eVGA GeForce 8800GTS 640MB on the new Mac Pro !

[triesto]

I have eVGA GeForce 8800GTS 640MB GDDR3 PCI Express installed in my media center. And due to the lack of an attractive media center platform, the Zalman 160HD, C2D 2.4GHz is setting beside the TV turned off. So, I thought it is wise to get benefit from some components for my other applications.

The mentioned card above is slower than 8800GT 512MB, which is sold for Mac Pro. My main usage of Mac Pro will be:

1. Photograph management using Aperture.
2. Photoshop editing.
3. Multi-instances of Parallel VM running Windows 2003 Server, Sharepoint and VS2005 development.
4. So far, no video editing.
5. No games.

My questions are:

1. Is this card compatible with Mac Pro ?
2. Is it faster than ATI HD2600XT ?
3. Is it cooler than ATI HD2600XT ?
4. Is the extra video ram worth it ?
5. Overall, if you don't have answers, does it worth to do trial/error on installing the card or the ATI is just fine for my applications ?

 

[bigbossbmb]

1) No
2 & 3) Irrelevant
4) It would be.
5) The ATi card will be fine.

 

[Eidorian]

It'll work in Windows and yes it's faster then the HD 2600 XT. Considering it's a dual slot solution do you think it's cooler?

 

[triesto]

Answer 1 is a bad news to me. Anyhow, I tried to find out the EFI type of the 8800GTS 640 card but it seems it's not a popular card and no answer found. Neverthless, let's assume it's either EFI-64 or EFI-32. The new Mac Pro is EFI-64, which is backward compatible with EFI-32 video card. Therefore, if it's up to the EFI type, it should work, unless things won't end up here.

So, is it the firmware of the card that raises the incompatibility or something else ?

 

[StealthRider]

It's probably not EFI at all, which is where the problem lies with "non-Mac" graphics cards.

 

[Pressure]

Answer 1 is a bad news to me. Anyhow, I tried to find out the EFI type of the 8800GTS 640 card but it seems it's not a popular card and no answer found. Neverthless, let's assume it's either EFI-64 or EFI-32. The new Mac Pro is EFI-64, which is backward compatible with EFI-32 video card. Therefore, if it's up to the EFI type, it should work, unless things won't end up here.

So, is it the firmware of the card that raises the incompatibility or something else ?

The fact that it does not have en EFI compatible ROM. EFI ROM is 128k compared to a normal BIOS ROM which is only 64k.

 

[Cromulent]

It's probably not EFI at all, which is where the problem lies with "non-Mac" graphics cards.

No it isn't. Remember there are EFI based PCs from companies like Gateway and they can use any standard PC graphics card.

The problem is the firmware of the card and the differences that Mac OS X needs in order to use it.