Nvidia 960 in Mac Pro 3,1

[dpdpforlife]

So I took a risk and bought a 960 for my mac. It's installed and running okayish using the web drivers. This thing is replacing my $2k (originally) Quadro FX5600.

When I say okayish, this is what I mean: The HDMI port works fine always. If I use the DVI port, sometimes it won't boot, sometimes after it boots I can plug it in and it works, other times I plug it in and the computer crashes. Lately, it's been more of the latter.

First off, does anyone know a way to troubleshoot and hopefully fix this issue?

I also miss my boot screen. What I've been thinking about the last day or so is using two cards, the 960 and my old FX5600. This would give me my dual monitors back reliably, but would also let me see the boot screen. The 960 takes a single 6 pin power cable while the 5600 requires two of them. Is there a way I can split off one of the power cables and send the split power to the 5600? Can the PSU handle this?

 

[pastrychef]

Do you have two monitors connected to the GTX 960? Have you tried using DisplayPort instead of DVI?

If you want boot screen, you can always pay to have custom firmware flashed on your video card by www.macvidcards.com.

I would not recommend trying to split the motherboard power connectors to try and power two video cards. Each of the connectors are only rated to provide up to 75W.

 

[dpdpforlife]

Do you have two monitors connected to the GTX 960? Have you tried using DisplayPort instead of DVI?

If you want boot screen, you can always pay to have custom firmware flashed on your video card by www.macvidcards.com.

I would not recommend trying to split the motherboard power connectors to try and power two video cards. Each of the connectors are only rated to provide up to 75W.

Thanks pastrychef. I didn't realize that macvidcards would flash a card for you until I read your post.

As far as the dual monitor thing goes, I was able to get a reliable DVI and HDMI setup by turning off window transparency in the accessibility panel of system preferences. This also had a huge performance impact across the board. Windows open faster, text boxes (safari address bar, for example) let me type in them immediately instead of there being a short pause; the entire experience is far more responsive.