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Graphic Card issue

R

rezatayebi

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 5, 2007
110
0
Recently, while working on complex scenes in maya, mac pro hangs and I have to restart it.
It`s an old first generation mac pro with a terrible nVidia 7300 GT graphic card.
I guess I have to change the graphic card. The problem is that I live in Iran and if I order something from apple it`s going to cost me a lot and I`ll get it next month (if lucky).
So I was thinking of buying GeForce 8800 GT from market.
I know it`s an old question but is it going to work on my mac pro?
I called apple about this. They said it may or may not work. :confused:
 
Needs a Mac ROM in order to work, which means may that a bargain bin card may or may not be able to be flashed.

However, if you look into the Hackintoshes, they may have more info on cards.
 
Hi Rezetayebi

You do have a couple of other options for your Mac Pro 1.1
First and easiest is to find one of the compatible cards on eBay.

Cards compatible with a Mac Pro 1.1 with the 32-bit EFI are:

1-A used ATI x1900xt originally sold by Apple for the Mac Pro 1.1. Apple still sells these new.
2-A used nVidia Quadro 4500 originally sold by Apple for use in the MP1.1.
3-A used nVidia 8800GT originally sold by Apple for use in the MP1.1.
4-A used ATI Radeon HD2600 originally used in the second generation Mac Pro.
(for some reason they work fine in the MP1.1)
5- A modded "flashed" PC type nVidia 8800GT card. Several people sell these on eBay all flashed and ready to go into a Mac Pro.

All of the above cards should work in your Mac Pro under Leopard or Snow Leopard.
All but the HD2600 will require a power cable. (also sold on eBay)


I just flashed an 8800GT for my MP 1.1. It worked really well.
There's a whole thread on it here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/471227/

Read the whole thread very carefully before you decide to do it yourself.
I posted exactly how I did mine at the end of that thread.
Some other people had similar success, some others had failures.

Cards I've had in mine:
The standard nVidia 7300
A hand-me-down Radeon HD2600
The current eVGA 8800GT 512-P3-N801-AR flashed with the Apple 32-bit EFI firmware.

One reason to choose an 8800GT (Apple or modded) is this whole "OpenCL" thing that Snow Leopard has. Apparently the 8800GT is the only one of the above cards that supports it fully.

Good Luck,
Keri

PS. I can't wait until Adobe gets around to using OpenCL with Premiere Pro. That's gonna be awesome when they finally get around to it.
 
Thanks a lot. :)
KeriJane, I can`t buy anything from ebay. I live in Iran.
I`ll order a nVidia 8800GT to an apple reseller. It will cost an extra 300$ :(. But seems like the best solution.
 
rezatayebi said:
Recently, while working on complex scenes in maya, mac pro hangs and I have to restart it.
It`s an old first generation mac pro with a terrible nVidia 7300 GT graphic card.
I guess I have to change the graphic card.
Click to expand...


Hi rezatayebi,

I don't know if this will help you but we occasionally had hard hangs with our Mac Pro 2.66 GHz and XT1900 card. We had no idea why. It started about 1.5 year after we bought the computer.

However, we took out all cards and blew away all dust. Those hard hangs are gone after the cleaning!

We also have problems when using dual 24" monitors. Sometimes a horizontal line gets the wrong colors; blue or green. It comes and goes. This also seems to be affected by increased temperature. But we live in the frozen north with an indoor temp of about 20°C so it shouldn't be a problem.

We also installed the little smcFanControl program to be able to increase the fan speeds and monitor the temperature. Temp readout is 30°C and rear fan and PCIe fan are run at 1100 rpm.

It is free and worth a try. Good luck!
 
johanf said:
Hi rezatayebi,

I don't know if this will help you but we occasionally had hard hangs with our Mac Pro 2.66 GHz and XT1900 card. We had no idea why. It started about 1.5 year after we bought the computer.

However, we took out all cards and blew away all dust. Those hard hangs are gone after the cleaning!

We also have problems when using dual 24" monitors. Sometimes a horizontal line gets the wrong colors; blue or green. It comes and goes. This also seems to be affected by increased temperature. But we live in the frozen north with an indoor temp of about 20°C so it shouldn't be a problem.

We also installed the little smcFanControl program to be able to increase the fan speeds and monitor the temperature. Temp readout is 30°C and rear fan and PCIe fan are run at 1100 rpm.

It is free and worth a try. Good luck!
Click to expand...

thanks a lot. I`ll try that.
 
The 7300 does not have a fan :rolleyes:


Don't forget you can get the 4870 or 4890 for the first generation MP also.
 
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