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Crossfire and Physics Accel on an '08 Mac Pro
- Thread starter Ikyo
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Er.... Just one question!!!
Does Mac Pro (If thats what you are talking about) support crossfire?
If it does, you better see this:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-cards,1965-6.html
Does Mac Pro (If thats what you are talking about) support crossfire?
If it does, you better see this:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-cards,1965-6.html
Every motherboard supports CrossFire. It's not like SLI where nVidia dictates what board (Skulltrail) works.
Motherboards with nVidia chipsets do not support CrossFire, much like intel / ati chipsets do not supplort SLi.
And not to forget, the 3870 is vastly superior to the 8800 GT in Core Image apps (i.e. half of the 'Pro' suite).
No MoBo with Nvidia chipset (eg: 680i, 790i, nforce 4, etc) supports CrossFire.
How Sure am I? 1000% cuz I myself am currently using an Nvidia 790i MoBo!
Yeah, unfortunately that's true. While there's no hardware reason that SLI/Crossfire should work on any motherboard, the drivers artificially limit it to only Intel/non-nVidia motherboards for Crossfire and nVidia boards for SLI. I swear I heard that from someone that this was illegal and violated anti-trust laws or something.
Yeah, unfortunately that's true. While there's no hardware reason that SLI/Crossfire should work on any motherboard, the drivers artificially limit it to only Intel/non-nVidia motherboards for Crossfire and nVidia boards for SLI. I swear I heard that from someone that this was illegal and violated anti-trust laws or something.
I dont think so dude cuz if it did, Mac OS would be running on millions of PCs in the same way!
Yeah you're right. Its a shame they don't try force us into using particular boards.
This does make me not want to buy an nVidia card again for my Mac. I've got SLI working on two 7300 GTs at the moment through hacked drivers but other than that there's not much I can do. I feel much safer in buying one 3870 now than an 8800 GT because I know I have the option of picking up another one if I want more gaming power in Windows.
Yeah you're right. Its a shame they don't try force us into using particular boards.
I badly wanted to run 2 4850s in crossfire in my gaming PC but cuz of this F**** monopoly, I'll have to stick with the monstrously expensive GTX 260 and wait for some more time saving!!!
that is the most uneducated statement i've ever read. Only CrossFire-compliant motherboards support Crossfire. IE Intel chipsets or (rarely seen) AMD/ATI chipset.
Crossfire is not supported by apple yet in OSX, as many probably know by now. Hopefully we get some support sometime in the next decade. Pretty pathetic we don't have it yet
Radeon HD 3870 mac edition works great in OSX. If you have a version only for PC you can get that working also, however it requires some patched kernel extensions from the OSX86 community
Last activity reported is Aug 29, 2009, so it's been awhile.
I'm not sure what happened, but oh well...
Last activity reported is Aug 29, 2009, so it's been awhile.
Pitty he got banned... he was a helpful user. Anyways, back to the OP question Mac Pros do support crossfire. Someone successfully reported crossfire success in their 09' Mac Pro with 2 Apple 4870's with ATI Catalyst 9.12 drivers.
I thought Apple's 4870s turned out to actually be hardware modified so as to stop crossfire from working. That's what turned up in the first few months of the 4870 ROM thread at least. Maybe it changed since.
I had crossfire working on first a 3870 Mac Edition paired with a 3870 standard PC card and then two flashed XFX 1GB 4870s. Windows only of course. This was on a 2006 Mac Pro.
It's my understanding it's in the drivers, not the hardware, as the boards don't need anything special. Unlike nVidia, which started with driver support, then required hardware support (chip on the main/logic board).
You need to watch this here ..
I was exactly looking for a solution what just mentioned.
This guy here did what me and you are looking for.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NQ-YGkx5JQ
I was exactly looking for a solution what just mentioned.
This guy here did what me and you are looking for.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NQ-YGkx5JQ
I seem to remember dual apple 4870s with a crossfire link simply not working with crossfire - even when they'd been reflashed with a non Apple ROM. Although ATI's 9.11 Catalyst drivers allowed them to work in Crossfire, bypassing Apple's hardware lockdown. Although, why bother spending all that money on two Apple 4870s? Two Apple 4870 512MB cards = $698. Two PC 4870 1024MB cards = ~$400. Apple's pricing is insane. Why bother getting a pair of year old cards that had half the memory compared to most of its PC counterparts at the time when for $650 you can now get a PC 5970??
I was exactly looking for a solution what just mentioned.
This guy here did what me and you are looking for.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NQ-YGkx5JQ
I did that too a month or two after this thread originally started. Why bother with 2x3870s when you can use a single 4870 which would give the same power. Or two 4870s. As far as keeping a third graphics card in for physics calculations, it's debateable if it's worth it. I originally had 7300GTs not 2600s.