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Help me choose graphics card for use with Yosemite on Mac Pro 1,1

sebtacular

sebtacular

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 14, 2015
20
0
So I was very kindly given a 1,1 Mac Pro by a complete stranger (specs should be in signature) and I would very much like to install Yosemite. I have read many things about this subject and I am left confused about choosing a graphics card. Please help me out. I would like to install Yosemite onto an ssd via SATA and run nothing other than that. Also I should mention that I am located in Australia (TAS). Thank you in advance.
 
Last edited:
Yes it is. The one you found is a flashed card, not a genuine Apple shipped ATI HD 5770. With some extra money you can get a flashed 7950 and be future proof ;-)
 
VAGDesign said:
Yes it is. The one you found is a flashed card, not a genuine Apple shipped ATI HD 5770. With some extra money you can get a flashed 7950 and be future proof ;-)
Click to expand...
I see, being future proof would be a good precaution to take but also a really expensive means to be able to run a free os! Could you suggest a good place to buy these magical things?
 
If you're familiar with flashing a card yourself, you can get a PC version of a card from eBay and then flash it. Some days ago I wrote this guide to flash a 7950 (includes rom for my XFX 7950).
 
VAGDesign said:
If you're familiar with flashing a card yourself, you can get a PC version of a card from eBay and then flash it. Some days ago I wrote this guide to flash a 7950 (includes rom for my XFX 7950).
Click to expand...
yeah, whilst I am very familiar with installing OS's I do not have windows at all so maybe I can't do that.. thanks for the link and everything. So I need look for a flashed card then.. will a flashed card display the boot screen or do I need a second hand one out of a Mac?
 
You can buy a flashed card and also get warranty & support from MacVidCards.com
I never bought anything from MVC but I see him around here to help and support all people who ask related to Graphics Cards questions. So give it a try.
 
Better use only 1 card, the 7950 will need both PCIe Power cables to be connected to motherboard. Better get a flashed one to escape the hassle and agony of ruin it with a wrong flash for example... (difficult cause they have dual flash).
The flashed one will give you boot screens and verbose mode etc. Like the genuine Mac shipped card. So yes, you need only this one card... If you get a non flashed one, you can have the genuine Apple shipped to the 3rd or 4th PCI Slot and the monitor connected to it so you'll get boot screens while the PCI Slot 1 will have the new card installed and running at max speed.

I hope this helps.
 
That's all very well and good but it will cost me
VAGDesign said:
Better use only 1 card, the 7950 will need both PCIe Power cables to be connected to motherboard. Better get a flashed one to escape the hassle and agony of ruin it with a wrong flash for example... (difficult cause they have dual flash).
The flashed one will give you boot screens and verbose mode etc. Like the genuine Mac shipped card. So yes, you need only this one card... If you get a non flashed one, you can have the genuine Apple shipped to the 3rd or 4th PCI Slot and the monitor connected to it so you'll get boot screens while the PCI Slot 1 will have the new card installed and running at max speed.

I hope this helps.
Click to expand...

OOOOOOOh! I just understood that. So you're saying that I could have a windows card installed with my Cinema display connected to it which would perform graphics tasks and power my display and also have an old OEM card installed specifically for boot screens? Except would my current card perform that function of simply and solely doing boot screens / boot options?

-edit-

I think my card is a double height card, does this matter?
 
Just get a flashed one or flash it yourself (quite easy, lots of tutorials are available).
Of course you could keep the 7300GT for bootscreens, but I think you'd need to switch cables everytime because the cinema display only has one single input, so you'd be better of with a flashed cards.

If you want to go for a HD 7950/7970 R9 280/280X: Get one with 2 mini DisplayPorts, 1 DVI and 1 HDMI, then you'll be fine.

EDIT: If you don't plan to run GPU intensive tasks (games or whatever), any supported card (e.g. the mentioned HD 5770) would be enough. You can get a used one for about $50 and flash it yourself. In this case a gaming card would obviously be a waste of money.
 
If you have already a dual height card, then the new one (5770/7950 or any other modern card) are also dual height.
This means that you loose 1 or 2 PCI ports having this setup.
I suggest get one flashed and use only this or flash it yourself. It's pretty easy, maybe a friend with Windows PC can help out. On the guide I posted earlier everything is explained.
 
I installed a GT730 in my 2.1 today. Completely off-the-shelf card. Booted fine on first try. Was not identified as a GT730 by Yosemite. Installed the latest web and cuda drivers, reboot the mac, and presto...card identifies fine.
 
I see. So it looks like I need the 5770. I now have two questions.. Do I even need a boot screen? And where on this planet can you get that card for $50?
 
Won't matter much, the Mac Pro 1,1 scores about 5,500 in geekbench. The bottleneck on that system created by the CPUs will be real, so much so that it wont do you any good moving from, say, a 650 GTX to a 970 GTX.
 
bladerunner2000 said:
Won't matter much, the Mac Pro 1,1 scores about 5,500 in geekbench. The bottleneck on that system created by the CPUs will be real, so much so that it wont do you any good moving from, say, a 650 GTX to a 970 GTX.
Click to expand...
+1

They are still very capable in certain task. Upgrade the ram to 32gb and the CPUs to a pair of X5365 s.
 
sebtacular said:
I see. So it looks like I need the 5770. I now have two questions.. Do I even need a boot screen? And where on this planet can you get that card for $50?
Click to expand...
We can't know if you need a boot screen. I'd like to have it, for switching OS, entering single user mode or just seeing when something is wrong. Btw, unflashed cards won't run in 10.6.8, support for those cards started somewhere around 10.7.4 I think.
E.g. this card would work, you'd just have to order the appropriate PCIe power cable for a few bucks. Of course you could also pay $150 for a flashed, used PC card (warning: most 5770 on ebay will show the boot screen only on VGA!) or $250 for a genuine used HD 5770.

PowerMac G4 MDD said:
The ATI Radeon HD 5770 won't work under El Capitan?
Click to expand...
It will work fine, it just doesn't support Metal. No problem if you don't care about performance.
 
Fl0r!an said:
We can't know if you need a boot screen. I'd like to have it, for switching OS, entering single user mode or just seeing when something is wrong. Btw, unflashed cards won't run in 10.6.8, support for those cards started somewhere around 10.7.4 I think.
E.g. this card would work, you'd just have to order the appropriate PCIe power cable for a few bucks. Of course you could also pay $150 for a flashed, used PC card (warning: most 5770 on ebay will show the boot screen only on VGA!) or $250 for a genuine used HD 5770.


It will work fine, it just doesn't support Metal. No problem if you don't care about performance.
Click to expand...

What sorts of issues would I encounter? Is there no way to avoid Metal? (I am not exactly sure what Metal entails).
 
You won't be able to run applications (primarily games, I guess) using the Metal API. At the moment there are exactly 0 of them, so it's no big issue.
Upcoming OS X games might use it, but you have to consider that we're talking about a 2006 MacPro, high-end AAA titles would be a problem either way.
 
Fl0r!an said:
You won't be able to run applications (primarily games, I guess) using the Metal API. At the moment there are exactly 0 of them, so it's no big issue.
Upcoming OS X games might use it, but you have to consider that we're talking about a 2006 MacPro, high-end AAA titles would be a problem either way.
Click to expand...

Do you think that extra support will be added in the full release of El Capitan?
 
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