Spanky Deluxe
macrumors 603
You need to buy a couple of mini PCIe to PCIe cables and yes you need to flash the card. Its not too hard but for those who feel comfortable doing it, they can save a pretty penny.
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ATI 4870 in 2006 Mac Pro with 10.5.7 Update?
- Thread starter benborman
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You need to buy a couple of mini PCIe to PCIe cables and yes you need to flash the card. Its not too hard but for those who feel comfortable doing it, they can save a pretty penny.
Hey all,
That's awesome news that the new ati card will work on the old mac pros 🙂
I've just got a couple of questions before I head off an purchase one:
1) does the mini display port work in windows under bootcamp?
2) Given that the pci speed would be running slower (not sure how much difference 1.1 vx 2.1 makes), had anyone tried it with any 3d apps (specifically Mudbox and Houdini)?
Cheers
That's awesome news that the new ati card will work on the old mac pros 🙂
I've just got a couple of questions before I head off an purchase one:
1) does the mini display port work in windows under bootcamp?
2) Given that the pci speed would be running slower (not sure how much difference 1.1 vx 2.1 makes), had anyone tried it with any 3d apps (specifically Mudbox and Houdini)?
Cheers
Gotcha. Does the PC version come with 1 GB of memory over the apple versions 512 MB? That seems like a huge difference.
Spanky Deluxe
macrumors 603
You can get the PC card in both 512MB and 1GB variants. The downsides of getting a PC card are the following: No mini-display port, no VGA support as yet and usually only one Dual Link port and one Single Link DVI port (although the second port doesn't work at all on some models, i.e. Sapphire cards). Right now flashed 4870s also only run on PCIe 1.1 speeds which means half of the maximum possible bandwidth. However, first of all, this doesn't even matter for probably 90-95% of programs out there since standard 16x PCIe 1.1 is *more* than enough and secondly, the bus speed only really matters when loading textures in and out of the VRAM. Although some games can currently saturate a 512MB VRAM, very few (if any) can fill out 1GB VRAM so for games, having a 1GB card running in PCIe 1.1 is better than a 512MB card running in PCIe 2.0.
Mind you, if you're talking about a 2006 Mac Pro, the slots only support PCIe 1.1 so nothing is lost anyway.
First of all, thanks for all the great information.
I have an older Apple Cinema Display. (Aluminum, not the LED version.) Right now I use one of the two DVI ports on the back of the X1900. (I don't think I can use the mini-display port).
The card itself would be using a 16x PCIe 1.1 slot. (I have the older mac pro)
Just out of curiosity, how much of a hit would one see between a 1 GB card and 512 MB card?
As I said previously , this is for playing WoW, so I doubt I really need a 1 gig card. However, my current card, the x1900, has 512 as well and seems to be struggling some with the game.
In the end, I don't feel comfortable doing the flashing thing, so I will probably just grab the apple version. I'm just wondering over a PCIe 1.1 slot, how much am I loosing over the PC card with 1 gig of ram?
I can back up The Rominator from my own experience for whatever that's worth.
The ATI Radeon 4870 (Apple upgrade kit - box standard) is working on 10.5.7 (as I write this) on a April 2007 Mac Pro 2x2.66 Ghz and driving a 30" Cinema display (quietly too).
...and the mind aching racket from the 1900XT has gone (at last)
The ATI Radeon 4870 (Apple upgrade kit - box standard) is working on 10.5.7 (as I write this) on a April 2007 Mac Pro 2x2.66 Ghz and driving a 30" Cinema display (quietly too).
...and the mind aching racket from the 1900XT has gone (at last)
Spanky Deluxe
macrumors 603
Not much of a hit at all. The PCIe 1.1 doesn't matter either. My two 4870s are only running on 8x PCIe 1.1 slots, 4x less theoretical bandwidth than PCIe 2.0 16x slots and I have no issues (although mine are 1GB cards). WoW's an old game. An old game that gets higher resolution textures thrown in every now and again but still an old game. Once you've got one of these cards (any card, flashed or not), you're bottlenecks in WoW performance will be very much down to network bandwidth, server stutters and possibly hard drive speeds.
For me, I swear the hard drive's the weak point. I know OS X isn't meant to have an issue with disk fragmentation and the fact that I've moved my WoW folder around a few times (i.e. when I reinstalled) should negate all that etc but WoW takes soooo long to load on my Mac Pro. By the time I actually get to a point where I can see messages etc, I've already received several whispers and guild chat messages. It feels just like Windows used to in games when my disks were really fragmented.
Chances are I just need to reinstall WoW but come on, that means hours of downloading sodding patches (hence why I've always just copied my installation from disk to disk).
Pressure
macrumors 603
This also boils down to what GUI enhancements you have installed.
Not that I play WoW but they are based on XML and take some time to load.
Spanky Deluxe
macrumors 603
I don't really have many addons. MetaMap, TomTom and QuestHelper. Honestly though, this is the same WoW folder I had when I first got my Mac Pro back in 2006. When I've reinstalled my system I just moved WoW to another hard drive and back after the reinstall. 😱
Well. I am in a bit of a bind here.
I have the card and am ready to install it, but I am having a problem.
I figured I would clean the machine while I did the installation and I am having this exact issue.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/460317/
I CANNOT get the darn fan unit out. I have removed all the screws, but the thing is really stuck. I have pulled pretty damn hard to no avail.
Any ideas? In that old thread, people seem to just say, pull. But that really isn't working.
I have the card and am ready to install it, but I am having a problem.
I figured I would clean the machine while I did the installation and I am having this exact issue.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/460317/
I CANNOT get the darn fan unit out. I have removed all the screws, but the thing is really stuck. I have pulled pretty damn hard to no avail.
Any ideas? In that old thread, people seem to just say, pull. But that really isn't working.
bozz2006
macrumors 68030
Hi, do you know for sure?
Because I just got recently a 2006-2007 Mac Pro with Quad-core 2.66 xeon and I sure would like to upgrade to this video card. I know that ATI cares about those with slightly older mac pros(2006) and their video cards work in our machines. Thus, eliminating the EFI32/64 limitation.
Nvidia, on the other hand hates us slightly lower end mac pro users. Someone also on here said that the 2006 mac pros are somewhat on par to performance and speed as the 2009?
Because I just got recently a 2006-2007 Mac Pro with Quad-core 2.66 xeon and I sure would like to upgrade to this video card. I know that ATI cares about those with slightly older mac pros(2006) and their video cards work in our machines. Thus, eliminating the EFI32/64 limitation.
Nvidia, on the other hand hates us slightly lower end mac pro users. Someone also on here said that the 2006 mac pros are somewhat on par to performance and speed as the 2009?
I can third the fact that the mac ATI HD 4870 will work in a first gen mac pro. It's plug and play. No need to flash it or anything.
On a side note:
I just installed this card and am disappointing to say I have not seen a huge jump in wow's framerate. In fact, the game is behaving much like it did with the x1900 xt.
Framerate is locked at 30 fps. For the most part, it will stay there. However, when I swing the camera around or enter a town, the framerate often dips before coming back up. It's odd. Once it has dipped, it usually levels off back at 30. Though sometimes it will jump around the 26-30 ranger.
I'm starting to think the hard drive theory could be spot on. Sadly, SSD are way to pricey. I might try getting a faster regular drive. We'll see.
The odd thing is, my machines specs should enable me to play the game maxed out at like 60 fps. However, I have noticed WoW performs consistently worse on macs than it does on equivalently powerful rigs running windows. I have no idea if this is an optimization issue or what.
Oh well. The card was worth a shot. At least it's quiet. The X1900 sounded like an attack helicopter spinning up.
Spanky Deluxe
macrumors 603
Frame rate in WoW is now locked at a max of 30 fps. I don't know if its always been that way but it certainly is now. It makes sense because a lot of areas in WoW don't need any kind of graphics power at all (like I said, its a four year old game) and there's no need to raise up the temperatures on your card and use up extra watts of power when you won't notice the difference.
I think WoW for Windows actually doesn't limit the frame limit. I'm not sure though. Stuttering when you go into cities is going to be because it has to access the hard drive to load different textures, models etc - hence why your hard drive's likely to be the limiting factor there. Check your game folder file size, how big is it? Its probably about 10gb. Most of that is maps, models and textures. Obviously the game can't fit all of that into your graphics memory at any one time (and even if it could, it would be inefficient). Some games have loading screens between levels where they do all this. Others do most of it on the fly (i.e. WoW). If you've got a slow hard drive though, it can still clunk down a fair bit. I notice this every time I use my hearthstone. Its probably the best example since you're usually somewhere completely different and the game has to load all new textures etc rather than doing it gradually as you're running around.
Really? What's the rest of your system like?
I actually choose to lock the framerate at 30.
You can use the command "/console maxfps x", where is "x" is the maximum framerate you want to allow. I find that if I set that to 60, it will be there sometimes, but then come crashing own when I start to move or fight anything.
Turning down the draw distance helps. Lowering anti-aliasing seems to help some, but not a lot. In fact, I can have it at 8x AA and still have similar framerates with that odd sputter just as if I have it set to 4x.
In terms of hard drives, what are some options less expensive than a SSD? I use very little space on my machine (44 GB at the moment), so I could probably get away with something 64 GB.
Spanky, I might send you a screen hot of my settings and perhaps you can hit me with a few ideas. I still find it odd I have such inconsistency.
I thought I read that the 4870 needed 2 power slots to run. I thought my mac pro 2006 only had the one which my 8800 is currently plugged into? Am I mistaken?
Spanky Deluxe
macrumors 603
It needs two PCI power connections of which there are two in your Mac Pro. The 8800 came with one cable to connect to one of them. The 4870 Mac card comes with two such cables to plug into both of the sockets.
Mackilroy
macrumors 601
Quad 2.66 (2006 model), 4 GB RAM, and WoW was on a 7200 RPM drive.
Can't you unlock that FPS lock, though?
TheSpaz
macrumors 604
I just broke down and bought the 4870 from the Apple Store. I can't believe I did it, but I did. I can't wait to get it and start playing CoD4 with it. I've heard many, many times that ATI drivers are always better than nVidia's drivers. We'll see. I hope CoD4 gets a nice boost from this card. I would love to get a constant 60fps if that's possible on the Mac version of the game 🙁
Plutonius
macrumors G4
Actually, it's very easy to PuG raid the older WotLK content. I'm not in a raiding guild but find it's very easy to get in a 25 Naxx run. The downside is that you will probably wipe more, may or may not have vent, and will most likely not continue the raid after it breaks up for the night. It's worth it though not to have be on a guild raid schedule, to be able to raid when you feel like it, and to be able to leave the raid when you want to.
Plutonius
macrumors G4
Hmmm, I play on a 2009 2.93 Quad Mac Pro with the 4870 and my framerates vary from 30s-100's depending on where I am. The framerates are not locked for me but maybe it's a setting that you have selected.
Spanky Deluxe
macrumors 603
I'm actually levelling a new character now so I'm good for now. I've had some experience with PuG raids before but they've never gone down too well, it takes so long to get them started and then when one person has to leave everyone has to sit around waiting for half an hour while a replacement's found. I'd far rather they put some more regular dungeons in but make them extra hard so that you don't have to do raids to get top spec gear.
I haven't really paid much attention to my framerates. I checked one time and they were locked at 30 and another time they were locked at 60. I haven't experienced a single stutter due to graphics, only due to loading stuff from the hard drive.
Wehrwolf
macrumors 6502
Just got my 4870 from Apple (OEM kit) and would like to also confirm that the card so far works perfectly in a 2006 Mac Pro (2x 2.66Ghz Woodcrest) running 10.5.7. Had an initial scare where the machine would *bong*, but would sit at a grey screen (no Apple logo). Reseating the card fixed the problem, and I've run the card through some paces with WoW and COD4.
More importantly, the 4870 is virtually silent compared to the 3870 it replaced, which will be RMA'd very shortly for a refund. Having come initially from a passively cooled 7300GT, the 3870 was quite a shock. Not only was the fan quite loud at idle (for reference, about as loud as the optical drive spinning at max speed), it generated so much heat that it noticeably increased my HD temps in the bays above it (up to 54C), but also caused the side panel of my Mac to become very warm to the touch. Granted, I may have gotten a defective 3870, but some research on my part suggests that many others seem to be complaining of heat and fan noise with the 3870. I am now back to noise levels very close to when I had the 7300GT, but with a better performing card. The 3870 performed nicely for the price, but I think I'm sticking with my 4870 😀
More importantly, the 4870 is virtually silent compared to the 3870 it replaced, which will be RMA'd very shortly for a refund. Having come initially from a passively cooled 7300GT, the 3870 was quite a shock. Not only was the fan quite loud at idle (for reference, about as loud as the optical drive spinning at max speed), it generated so much heat that it noticeably increased my HD temps in the bays above it (up to 54C), but also caused the side panel of my Mac to become very warm to the touch. Granted, I may have gotten a defective 3870, but some research on my part suggests that many others seem to be complaining of heat and fan noise with the 3870. I am now back to noise levels very close to when I had the 7300GT, but with a better performing card. The 3870 performed nicely for the price, but I think I'm sticking with my 4870 😀
Spanky Deluxe
macrumors 603
That 3870 must have been a dud. I've heard of some other people having similar noise problems. I had two of them in my machine (one Mac and one PC one for Crossfire) and they were both near silent most of the time. My 4870s are only a smidgeon quieter.