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Upgrading old Mac Pro to 8800 GT graphics?
- Thread starter Fezzy
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Ahhhh
Mine's now been bounced to the 11th March too.
I am convinced this is all about Apple keeping cards to ship on orders for the new mac pros with existing and loyal customers being forced to wait. When new orders dry up and they need to find a revenue stream then the fix will come.
Ho Hum - fun whilst it lasted I suppose.
Yep same here. Mine where supposed to be shipped on the 21:Th of January but that never happened (what else is new...)
This is, in one way good news as nVIDIA can work on getting the card working on my old MacPro, but I'm really feeling to cancel the whole dam thing right now.
My guess is they're using their supply of cards for full Mac Pro orders and anyone who ordered the upgrade will get the new one being worked on by Nvidia that will work on the old Mac Pro. Nvidia did say they'd have it done in "weeks".
I think somebody beat you to it.
No. That's using a PC version of the card under a Hackintosh. I wish people would quit linking articles from Netkas. The things they're doing have absolutely ZERO use to us, since we need EFI bootable cards and they don't.
I think I can make the HD 2600 ROM work on higher end cards. I'm waiting to get in touch with a friend who has a high end HD Radeon to test this on.
If you manage this and can post the steps (and files) for the rest of us you'd be our graphics god
A. Apple's market share is now about comparable to Dell and HP. This may not mean much in total comparison, but still, this is significant. It's prolly a combination of both: Apple wants them to dev for OS X, but under this condition and that condition and this and that, etc.
B. I'm talking SDKs, not just the hardware. SDKs are one thing Apple seems to hold a little too close.
I think this Editorial is relevant to the 8800 GT issue discussed here:
http://www.macobserver.com/editorial/2008/01/24.1.shtml?sid=3bcbbb303dfc3a88beaeb21ed6f9975f
http://www.macobserver.com/editorial/2008/01/24.1.shtml?sid=3bcbbb303dfc3a88beaeb21ed6f9975f
Will Nvidia sell the 8800 GT for the "old" Mac Pro's only via applestore ?
I'm expecting these cards in the first week of Februari....can't wait..
I'm expecting these cards in the first week of Februari....can't wait..
What makes you think they will work with the 'old' Mac Pro.
Unless I've missed something - which has known to happen - all we have to go on is a report of an e-mail form someone in Nvidia saying 'they are working on it'.
Anyone know any more?
Several things here, people ....
First of all, your existing FB-DIMMS from an older Mac Pro ARE compatible with the new ones. They don't run at quite a fast a speed, but they'll work just fine at the slower bus speed. In fact, the overall performance boost you'd see by getting the new 800Mhz FB-DIMMS is not nearly enough to justify their cost, vs. just re-using 8GB of existing FB-DIMMS from the older generation of Mac Pro!
Second, if you've got an ATI X1900XT 512MB card from an older generation Mac Pro, it too will work just fine in the new model. The X1900XT is a better card than the Radeon HD2600XT that ships with default configs. of the new Mac Pro. Granted, it's no 8800GT card, but it's the next best option for the time being.
(As an aside, if you want performance better than the HD2600XT but don't want to fork out the cost of an 8800GT, you can buy X1900XT 512MB cards on eBay all the time for around $80-150. They're going to be the PC/Windows versions, but it's not difficult to re-flash them with Mac firmware and convert them over. Several web sites detail this procedure, which can be done right from inside the Mac Pro.)
First of all, your existing FB-DIMMS from an older Mac Pro ARE compatible with the new ones. They don't run at quite a fast a speed, but they'll work just fine at the slower bus speed. In fact, the overall performance boost you'd see by getting the new 800Mhz FB-DIMMS is not nearly enough to justify their cost, vs. just re-using 8GB of existing FB-DIMMS from the older generation of Mac Pro!
Second, if you've got an ATI X1900XT 512MB card from an older generation Mac Pro, it too will work just fine in the new model. The X1900XT is a better card than the Radeon HD2600XT that ships with default configs. of the new Mac Pro. Granted, it's no 8800GT card, but it's the next best option for the time being.
(As an aside, if you want performance better than the HD2600XT but don't want to fork out the cost of an 8800GT, you can buy X1900XT 512MB cards on eBay all the time for around $80-150. They're going to be the PC/Windows versions, but it's not difficult to re-flash them with Mac firmware and convert them over. Several web sites detail this procedure, which can be done right from inside the Mac Pro.)
Got this message this morning from one of the people at Apple I have been in contact with:
"Just a quick follow up. I heard back directly from the escalation I made inside Apple to let me know that the 8800GT will indeed be made available in the near future to work with older MacPros. It's probable that the card will be offered by NVIDIA directly, and that the card will continue to be offered on the Apple price list only when bundled with a current MacPro.
Just thought I'd let you know that there are people listening!"
Interesting
"Just a quick follow up. I heard back directly from the escalation I made inside Apple to let me know that the 8800GT will indeed be made available in the near future to work with older MacPros. It's probable that the card will be offered by NVIDIA directly, and that the card will continue to be offered on the Apple price list only when bundled with a current MacPro.
Just thought I'd let you know that there are people listening!"
Interesting
That sounds strange - unlike ATI, NVIDIA do not sell direct. The card would have to be manufactured by somebody else...perhaps this card would be sold as an Apple product through Apple stores only? I can't see it appearing retail.
Yeah, I had already replied to her saying that it would be a unique situation since NVIDIA doesn't sell directly. She replied with:
"I don't know what the final offering will be, but it sounds like you should stay tuned!"
Whatever, I guess we will just have to wait and see.
"I don't know what the final offering will be, but it sounds like you should stay tuned!"
Whatever, I guess we will just have to wait and see.
Barefeats has some nice benchmarks on this.
Looks like the chipset makes the biggest improvements here.
God knows I hope they do this time. Then maybe we won't have to pay double the price just for the privilege of ordering from an Apple store.
The problem I have with this is why would Apple be so bent on putting out an EFI64 ROM GPU card for the new Mac Pros when the new Mac Pros have EFI64 which is backwards compatible with a card using an EFI32 ROM? Why not just put out one 8800GT with only an EFI32 ROM which would work in both the old and new Mac Pros. Putting both an EFI32 and 64 on one ROM which subsequently would need a much bigger ROM than standard seems like a waste of resources. All thing considered a card with only EFI32 would require no modification to the ROM chip size as compared to the Nvidia reference design, work in both old and new machines and be easier all around to produce and get to market faster. Something doesn't add up here. The only thing I can come up with is the impending release of GPGPU's on OSX which might necessitate the EFI64 on ROM but I am grabbing at straws on that one even.
NVIDIA updated their Apple product page. Interestingly, they don't specify that the 8800GT is just for newer Mac Pros.
http://www.nvidia.com/page/apple.html
http://www.nvidia.com/page/apple.html
Would be nice if Apples PR and NVIDAs PR would publicly post info pertaining to the the release of an updated 8800 graphics card that is compatible for both new and old MAC Pros. One cannot go by hearsay. Need proof. Apple and NVIDA need to stop pulling the wool over everyones eyes. Until then its all speculation.
Also quite interesting:
http://www.apple.com/macpro/specs.html
:"NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT with 512MB of GDDR3 memory and two dual-link DVI ports"
http://www.nvidia.com/page/apple.html
:"Each GeForce® 8800 GT comes with both a dual-link DVI and a single-link DVI port"
...so maybe there will be 2 totally different products, not just by price...
Also, they say that you can have up to four 8800 GT cards in your Mac Pro. THIS NEEDS TO BE FIXED BEFORE SOMEONE FRIES THEIR MOTHERBOARD.