Can I play Battlefield 3 and Crysis 2 on Mac Pro 1,1?

Yes and yes.

1) Battlefield 3 and Crysis will run fine on a 4870.
2) The fastest card you can upgrade to at this point in time is a 5870.

The best cards Mac Pros can take at the moment are Radeon 5870s. I have been playing the Crysis 2 demo constantly since it came out at max settings with no problem on my 5770 (similar to yours), which is literally half the card the 5870 is.

I can't say about Battlefield 3, isn't that meant to "push" PCs?

gullySn0wCat said:

The best cards Mac Pros can take at the moment are Radeon 5870s. I have been playing the Crysis 2 demo constantly since it came out at max settings with no problem on my 5770 (similar to yours), which is literally half the card the 5870 is.

I can't say about Battlefield 3, isn't that meant to "push" PCs?

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The system requirements aren't final yet but a 4870 will surely be able to run it(albeit lower settings if needed).

From my understanding the 5870 will not work in the macpro1,1. I think I read it at netkas as well as owc (going from memory). On the other hand the 5770 does work fine. I have a flashed one running in my macpro1,1.

Dadioh said:

From my understanding the 5870 will not work in the macpro1,1. I think I read it at netkas as well as owc (going from memory). On the other hand the 5770 does work fine. I have a flashed one running in my macpro1,1.

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http://www.barefeats.com/wst10g3.html

aiqw9182 said:

http://www.barefeats.com/wst10g3.html

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Aaahh. I stand corrected. This is good news for me since I may consider going to a 5870 in the future. I wonder if flashed 5870 work as well. Time for some research.

Thanks for the info.

Flashed 5870 works the same as 5770, IE great. Lol!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1L2ZRkM6f0

This guy shows that a 5870 does work in a 1,1 and that Crysis 2 runs well.

I have a 1,1 2ghz 2X dual core mac pro, will the 5780 still work, thought it had to do with bus speed whether or not that the card will work and i believe mine is 1.33ghz, just dont want to buy a 5870 to find out it wont work.

In a 2006 MP, the 5870 is only barely faster than a 5770 for gaming.

http://www.barefeats.com/wst10g5.html

It is also much more expensive.

ActionableMango said:

In a 2006 MP, the 5870 is only barely faster than a 5770 for gaming.

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Exactly. The 5770 is the sweet spot for the Mac Pro 1,1 according to all of the testing I've seen. You won't be disappointed and you can put the extra bones towards a shiny new system in the future!

No benchmark, but C2 gets more than 30fps in singleplayer @ 2560x1600 at very high settings (similar to the original with AA off) and a much higher frame rate at "just" high settings (important in multiplayer.)

This is on MP1,1
HD5770
7gb RAM
ACD 30"

I dunno how you will fare with Battlefield 3. Even in Crysis (1) the Mac Pro 1,1 shows it's age - the processors just aren't fast enough to hit 60FPS even with the 5870.

I used to try playing Crysis, but it is very slow. It was a huge disappointment for me. Everything is slow with 4870. I have windows 7 64 bit, everything is updated. But still couldn't play.
Also my brother has a pc with 4870 and core2du processors. Guess what?? It worked fine with him.

hms84 said:

I used to try playing Crysis, but it is very slow. It was a huge disappointment for me. Everything is slow with 4870. I have windows 7 64 bit, everything is updated. But still couldn't play.
Also my brother has a pc with 4870 and core2du processors. Guess what?? It worked fine with him.

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I hate posts like these. Settings is everything! Especially in Crysis.

You can get 100fps with lowest settings and 1 fps with highest....on the same system.

hms84 said:

I used to try playing Crysis, but it is very slow. It was a huge disappointment for me. Everything is slow with 4870. I have windows 7 64 bit, everything is updated. But still couldn't play.
Also my brother has a pc with 4870 and core2du processors. Guess what?? It worked fine with him.

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That doesn't make any sense, assuming you were using boot camp and the same game settings.

hms84 said:

I used to try playing Crysis, but it is very slow. It was a huge disappointment for me. Everything is slow with 4870. I have windows 7 64 bit, everything is updated. But still couldn't play.
Also my brother has a pc with 4870 and core2du processors. Guess what?? It worked fine with him.

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That's BS, your video card is faster than mine.

Put everything on Very High, then turn AA off. If you play at a resolution less than 2560x1600 then you can probably turn AA on to 2 or 4x and get decent (~40fps) performance.

ActionableMango said:

In a 2006 MP, the 5870 is only barely faster than a 5770 for gaming.

http://www.barefeats.com/wst10g5.html

It is also much more expensive.

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Those are OS X tests. Apple has a performance ceiling compared to Win. Do those tests in Win and you'll see the 5870 closer to twice the performance. So if all you are going to do is game in OS X (God help you) then yes no real performance advantage.

derbothaus said:

Those are OS X tests. Apple has a performance ceiling compared to Win. Do those tests in Win and you'll see the 5870 closer to twice the performance. So if all you are going to do is game in OS X (God help you) then yes no real performance advantage.

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+1

the pci-e 1.0 constraint is actually only 5-10%

1.5 years ago i got the 4890 sapphire which was JUST getting flashed for the 1,1 .

Its a beast. I have 5gigs of ram and 4890 playing crysis 2, deadspace 2 at full without a hickup.

The only time my fans Scream at me with agonizing pain is on starcraft 2's menu(and yes i did the variable.txt edit/hack ) but the game runs fine on 60fps on high.

PS: wow lots of sequel games... didnt notice that until now.

pps: resolutuion is wuxga 1920x1200

ppps: still alive

So… I thought I'd update this thread with a relevant question… carrying on from battlefield 3… I'd like to run battlefield 4 on all max settings if possible.

I have the same computer as original poster I think…

macpro 1,1 dual core intel xeon 2.66ghz 10gb ram
nvideo geforce 7300 gt 256mb

What graphics card can I get in 2013 that would work with the computer to run bf4 all maxed out?

Cheers,
V