Is this a good brand of ATI card?

[spiralof5]

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/SKUSearch_v3.asp?px=FX&scriteria=AA74520

I want to flash a card to run in OS X because it is super cheap. It's the sapphire version of 4870. Or should I get a 4890?

I also have a few questions on flashing (not the technical stuff though). Is it fairly easy or will I be without computer for a day trying to get it to run? Preflashed cards are about 100 bux more so I'd rather flash it myself.

Also, I'll probably be keeping my OS at 10.5.8 for awhile but do I have to reflash it if I were to upgrade to snow leopard? Even so, will I have to flash it every time Snow Leopard updates? Is it worth it?

No trolls please. I'm stuck with my early 2007 mac pro as it was a beautiful thing for me to afford a 4000 bux computer that my grandmother gave to me when she died. This is a special machine for me.

Thanks,

spiral

 

[CaptainChunk]

Cindori's probably the best guy to ask about which 4870s are flash-worthy, because not all of them are.

But what I can tell you is that the 2006-2007 Mac Pros use EFI-32 ROMs, so you'll need to flash the card with that type of ROM.

To answer your other question, if you actually flash the card's physical ROM (as opposed to using driver injectors), it will work on any version of Mac OS, provided it there's a driver for it (and that shouldn't be a problem on the 4870 using 10.5 and above).

 

[vizfxman]

Agreed - Cindori (and The Rominator) were vital help to me when I went through the process of flashing my 4870 (I installed the XFX 1GB model in my Mac Pro 1,1).

Flashing is "easy" if you do some reading and make sure you have all of the bases covered. For me, jumping in before I was fully aware of all the in's and out's had me struggling for days. Now that I know the process, it would take me a half an hour.

I don't think you have to flash your card every time an update comes along. You do (to my knowledge) have to run patches on the card though. Last night I updated from 10.6.3 to 10.6.4 and had to run a patch that I found in these forums.

Good luck with the card!