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No More Graphics Upgrade Kits?

MakDawg

MakDawg

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 4, 2015
6
0
Hi All,

I just went to the apple site to get a graphics upgrade kit for my early 2009 Mac Pro. I was recommend to get the HD5870. But its seems there are no graphics upgrade kits available any more. Is this the case or am I just looking in the wrong spot?

Cheers
Mak
 
MakDawg said:
I was just hoping to buy a stock card from apple to avoid complications. Have they removed all upgrades to force people to buy a new mac pro?
Click to expand...

Doesn't make much sense for Apple to build and sell upgrade parts to a system they pretty much stopped building almost 2 years ago?? Shut down production, save money and use the inventory for warranty work.
 
PsyOpWarlord said:
Doesn't make much sense for Apple to build and sell upgrade parts to a system they pretty much stopped building almost 2 years ago?? Shut down production, save money and use the inventory for warranty work.
Click to expand...

This exactly. I'm sure you could find the exact same card that apple used to sell to avoid complications.
 
Yet Toyota still makes parts for my 2000 model Hilux...
 
MakDawg said:
Thanks. But the majority of these seem to be flashed cards. I was just hoping to buy a stock card from apple to avoid complications. Have they removed all upgrades to force people to buy a new mac pro?
Click to expand...

Yes, they are all flashed cards but many of them are supported by OS X with native drivers. For example, a GTX 680 is very much plug and play since they work perfectly with stock OS X drives. There's no need to install anything else and all OS X updates go without any problems.

There are, however, other cards offered by MacVidCards that are not quite as well supported by Apple. For example, the Titan X requires that you install "web drivers" that are provided by Nvidia themselves each time there's a point release of OS X. The Titan X also require more power than your Mac Pro was originally designed to provide and you need to install an additional power source for it to operate safely.

MakDawg said:
Yet Toyota still makes parts for my 2000 model Hilux...
Click to expand...

I'm certain that if your current video card failed and you called Apple, they would have the required parts to repair it and get your Mac Pro running again.

I doubt Toyota will offer to sell you the engine from a 2015 model and help you retrofit it in to your 2000 model.
 
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The cards from MacVidCards are as good as it gets right now. As long as you don't buy a Maxwell nVidia card (which still don't have drivers built into OS X, so you have to constantly make sure the nVidia web driver is on), you will not notice any difference from the cards Apple shipped with the machine. They work natively with OS X, and you can install updates without any issue.

The fastest non-Maxwell card at the moment I believe is the Radeon R9 280X. It's still much slower than a 980 though.
 
pastrychef said:
Yes, they are all flashed cards but many of them are supported by OS X with native drivers. For example, a GTX 680 is very much plug and play since they work perfectly with stock OS X drives. There's no need to install anything else and all OS X updates go without any problems.

There are, however, other cards offered by MacVidCards that are not quite as well supported by Apple. For example, the Titan X requires that you install "web drivers" that are provided by Nvidia themselves each time there's a point release of OS X. The Titan X also require more power than your Mac Pro was originally designed to provide and you need to install an additional power source for it to operate safely.



I'm certain that if your current video card failed and you called Apple, they would have the required parts to repair it and get your Mac Pro running again.

I doubt Toyota will offer to sell you the engine from a 2015 model and help you retrofit it in to your 2000 model.
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Quite incorrect. My GT120 failed recently and apple australia told me this Mac pro (2009) is no longer supported and cannot help with a new video card. Also in reference to the toyota I believe makdawg was talking about peripheral components (video card analogy) not the engine, which I can guarantee toyota supports older vehicles with components. Apple fan-boys blow me away with their denial sometimes....
 
Thank you all for your comprehensive responses. It is actually a GT 120 that I'm replacing and yes I've seen the second hand one available at owc. It made me question though , what are the thousands of people around the world with mac pro's doing if there is but 1 card available from OWC. Surely not everyone has the money to upgrade to a dustbin, so I thought I had to be missing something. So everyone must be upgrading via the macvidcards. And yes rodeick that is exactly what I meant :)
 
rodeicksmorgasboard said:
Quite incorrect. My GT120 failed recently and apple australia told me this Mac pro (2009) is no longer supported and cannot help with a new video card. Also in reference to the toyota I believe makdawg was talking about peripheral components (video card analogy) not the engine, which I can guarantee toyota supports older vehicles with components. Apple fan-boys blow me away with their denial sometimes....
Click to expand...

I'm very surprised they didn't even offer to get you up and running with one of the AMD cards. I would have continued pestering them some sort of solution.

I have no denial. I have personally never had any issues sourcing components for my Macs. No company supports their products forever. The length of time a car company continues to supply parts for a car model is very different from computer companies continuing to supply components for aging models. If for example, Nvidia ended production of GT 120 GPUs in 2011 where would you expect a computer maker to get one for you? Whether is be Apple, Dell, or anyone. There's no fan-boyism here, just common sense.
 
MakDawg said:
Thank you all for your comprehensive responses. It is actually a GT 120 that I'm replacing and yes I've seen the second hand one available at owc. It made me question though , what are the thousands of people around the world with mac pro's doing if there is but 1 card available from OWC. Surely not everyone has the money to upgrade to a dustbin, so I thought I had to be missing something. So everyone must be upgrading via the macvidcards. And yes rodeick that is exactly what I meant :)
Click to expand...

Many users have purchased and flashed stock PC video cards for use in their Macs themselves. I did so with a GTX 680 and the card continues to work perfectly today. It was just a matter of booting in to my Bootcamp drive and flashing the firmware on the video card. That's all that was needed.

If you do not wish to flash the firmware, many of the Nvidia cards work out of the box in OS X. However, the screen will remain black until OS X is fully loaded along with the video drivers. You can get much more info at https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-graphics-cards.1440150/page-88#post-21411044
 
pastrychef said:
I'm very surprised they didn't even offer to get you up and running with one of the AMD cards. I would have continued pestering them some sort of solution.

I have no denial. I have personally never had any issues sourcing components for my Macs. No company supports their products forever. The length of time a car company continues to supply parts for a car model is very different from computer companies continuing to supply components for aging models. If for example, Nvidia ended production of GT 120 GPUs in 2011 where would you expect a computer maker to get one for you? Whether is be Apple, Dell, or anyone. There's no fan-boyism here, just common sense.
Click to expand...
I'd never expect them to have another GT120 and that's not what I was asking, but I would expect them to have a replacement card that I can use to upgrade or replace. I havn't called apple yet but if, as you say they have AMD cards available for replacement why are they not able to be purchased from the store?
 
MakDawg said:
I'd never expect them to have another GT120 and that's not what I was asking, but I would expect them to have a replacement card that I can use to upgrade or replace. I havn't called apple yet but if, as you say they have AMD cards available for replacement why are they not able to be purchased from the store?
Click to expand...

I have no idea why they don't list any video cards for the older Mac Pros. My only guess is that it's because those models have been discontinued for a while now. I also don't see any PCI video cards for Power Macs in the Apple Store.
 
yea, now you're reaching lol. The PCI card for a power mac isn't really a comparison as you can't run much current software on it. But you can still run the latest and greatest stuff on a Mac Pro from 2009, just need a better video card. Again thanks for your comprehensive responses. it's given me enough confidence to try out one of the macvidcards. Cheers
 
pastrychef said:
I also don't see any PCI video cards for Power Macs in the Apple Store.
Click to expand...

With the exception of the BTO Radeon 7000 for the Xserve G5, PowrerMacs quit using PCI graphics cards around the turn of the century...

With that said, even the newest PowerMac G5s-which used PCIe Graphics-were introduced in late 2005 and discontinued in 2006. That's nearly 10 years.

You'd have to stretch back to about 1999 to find a PowerMac that used a PCI graphics card, and even then there were effectively three options(Rage 128, Radeon 7000, Radeon 9200).
 
pastrychef said:
Opps. You're right. That was an AGP card.

The fan on mine failed and I ended up changing the entire cooler.
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I mentioned above that I have two of them. I actually have three, but the third is stone-cold dead.

I'm keeping it around because I've seen them advertised on Ebay as having a bad fan, and figure I'll be in good shape if I ever buy one. Of course, I should also mention that I've bought two from the same seller that were advertised as such, and both were perfectly fine.

I love the GEForce 4Ti. It's-bar none-the best card you can get that has full OS 9 compatibility. I'm not a big gamer, but I have one in my OS 9 "gaming rig" and it's great. That same computer has a Sonnet Duet 1.8ghz processor upgrade. The second processor is useless in OS 9(except in Photoshop and a handful of other programs) but even one G4 at 1.8ghz is still pretty darn fast in OS 9. I've made the claim-and I think it's probably true although I can't support it-that this is probably one of the fastest OS 9 computers in existence.

In any case, every PowerMac G4 save for the first generation low-end Yikes!(which really was a B&W G3 logic board with a G4 processor in a G4 case and no ADB port) used AGP graphics. Even the B&W G3 and Yikes! G4 used a somewhat unique PCI graphics set up where they had a 32 bit, 66mhz dedicated PCI graphics slot separate from the main PCI bus(which was 64 bit and 33mhz). It effectively was an AGP 1x slot. All G5s had AGP graphics also, save for the late '05 models(2.0 Dual Core, 2.3 Dual Core, 2.5 Quad Core) which switched entirely to PCIe.
 
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