8800 GTS, Universal ? PC? Ehh?

[Ryan813]

So I brokedown and ordered the powerhouse 8core 2.8ghz mac pro. The problem is that if I wanted the 8800 GT card from apple I would have to wait weeks for my mac to ship. So I took the crummy ATI, and overnight shipping That said, now I'm off to track down an 8800 GT.

Macmall.com offers the 8800GT, and the "PC brands" that I'm used to seeing make it, XFX, EVGA, etc. Under platform support some cards say "PC" others say "Universal". Now that's news to me.. Universal? I've read on other forums that mac video cards must have a special video bios / firmware to be recognized. But here mac mall is selling cards that are universal. I visited both EVGA and XFX's websites but I was unable to find any mention of support for mac. Does anyone out there have the lowdown on 3rd part cards working in the new mac pro's?

 

[barefeats]

Macs have to have Mac ROMs in GPU

They can call it "universal" or whatever, unless it has the Mac OS X compatible ROM code in the card, it won't boot.

I can confirm this because we physically tried it just to make sure. You must buy the GeForce 8800 GT from Apple. No other GeForce 8800 GT or GTX will work under OS X unless it contains Apple's ROM illegally or by licensing agreement. And the only company who has ever been licensed to use Apple's ROM code is XFX -- but they never produced any Mac compatible cards, for some reason.

A PC version of the GeForce cards will boot under Windows XP or Vista in a Boot Camp partition. We have confirmed that by booting a PC GeForce 8800 GTX yesterday on our Vista 64 partition (2008 Mac Pro 3.2GHz). We used the 64-bit Vista driver that came with the card though you can also download it from the nVidia website.

 

[Ryan813]

Thank you very much, you just saved me hours of stress and return shipping fees.