Does anyone think apple would support this? I switched from a pc because of Leopard being just a superior operating system- i would love to see apple support mutiple graphics cards for higher performance gaming. Anybody ever heard rumors about this?
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ATI Crossfire or Nvidia SLI support
- Thread starter iansilv
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From what I have heard the current Mac Pro can support either 2 x 8800GT's or 2 x 3870's as far as the energy requirements go, however, within Leopard its not going to do either Crossfire or SLI, but will function as two individual graphic cards, note the 3870 is not officially supported in OSX, however under windows it is very likely that the two 3870's would support corssfire I believe due to current crossfire being implemented in drivers.
For the last time, as I've personally made two threads on this subject. NO SLI OR CROSSFIRE in OS X. The people who use either of them represent around 2% of the entire market, and Apple couldn't care less about gaming, anyway. On the old Mac Pro, it was found to work somewhat in Windows, but you're not getting two 8800 GT to work together in OS X.
To remedy this situation, I'm getting two 8800 GT for my Mac Pro anyway and hooking up one monitor to each. That way I have the power of an entire card behind each monitor; something that SLI and CrossFire can't do.
Oh, and I don't put an 's' on 8800 GT when it's plural because I don't want to mess up searches for specific models.
Edit: OP, congratulations on your first name.
To remedy this situation, I'm getting two 8800 GT for my Mac Pro anyway and hooking up one monitor to each. That way I have the power of an entire card behind each monitor; something that SLI and CrossFire can't do.
Oh, and I don't put an 's' on 8800 GT when it's plural because I don't want to mess up searches for specific models.
Edit: OP, congratulations on your first name.
Both SLi and Crossfire and implemented in drivers. They are also limited by the drivers to only work on boards nVidia/ATi deem compatible. There is no hard physical limitation stopping a board with dual PCI-E 16x slots from doing either.
I don't think SLI will happen until nVidia support SLI on Intel. Imagine buying a Mac Pro and having SLI in OSX, but not in Windows. That would get a whole lot of people annoyed.
True, I am however baseing this on the asumption that since Crossfire is supported on the Intel P35, X38 and X48 chipsets it makes it highly likely to work on the current Mac Pro whose motherboard uses Intel 5400 chipset which is similar chipset to that of the Skulltrail boards due out soon, which definitely supports crossfire and probably SLI to.
NO, Skulltrail has nVidia chips that the Mac Pro motherboard does not have, so no SLI. P35, X38 and X48 chipsets are in a different class from 5400B
The reason SLI doesn't work on intel motherboards is the same reason OSX doesn't install on any X86 machine.
There is no hardware or technical reason why SLI or Crossfire can't run on these chip sets. There is no hardware or technical reason why SLI can't run on ATi chipsets, or for crossfire to run on nVidia chipsets.
All the work for SLI/Crossfire is done in the driver. The driver artificially limits what chipsets it "supports".
99%
Yeah, the driver does determine which chipset it runs, on and in this instance as I had mentioned its the Intel 5400 chipset same as the one the Skulltrail motherboard uses which does support crossfire and just so happens to be the same chipset the the Mac Pro uses.
All I'm saying is the likelyhood of crossfire working under windows is very high.
Yeah, the driver does determine which chipset it runs, on and in this instance as I had mentioned its the Intel 5400 chipset same as the one the Skulltrail motherboard uses which does support crossfire and just so happens to be the same chipset the the Mac Pro uses.
All I'm saying is the likelyhood of crossfire working under windows is very high.
As long as the PSU can take the power draw you can connect as many cards as you want. All you need is some 4-pin molex to 8 (or 6)-pin PCIe connectors.
The power consumption of a 8800GT is somewhere in the upper 130 Watts region so the Mac Pro should manage with two.
110, actually, so we should be good.
ok so can i get an answer for this...
I have a macpro coming. standard config with extra ram HD's blah blah blah and 1 8800gt...i do my work in OSX and i accept that 2 8800gt's will do nothing other than let me run extra monitors...however, i intend to do some gaming in windows vista and I want to know if this will benefit me there if i run it in SLI mode??
thanks
I have a macpro coming. standard config with extra ram HD's blah blah blah and 1 8800gt...i do my work in OSX and i accept that 2 8800gt's will do nothing other than let me run extra monitors...however, i intend to do some gaming in windows vista and I want to know if this will benefit me there if i run it in SLI mode??
thanks
You can only do that with hacked (read: unsupported) drivers. But yes you can get SLI working in Windows with 2 8800GT cards.
thanks for the quick reply!! would you be able to tell me where i might find out how to do this? and if i get these drivers it wont effect the cards working in OSX right?
sorry im a bit clueless
After doing some snooping, it is more difficult than I realized. Plus no one is sure that the GF8 series will even work with the hacked drivers. Supposedly there is a way to get a more up to date inf that should include the GF8 cards. Here is the long thread.
Id imagine you would have to make sure the SLI connector was on the cards?
for SLI to work on Wintel's the cards are physically bridged together with an internal connector that typically comes with a Motherboard.
He'll need a flexible bridge, likely. Those that have got this working on the first generation of Mac Pros used a flexible bridge, I believe.
As well, wouldn't pro apps like Maya and Cinema 4 and Final Cut Pro's Color benefit from SLI. I mean we always look at the games part, which interests me, but what's good for games is often good for the pro apps, right? So then it would be of interest to Apple to support SLI or Crossfire.
Not in the least, right now. There has to be application-level support as well as OS-level support in order to fully take advantage of SLI. Not quite as sure about Crossfire.
Either way, the Pro apps will need to support SLI. Not just the operating system.
And remember: as soon as you enable SLI, you lose all but 1 monitor. There is no multi-monitor support for SLI from nVidia.
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