You could always look into buying the GTX 285 Mac Pro edition, or if you are frisky you can flash a PC version of a 5870.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple's ATI Radeon HD 5870 Works in 2008 Mac Pro
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
You could always look into buying the GTX 285 Mac Pro edition, or if you are frisky you can flash a PC version of a 5870.
Who buys a Macpro to play video gamesLOL
I'd imagine not many but people may want to use a Mac Pro to create a few polygons here, a few textures there, maybe involve the Mac somewhere in game development? I mean it's a long shot
.
It is for Apple users. The idea you can upgrade your own machine beyond the hard drive or RAM without Apple doing it for you is new to them.
They are? They keep buying last year's tech at higher than current tech prices.
I have a Mac Pro 1,1 (bought it in 2007). I have the nVidia 7300 GT that came standard with it, which I run two 1600x1200 monitors with. At some point I plan to add a third monitor, and I'll need a second video card for that. While $450 is more than I'd like to spend, I'm not ruling it out, and the price could drop over time. I'd like to know if its possible so I could consider that as an option. If it were to work well, it might be worth it to spend a few extra hundred to boost the gaming performance of my machine. As it stands, I can't even play any of Valve's games with the 7300 GT unless I boot into Windows (lack of OpenGL support in OS X for this card), which I don't have a native install of on this machine. Gaming isn't that important to me, but it'd be nice to have.
Considering that current Mac Pro's start at $2499, it is 1/5 the price of a new setup. I have no intentions of buying a new Mac Pro any time soon. I spent what I consider a large amount of money on this machine because I expected it to last for a long time, and I expected to be able to keep it current with upgrades. It's already fast enough for what I use it for at the moment, but adding an SSD and more RAM (only have 5GB at the moment, can max out at 32GB) will make a difference.
Even if unsupported video cards do work, this situation is rather disappointing. It is looking like it makes more sense to go the Hackintosh route than a Mac Pro, because after a few years you get about the same level of support either way.
It's just you. Game benchmarks are not usually a good indicator of performance difference, especially ones that are not CPU heavy.
The reason why it clocks faster is because gamebenching is done with 32-bit software. Al though they're both officially 64-bit, the 2008 8-core (2 CPU) MP runs 32-bit by default and the new 6-core (1CPU) runs 64-bit by default.
32-bits software tends to clock a tiny little bit slower when running on 64-bit S.Leopard.
So do the test again on the new 6-core when booted in 32-bit S.Leopard.
32-bits software tends to clock a tiny little bit slower when running on 64-bit S.Leopard.
So do the test again on the new 6-core when booted in 32-bit S.Leopard.
The tests are done in K64 in both machines I'm pretty sure. So both machines are running the fastest they can.
My bet now is the truth lies somewhere between "Greedy Apple wants you to upgrade" and "they cut support/testing budget"...
schweet
Might have to throw down for one of these in a year or two.
-- provided something better & compatible doesn't come out..
Might have to throw down for one of these in a year or two.
-- provided something better & compatible doesn't come out..
This is definitely a driver issue. I have the ati 4870 in my Mac Pro3,1 running minidisplay port. Some have made incorrect comments. The 2008 Pros PCI can run both 32 and 64 while the new ones are 64 only. The issue with the minidisplay port is driver based not hardware. At the moment not many varied tests have been run and none with any official Apple update graphics driver so I doubt the 5870 and 5770 minidisplay ports will not work while the dual DVI port does. Give it time. It's not even out yet.
I'm not so sure it's a driver issue. After all, flashed 5770 and 5870 cards using the iMac's EFI work with DVI and displayports - all three outputs work but triple display doesn't. It looks so far like Apple has purposefully stopped these working properly in pre 2009 Mac Pros. They did something similar with Crossfire support in their 4870 but ATI fixed that in their driver for Windows. Since Apple releases the drivers for OSX not ATI, it doesn't look hopeful that this will be fixed.
I'd imagine not many but people may want to use a Mac Pro to create a few polygons here, a few textures there, maybe involve the Mac somewhere in game development? I mean it's a long shot
What's negative about it is that they tested a (high end of the scale) machine with 2 physical processors against a (lower end of the scale) machine with one and tried to make the new machine look inferior when it isn't. Its because they compared an upgraded machine to a base model and then made a big deal about it.
The 2.8GHz 2008 Mac Pro *was* the base model at $2799. The 3.33GHz Hexacore model is not a base model and now sells for $3699. It's not exactly great news when Apple's newest computers are outperformed by computers that retailed for $900 less two years ago.
hmmm....
Currently have 2008 mac pro - 4870 x 2 (Xfire in win 7).
The question is 5870 x 2 (Xfire) will it work and how much quicker...
Currently have 2008 mac pro - 4870 x 2 (Xfire in win 7).
The question is 5870 x 2 (Xfire) will it work and how much quicker...
No reason why not. It should be about twice as fast since a single 5870 performs about the same as a pair of 4870s.