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New Mac Pro ATI HD 2600 works in old Mac Pro - CONFIRMED

T

thasoul

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 30, 2006
43
16
This is true and we have some hope for our 8800 GT. Please check this link out: http://www.mactechnews.de/forum/thread.html?id=238244&page=2

So I really hope that even a 8800 GT works in the old Mac Pro models. The Apple support article was also unclear: It says G5 cards do not work in Mac Pros - but perhaps Mac Pro cards are interchangeable. Perhaps Apple didn´t really test the new 8800 GT in the old Mac Pros and cannot support them for now (an leading to those telephone calls to cancel the order)

Has anyone tested it?

278590.jpg
 
The Mobility HD 2600 XT drivers are more then likely just fine for other R/RV6xx cards. If you make a Tiger image from an iMac (Alu) then you can run this on a Tiger Mac Pro as well.
 
thasoul said:
Perhaps Apple didn´t really test the new 8800 GT in the old Mac Pros and cannot support them for now
Click to expand...

That is the most ridiculous thing ever. A Geforce for windows based computers works across all sorts of platforms, apple had only TWO motherboards to worry about the mac pro and could only get ONE to work? Thats bullsh*t. The geforce *has* to work, whatever apple did to prevent that from happening is a sham.
 
Hm. I wonder if the new Radeon 3x00 series works. That'd be a really good idea.. since a 3850 smokes a 2600XT in every way, and costs the same (PC-side) as the Mac edition does ($150). 3870 is bit less than PC-side 8800GT, and less than ME GT.. and only a bit slower.. around $230, I think. Street prices are a bit higher on GTs and R3Ks, though, since they're in high demand/low supply.
 
Firefly2002 said:
Hm. I wonder if the new Radeon 3x00 series works. That'd be a really good idea.. since a 3850 smokes a 2600XT in every way, and costs the same (PC-side) as the Mac edition does ($150). 3870 is bit less than PC-side 8800GT, and less than ME GT.. and only a bit slower.. around $230, I think. Street prices are a bit higher on GTs and R3Ks, though, since they're in high demand/low supply.
Click to expand...

You'd still need the OS X drivers for the 3850, 3870, and 3870X2 series ATI cards.

So until then, no.
 
Problem with R3850 and R3870 is that no one offers them with EFI compatible ROMs. The X2000.kext is general enough to support R38xx cards, but without the EFI ROM the cards won't initialize during boot.
 
yeroen said:
You'd still need the OS X drivers for the 3850, 3870, and 3870X2 series ATI cards.

So until then, no.
Click to expand...

Oh. Lol. Right. Forgot about that.

What is all this about EFI? I seem to vaguely remember reading about it years back... as the replacement for BIOS. What's it stand for? Electronically Flashable Interface or something?

It really wouldn't be a bad idea to offer both traditional ROMs and EFI (if they're the two comparable components...); it wouldn't be all that hard I don't imagine, and couldn't be that expensive. For the time being, that is, before the transition is made in full.. it would probably- or at least possibly- ease work on ATI and nVidia if they didn't have to do it for Mac.

I'm talking completely speculatively of course, since not only do I not know how EFI works, I don't know what it is =-)

Oh well. At least you'd be able to use a 2600XT. It's kind of too bad there was never any 2900XT available (there should have been), as all the 3870 is, is a 2900XT with half the memory bus width, and stratospheric GDDR4 clocks... and a slightly tweaked memory core... I'd bet 2900XT drivers would work for the 3870 ;x


...Maybe
 
newtech said:
Problem with R3850 and R3870 is that no one offers them with EFI compatible ROMs. The X2000.kext is general enough to support R38xx cards, but without the EFI ROM the cards won't initialize during boot.
Click to expand...

So whenever Windows goes EFI, will this clear the log jam?
 
NATO said:
Do you ever get the impression Apple went with EFI just to make life difficult so we wouldn't be able to buy off-the-shelf Graphics cards?
Click to expand...

BIOS does not support Firewire booting or Firewire Target Disk Mode. EFI does. That's the main reason why they went to EFI I think, but there are other advantages.
 
Intel, also is the progenitor and a big supporter of EFI. Apple and Intel have really thrown in together on EFI.
 
Could some smart team of programmers make a fortune selling OS X drivers for off the shelf video cards?

Or are there licensing fees involved?
 
Mike Teezie said:
Could some smart team of programmers make a fortune selling OS X drivers for off the shelf video cards?

Or are there licensing fees involved?
Click to expand...

Drivers are the easy part. each card would need new firmware to support EFI and in many cases a larger flash ROM to accomodate that firmware.
 
Working in 10.5.2

jemo07 said:
Anyone tried the perf with 10.5.2?
Click to expand...

XBench Results on my 2.66 Ghz. MacPro
with the 2600 card, OS X 10.5.2:

Results 214.69
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.2 (9C31)
Physical RAM 4096 MB
Model MacPro1,1
Drive Type ST3400620AS
CPU Test 167.29
GCD Loop 314.02 16.55 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 151.62 3.60 Gflop/sec
vecLib FFT 123.34 4.07 Gflop/sec
Floating Point Library 166.04 28.91 Mops/sec
Thread Test 372.57
Computation 441.48 8.94 Mops/sec, 4 threads
Lock Contention 322.26 13.86 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
Memory Test 155.92
System 172.17
Allocate 291.20 1.07 Malloc/sec
Fill 148.51 7220.90 MB/sec
Copy 137.80 2846.10 MB/sec
Stream 142.47
Copy 140.67 2905.40 MB/sec
Scale 139.23 2876.38 MB/sec
Add 145.83 3106.56 MB/sec
Triad 144.37 3088.40 MB/sec
Quartz Graphics Test 209.49
Line 184.18 12.26 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 257.53 76.89 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 210.74 17.18 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 206.44 5.21 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 201.40 12.60 Kchars/sec
OpenGL Graphics Test 194.92
Spinning Squares 194.92 247.26 frames/sec
User Interface Test 336.87
Elements 336.87 1.55 Krefresh/sec

Cinebench 10 Open GL Results: 5245
 
RKEnnis said:
XBench Results on my 2.66 Ghz. MacPro
with the 2600 card, OS X 10.5.2:

Cinebench 10 Open GL Results: 5245
Click to expand...

Thanks! Did you have test data before the upgrade? Is it better? I am considering getting two of these for my pre 2008 Mac Pro.
I am connecting two 23 ACD and a Wacom Cintiq.

I am curently running on the 7300 and it's a bit slow.
 
newtech said:
Drivers are the easy part. each card would need new firmware to support EFI and in many cases a larger flash ROM to accomodate that firmware.
Click to expand...

So it's not possible?

THey couldn't write a program for OS X that would detect the card, and then flash it and put the specific EFI on it for you? Maybe that's illegal?

I have literally no idea what I'm talking about, so don't laugh at me.
 
yeroen said:
You'd still need the OS X drivers for the 3850, 3870, and 3870X2 series ATI cards.

So until then, no.
Click to expand...

Funny things... OSX HAS drivers for 3870, in 10.5.2

and for 3850 too, but incomplete, so it has some glitches woth 3850, but it solvable, jsut need to change devid from 9505 to 9501 in gfx bios, and then it works fine in OSX

anyone wanna try 3870 ?
 
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