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ticotoo

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 8, 2010
72
14
Do I need to flash a Mac Pro 1,1 to get a ATI5870 to work?
thanks
 

GP-SE

macrumors 6502
Feb 27, 2013
344
52
It should work, just make sure you are running Lion, although Snow Leopard might have the drivers also, I'm not sure.
 

goMac

Contributor
Apr 15, 2004
7,662
1,693
Do I need to flash a Mac Pro 1,1 to get a ATI5870 to work?
thanks

It will work, but I've previously seen that on a 1,1 the performance improvement over a 5770 is very small, unless that has changed.
 

ticotoo

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 8, 2010
72
14
replacing a NVIDIA 7300 GT 256 mb.

No its replacing a NVIDIA 7300 GT 256 mb. in a 1,1. I just got a EVGA GeForce GTX 680 for my 5,1:):):)
 

applegeek897

macrumors regular
Aug 23, 2011
131
1
No its replacing a NVIDIA 7300 GT 256 mb. in a 1,1. I just got a EVGA GeForce GTX 680 for my 5,1:):):)

Yea the difference is huge, when I had my 1,1 It had a 7300 gt and was running a 30" and a second 1080P display and then when I got the 5,1 with the 5770 the difference was amazing, can't wait till I out a GTX 670 tho :)
 

goMac

Contributor
Apr 15, 2004
7,662
1,693
No its replacing a NVIDIA 7300 GT 256 mb. in a 1,1. I just got a EVGA GeForce GTX 680 for my 5,1:):):)

Ah, ok. I was thinking if you were buying it, it might be worth it to save the money and get a 5770, but if you've already got one...
 

666sheep

macrumors 68040
Dec 7, 2009
3,686
291
Poland
It will work, but I've previously seen that on a 1,1 the performance improvement over a 5770 is very small, unless that has changed.

There's night and day performance difference between these 2 even in 1,1.
But this is strictly app dependent. I've used number of different GPUs with my 1,1 and it's always like that. CPU limited ones will never show an improvement.

Let me quote wise words from another thread:
If you see data where the 5770 is identical to the 5870, then the issue is that it's CPU limited. It's not a question of PCIe bandwidth, it's simply that the app/driver can't feed enough work for the GPU for it to make a difference.
 
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