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Frequently Asked Questions About NVIDIA PC (non-EFI) Graphics Cards

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Quick question.. I'm fairly sure this isn't possible. But can an Nvidia GFX card (like the 650Ti) be run at the same time as the stock GT120?

I ask because I still need the Mini Display Port input.

TIA
 
snapdragonx said:
Quick question.. I'm fairly sure this isn't possible. But can an Nvidia GFX card (like the 650Ti) be run at the same time as the stock GT120?

I ask because I still need the Mini Display Port input.

TIA
Click to expand...

Yes, it works.

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tigerintank said:
Have a gtx650 ti boost installed - but can't see where the PCIE speed is 1.0 as there is an error in the PCI section of profiler and the Graphics section simply says x16.
Click to expand...

System Profiler reporting an error is normal behavior when you are using an unflashed card.
 
Is there really a way to install a GTX650 to run on Mac OS Lion? I got one that works great with Windows. I have a Mac Pro 2.1 with Mac OS X Lion I already tried to make it work :/ Screwed up but I got it working will have to eventually reinstalled everything again.
 
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Gtx 670 4gb

I just bought an EVGA GTX 670SC 4GB for my 5,1 Mac Pro running 10.8.5

From what I understand, besides no boot screen, the overclocking will be lost and I may-or-may-not be getting full PCIe 2.0 speeds with native OSX drivers? I don't know how to confirm whether the card is running at 2.5 or 5GT/s.

I'd like to flash this card to bring back all these things, but I can't find any threads that address this card (the 4GB version). The 680 4GB has a thread, but searching it didn't reveal anything for the 670.

Any ideas or links I missed?

Edit: I missed this line in the system profiler that tells you the card connection speed.
iEK5umu.png
 
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riggles said:
I just bought an EVGA GTX 670SC 4GB for my 5,1 Mac Pro running 10.8.5

From what I understand, besides no boot screen, the overclocking will be lost and I may-or-may-not be getting full PCIe 2.0 speeds with native OSX drivers? I don't know how to confirm whether the card is running at 2.5 or 5GT/s.

I'd like to flash this card to bring back all these things, but I can't find any threads that address this card (the 4GB version). The 680 4GB has a thread, but searching it didn't reveal anything for the 670.

Any ideas or links I missed?

Edit: I missed this line in the system profiler that tells you the card connection speed.
Image
Click to expand...

If I am correct, factory overclocking should be present. I have a 650ti SC and it runs at the overclocked speed as far as I can tell. I'm running 10.9. but I had it under 10.8.5 previously running full speed.
 
MacGamver said:
If I am correct, factory overclocking should be present. I have a 650ti SC and it runs at the overclocked speed as far as I can tell. I'm running 10.9. but I had it under 10.8.5 previously running full speed.
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Oh, good to know. Thanks! Did it run at 5GT/s natively, too?
 
Just ordered EVGA's SC 4GB GTX 760. Was considering purchasing an additional PSU until I saw its TDP was only 170 Watts. Can't wait to push those sliders to Ultra in BF4!
 
BDM STUDIOS NL said:
I can confirm that I run BF4 @60 fps with full ultra-settings in 1920*1200 resolution with a EVGA GTX-670 FTW 4GB! My very best graphics card EVER!!!

You should be okay then!!! 😀
Click to expand...

Hi, may I know how you monitor the fps? I'm using EVGA precision it can show the fps for other games but not BF4.. according to other forums it's because its a 64bit game (I dont understand why is that).
 
pootahauntus said:
Hi, may I know how you monitor the fps? I'm using EVGA precision it can show the fps for other games but not BF4.. according to other forums it's because its a 64bit game (I dont understand why is that).
Click to expand...

PrecisionX can't monitor 64 bit games! 2 options for you in BF4:

1. Start BF4 and start your game, press the "tilde" key and then use the command "perfoverlay.drawfps 1"
2. use the app FRAPS

GL and Cheers
 
Hello everyone

I'm new here and I have some questions:

I'm a french freelance graphic designer, I work mostly with Adobe CS5, 2D work for print or web, under Mac OS 10.6.8 for compatibility with EZcolor (PPC software) that drives my Optix XR calibration device (but I found an alternative software that doesn't requires Rosetta so I could upgrade my OS now for compatibility with PC graphic cards).
And I don't play video games at all.

My Mac is a 3.1 MacPro (2008) with 2x2.8 GHz quadCore Xeon, 10 GB ram, several Crucial M4 SSD, ATI Radeon HD 2600 graphic card with 256 MB and two monitors (1920x1200 and 1680x1050).

I'm wondering what improvement I would get by changing the graphic card. Would the Mac be more fluid in general application or just in particular heavy operations like some Photoshop actions or filters, video compilation…
Would it be comparable in some ways to the replacement of hard drives by SSD ?

I'm also hesitating on which card to choose as I don't think it would be reasonable to spend a lot of money considering the actual value of this Mac.

Noise is a certain concern too, my MacPro is closer to silent with its SSD, I wouldn't appreciate it to get more noisy.

So I was wondering if a relatively cheap second hand GTX 560 Ti 1GB would be a good bargain and an improvement (for less than €100) or if I should look for a bigger or more recent card (GTX 670 for ~€200 ?) to make a real difference with the ATI HD 2600 ?
What would you suggest ?

Different thoughts : according to Geekbench, a high end 2012 Mini seems to be twice faster for monocore tasks and a little faster for multicore tasks than my MacPro, but I don't know if it's the same in real life.
Instead of trying to improve my "old" MacPro and wait longer before a new machine, would it be better to replace it by a high end Mini full or ram and SSD ? If the new Mini was available, I think I would probably be more willing to get it… But I don't know how a Mini compares to my MacPro about noise.
That would also require a new external storage solution (I have 6 drives in my MacPro, plus some external single or double drives).
It would be more expensive, but would it with a greater benefit ?

Anyway thanks for your advices !
 
I have a very similar specification 2008 Mac Pro 3,1 2x2.8GHz with 12GB RAM & SSD. Upgrading from a Mac GTX 285 to a PC GTX 570 improved performance a lot especially in Premiere Pro. The GTX 285 itself was a great improvement in performance over the original ATI Radeon HD 2600. My system still does all that I need & the only further upgrade that would make sense is if I could afford to upgrade to 32GB RAM (possibly sell my 800MHz & buy 667MHz PC FB-DIMMs to keep the cost down).

I can thoroughly recommend replacing your ATI Radeon HD 2600 with a used GTX570 as you will see that the system is much smoother & if you use CUDA or OpenCL at all then it will be vastly improved. The particular model I have is a MSI Twin Frozr II/OC Nvidia GTX 570 like this one http://www.ebay.fr/itm/Carte-graphi...e_Composants_Cartes_Vidéo&hash=item1c3a1ca678

Last time I looked the GTX 570 was still the best performing card for CUDA acceleration therefore the best for Premiere Pro.
 
question about dual boot with 660ti

I'm running a 2009 Mac Pro with a GeForce 660Ti, and I'd like to set up my system to dual boot into ubuntu. I've tried installing refit and refind, but when I reboot, it shows a blank screen on boot. Has anybody managed to get a similar setup actually working?

Thanks in advance!
 
pariah99 said:
I'm running a 2009 Mac Pro with a GeForce 660Ti, and I'd like to set up my system to dual boot into ubuntu. I've tried installing refit and refind, but when I reboot, it shows a blank screen on boot. Has anybody managed to get a similar setup actually working?

Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

I would also like to know if this is possible---having Linux on a Mac Pro with a unsupported graphics card (and no EFI boot menu).

I've not attempted it since Startup Disk doesn't see Linux installations (OS X cannot read EXT4 file format).

I had assumed reFit would not work either, and you seem to have confirmed that.

What else to try?
 
No FaceTime audio

Ok, so I installed a GTX 670 4GB in my 5,1 recently and I thought most everything went pretty smoothly. Even booting into the recovery partition with Cmd+R when restarting worked fine. But I just used FaceTime with my girlfriend and the microphone audio from my LED Cinema Display wasn't getting thru. Display Audio showed up in Audio/Midi Setup, but selecting it didn't change anything. I confirmed it was related to no mini-DP on the nVidia by swapping it out for the original 5770, called her back, and microphone audio worked. Has anyone else had this problem?

PS. I'm using this StarTech DP to mini-DP adapter
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812200691
 
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