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Upgrading old Mac Pro to 8800 GT graphics?

hugodrax said:
I talked to a friend who works at Apple. The 8800 will not work on the Previous generation of the Mac Pro and there is no intention to provide a support path for the prior generation of mac pro systems.

The only way to get an 8800 is with the purchase of the Penryn based platform.
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That is always been the case when Apple offers new slots in the machines.

The graphics card companies generally were the ones to offer the cards for the older machines with the Mac Retail editions.

But of course that has been ATI doing that for the older Mac users, can't remember many recent Nvidia retail editions offering support for the older machines with a variant of the OEM cards.
 
My plan was to sell the ATi card once my 8800GT came in.

The recent developments have totally shot that to hell. Nobody's gonna want a card that came standard in the MP's to being with!

Kind of lame, Apple. Not so much for me, my little gripe is a small inconvenience.

Friggin' blows for the previous MP owners!

:rolleyes:
 
Sun Baked said:
That is always been the case when Apple offers new slots in the machines.

The graphics card companies generally were the ones to offer the cards for the older machines with the Mac Retail editions.

But of course that has been ATI doing that for the older Mac users, can't remember many recent Nvidia retail editions offering support for the older machines with a variant of the OEM cards.
Click to expand...

Mac Pro (Early 2008) doesn't have new slots. They just have a PCI 2.0 capable bus.

If I can stick a PC 8800GT card in older Mac Pros and it runs fine under Windows, there's no reason I shouldn't be able to run the Apple brand card under OS X on the same Mac Pro. The only technical limitation is the one Apple is creating.
 
Wild-Bill said:
That's Apple for ya. ;) That is REALLY messed up of them to do. Sorry early Mac Pro owners, you'll have to buy a whole new system to get a better video card. What a CROCK. If I was an early Mac Pro owner I'd be PISSED.

Hell, I'm pissed anyway for all of you (well, most of you anyway. There are a few on here that deserve it). I'm almost tempted to cancel my MP order and just build a Hack, since its clear that there will be no upgrade path for me down the road.
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Just think a year from now when we cannot upgrade our new Mac Pros ;)
 
The hate is swelling... I woke up this morning and was pretty torqued when I saw that Apple had already put a hold on my money for a product that was shipping in 5-7 week and called them, only to find out that the card was not compatible with my MacPro I purchased in August. I was aware of the limitations in terms of upgradability with the rest of the Mac line-up, but how the Mac Pro was presented to me lead me to believe that I would be able to upgrade the video card at least once in the product cycle of this machine. I was real nice of them to offer to sell me the inferior card for my system at a premium.. http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/wa/RSLID?mco=7E4FA1DC&nplm=MA631Z/B

I guess what really makes the most angry is not that the new card is such an earth shattering change that it is incompatible, its just that they went out of there way not to make it compatible when it would have been just as easy to make it so that it was.
 
Another sad day for Apple.

As a Windows tech (day job) and Mac Pro/MacBook/iPhone/iPod owner, I will find it hard to recommend to my fellow techs the Mac Pros now that you cannot update the graphics card on boxes that could be less than a couple of weeks old. As bad as I talk smack about Microsoft they do build in some backward compatibility (decent AGP cards are still available) and work with ATI/Nvidia.

If you want something more powerful than a iMac, build it yourself.
 
I will not rest until I have a 8800 GT running in my September 2006 Mac Pro. I endured receiving my first MP DOA back in late 2006, then I waited patiently for a graphics card update. After 16 months I am told I have to buy a new system to get an updated card. That is wrong, plain and simple.

I have called Apple four times today, trying to track down accurate information. Two of the calls were sidetracked by 13 year old slave labor techs in India, and the other two calls were probably more informative for the techs than they were for me. I emailed a contact in Corporate Executive Relations who I dealt with back when I got the original DOA MP. I emailed Steve Jobs directly. I think my next step is driving my system up to Cupertino and not leaving until someone has successfully installed an 8800 for me. I also left a review of the card in the Apple Store. At least someone will get to read my opinion of this ordeal.

It seems petty to get so upset about a graphics card, but I feel like I was misled about the expandability of this computer when I originally purchased back in 06.
 
antzona said:
It seems petty to get so upset about a graphics card, but I feel like I was misled about the expandability of this computer when I originally purchased back in 06.
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This is really it. I might as well be running an iMac if I can't upgrade the components.

I could understand this sort of thing back in the PPC days, but we're running Intel chips now, there is no excuse.

The thing that bothers me the most is that the ATI HD 2600 XT cards will run on our Mac Pros. Obviously they can write 32-Bit and 64-Bit extensions (or maybe just 32-Bit extensions), why can't Nvidia? If they can't, then Apple needs to give us a firmware upgrade to UEFI 2.1, since it's the current standard. (EFI 1.10 is obsolete now.)

I'm seriously close to saying screw it and running a Hackintosh version of Mac OS X on my Mac Pro so I can use a PC 8800 GT. It's ridiculous I should have to do that.
 
I confirmed with Apple that the GeForce 8800 GT will NOT work on the pre-2008 Mac Pros.

I've visited various forums and see that many of the Mac faithful are quite displeased with this situation.

Therefore, I've created an online petition if you want to urge Apple to create a version of the GeForce 8800 GT that's compatible with older (2006,2007) Mac Pros:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/geforce8800
 
barefeats said:
I confirmed with Apple that the GeForce 8800 GT will NOT work on the pre-2008 Mac Pros.

I've visited various forums and see that many of the Mac faithful are quite displeased with this situation.

Therefore, I've created an online petition if you want to urge Apple to create a version of the GeForce 8800 GT that's compatible with older (2006,2007) Mac Pros:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/geforce8800
Click to expand...

Done and done. I will help to spread this petition further than Paris Hilton's legs.
 
Barefeats

I hope you don't mind, i posted a link to the online petition you started on Digg in hopes that the more people that if more people take notice and pass it on, then there may be an increased chance of something actually happening.

Regards
 
barefeats said:
I confirmed with Apple that the GeForce 8800 GT will NOT work on the pre-2008 Mac Pros.

I've visited various forums and see that many of the Mac faithful are quite displeased with this situation.

Therefore, I've created an online petition if you want to urge Apple to create a version of the GeForce 8800 GT that's compatible with older (2006,2007) Mac Pros:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/geforce8800
Click to expand...


Signed, by a soon to be ex Apple devote' if they don't do something to help out the rest of us.

Dan
 
antzona said:
Two of the calls were sidetracked by 13 year old slave labor techs in India, and the other two calls were probably more informative for the techs than they were for me.
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As I understand it, Apple did start setting up a call center in India, but gave up on the idea and closed it down before it became active.
 
Blogger said:
As I understand it, Apple did start setting up a call center in India, but gave up on the idea and closed it down before it became active.
Click to expand...

I read that as well, but neither of these techs were in the US, and both were second language learners. They could have been in Sri Lanka or Bangladesh. With both calls, I asked them to transfer me to someone in the US and they both did (well, they both tried).
 
antzona said:
I read that as well, but neither of these techs were in the US, and both were second language learners. They could have been in Sri Lanka or Bangladesh. With both calls, I asked them to transfer me to someone in the US and they both did.
Click to expand...

Yea, I went through the same thing when my X1900 fried. Two overseas techs told me to call ATI. Finally I got transfered to a guy in the US who ended up transferring me back overseas. All in all it took me 3 hours on the phone to get an RMA.

Apple drop shipped me a new card and then charged my credit card for the $400 after I returned the bad card. That fun was fun getting straight as well.
 
I've never had a tech support call routed to anywhere but the US, however that doesn't mean it's impossible. But the way I heard it, Steve cancelled the overseas call centers because the competition had already hired the best English speakers, and because of that, there wasn't much of a price saving after taking into consideration the potential problems with customer relations.
 
Cowinacape said:
This would be like one of the big three auto makers putting out a new model of car, and then two years ( 16 months actually) later telling you, that you can no longer get new parts for it, but you can buy this "New" model, with an updated interior, and 4 horsepower more instead.
Click to expand...

That is a spot-on analogy.
 
Blogger said:
I've never had a tech support call routed to anywhere but the US, however that doesn't mean it's impossible. But the way I heard it, Steve cancelled the overseas call centers because the competition had already hired the best English speakers, and because of that, there wasn't much of a price saving after taking into consideration the potential problems with customer relations.
Click to expand...

Considering the fact that both of these people agreed with what I said and attempted to transfer my call, we can safely assume they were both outside the US.
 
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