MacPro 1,1 El Capitan graphics card - best bang for buck

[marktronics]

Hi all,

I'm looking to upgrade my MacPro to 1,1 to El Capitan. I could go with a Apple Nvidia GeForce GT 120 512MB for ~$50 but I'm wondering if there are any better cards?

I'm not looking for anything high performance and don't mind not having a boot screen. Just looking to make the best purchase.

For example I can grab a Nvidia GeForce 9500 GT 512mb for ~$20. Would this work?

What would you recommend? Thanks!

 

[PowerMac G4 MDD]

I think that the best bang for your buck might be a Radeon 5770 (non-Mac edition) or GTX 660. The GT 120 would also be fairly good, but it's not necessarily the greatest. I wouldn't even advise that someone use it daily, since El Capitan itself is a little bit unforgiving when it comes to graphics.

 

[marktronics]

I think that the best bang for your buck might be a Radeon 5770 (non-Mac edition) or GTX 660. The GT 120 would also be fairly good, but it's not necessarily the greatest. I wouldn't even advise that someone use it daily, since El Capitan itself is a little bit unforgiving when it comes to graphics.

GTX 660 seems promising! If I grabbed one like this could I just install it in a MacPro 1,1 and it's good to go or would I need to do some driver/firmware work?

Thanks!

 

[PowerMac G4 MDD]

GTX 660 seems promising! If I grabbed one like this could I just install it in a MacPro 1,1 and it's good to go or would I need to do some driver/firmware work?

Thanks!

You don't need to do anything extra; it plugs in and works OOTB. You can install the NVIDIA Web Drivers, but, when I had my ASUS GTX 660, I didn't see any difference between NVIDIA's drivers and Apple's built-in ones.

The GTX 660 will certainly perform better within its intended operating system (Windows)—especially since it's not gonna be flashed for Mac—but it will still be just fine for productivity needs. Granted, I've learned not to immediately pounce on a card before I exhaust all other options. Just make sure there isn't some better deal out there. Ex. while this isn't likely, if you happen to find an official Radeon 5770 Mac Edition (not just simply flashed for Mac) for the same price as a GTX 660, go with the 5770 Mac Edition. I'm fairly certain that a 5770 meant for a Mac will be performing better than a stock GTX 660. The only thing the 660 would be doing better is being virtually silent in operation; 5770s are a little bit loud.