8800 GT seems to have died... OR has it...

[TommyS]

My friend has what I believe is dual Harpertown Mac Pro system. The machine is a little over a year old. He calls me over and explains to me that his video card is displaying massive artifacts and the system crashes after a few moments in Vista. He does not have MAC OS X installed, his machine boots straight into Windows Vista x64. After the machine has warmed up, it won't even make it into Vista it just halts after the initial loading screen.

We took an 8800GT from a functional Dell XPS machine we had laying around and swapped the cards. The Mac did not post anything to the monitor with the 8800 GT from the Dell. We tried different PCI-X slots and different monitors. The Dell with the 8800 GT from the MAC did not post anything either. Both cards were identical down to the individual capacitor. Perhaps the cards have a different BIOS installed on themselves.

In addition, last week, he installed 8 more GB of memory into it. I presumed this could have been the issue. We took out all non original RAM and tested the machine. We tried different combinations and nothing succeeded. This was the memory that was installed.

Kinda stumped as to what's up. I don't think it's a software issue as this sort of behavior tends to be a hardware failure. I can buy a card locally and test it in the MAC and if it doesn't work, return it. Would any AMD 4850 or AMD 4870 function or do I need a specific brand/version? I really hope it's the video card causing these problems and not the motherboard. Apple would probably ask for his first new born and a kidney for a replacement part.

Any advice would be appreciated!

- Tommy

 

[MacVidCards]

using a Non-Mac 8800GT (or any PC only vid card) you will need to wait a LONG TIME before you see anything on monitor.

It is the Mac EFI ROM which brings screen up right after the "bong"

Try bootin with the known good 8800GT again, and give it 4 or 5 minutes.

Also, try holding F8 and using advanced Windows boot options...Safe Boot, etc.

 

[TommyS]

Romanitor, thanks for the advice. We got post with the other 8800 GT.

So I went ahead and bought a EVGA GT 260. It requires dual PCIE 6 Pin power adapters. Does the Apple store sells these cables to the public? The machine only has one from the 8800 GT. The Video card came with a 4 pin to 6 Pin adapter. The power supply is neatly enclosed behind something. Are there leads back there for that connector?

- Thanks


Edit: I have to say, this is my first time working on an Apple and the the design and workmanship behind this case is beautiful.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

Romanitor, thanks for the advice. We got post with the other 8800 GT.

So I went ahead and bought a EVGA GT 260. It requires dual PCIE 6 Pin power adapters. Does the Apple store sells these cables to the public? The machine only has one from the 8800 GT. The Video card came with a 4 pin to 6 Pin adapter. The power supply is neatly enclosed behind something. Are there leads back there for that connector?

- Thanks


Edit: I have to say, this is my first time working on an Apple and the the design and workmanship behind this case is beautiful.

Unfortunately Apple don't sell the cables themselves. If you're in the states then you can easily buy them from ATI's online store. If you're elsewhere then you can either buy the required molex adapters and roll your own cables or you can often get them on eBay made by someone else. Have a search through the 4870 ROM dumping thread, I'm sure I them mentioned in there.