Mac Pro 1,1 - El Capitan with Supported & Unsupported Graphics Card

[izzy0242mr]

If I have a 2006 Mac Pro 1,1 and want to install El Cap on it using the modded EFI but realize I'll probably need a supported graphics card. Is it possible (and/or practical) to *add* a graphics card and use both the supported one and the unsupported one in tandem, or does that not really make sense/would there be no advantages from doing that?

 

[bax2003]

How do you intend to use unsupported cards ?

 

[Draeconis]

If I have a 2006 Mac Pro 1,1 and want to install El Cap on it using the modded EFI but realize I'll probably need a supported graphics card. Is it possible (and/or practical) to *add* a graphics card and use both the supported one and the unsupported one in tandem, or does that not really make sense/would there be no advantages from doing that?

Assume you mean 'officially unsupported but can be made to work through varying levels of effort', rather than purely 'unsupported'. Unsupported wouldn't work at all.

Also assuming you have the original GPU the MacPro1,1 shipped with? Impressive yours is still working, depending on what it is.

You'll be hard-pressed to power a second card, unless using an additional PSU, and there may be no point anyway, depending on what you hope to achieve?

 

[izzy0242mr]

Assume you mean 'officially unsupported but can be made to work through varying levels of effort', rather than purely 'unsupported'. Unsupported wouldn't work at all.

Also assuming you have the original GPU the MacPro1,1 shipped with? Impressive yours is still working, depending on what it is.

You'll be hard-pressed to power a second card, unless using an additional PSU, and there may be no point anyway, depending on what you hope to achieve?

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2006-2007-mac-pro-1-1-2-1-and-os-x-el-capitan.1890435/

This forum says the original GPUs won't work with El Capitan without being insanely sluggish, so I'm wanting to obviously avoid that. I thought (and I may be wrong here) that you could put multiple GPUs into the Mac Pro motherboard simultaneously, and if so, would there be a benefit to keeping the original GPU + one that works with El Cap? If I would have to get an external exclosure or something, yeah, not really worth it for me.

 

[Draeconis]

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2006-2007-mac-pro-1-1-2-1-and-os-x-el-capitan.1890435/

This forum says the original GPUs won't work with El Capitan without being insanely sluggish, so I'm wanting to obviously avoid that. I thought (and I may be wrong here) that you could put multiple GPUs into the Mac Pro motherboard simultaneously, and if so, would there be a benefit to keeping the original GPU + one that works with El Cap? If I would have to get an external exclosure or something, yeah, not really worth it for me.

Unless you fancy re-wiring your PSU, or pulling power from a lot of SATA ports that may or may not be rated for it, or you can live with an external PSU, then is focus on getting a single card to replace your existing one.

'Benefit' is a little vague; it depends on what you want to achieve, which still isn't clear.

If I recall, the best GPU that will work in your machine when running El Cap without issues would be a Sapphire 7950 Mac Edition, although these are probably hard to come by these days. There are a few other threads where people discuss more current GPU solutions for the 1,1/2,1.

Things might be different if you purely run Windows on this machine, but I personally have no experience of this.