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AfterglowMP

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 20, 2010
80
10
My Mac Pro 6 core 2.66 started up this morning but the screen remained blank. Front light on, fans whirring, normal noises, just no picture. I plugged in another monitor but nothing. I've tried rebooting in safe mood, still nothing. Checked inside, ram in place, no loose cables - only a bit dusty. It's been at least a year since a clean out.

After waiting and rebooting more times, I restarted it in Target mode, connecting it to my MBP and phew, all the drives are working fine.

This is starting to look like graphics card (Radeon 5870) issue BUT when I reboot and try to network from other macs, the Mac Pro doesn't show up. Is this still in line with a faulty graphics card?

If I can confirm it is the graphics card, I'll go up to the nearby Apple store and buy a new one to instal and get back to work.

However, if one of you veterans think it may the processor, I'll hang off and send it in.
 

AfterglowMP

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 20, 2010
80
10
Bump. Anyone? MP back working but for no obvious reason.

Would a faulty graphics card stop the mac from showing up on other macs on the network?

My Mac Pro 6 core 3.33 started up this morning but the screen remained blank. Front light on, fans whirring, normal noises, just no picture. I plugged in another monitor but nothing. I've tried rebooting in safe mood, still nothing. Checked inside, ram (16gb) in place, no loose cables - only a bit dusty. It's been at least a year since a clean out.

After waiting and rebooting more times, I restarted it in Target mode, connecting it to my MBP and phew, all the drives are working fine.

This is starting to look like graphics card (Radeon 5870) issue BUT when I reboot and try to network from other macs, the Mac Pro doesn't show up. Is this still in line with a faulty graphics card?

If it is the graphics card, I'll buy a new one.

However, if one of you veterans think it may be the processoror other hardware, I'll send it for repair.
 

Robert Davies

macrumors 6502
Jul 28, 2011
316
4
People's Republic of Wrexham

AfterglowMP

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 20, 2010
80
10
I'll re-run the diagnostics test.

My question was more a broader one about the involvement of the graphics card in the functioning of the system, whether the system would still function without the graphics card working but not output vision to the monitor.

Thanks
 

ActionableMango

macrumors G3
Sep 21, 2010
9,612
6,907
I'll re-run the diagnostics test.

My question was more a broader one about the involvement of the graphics card in the functioning of the system, whether the system would still function without the graphics card working but not output vision to the monitor.

A Mac Pro will still boot with no video card at all. You could remove it completely if you like, then try to connect to it on the network again. That would tell you whether or not it is a bad video card causing your network problem.

I admit it seems unlikely to me, but on the other hand bad hardware can definitely cause problems with seemingly unrelated features.
 

Sikh

macrumors 6502a
Mar 8, 2011
541
318
Take it to the apple store and get a free proper in depth diag done. It's free and you'll feel better knowing what's wrong. Definitely sounds like a logic board not GPU. When gpus die they die.
 
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