8800, PC version versus Mac version

[Nephelim]

I have an 8800 card that I bought for my Wintel box a couple years ago now. In the interim, I've gotten a Macbook and have totally fallen for OSX. As a result, as my Wintel box gets more and more crusty, I've been mulling over replacing it with a Mac Pro (or, preferably, the midrange mac minitower of myth, the i-Chupacabra).

Assuming that I did get a Mac Pro, would I be able to cannibalize the 8800 that I have in my Wintel box and use it in the Pro, thus possibly avoiding the outrageous markup found in buying hardware upgrades from Apple? I am concerned that perhaps the 8800 GT offered as an upgrade is somehow physically different than the one that you can buy for the PC...

 

[grue]

I have an 8800 card that I bought for my Wintel box a couple years ago now. In the interim, I've gotten a Macbook and have totally fallen for OSX. As a result, as my Wintel box gets more and more crusty, I've been mulling over replacing it with a Mac Pro (or, preferably, the midrange mac minitower of myth, the i-Chupacabra).

Assuming that I did get a Mac Pro, would I be able to cannibalize the 8800 that I have in my Wintel box and use it in the Pro, thus possibly avoiding the outrageous markup found in buying hardware upgrades from Apple? I am concerned that perhaps the 8800 GT offered as an upgrade is somehow physically different than the one that you can buy for the PC...

It depends. If you have a 128k EEPROM, it "should" be flashable to a Mac version. You'd have to check with nvflash.

 

[Nephelim]

so then the difference is the Firmware. Cool, thanks.

 

[nanofrog]

There are a few threads on this. IIRC, the ROM files are available there, so if your card does have a large enough ROM on the board, just download and update.