Wanting to use a new 24" Cinema Display with my 1st Gen Mac Pro (2006, 2.66Ghz x 2) Have looked at replacing my video card with ATI Radeon HD 4870 Graphics Upgrade Kit. Can't get a clear and difinitive answer as to the functionality of this with my MacPro. Any ideas or info on this? Thanks in advance.
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2006 1st gen MacPro 2.66Ghz x 2 - Need Minidisplay Port!
- Thread starter Kennyyoli
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Yup, the 4870 kit supplied by Apple *does* work in 2006 Mac Pros although a lot of people who want 4870s in their 2006 Mac Pros opt instead for the PC card flashing route because it is far cheaper, however, if you need a mini display port adapter then the Apple 4870 is the only way to go for 2006 Mac Pros. The nVidia GT 120 does *not* work in 2006 Mac Pros so again, Apple's 4870 is the only way to get display port support on 2006/2007 Mac Pros. Both the 4870 and the GT 120 will work on 2008 Mac Pros though for anyone else stumbling across this thread looking for answers.
No problem! Enjoy your new card and new display, I wish someone gave me a freebie 24" cinema display!!
The clock speeds are exactly the same. The only difference is you can only run the bus at 16x PCIe 1.1 speeds rather than 16x PCIe 2.0 speeds. It means that the bandwidth between the system and the graphics card is halved. However, this makes virtually no difference in practice since even 16x PCIe 1.1 speeds are difficult to saturate. The only program that I know of where this bandwidth difference is noticeable is Mudbug.
For what it's worth, I ran two 4870 cards in my Mac Pro 1,1 with 8x PCIe 1.1 - so a quarter of what a single 4870 can run with in a 2008 or newer Mac Pro and I never observed any visible slow downs. When going from 16x PCIe 2.0 to 8x PCIe 1.1 you're talking a real world performance difference of like 5%.
For what it's worth, I ran two 4870 cards in my Mac Pro 1,1 with 8x PCIe 1.1 - so a quarter of what a single 4870 can run with in a 2008 or newer Mac Pro and I never observed any visible slow downs. When going from 16x PCIe 2.0 to 8x PCIe 1.1 you're talking a real world performance difference of like 5%.
Anything that uses graphics acceleration will get a significant performance boost with a 4870 over a 7300. However, I don't know how much Final Cut Express or Photoshop utilise graphics cards. I'd expect them to not use them all that much so you may not get much of a boost if any.