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Upgrading old Mac Pro to 8800 GT graphics?

Has anyone solved this issue?? From what I've been reading the problem has to do with the new version of PCI express? PCIe 2.0 seems to be twice as fast but if you look on the Mac Pro overview page, it says....

"The PCI Express 2.0 graphics card slot delivers twice the transfer rate of the previous generation. And you can install up to three additional PCI Express cards in three full-length slots — one PCIe 2.0, the other two PCIe."

Which makes me suspicious. Because if its raving about being able to add 3 cards but only 1 slot is PCIe 2.0....what are they gonna try to sell us the 7300? If all the cards they are offering will work in an old standard PCIe slot...then we have our answer.

Am I wrong?
 
You're not only wrong, you're overreacting. Note the three additional slots, one of which is PCIe in addition to the slot which the graphics card you ordered is in. So there are two x16 slots and two x4 slots. Also, they don't sell the 7300 GT with new Mac Pros anymore, you'd have to buy it separately. And the HD2600 XT works with 2006/2007 Mac Pros, as you can tell from my signature.
 
Mackilroy said:
And the HD2600 XT works with 2006/2007 Mac Pros, as you can tell from my signature.
Click to expand...

How are you finding the HD2600 XT? I bought one but returned it because, although I noticed a slight improvement over the 7300, in practice it didn't seem that much better to me. So I thought I'd rather wait and see if we ever get a 8800 option and put my money towards that.
 
Chuck Norris just called ATI and ordered a Nvidia GeForce 8800 video card for his 2006 Mac Pro, he got one.

Everybody at Nvidia is frantically vacating the building due to they heard a rumor that Chuck Norris is coming over to give round-house kicks to everyone.
 
I would like to point out that there is a known issue with the 8800GT and PCI-E 1.0a slots as quoted in the Wikipedia article on the card.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_8_Series#8800_GT

Shortly after the release, an incompatibility issue with older PCI Express 1.0a motherboards was unmasked. When using the PCI Express 2.0 compliant 8800GT in motherboards with PCI Express 1.0a slots, the card would not produce any display image, but the computer would often boot (with the fan spinning at a constant 100%). Some mainboard (Motherboard) chipsets had a workaround, which was to re-flash the graphics card's bios with an older GEN1 BIOS (which effectively made it into a PCI Express 1.0 card, not being able to utilize the PCIE 2.0 functions. but since the card itself could not even utilize the full capacity of the regular PCIE 1.0 slots, there was no noticeable performance reduction). A workaround to this is to flash the BIOS of the motherboard to the latest version. The flashing of the BIOS, however, voided the warranties of most cards thus making it a less-than-optimum way of getting the card to work properly. In relation to this compatibility issue, the high numbers of DOA (Dead On Arrival - cards that are broken out of the box)(As much as 13-15%) were believed to be inaccurate. When it was revealed that the G92 8800GT and 8800GTS 512Mb were going to be designed with PCI Express 2.0 connections, NVIDIA claimed that all cards would have full Backwards-Compatibility, but they completely failed to mentioned that this was only true for PCI Express 1.1 motherboards. The source for the BIOS-flash did not come from NVIDIA or any of their partners, but rather AsRock, a mainboard producer, who mentioned the fix in one of their motherboard FAQ's. ASUSTek, which produces their own versions of the 8800GT, posted a newer version of their 8800GT BIOS on their website, but did not mention that it fixed this issue. As of the date of this article (Dec 26 2007) there has not been any official word on this issue from either NVIDIA or any of their partners. One could speculate that this is because they do not want to harm their sales figures, by possibly turning away customers who are unsure of their motherboard specifications.

Edit:

Also this is nice CYA article by Apple reguarding the card.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305346
"All of these cards are only compatible with the family of computers with which they shipped."
 
duh... you aren't the first one to post that info Cubeman. That info was already posted in the thread. In fact that's about where the thread started. You 've got to learn to keep up...
 
Kosh66 said:
duh... you aren't the first one to post that info Cubeman. That info was already posted in the thread. In fact that's about where the thread started. You 've got to learn to keep up...
Click to expand...

I may have to learn to "keep up" but why are you griping about a known problem? Did you expect that your Mac Pro would magically not have the problem even though its sporting the exact hardware thats causing the issue?

I seem to be missing something here.
 
Cubeman said:
I seem to be missing something here.
Click to expand...

Missing a few things:
  • It is not the same issue: The mac pro's sold before 2008, had a 1.1 PCIe, not 1.0. Not the same hardware.
  • The bios issue is not likely to crop up as a new EFI compatible firmware is required for the cards.
  • The problem has already been identified as relating to 64bit EFI being non-compatible with old MacPros. Nvidia is maybe going to fix this, maybe not.
  • Steve Jobs has said he would just prefer everyone buy a new $5000 machine (I just made this up).
 
Guys, Steve said it's being worked. We should close this thread until he releases another statement on 8800gate.
 
lloyd709 said:
How are you finding the HD2600 XT? I bought one but returned it because, although I noticed a slight improvement over the 7300, in practice it didn't seem that much better to me. So I thought I'd rather wait and see if we ever get a 8800 option and put my money towards that.
Click to expand...

Well, just going from World of Warcraft, I went from disabling Full Screen Glow and having all options at the halfway point to get a framerate of about 40 FPS to enabling FSG and maximizing all options to get a FPS of about 50. This is at 1680x1050. Halo also runs faster, as does Civilization IV and pretty much every other game that uses the GPU. The 8800 GT definitely does run much faster, but for 2006 Mac Pro users the HD2600 XT is a nice upgrade/stopgap until Nvidia gets the 8800 out to us.
 
I don't think this thread should be closed until we KNOW that the right thing is being done. We won't know that until Apple releases an official statement regarding the issue, or a card that works in the older Mac Pros is released. We know Apple isn't going to say anything about it, because they can't bring themselves to even remotely admit that they messed up. So, this thread should be active until the cards are selling in the Apple Store. An unfortunate side effect is that we will have a few posts from people who are four weeks behind the news cycle and think they are sharing some new insight or a scoop. If they took the time to read the thread they would realize that not only are their thoughts not original, but they are quite common and have been dissected, refuted, proved wrong, and then rehashed five days later. That being said, I am glad people are still paying attention to this issue, even though it looks like it has been "worked". I won't stop discussing this issue until I am reading this thread with a 8800 GT in my Mac Pro.
 
antzona said:
I don't think this thread should be closed until we KNOW that the right thing is being done. We won't know that until Apple releases an official statement regarding the issue, or a card that works in the older Mac Pros is released. We know Apple isn't going to say anything about it, because they can't bring themselves to even remotely admit that they messed up. So, this thread should be active until the cards are selling in the Apple Store. An unfortunate side effect is that we will have a few posts from people who are four weeks behind the news cycle and think they are sharing some new insight or a scoop. If they took the time to read the thread they would realize that not only are their thoughts not original, but they are quite common and have been dissected, refuted, proved wrong, and then rehashed five days later. That being said, I am glad people are still paying attention to this issue, even though it looks like it has been "worked". I won't stop discussing this issue until I am reading this thread with a 8800 GT in my Mac Pro.
Click to expand...

Amen...besides if HD2600 XT can operate in all the Mac Pro Generations, then theres no excuse why the 8800 GT (after the update of course) cannot.
 
Colossus said:
Chuck Norris just called ATI and ordered a Nvidia GeForce 8800 video card for his 2006 Mac Pro, he got one.

Everybody at Nvidia is frantically vacating the building due to they heard a rumor that Chuck Norris is coming over to give round-house kicks to everyone.
Click to expand...

I like this idea better everyone ^ Just send Chuck out and he will get us our cards. We might have to fight Chuck for one, but thats a risk im willing to take
 
lloyd709 said:
I'm missing something here. Who's this Chuck guy then?
Click to expand...

I just blew coffee out of my nose and sprayed my keyboard. I am laughing so hard I can barely breath. Bwahahahahaha!

The Chuck we are referring to is the one and only Chuck Norris. There's no other Chuck, period. Word.
 
Glad I gave you a laugh.

I'm not that bothered - keep your little in joke if that makes you happy - but if anyone does want to answer the question...
 
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