GTX285 or HD4870

[MacVidCards]

With the tiniest bit of trouble, you can have the GTX480 working in OSX. It isn't running at full speed yet, but it is running and will reduce amount of cable fiddling.

In Windows the 8800GT can be assigned to be Physx card. In OSX it will be one to allow GTX480 to work.

Nice and neat, you just need to figure out how to power it all.

 

[jav6454]

With the tiniest bit of trouble, you can have the GTX480 working in OSX. It isn't running at full speed yet, but it is running and will reduce amount of cable fiddling.

In Windows the 8800GT can be assigned to be Physx card. In OSX it will be one to allow GTX480 to work.

Nice and neat, you just need to figure out how to power it all.

A nuclear reactor does the trick. Seriously? Was there need to go tough on Hellhammer? no.

 

[Hellhammer]

With the tiniest bit of trouble, you can have the GTX480 working in OSX. It isn't running at full speed yet, but it is running and will reduce amount of cable fiddling.

In Windows the 8800GT can be assigned to be Physx card. In OSX it will be one to allow GTX480 to work.

Nice and neat, you just need to figure out how to power it all.

Good point. I guess you can advice him how to get it work as you originally got it to work

BTW, how many PCIe power ports does the Mac Pro have? Both GPUs needs two so I assume it has four? The PSU is 1000W AFAIK so it shouldn't have issues running dual GPUs though

 

[harleymhs]

Im looking to install the GTX480 for win 7 and keep the 8800 gt in there for MAC OSX... I will buy a DVI Belkin Switch so I can switch between the 2 cards from OSX to Win 7 .. do I need any other power cored from the motherboard or power supply to run the 2 graphi cards.. ?? Thanks!

 

[Hellhammer]

Im looking to install the GTX480 for win 7 and keep the 8800 gt in there for MAC OSX... I will buy a DVI Belkin Switch so I can switch between the 2 cards from OSX to Win 7 .. do I need any other power cored from the motherboard or power supply to run the 2 graphi cards.. ?? Thanks!

You need two of these I think. However, the GTX 480 has 6-pin AND 8-pin connector so I'm not 100% sure do you need an adapter.

In addition, as The Rominator said, you can get GTX 480 to work under OS X with minor changes so maybe it's better for you? Would save the cable hassle. I'm sure he can advice you more than I can because he actually owns a Mac Pro and was able to get GTX 480 work under OS X

 

[carshooter]

Hi Rominator, would you mind shooting me a pm or an e-mail? Question for you - thanks!

 

[Pressure]

Hey guys, no fighting!! Can we PLEASE get back to the topic that I started?
I think the idea for 2 VIDEO cards is the BEST for me! I ordered the GTX480 EVGA.. Now my question is whats the BEST way to switch the monitors back and fourth with out pulling the plug on the video cards every time I want to go back to MAC OSX? Thanks GUYS!

Do your monitor happen to have more inputs? Like DVI and HDMI?

Then you could hook it up like that and just switch input from the monitor.

 

[harleymhs]

I did more research... If I wanted to use the 8800 and the 480 together I would need to find 2 6-pin Power Cables (w/mac pro motherboard connectors)
to connect the 480 to the mac pro motherboard! The cables in the 480 wont fit on the mac pro motherboard! Does anyone think the NEW MAC PROs will have 480 nvidia option? Maybe it just pays to wait to see if evga comes out with a MAC version of the 480!

 

[Hellhammer]

I did more research... If I wanted to use the 8800 and the 480 together I would need to find 2 6-pin Power Cables (w/mac pro motherboard connectors)
to connect the 480 to the mac pro motherboard! The cables in the 480 wont fit on the mac pro motherboard! Does anyone think the NEW MAC PROs will have 480 nvidia option? Maybe it just pays to wait to see if evga comes out with a MAC version of the 480!

See my post above, there are connectors you need. The Mac version will likely cost more and may have less VRAM than its PC brothers.

 

[Roman23]

Sli

Is a technology thats on the motherboard.. the mac pro logic board does NOT support this and never will at least thus far.. you are only able to crossfire and thats only done on the windows side. OS X won't support either technology.

Dual GTX 460s in SLI will run circles around GTX 480 and will still be over 100$ cheaper. May not be that easy to get it work but it should be possible to get SLI in Mac Pro.

 

[Pressure]

Is a technology thats on the motherboard.. the mac pro logic board does NOT support this and never will at least thus far.. you are only able to crossfire and thats only done on the windows side. OS X won't support either technology.

It's actually only an limitation in the Windows drivers but we have already covered this

 

[harleymhs]

Thanks FOR ALLLLLLLL of your help !!! I dont have the Mac Pro near me it is in another home, I see the Mac Adaptors on ebay you guys pointed me too! That helps! But I dont know HOW MANY plugs are on the Logic board! I would NEED 3 total! One for the 8800 and 2 for the 480! So Im not really sure how many plugs are on the board! I think at this time it is BEST for me to go with the GTX285 Mac Version, neater inside and out, no extra cables or switches on the outside! Flight Sim is a 32 bit game and a friend has an alienware area 51 with GTX480 and his frame rates are only slightly higher with his 480 than with my ATI 5770 So I will assume the Frame Rates will be as good with the 1 GB GTX285 as with my other ATI 5770 ( also has 1 GB ) in my dell! I will try it tonight with the Mac Version of the 285 and report back to you guys! If I get decent FPS with the 285 Ill be happy PLUS it has all the cables I need and I still can use the OSX with the 285! THANKS AGAIN! You guys rock!

 

[gpzjock]

Mac Pro 2008 boards only have 2 power sockets for PCI-E cards, the rest of the power comes from the rail itself. The PSU is only rated to supply 400w to the PCI-E sockets so you are a socket short and will definately be unable to run both cards simultaneously (not that you said you intended to ofc.). Just a GTX480 on it's own draws 450w peak: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-480,2585-15.html
Some serious modders have put extra plugs and an additional PSU in the spare optical drive bay above the hard drive hangers but this is commonly known as a 'lash up'.
Hope this info helps your choices. Personally I would go down the 1 GTX 285 card fits both route and put up with the loss of frames.

 

[Hellhammer]

Mac Pro 2008 boards only have 2 power sockets for PCI-E cards, the rest of the power comes from the rail itself. The PSU is only rated to supply 400w to the PCI-E sockets so you are a socket short and will definately be unable to run both cards simultaneously (not that you said you intended to ofc.). Just a GTX480 on it's own draws 450w peak: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-480,2585-15.html
Some serious modders have put extra plugs and an additional PSU in the spare optical drive bay above the hard drive hangers but this is commonly known as a 'lash up'.
Hope this info helps your choices.

That's total system power consumption, not GTX 480's, see this article (power consumption is usually measured from whole system as it's fairly hard to measure the consumption of single component). GTX 480 has TDP of 250W so those numbers are reasonable as total system consumption. GTX 285 uses ~100W less though

I'm not 100% sure but you could use splitters, maybe someone can confirm that

 

[gpzjock]

Good point, you are quite correct, I missed the words Total System Consumption, but the lack of connectors is still an issue. The total consumption for an original Mac Pro 2008 system with 2600XT card is only 318w. Your table shows the PC rig running a 8800GT at 248w, GTX285 at 360w and a GTX480 at 421w.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2836?viewlocale=en_US and
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/HD_2600_XT/17.html shows the 8800GT drawing 136w itself (87w more than the base card's 49w claimed for the 2600XT) so the adjusted Mac Pro consumption would be: 8800GT 405w, GTX285 517w and GTX480 578w.
All well within the 900w the Mac Pro's PSU can supply to the whole system. Subtracting the base system consumption (269w) from the 480 leaves it consuming 309w by itself, so my original statement that you couldn't run both cards at the same time still stands assuming the 400w limit to the PCI-E slots is correct. The GTX480 takes up 2 slots in width too I believe so it stops the 8800GT getting a x16 slot as well unless you park the 8800GT in slot 1 and cover it's fan with the 480's butt.

 

[Hellhammer]

Good point, you are quite correct, I missed the words Total System Consumption, but the lack of connectors is still an issue. The total consumption for an original Mac Pro 2008 system with 2600XT card is only 318w. Your table shows the PC rig running a 8800GT at 248w, GTX285 at 360w and a GTX480 at 421w.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2836?viewlocale=en_US and
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/HD_2600_XT/17.html shows the 8800GT drawing 136w itself (87w more than the base card's 49w claimed for the 2600XT) so the adjusted Mac Pro consumption would be: 8800GT 405w, GTX285 517w and GTX480 578w.
All well within the 900w the Mac Pro's PSU can supply to the whole system. Subtracting the base system consumption (269w) from the 480 leaves it consuming 309w by itself, so my original statement that you couldn't run both cards at the same time still stands assuming the 400w limit to the PCI-E slots is correct. The GTX480 takes up 2 slots in width too I believe so it stops the 8800GT getting a x16 slot as well unless you park the 8800GT in slot 1 and cover it's fan with the 480's butt.

GTX 480 has maximum power usage of 250W according to NVIDIA and 8800 GT has maximum power usage of 105W according to NVIDIA. That's 355W so unless NVIDIA isn't telling the truth, it should work. It sounds about right that GTX 480 draws 136W more power than 8800 GT does. The Rominator has tried this so maybe he can confirm this

 

[gpzjock]

There are lies, damn lies and power consumption figures. I just noticed I used a 8800GTX for my calcs so I'm about 25w adrift, my bad.