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Evidence! New Mac Pros's or BTO Options on the way!

barefeats said:
I received my "Silver Arrow" on Wednesday. I'm getting similar 3D game benchmark numbers to the Retail Radeon 3870 "Mac and PC Edition." I say "similar" because some are slightly slower. Some are slightly faster.

The whole issue has been rendered academic because OWC is sold out of the "OEM" 3870 as of last night and I doubt there will be more available.

The "OEM" heatsink/fan assembly is sexy looking but is thicker than it needs to be if you are thinking of adding a second card to you "early 08" Mac Pro.

Also if you plan to jumper two 3870s for use in CrossFire mode under Windows, that isn't possible with the "OEM" whose heatsink cover renders the CrossFire port unreachable.

In answer to the question about ports, the "OEM" only has DVI ports. There is no S-Video port (like the Retail version) and no HDMI port (as some sources reported).

That leaves the only reason to choose the "OEM": The fan. It's silent. The Retail 3870's fan can get pretty noisy when the card is at 100% load.
Click to expand...
The dual slot OEM 3870 probably overclocks a lot higher on the Windows side with that massive dual slot cooler.
 
Mine shows up in the mail today. I'll post some pictures for those who previously asked to see it.
 
Chaos123x said:
I guess the "Sliver Arrow" would be good for people who keep getting defective blue retail cards with the constant hairdryer fan.
Click to expand...
If only it worked in older Mac Pros. Why the limitation? What's different from the retail card besides the cooling?

What would be cool (no pun intended) is if Apple were to sell the cooling unit separately as an option for people with the retail card. :cool: Not going to happen, but I can dream.

Anyone have idle/load temperatures to report? Compared to the retail cooler or popular 3rd party coolers? You can use GPU-Z in Windows to check them.
 
UPDATE: If you want a "Silver Arrow" OEM Radeon HD 3870, they are back in stock at OWC:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/ATI Technologies/630ATI3870/

In answer to "apfhex":
The 'OEM' 3870 card only has the 64-bit EFI driver in the ROM -- so it only boots in the 'late 2008' Mac Pro. The Retail 3870 card has both the 32-bit and 64-bit EFI drivers in the ROM so it will boot any model of Mac Pro.

One has to wonder if you flashed it with the Retail ROM that it would boot on older Mac Pros. Two possible catches, though.
1. They are based on different reference boards, and,
2. The ROM on the OEM board may not be big enough to hold the code from the Retail card.
 
Eidorian said:
That looks like a guide. Doesn't the Mac Pro have a card guide in the front for long cards to secure them?
Click to expand...

Yep, you were correct. Once the card was placed in the Mac, I was able to undo the set screw and the "tab" pops into place within that guide. This card is a TIGHT fit, took a while to install. The metal, finned exhaust vent on the end was actually bent from someone the shipping I'm guessing. After straightening that out, got it in there, and fired up 3DMark06 in XP. My score went from 4930 with the stock ATI 2600 to 12648 with the new ATI/Apple 3870. Not too bad, I can finally play games now. Someone mentioned better overclocking with this apple version of the card and I firmly believe they are correct that this card would be better as far as dissipating the heat. Not only because of the big fan but the whole back of the card is mounted to a large block of aluminum (basically the grey shell has two parts, an aluminum back and plastic top).
 
Quick update for those following this thread: I installed the Apple 3870 last night, played Spore in XP bootcamp for about 45 minutes and the game froze, sound looped, saw black screen, then had to push power button to shut down. I think it's overheating so that is a bummer since this card has the jumbo fan on it. I would be curious to know if anyone else with this card has ran into similar issues or would be willing to stress test it for a while to see if the problem occurs.
 
AdiosVista said:
Quick update for those following this thread: I installed the Apple 3870 last night, played Spore in XP bootcamp for about 45 minutes and the game froze, sound looped, saw black screen, then had to push power button to shut down. I think it's overheating so that is a bummer since this card has the jumbo fan on it. I would be curious to know if anyone else with this card has ran into similar issues or would be willing to stress test it for a while to see if the problem occurs.
Click to expand...

I've only run multiple short benchmarks. No problems so far.
I'll try a longer session this evening to see if I get a black screen.
 
AdiosVista said:
Quick update for those following this thread: I installed the Apple 3870 last night, played Spore in XP bootcamp for about 45 minutes and the game froze, sound looped, saw black screen, then had to push power button to shut down. I think it's overheating so that is a bummer since this card has the jumbo fan on it. I would be curious to know if anyone else with this card has ran into similar issues or would be willing to stress test it for a while to see if the problem occurs.
Click to expand...
RivaTuner and GPU-Z time.
 
When did the "late '08" Mac Pros come out? Did I miss it?

I have an early '08 Mac Pro, not sure what the differences are, seems like the BTO on Apple's site is the same (other than 3870) as when I ordered.

What did I miss?

Thought I spent way too much time on these boards, maybe not? lol

J
 
akdj said:
When did the "late '08" Mac Pros come out? Did I miss it?

I have an early '08 Mac Pro, not sure what the differences are, seems like the BTO on Apple's site is the same (other than 3870) as when I ordered.

What did I miss?

Thought I spent way too much time on these boards, maybe not? lol

J
Click to expand...
Looks like a typo on barefeats part. It should say Early 2008.
 
Chaos123x said:
BREAKING NEWS from Rob-Art at Barefeats.com

"Turns out those are CTO cards that Apple (Steve) decided not to sell. That's why ATI did their retail version.

So these cards are basically unsupported by Apple and will never be sold as a CTO or kit on the Apple online Store.
It appears that OWC got their hands on the limited number that were built. They are clever at doing that.

I've sent some info to the OWC test engineer so he can see what the core and memory frequencies are set at.
I should have that info by the end of the day.

ATI says that the only difference should be the heat sink unless Apple engineering overclocked it.


Rob-ART"


Well I guess false alarm. :eek:
Click to expand...
hmm, so what will this mean?
 
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