Early 2008 Mac Pro - Mountain Lion

epidote said:

I have an Early 2008 Mac Pro with the following specs running Lion fine.

Processor 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Memory 8 GB 800 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM
Graphics ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256 MB
Software Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5

Been reading that the (as shipped) graphics card might not be up for the job for Mountain Lion. Anyone got an opinion/had any problems with similar setup?

Thanks

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Your Radeon HD 2600 XT is a dated (old) card, however it will run Mountain Lion just fine. That said some programs you run on mountain lion may not appreciate a dated card. There are several option for improving your graphics card that can be found on the forum, and most of those talk about using a PC card, which will save you money and give you better options, since Apple is including drivers for these cards in their OS these days. You don't have to flash many pc cards anymore for them to work, but you wont have your initial boot screen (no big deal).

I have the same model as you (2x2.8g MP 3.1 early 2008), and i chose a ATI radeon HD 6870 1g GPU as my replacement and it has been fantastic so far. I can even run Planet Side 2 on maxed out graphics (though i opt to go lower to pwn fools with more ease).

You can find more information regarding GPU upgrades on Groths.org or Netkas.org forums. However its somewhat hard to find information on netkas and thats really for people who want to flash their cards bios to efi so they can have a boot screen. If you want to keep it simple, just install one of several ATI series cards that are confirmed as having drivers on OS. I found the 6870 not only to be the best price per power, but also appreciated that Cindori over at groths.org has a software fix for a few small glitches that can occur when using a PC card in a mac pro.

GL finding what you are looking for.

epidote said:

Thanks for your time, good to know it's still up for the job, at least for the basics. Will upgrade and see if I bump into any problems. Not maxing out any capabilities as is purely a work machine (web, apps) with no video editing, gaming. A new card would be tempting though, some system functions, launchpad, dashboard can be a little laggy even on Lion, I assume that's the old card.

Cheers

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You will gain significantly more speed by upgrading to a SSD drive than by getting a new GPU fo the app lag you are talking about.

Nothing but Problems

I had way too many problems with my 2008 and Mt. Lion I wiped it out. It slowed the computer down even with an upgraded video card. Out look would no longer work. And on and on.

I have the same machine as the OP, but with Radeon 5770.
Works great!
No problems here.

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P.S. For me, ML is working better than Lion.

Mountain Lion runs just dandy on my 2008 MP with an EFI-flashed 8800 GT 512MB card. No hiccups.

All fine here with the same machine and a flashed 4870.

When I bought my 2008, I bought it with three 2600s so I could run six monitors.

What I eventually found was the 2600s were bad video cards--random machine freezes and lock ups. I ran ML on the 2008 for some time just fine with a 5770, and I ran a pair of 5770s and Lion for a long time too.

Get rid of the 2600 and get a 5770, and like another poster said, get an ssd if you can afford to do some upgrades. It will feel like a new machine.