Vid Cards for Mac Pro?

B

bfx

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Dec 28, 2007
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When I bought my Mac Pro at the local Apple Store the base model was the only type in stock so I ended up with the 7300GT video card.

It's worked great up til now but I'm moving into areas that need a faster card with more vram.

I would buy the ATI from Apple - but my main app has always had problems with ATI cards and drivers causing system crashes.

Does anyone know of a company making nVIDIA based cards for the Mac Pro?

I am not interested in re-flashed pc cards - valid production cards only.

bfx
 
Sadly you are stuck with either getting the X1900 from ATI or the overpriced QaudroFX(used for 3D applications) i heard there is a 7800GT but i haven't found it nor can i confirm if it will work with the newest Macs.
 
Thanks dogbyte_13

I was afraid the situation hadn't changed.

And thanks for the 7800GT mention - that's something I hadn't heard.

I'm kind of surprised one of the nVIDIA card makers hasn't came out with something.

Mac's may not have the market penetration pc's have but there is a market for cards of the 7800GT and faster type for the Intel Macs.

bfx
 
well hopefully at the on January 18th there will be some new video cards announced, IE 8800 series, and in probably May or so is when i plan on a Mac Pro.
 
IIRC, the 7800 card was for the power mac...won't work with the mac pro. So your choices are- 7300, x1900 and quadro :(
 
dogbyte_13 - I'm also looking forward to Jan 18th. Actually I'd be happy with something like an nvidia 7900 gtx.

Maybe a nice 24" or 27" Cinema display will also be announced. I wish.

And - the Mac Pro is wicked fast. I've got a couple ... a 2.66 ghz quad and a 3.0 ghz eight core. Neither would disappoint you.

bahula03 - thanks for the info. After googling that's what I figured out. But thanks confirming it. Sometimes finding the latest info on google is hit or miss.

bfx
 
the intel based apple computers use EFI instead of BIOS, so the video cards used in the mac pro have to be 100% mac compatible.
 
I put my pc 7800gt (xfx) in the mac pro, and it works in both mac os 10.4 and in windows xp. There are caveats with using it in os x though. For example, the original card, in my case the 7300gt, has to be in the mac pro during boot or it's a no go. Second, the monitor has to be connected to the 7300gt until it's in os x. Once in os x, you can plug your monitor(s) into the 7800gt and it will detect it and work properly. System profiler sees the card as a "g70 board." The monitor on the 7800gt can be set as the primary (or only) display :)







​




I had the power connected to the 7800 all ghetto like. If you want to do it "right," then get a cable like this for it.
http://www.welovemacs.com/9227128.html


Edit: I ran Cinebench

Stock Mac Pro 7300GT


XFX 7800GT OC
​
 
Silversierra said:
I put my pc 7800gt (xfx) in the mac pro, and it works in both mac os 10.4 and in windows xp. There are caveats with using it in os x though. For example, the original card, in my case the 7300gt, has to be in the mac pro during boot or it's a no go. Second, the monitor has to be connected to the 7300gt until it's in os x. Once in os x, you can plug your monitor(s) into the 7800gt and it will detect it and work properly. System profiler sees the card as a "g70 board." The monitor on the 7800gt can be set as the primary (or only) display :)


I had the power connected to the 7800 all ghetto like. If you want to do it "right," then get a cable like this for it.
http://www.welovemacs.com/9227128.html
Click to expand...
Great Info. BTW if you have a monitor with multiple inputs or a KVM you can just press a button to switch to the second video card which is than switching the cable every reboot.
 
Silversierra said:
I put my pc 7800gt (xfx) in the mac pro, and it works in both mac os 10.4 and in windows xp. There are caveats with using it in os x though. For example, the original card, in my case the 7300gt, has to be in the mac pro during boot or it's a no go. Second, the monitor has to be connected to the 7300gt until it's in os x. Once in os x, you can plug your monitor(s) into the 7800gt and it will detect it and work properly. System profiler sees the card as a "g70 board." The monitor on the 7800gt can be set as the primary (or only) display :)







​




I had the power connected to the 7800 all ghetto like. If you want to do it "right," then get a cable like this for it.
http://www.welovemacs.com/9227128.html


Edit: I ran Cinebench

Stock Mac Pro 7300GT


XFX 7800GT OC
​
Click to expand...

Thanks Silversierra

Did you put the 7300gt in a regular pci-e slot and the 7800gt in the 16x slot?

Wonder if rhe setup works under Leopard. Sadly I rarely boot into OS X due to lack of apps.

The Boot Camp 1.4 license expires tommorow so I'll have to upgrade to Leopard.

bfx
 
There are not PCI slots in the Mac Pro, only PCI-E 16x

Also, isn't the X1900XT faster then that 7800gt anyway? Whats the point? Or did you buy it with a 7300GT and just upgrade it?
 
I haven't tried a kvm, but I'd imagine it would work. I put the 7300gt in the top slot(as in the pic), and the 7800gt in the bottom most slot. I then used the mac os x slot bandwidth tool to set the slot speeds so the 7800gt was getting x16 and the 7300 was getting x8. And btw, you should still be able to use bootcamp. I *believe* it's just the boot camp assistant that expires, so you just can't make changes after today (but changing the date back in os x seems to allow you to do that anyway). I set my os x date to mid 2008 to see what would happen, and it continued to work as usual with bootcamp, but the assistant wouldn't run, but most people only run it once anyway. Continued use of BC 1.4 may be against the TOS, but I am not sure on that. I do believe the x1900xt is faster, but apple charges a boat load for what it is, so getting a stock config with the 7300gt, and getting a card like a 7800gt is cheaper (note: not all pc cards work). Also, some people just like nvidia better than ati (for whatever reasoning), so a 7800gt is a nice option to have.

Edit: Ran 3dmark06 (in windows obviously), and got about 4900 with the card overclocked. That's a better score than I got with a mac pro with the octo 3.0ghz, 16gb ram, and the quadro 4500 :)
 
CHAoS_NiNJA said:
There are not PCI slots in the Mac Pro, only PCI-E 16x

Also, isn't the X1900XT faster then that 7800gt anyway? Whats the point? Or did you buy it with a 7300GT and just upgrade it?
Click to expand...

As I said earlier I bought both Mac Pros at the local Apple Store - not over the net. They had only the base models with the 7300GT in stock and it's worked fine til now.

But I'm getting into 3D meshes with a couple of million polys each and 256 mb of vram just isn't cutting it anymore.

The app I use 99% of the time uses OpenGL for everything in the menus and texturing/lighting displays during the modeling and scene setup phases.

ATI cards and - more inportantly their drivers - have always had weak OpenGL support. When pushed the way I push them the system crashes.

So I need a non-ATI vid card with 512 mb vram. The nvidia quadro is way overkill unless you're running somethimg like AutoCad.

So - that's why I'm looking for an off the shelf nvidia card with 512 mb vram that will work in the Mac Pro.

Where did the pci/pci-e bit come from? Must have missed that. Of course the Mac Pro uses pci-e but far as I know only one of the them is x16. The rest are garden variety pci-e slots.

bfx
 
in all honesty if you are doing any 3D app you really should be using the quadro for best compatibility, granted it costs more, but you wont get any mesh errors or view port errors with them., if i had the cash or needed to save then it would be the quadro, now if you plan on gaming a bit dont expect very good performance with the quadro.
 
A buddy of mine has a Mac Pro with the quadro and it rips through his AutoCad projects while his otherwise identical Max Pro except for having the ATI card bogs down.

But there's no difference between the two when playing back full scenes in a 3d app. The frame rate stays the same.

I've had a chance to talk with several people using the Mac Pro with the ATI card - they say the latest drivers from ATI - not Apple - are a lot more stable so that's probably the way i'll go.

After I find out if Apple is adding any new vid options to go with the Penryn Mac Pros.

bfx
 
The 7800GT came with the Quad 2.5GHz G5 powermac, as well as the other models that came with that refresh.

You can find stock ones pulled from G5s on ebay, but I heard it is possible to use a PC version with some hack.

You can also find the x1900 cards on ebay.
 
Looking around, it seems possible you can use 7800GT, and 7800GTX cards in a Mac pro/ G5's with PCIe.

G5's with AGP and G4's seem to be able to take a 7800GS (only came in AGP, there were some PCIe versions but nvidia didn't want them to be released)

7900 GS/GT/GTX, 7950 GT/GX2 don't seem to work with macs. There are some Geforce 6800 cards that work for macs too but they were only agp.

x1900 even if it is a G5 mac edition I'm pretty sure will work in the mac pro. Other wise check ebay for the mac pro version.

You could also wait for the new mac pro's, I'm pretty sure we are going to get new video cards to choose from. AMD buying ATI awhile ago, and apple using intel chips, might spell out apple using nvidia cards again.

Apple has always been flip flopping between the two, but they seem to lean on ATI in the past. Right now: ATI in imac (shitty HD 2600), mac pro(older by the second x1900). nvidia: macbook pro (8600M GT), mac pro(low end crap 7300's and a pretty good CAD card: Quadro 4500).
 
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