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NVIDIA 8800 GT (1st Generation) Graphics Upgrade Kit for Mac Pro!

At last, we can finally all move on to bitching about the poorly written driver that hobbles its use for pro apps.

Cue in the wailing and gnashing of teeth.
 
Now all we have to do is get the ROM dump from that card and flash a PC card to work in the old mac pro :D
 
yeroen said:
At last, we can finally all move on to bitching about the poorly written driver that hobbles its use for pro apps.

Cue in the wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Click to expand...

I have yet to see nVidia drivers on the Mac that didn't need a couple revisions to sort out. *sigh*

The MBP with the 8600M was ugly, especially when I was trying to use Leopard seeds for development, and the drivers were causing full-blown hangs every day before they got sorted out in the last couple builds.
 
so does anyone have this unit, I am hoping to buy it, hoping that it works better than my the old ATY,RadeonX1900, that doesnt work well with the new Leopard?

I need something that is going to work anyone Beta buying? :)

TIA

well just checked out barefeats

http://www.barefeats.com/harper10.html

and it looks like for Apple Pro apps, the 8800 isnt the best or faster but worse!
SInce those are the apps that I use constantly and where I am looking to up my speed, seems like a bad buy, for me.
 
Grokgod said:
so does anyone have this unit and will buying it work better than the old ATI ATY,RadeonX1900, that doesnt work well with the new Leopard?

I need something that is going to work anyone Beta buying? :)
Click to expand...

I haven't had any issues with the X1900 XT in Leopard, myself... I am curious what issues you are seeing.
 
Thats what I do not understand, how the heck is the 8800 providing such pisspoor performance compared to the 1900XT when it comes to core image/pro apps? I guess the 8800 is for games, real work stick with the 1900XT.

Disappointing to see worse performance on a next gen chip, I guess they are more concerned with the fastest game FPS when they designed the 8800 series.
 
Grokgod said:
so does anyone have this unit and will buying it work better than the old ATI ATY,RadeonX1900, that doesnt work well with the new Leopard?
Click to expand...

The X1900 works fine with Leopard, but because Leopard offloads more work to the GPU, the card gets exercised more. If you haven't cleaned the dust out your X1900's intake and fan assembly or taken further steps to cool it, you may see some instability.

I never had any freeze-ups in Tiger. Immediately after I upgraded to Leopard, I would get 1 or 2 freeze-ups a day, always when doing something graphics intensive like iTunes Visualizer, DVD playback, even activating Spaces. This tendency to lock up went away once I cleaned out my X1900 and applied some Arctic Silver thermal paste to the GPU/heat-sink interface.

In fact, for pro-apps like Final Cut, Motion, or Aperture the X1900 is quite a bit better than the 8800 (see the barefeats review). If and when updated drivers are released, the gap will probably narrow, but until then unless your X1900 is near death or you do a lot of 3D gaming, there is no reason to rush out and buy an 8800.
 
hugodrax said:
Thats what I do not understand, how the heck is the 8800 providing such pisspoor performance compared to the 1900XT when it comes to core image/pro apps? I guess the 8800 is for games, real work stick with the 1900XT.

Disappointing to see worse performance on a next gen chip, I guess they are more concerned with the fastest game FPS when they designed the 8800 series.
Click to expand...

Well, the issue here is VERY likely to be drivers. If you look at the history of nVidia chips on the Mac over the last few years... drivers have always left something to be desired. The 8600M had various graphical issues until Leopard came out (some Leopard builds didn't even support ColorSync on the 8600M).

I have yet to see an nVidia chip with a really decent set of drivers out of the gate on the Mac. ATI drivers are usually much better out of the gate in comparison.
 
If that is the case Apple should have chosen the High end ATI card. I wonder why they chose the 8800 instead of ATIs higher end line of cards.
 
Any indications of these:

1) already having the x1900, using Bootcamp, do i have uninstall the original drivers that i loaded with my Bootcamp Install Disc? or should windows already have it installed w/ the bootcamp driver disc?

2) Will this work with Tiger? (im running 10.4.10)

3) forward/backward compatibility? (old macpro new macpro etc)


thanks!
 
Well, I went ahead and bought one. It should get here by monday or wednesday of next week, and I'll try to help out with any questions people have.
 
ThirteenXIII said:
Any indications of these:

1) already having the x1900, using Bootcamp, do i have uninstall the original drivers that i loaded with my Bootcamp Install Disc? or should windows already have it installed w/ the bootcamp driver disc?

2) Will this work with Tiger? (im running 10.4.10)

3) forward/backward compatibility? (old macpro new macpro etc)


thanks!
Click to expand...

1) AFAIK, there are no Bootcamp drivers for the 8800GT, the upshot is that since the 8800GT is a desktop card, nVidia does have driver downloads for it. You should be good.

2) OS X drivers for the 8800 weren't available until the Harpertown systems landed, so I wouldn't be surprised if you need Leopard to run this card. Seeing as nobody has the card in hand, we don't know for sure, and in your case I would hold off until someone can answer this correctly.

3) I wouldn't bet on this, get the version of the card for the model Mac Pro you have.
 
The boot camp setup disk (leopard disk 1) on the 2K8 Mac Pro installed both ATi and nVidia drivers on my vista64 disk. I'm assuming there will be one available, but i know for sure the 8800GT does have 32 and 64 bit support in boot camp.

Although you can download drivers directly from nVidia I'm unsure on the compatibility of those, or indeed the benefits (if any). Hopefully someone can expand on that.
 
tom. said:
The boot camp setup disk (leopard disk 1) on the 2K8 Mac Pro installed both ATi and nVidia drivers on my vista64 disk. I'm assuming there will be one available, but i know for sure the 8800GT does have 32 and 64 bit support in boot camp.

Although you can download drivers directly from nVidia I'm unsure on the compatibility of those, or indeed the benefits (if any). Hopefully someone can expand on that.
Click to expand...

Be aware that Vista includes drivers for the entire 8xxx series when it installs. BootCamp doesn't need to install anything on top of it.

Plus, the drivers shipped with the 08 Mac Pros are different than what you find in a retail Leopard box.
 
I am very excited that Apple has come through. It makes me so much more optimistic for the future of my Mac Pro and the way Apple is going to do business. I think this speaks volumes about the way they are going to handle their desktop computers in regard to upgrades. Many people in this thread were pretty positive that Apple wouldn't come through and referenced Apple's history with video card upgrades. Many people acted like we were crazy for ever assuming Apple would give us an upgrade. "They never have before, why would they now?" Well, they did, and I think this is emblematic of the way they will operate from this day forward. I'm glad we kept this issue alive and made sure that they knew it was important to their customers.
 
Krevnik said:
Be aware that Vista includes drivers for the entire 8xxx series when it installs. BootCamp doesn't need to install anything on top of it.

Plus, the drivers shipped with the 08 Mac Pros are different than what you find in a retail Leopard box.
Click to expand...

I understand the disk is different to that of a leopard box, however surely someone will make have made the boot camp setup form the 2K8 Mac Pro available? I'm really unsure to be honest.

The setup definitely said it was installing both ATI and nVidia drivers as i was watching it, but as you said they are included with vista, i remember from my 8800GTX PC. Are the standard vista drivers 'card specific' or are they just a make-do until you get hold of the drivers off nVidia?
 
For Windows you can just use the GPU manufacturer's drivers. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple provided their own updated 8800GT drivers online or on a disc in the video card's box.

Even without any proper drivers in Windows you get generic VGA to play around with in your quest to install the full fledged ones.
 
What I am curious about and this may sound rather foolish, but with the additional slots for extra graphics cards.

Does it speed up the computer for rendering etc, if you buy another graphics card and stick it in, will the OS use it, will the apps use it.

Or are they used only if it attached to another monitor?

I would love to have an extra graphics card helping with FCP rendering, or one card for work one for the occasional game of C&C which the ATI is horrible at!
 
antzona said:
I am very excited that Apple has come through. It makes me so much more optimistic for the future of my Mac Pro and the way Apple is going to do business. I think this speaks volumes about the way they are going to handle their desktop computers in regard to upgrades. Many people in this thread were pretty positive that Apple wouldn't come through and referenced Apple's history with video card upgrades. Many people acted like we were crazy for ever assuming Apple would give us an upgrade. "They never have before, why would they now?" Well, they did, and I think this is emblematic of the way they will operate from this day forward. I'm glad we kept this issue alive and made sure that they knew it was important to their customers.
Click to expand...

I agree. I was angry/scared/skeptical of future purchases, but this has restored some confidence. My card was ordered yesterday, can't wait =).
 
Grokgod said:
What I am curious about and this may sound rather foolish, but with the additional slots for extra graphics cards.

Does it speed up the computer for rendering etc, if you buy another graphics card and stick it in, will the OS use it, will the apps use it.

Or are they used only if it attached to another monitor?

I would love to have an extra graphics card helping with FCP rendering, or one card for work one for the occasional game of C&C which the ATI is horrible at!
Click to expand...

i would have thought that even if there was a way to use multiple GPUs, the cards would have to be the same make
 
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