GTX480 running OSX in 1st Gen & Nehalem Pro !!!

[10THzMac]

you may have misunderstood

my theory is that only the 4,1 machines suffer from this issue and that the scores go UP when AGPM gone
...

Thanks. I will try this when I get back from a trip. I remember fiddling with this kext in the early 285 days, and understand what you mean now.

Over on forums.nvidia.com a couple of people have been trying to press Nvidia to yield a proper beta test program for OS X fermi drivers. No luck so far but it might be worth keeping an eye on the OS X threads there as well. My guess is that this will all be under wraps until a Quadro level card with fermi innards is released.

 

[4,1er]

Booster PSU

Can you provide a link to the manufacturers product page?

It's one of these: Thermaltake Expresspower 450w

It comes with an ATX splice to get GND and power on from the main PSU, but obviously that's no good in a mac pro

Right now I'm thinking of buying a 12v relay and tapping into the GND and +12VDC lines of one of the sata+power connectors in the ODD.

If you unscrew the backplane of the first hard drive bay you *may* be able to squeeze the cables through underneath it, it's quite tight though.

Yeah, that was what I thought would be the easiest - but fitting in both power cords and the AC line proved to be a pain without taking the whole "shelf" off - it sounds like you might know/have done it, any tips?

Cheers for the advice

 

[macest]

It's one of these: Thermaltake Expresspower 450w

It comes with an ATX splice to get GND and power on from the main PSU, but obviously that's no good in a mac pro

Right now I'm thinking of buying a 12v relay and tapping into the GND and +12VDC lines of one of the sata+power connectors in the ODD.

Perhaps a 2-pin to 4-pin molex adapter might work.

Yeah, that was what I thought would be the easiest - but fitting in both power cords and the AC line proved to be a pain without taking the whole "shelf" off - it sounds like you might know/have done it, any tips?

Cheers for the advice

I've only fed a molex extension cable through there, it wasn't easy. You may be better off feeding the AC cable out of the optical drive bay door. It'll be one less cable to squeeze through, you'll just have the two PCI express cables to feed through the hole then.

 

[mdmesadie]

Um, I hate to be dense, but what exactly have you done in order to install and run a 480 on your mac?

All I seem to see are lots of posts of people going "me too", but no-one anywhere kindly enough to explain how this feat of magic is achieved.

Could someone please point me to the explanation (for n00bs) of what processes you guys went through to get your improved GPU's working on your first gen mac pros?

 

[10THzMac]

Um, I hate to be dense, but what exactly have you done in order to install and run a 480 on your mac?

All I seem to see are lots of posts of people going "me too", but no-one anywhere kindly enough to explain how this feat of magic is achieved.

Could someone please point me to the explanation (for n00bs) of what processes you guys went through to get your improved GPU's working on your first gen mac pros?

If you read through the whole thread the info and links are all there, but my advice would be to wait until Nvidia improve the drivers - we are not getting good OpenGL performance right now, nor can I get CUDA up.

But you need 3 things

1. Drivers - not from Nvidia as they deleted the fermi stuff having released it briefly
2. Injector from netkas site
3. power

 

[Cindori]

I think that the leaked drivers are not meant for a Mac 480 GTX, but a Mac Quadro 400 GTX.


think about it, every release we have seen a quadro card. now we have 5000 drivers and 400 drivers but the 5000 got announced as both base card and middle card. it's seems like the 400 GTX quadro will come as top card and maybe that is where the drivers are heading.

 

[666sheep]

You mean these? http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro-fermi-overview.html It's quite possible, i think. From 1st rev of MP there always been Quadro option.

 

[10THzMac]

I also think high end Quadro will be first up, though I am not sure if this would explain why leaked ones do so badly on 480s we have tried so far. I'd be surprised if we get the QF 6000, due to power issues, unless the new Mac pro has more PCI power on board than the rubbish 2x 6-pin on the ones so far.

 

[TheStrudel]

I think that the leaked drivers are not meant for a Mac 480 GTX, but a Mac Quadro 400 GTX.


think about it, every release we have seen a quadro card. now we have 5000 drivers and 400 drivers but the 5000 got announced as both base card and middle card. it's seems like the 400 GTX quadro will come as top card and maybe that is where the drivers are heading.

Very plausible. Good call.

 

[Novablas]

2007 Mac Pro

Hey guys, I've read through the topic but am COMPLETELY new to this whole flashing video cards business so I have a few questions if you all don't mind.

Firstly, my rig is a 2007 Mac Pro Dual 3ghz with 6gb ram and the nVidia 8800 GT.

I'd love the be able to get this thing to have a more recent video card to be able to play some of the newer stuff on max settings, but Apple really abandoned the old Mac Pros as far as our upgrade choices go so I'm lead here.

Finishing the thread it seems like the real mac drivers for this particular card are not yet released? However, does this only affect the OS X side of things or will it affect my Windows 7 partition as well?

Would it be better off for a newbie like me to go with the ATI 4890 Sapphire, which seems to have a more comprehensive guide, or should I wait for this card to be completely solved as far as getting it working on an old Mac Pro?

Is it even possible for this card to work on my old Mac Pro?

 

[Cindori]

the 4890 is and will forever be the strongest single video card for 2006 and 2007 mac pro's.

The strongest dual video card setup would be a EFI nvidia card and a PC 285 GTX + netkas injectors. but you wont get bootloader screen.

 

[Novablas]

Okay, thank you then, I'll go for the 4890. Hopefully I can keep this old one going for a while longer before I need to replace it.

 

[paintmav]

Injector

Hey guys,

I've been following along and as a newb I'm trying to figure it out as I go. I've been reading everything I can from here, netkas.org, and insanely Mac and have tried to follow along. I'm trying to get an Nvidia GTX460 up and running. Is the "injector" you're referring to "ATI_INIT.kext" and if so, do I install it or place it in a certain folder ie. extensions folder? Again I appreciate any help you may provide.

 

[MacVidCards]

Hey guys,

I've been following along and as a newb I'm trying to figure it out as I go. I've been reading everything I can from here, netkas.org, and insanely Mac and have tried to follow along. I'm trying to get an Nvidia GTX460 up and running. Is the "injector" you're referring to "ATI_INIT.kext" and if so, do I install it or place it in a certain folder ie. extensions folder? Again I appreciate any help you may provide.

use "kext helper" to place in extensions folder

may have to force quit

you should read up on 460...I can only guarantee that GTX480 works.

Hey guys, I've read through the topic but am COMPLETELY new to this whole flashing video cards business so I have a few questions if you all don't mind.

Firstly, my rig is a 2007 Mac Pro Dual 3ghz with 6gb ram and the nVidia 8800 GT.


Is it even possible for this card to work on my old Mac Pro?

Yes, but before doing anything I would wait a week or two on 5770/5870 news.

If it works in EFI32, you would better off with one of them.

Anyone calling themselves a "noob" should avoid the 4890, IMO.

 

[paintmav]

use "kext helper" to place in extensions folder

may have to force quit

you should read up on 460...I can only guarantee that GTX480 works.

Thanks for that info Rominator, I guess all I'm trying to do right now is get it to boot on the Mac side even if its just from the Apple 8800gt(can't get past the blue screen) without disconnecting power for now until there is more concrete evidence that the GTX460 is up and running.

 

[Achtepa]

Hi all,

I been reading pretty much all the posts both on here and insanelymac about getting 285 to work in osX.

I spent pretty much all day yesterday to get an EVGA 285 GTX SSC to work. but not luck. Never got KP and always got to the login screen and into the system ok. But past that, system profiler shows me the 285 (slot1) and the 8800gt (slot3) and that its running netkas. However no monitor plugged in is detected. I've tried swapping the monitor from 3 to 1 but it didnt work (i can see my desktop when its plugged into the 8800).

I'm running a early 2008 mac pro 8 core on Snow Leopard. For the steps i did, i installed ATY_Init.kext with kexthelper, installed the drivers from EVGA (i also tried NVIDIA to no avail) and rebooted. Again it boots fine, but just the monitor on the 8800 is detected and starts. Also i was wondering if using this method (and having it actually working) is possible to drive 3 monitors ? My current setup is 3x 24s

Thanks!

 

[Tutor]

Clean up

 

[CountlovE]

Hey guys, I have been snooping this thread. I just wanted to know if anyone had a 3 SLI GTX480 machine running where at least one of the 3 cards would work in OSX. I am looking to build an 3-SLI 480 setup for Windows 7 to use Maya/Vray 2.0 RT, and then boot in OSX to use Logic Pro. I don't care about using the 480 for games in OSX, I am mostly just interested in getting a working display and having things run decently for Logic.

Thanks!

 

[Pressure]

Hey guys, I have been snooping this thread. I just wanted to know if anyone had a 3 SLI GTX480 machine running where at least one of the 3 cards would work in OSX. I am looking to build an 3-SLI 480 setup for Windows 7 to use Maya/Vray 2.0 RT, and then boot in OSX to use Logic Pro. I don't care about using the 480 for games in OSX, I am mostly just interested in getting a working display and having things run decently for Logic.

Thanks!

The Power Supply in the Mac Pro is definitely insufficient to run three Geforce GTX480.

I don't see why you would want to try as SLI is not even supported in the Mac Pro, be in Mac OSX or Windows for that matter.

 

[Cindori]

The Power Supply in the Mac Pro is definitely insufficient to run three Geforce GTX480.

I don't see why you would want to try as SLI is not even supported in the Mac Pro, be in Mac OSX or Windows for that matter.

sli works in windows with hacked drivers

 

[CountlovE]

The Power Supply in the Mac Pro is definitely insufficient to run three Geforce GTX480.

I don't see why you would want to try as SLI is not even supported in the Mac Pro, be in Mac OSX or Windows for that matter.

My Bad. I am not using a Mac Pro. I would be building a System from Ibuypower.com. I am burnt out from buying Apple computers. For 6 Grand I get a hell of a lot more.

 

[666sheep]

I just wanted to know if anyone had a 3 SLI GTX480 machine running where at least one of the 3 cards would work in OSX.

Look here

 

[CountlovE]

Look here

Awesome! Thanks a ton for that link.. Wow, I wish I could do that to a Macpro, but warranty is super important to me. I hope they find a way to get openCL working.

Look what you can do with OpenCL:

http://shop.vray.info/siggraph-2010-chaos-group-end-user-event-demos.html

Check out the 3rd Video down. Thats Vray RT for Maya, but there is a Vray for Maya that will run under OSX, so it would be great to have 3 SLI's running under OSX using all GPU's.

 

[4,1er]

Update on 480 GTX

Wrestled with the supplementary PSU and failed to get it to fit, so I ordered a 6 to 8 pin PCIe converter instead.

OSX works great and no problems there so far running Eve Online or SCII.

Bootcamp works fine too, with multiple 3D apps windowed and spread over several displays.

The one problem I've run into is running furmark (admittedly I did this just to double check stability); it runs fine for 30s or so then trips the PSU and hard turns off the MP. It's a thermal reset so the PSU won't let the system power back on for ~60 seconds.

Verdict is that the 6-8 pin converter will work fine for most people, but be aware that it can trip your PSU.

 

[10THzMac]

CUDA speed

For any CUDA fans out there doing scientific comp, I have managed now to run the same double precision code on the Quadro 4800, GTX 285 and GTX 480 (the last only under bootcamp, xp32, as the Mac fermi support described in this thread has not yet allowed me to get CUDA access to the 480) all in 2008 Mac Pros. Timings were, in ms,

Qu4800 3499
GTX285 2240
GTX480 1046

and the 480 was more than twice as fast as the 285 in several other DP codes I tried. I will try a Tesla when I can as its DP is supposed to be better still.