Cheapest replacement viddy for Mac Pro 3,1?

[kirkbross]

My 8800GT keeps failing. I've "baked" it twice now (which actually works) but it's a big pain in the arse and the novelty has worn off.

I'm ready to call the card what it is -- a piece of junk -- and I'm ready to replace it.

Is the HD 5770 ($229 / B&H Photo) really the cheapest card I can buy that will work out of the box?

 

[minifridge1138]

My 8800GT keeps failing. I've "baked" it twice now (which actually works) but it's a big pain in the arse and the novelty has worn off.

I'm ready to call the card what it is -- a piece of junk -- and I'm ready to replace it.

Is the HD 5770 ($229 / B&H Photo) really the cheapest card I can buy that will work out of the box?

It is the cheapest, currently sold card.

Used, you could get a GT120. It was a stock card for the 2009 Mac Pro. It isn't as beefy as a 5770, but it is a capable card.

Que people suggesting a PC card in 3... 2... 1...

 

[CaptainChunk]

I'd advise against a GT 120, actually. It's a downgrade with less than half the processing power of an 8800 GT.

The 5770 is the cheapest "official" card you can buy right now. Faster than what you have for sure and it's a simple drop-in.

If you're running Lion, another alternative would be a PC 6870. It works right out of the box with Lion, but you get no Apple boot screen. They can also be flashed to work with Snow Leopard. It's both cheaper and faster than Apple's 5770.

 

[kirkbross]

If you're running Lion, another alternative would be a PC 6870. It works right out of the box with Lion, but you get no Apple boot screen. They can also be flashed to work with Snow Leopard. It's both cheaper and faster than Apple's 5770.

I'm running Lion... but I sometimes boot my Snow Leopard drive... can the PC 6870 be made to work with both? And how much of a hassle is the flash?

PS... how is B&H able to offer the card $20 cheaper than Apple? Any risk buying from them?

 

[BigJohno]

Just tried the 6870 over the weekend. XFX to be exact. The GPU fan ran at full blast under Lion. I didn't want to go through the hassle of flashing it. It was great under win 7 because I could turn the fan down but it was still the loudest one thing in my Mac pro... I'm returning it and sticking with my 5770 until the hopeful mac pro refresh sometime this year...

 

[badlight]

Just acquired a PC Sapphire 6850 to replace 8800GT. Works with the single power cable which powered the 8800, quieter than the 8800 and doesn't run full fan at boot time like its predecessor. Card is unflashed and I'm running 10.7.3. The card is said to be supported under 10.6.8 but I haven't tried it.

No Apple boot screen as previously noted, so less convenient to switch OSes, especially since Lion seems not to like my Win 7 drive any more. Otherwise, early impressions very favourable.

 

[kirkbross]

I went ahead and bought the Mac HD 5770 from B&H. $229, no tax, free shipping.

I do love Macs -- I use mine for Pro Tools, CS5, etc. -- but I also build PCs for gaming and it's times like this when I resent the expensive, proprietary nature of Apple. Sigh. I would have been happy with a $40 video card for my Mac, but I do want a boot screen.

 

[WardC]

I have the 6-core 3.33GHz, and the Radeon 5770 is the card that came with this Mac Pro. It is a pretty great card, I have had zero problems at all with it, and it has handled everything that I have thrown at it. I have seen no need to upgrade to a 5870 or other card. I don't really do super-high resolution gaming on a 30" monitor and want 100+ FPS frame rates or anything, mostly I do graphics, photo work, and play video (full screen) and the 5770 handles all of that very well.

If I was a gamer and wanted to crank out high frame rates at 2560x1600 resolution, then I might be in the game for a more souped-up card, but the 5770 has proved to be a great card for me so far.

I hope you are happy with your purchase, as I have been happy with the 5770.

 

[phforandafter]

Hey, guys, I'm having an issue installing the PC HD 5770, and rather than start a new thread, I thought I'd post in here.

The problem, basically, is that it doesn't work. The 5770 supposedly works out of the box with Lion on Mac Pro 3,1's, but I get no video at all out of it. Here's how the card shows up, along with my specs:

Image taken with two cards installed, obviously. I've tried a few things, to no avail. I'd really rather avoid flashing the card, as that seems like a huge pain in the ass, so if anyone has any ideas, I'd appreciate the help. Thanks!

 

[MacVidCards]

Did you remember to plug in the power? Much like a toaster, card won't work unless plugged in.

If there is power connected, the card might just be bad.

 

[phforandafter]

Did you remember to plug in the power? Much like a toaster, card won't work unless plugged in.

If there is power connected, the card might just be bad.

The card is fine, it's my gaming PC's GPU that I'm switching out. It does have power connected, but it's a cheap cable, so I suppose the issue could be with that. The fan spins and it shows up as a GPU, as you can see above, though.

 

[MacVidCards]

The card is fine, it's my gaming PC's GPU that I'm switching out. It does have power connected, but it's a cheap cable, so I suppose the issue could be with that. The fan spins and it shows up as a GPU, as you can see above, though.

That is exactly how it would behave if power cable isn't working or connected completely.

 

[phforandafter]

The problem does not seem to stem from the power cable. I tried another that I know is functional, and no change.

 

[Tbarr]

Hey, guys, I'm having an issue installing the PC HD 5770, and rather than start a new thread, I thought I'd post in here.

The problem, basically, is that it doesn't work. The 5770 supposedly works out of the box with Lion on Mac Pro 3,1's, but I get no video at all out of it. Here's how the card shows up, along with my specs:

Image

Image taken with two cards installed, obviously. I've tried a few things, to no avail. I'd really rather avoid flashing the card, as that seems like a huge pain in the ass, so if anyone has any ideas, I'd appreciate the help. Thanks!

That's almost the exact problem I'm having. I read up on the 6850 & 6870 and went for the XFX 6850 on my Snow Leopard MacPro 3.1, with a twice baked flashed 8800GT and once baked stock 2600. The XFX 6850 doesn't work, in SL, and I finally was able to flash it with the Zeus 2.8 EFIed ROM using my XP PC in DOS with ATIflash & -fa. Nothing on the Mac would flash it, saying it was already the same ROM, and WinFlash refused as well. I was able to Flash the 8800 a while back on the Mac, but this time nothing worked. It still works fine in XP, but nothing on my Snow Leopard 3.1. I was thinking about Lion, but now I'm thinking again. Too bad I couldn't just get the ATI 4670 from my PC to work in the Mac and just swap them. I'm getting rather concerned with all these baked cards...

 

[Tbarr]

So...I assume the next move is to upgrade to Lion to see if I can get my XFX 6850 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150573 to work on the Mac side? I'm still getting nothing but a black screen in 10.6.8 even though I've flashed the 6850 twice with the Zeus 2.8 EFIed Roms. I've found a way to flash it on the Mac if you have Windows installed. You have to use RBE_128 along with ATIWinflash in Windows. RBE_128 allows you to force ATIWinflash to flash the card. I used GPU-Z & ATIWinflash to dump the original rom so I had two roms to try. I've tried both with the same results. I was able to get 10.6.8 to load both the ATI5000Controller.kext & ATI6000Controller.kext by adding the number to the ATI5000Controller.kext, it was already in the ATI6000Controller.kext but wouldn't load until I tried the ATY_Init.kext.

The ATY_Init.kext caused both Controller.kexts to load but still nothing but a black screen, so I removed the ATY_Init.kext. The two Controller.kexts are still loading now even with the ATY_Init.kext removed. Currently these are the loaded kexts with both the 2600 & 6850 installed;
ATI2600Controller.kext
ATI5000Controller.kext
ATI6000Controller.kext
ATIFramebuffer.kext
ATIRadeonX2000.kext
ATIRadeonX3000.kext
ATISupport.kext

This is what System Profiler says with the 2600 in slot 1 & 6850 in slot 2;
Display:

Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
Slot: Slot-2
PCIe Lane Width: x16
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x6739
Revision ID: 0x0000
Displays:
Display Connector:

I just received the PCIe power splitter I ordered last week so I could replace the 2600 with the 8800 now that I have three PCIe power sources. I got my second PCIe power cable last week from here http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Apple/9227128/

Suggestions?

 

[Tbarr]

Things are looking better This worked for my XFX 6850 in 7.3 and to a lesser degree in 6.8 https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/13812741/

I had a time trying to get past the 'no-recovery disk' install bug in Lion, and ended up installing on an external FW disk for now. I tried a number of things, the closest was creating an EFI rom with RomCreator.app and flashing with Zeus 2.3, which then identified the card as a 6870 but still wouldn't see the attached monitors. Flashing back to the Original rom and using Kext Helper b7.app to install ATY_Init.kext without the ATI Graphics Update.pkg seems to give me a DVI & HDMI port in Lion but only a HDMI port in 6.8. The package is here http://www.rghost.net/12792671

For some reason 6.8 sees both my 2600 & 6850 in slot 1, something wrong there, the System Profiler in 6.8 says;
ATI Radeon HD 6800 Series:

Chipset Model: ATI Radeon HD 6800 Series
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
Slot: Slot-1
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 1024 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x6739
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-B7710C-176
EFI Driver Version: 01.00.318
Displays:
ASUS VK222H:
Resolution: 1680 x 1050 @ 60 Hz
Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Display Serial Number: 88Lxxxxxxxxx
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Rotation: Supported
Television: Yes
Display Connector:
Status: No Display Connected
Display Connector:
Status: No Display Connected
Display Connector:
Status: No Display Connected

There are two displays connected to the two DVI ports but all that is seen is the HDMI monitor.

Lion also sees both cards in Slot 1. I have one monitor connected to the HDMI port and the other to the Lower DVI port with a VGA adaptor;

ATI Radeon HD 6800 Series:

Chipset Model: ATI Radeon HD 6800 Series
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
Slot: Slot-1
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 1024 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x6739
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-B7710C-176
EFI Driver Version: 01.00.318
Displays:
ASUS VK222H:
Resolution: 1680 x 1050 @ 60 Hz
Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Display Serial Number: 88Lxxxxxxxxx
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Rotation: Supported
Television: Yes
AL1914:
Resolution: 1280 x 1024 @ 60 Hz
Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Rotation: Supported

The only Boot screen is on the 2600. I just got it working and will be testing things...