Mac Pro 2008 Faulty Graphics Card and Replacement

GermanyChris said:

Other than mountain lion the machine does't have limitations. No graphics card you can power from within the machine is going to have a noticeable difference between PCI v1 and v2 many tests all over the Internet show this I think Anand came up with about an 8% actual difference. Again the problems with an 08 is its still going to have an old card and in two months could have the same issues. The machines fake bitness will have nothing to do with future software as the folks running mountain lion on them will tell you the os will. They dropped support for two gens back when os's were released every few years not every year, remember they just re-offered snow leopard a few months back. We have another 5 to7 years yet before upgraded 1,1's become G5's. In the end it's always cheaper to fix what you got than buy used.

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Not if you sell what you have first it isn't. If he sells that machine, buys an Early 2008 machine AND something reliable like a GT 120 or a 4870, he won't have spent all THAT much extra, and he'll have a machine that's more modern and current. Ordinarily, I'd agree that fixing an existing Mac is better than scrapping it and getting something else; but not when the Mac is encroaching its seventh birthday. That's where it makes sense to draw the line as any number of issues could crop up down the road and at that point, you're pouring money into a dinosaur. This is largely why most people with G5s tend to scrap their G5s and replace them with other G5s rather than fixing them; just not cost-effective.

Yebubbleman said:

Not if you sell what you have first it isn't. If he sells that machine, buys an Early 2008 machine AND something reliable like a GT 120 or a 4870, he won't have spent all THAT much extra, and he'll have a machine that's more modern and current. Ordinarily, I'd agree that fixing an existing Mac is better than scrapping it and getting something else; but not when the Mac is encroaching its seventh birthday. That's where it makes sense to draw the line as any number of issues could crop up down the road and at that point, you're pouring money into a dinosaur. This is largely why most people with G5s tend to scrap their G5s and replace them with other G5s rather than fixing them; just not cost-effective.

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You're recommending something on it's 5th B-Day. His existing mac will run both of those cards and neither cost much.

On the G5 note the quadro just went out on my quad do I'll be buying a another quadro

today it happens to me the same... macpro1.1 2x 2.66
gforce 7300gt

one output stopped working and then the pink lines in the other...

the question is... the machine only works in safe mode for me..

it is right??? i dont want to think i have other problem....

any suggestion for a new graphic card??

many thanks

Recently my Mac Pro started spontaneously restarting and/or crashing with the dreaded screen of death.
I had read about overheating issues with this 7300GT card, so decided to pull it out, scrub it clean, remove the heat sink and replace the heat sink compound. Computer has been running flawlessly for two straight days. It had been "crashing" every half hour before finally getting cleaned and "serviced"....I know this thread is old, but perhaps this will help others experiencing the same. Another thing about Apple's poor design, having the card sit so close/nearly touching the plastic inner casing above the RAM risers. There is a scorch mark from the bottom of the overheating card.....may get a pic to add later. May put a small spacer there and look into adding a small fan to the side and keep the hot air moving better. Picture shows the card with heat sink removed, GPU exposed prior to applying new heat sink compound.

jake.anq said:

The computer now totally fails to load the GUI after logging in with safe mode and I have been unable to find a command to find the GPU type from the command line via SSH. Attatched is a photo of the card, which appears to be a 7300GT.

Thanks again

Jake.anq

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try a 8800gt, is the cheapest option