro but it won't work. Rather dissapointing.
Click to expand...

It's only a driver issue? It runs, but without acceleration?
 
felix88 said:
macvidia.starchaser.org
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Yeah, but I was helping with it back before it was such an organized project. It was just a bunch of guys at OSX86Project, Win2OSX and 360Hacker throwing code at each other and editing kexts to try to jury-rig something that would keep the system from crashing with nVidia cards in it. Good times.
 
thx OP for link

the optical drives are gonna die of dust w/o those front bezels

wtf apple
 
piako said:
thx OP for link

the optical drives are gonna die of dust w/o those front bezels

wtf apple
Click to expand...

Apple has been doing that since the Mirror Drive Door G4s, maybe even the Quicksilver G4s. the drives seem to do ok, they may die a little early, but nothing major.
 
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