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Upgrading old Mac Pro to 8800 GT graphics?
- Thread starter Fezzy
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Well, the man said the problem was being worked (not worked on). That's one way of working the problem, ignoring it until it goes away. Seriously, even if that card shows up, it'll likely be the last card for the old Mac Pros. So slim pickings anyway.
If it makes any difference to anyone in this thread the new shipping date for the nvidia 8800gt cards are now 1-2 weeks.
They are just hoping that we will go away.
I, for one, have a lot invested in my Mac Pro. It is a lot cheaper for me to upgrade than to buy new, at this point.
No matter what some of you believe, this is Apple's f uck up, not Nvidia's.
I hope this thread never goes away ! I want potential "switchers" to know what they are in for, in the long run.
Also, for the record, this is about the millionth time Apple has screwed me. They will eventually get everyone, one way or another. If you stay on the Apple train long enough, you will see a pattern emerge.
The only reason I continue to buy Apple is for OS X, nothing more. So, as I hone my Hackintosh skills, I will continue to demand a GPU Upgrade !
I, for one, have a lot invested in my Mac Pro. It is a lot cheaper for me to upgrade than to buy new, at this point.
No matter what some of you believe, this is Apple's f uck up, not Nvidia's.
I hope this thread never goes away ! I want potential "switchers" to know what they are in for, in the long run.
Also, for the record, this is about the millionth time Apple has screwed me. They will eventually get everyone, one way or another. If you stay on the Apple train long enough, you will see a pattern emerge.
The only reason I continue to buy Apple is for OS X, nothing more. So, as I hone my Hackintosh skills, I will continue to demand a GPU Upgrade !
You're right Edd. To buy a new MP I need to take ~$1000 hit again. For that money I can build a gaming PC that will destroy the new MP in gaming (and be plenty upgradeable in future) and keep my old MP for work. Win/win except that Apple doesn't get a penny. Or maybe I don't even keep the MP since I can use the MBP and end up in positive territory after the whole video card ordeal.
Yep I'm honestly considering just going back to having a MBP as my only mac and a windows pc desktop for gaming. It was nice to have a Mac Pro as my sole desktop machine and be able to boot into windows for games whenever I wanted, but the X1900 XT is starting to get long in the tooth now since I game at 1920x1200. Not to mention all the problems it has with overheating and destroying multiple cards.
I'm sure someone is going to hack the 8800gt to work in the old mac pros eventually...probably before Apple ever comes out with a solution...but I'm not sure I really feel like waiting around.
Kind of makes you wonder why Apple goes through the trouble of putting a video card slot on the MacPro at all. Why not go with a motherboard based solution. Apple can save a few bucks and not have to deal with with our "unreasonable" expectations about upgradeability.
This is the one worry I have about my future Mac Pro. So few video cards to choose from and such big gaps in their price and performance. The latest generation FireGL cards are so much better performers in Maya and other pro apps than the 8800 and the Quadros and for a lot less dosh. I was really excited about the 8800 be available in the Mac Pro till I read this. Hello ? Pro machine ? Pro apps.
http://www.barefeats.com/harper10.html
Why did apple even boast about the mac pro being so 'upgradeable' ?
My next computer just may very well be a hackintosh still using the Mac Pro cheese grater case. Like someone else has said, id actually get MORE choice that way with components than if i were to actually pay for a legit mac. Of course, gaming would also be a hell of a lot better that way too, the fully buffered ram thats necessary for the mac pros isnt very good at all when it comes to gaming.
I really start to believe that this "we are working on it" is just BS to stop unhappy users from making them bad publicity ...
Seriously, EFI Drivers are written in C, then compiled to 32bit, 64bit assembly, or EFI bytecode.
If Nvidia really was working on it, they just would have to take the code they wrote for the 64bit driver, then switch the compiler for a 32bit one, and click the "recompile" button ... Then fixing portability issues should have taken them a few days maximum.
So, either all software people at Nvidia are incompetent, or Apple is keeping it on hold, hoping that every rev1 Mac Pro owner will just get bored and buy a new one ...
What can be done now, for people who have a PC Geforce 8 card they want to use in their Mac Pro, would be to write an email to their card manufacturer's support, asking if they have plan about EFI.
Possibly, if enough of us do so, the request will be escalated to Nvidia, which might eventually allow its third parties to redistribute EFI enabled cards and firmware updates. Support contacts are available here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/support_aic.html
Seriously, EFI Drivers are written in C, then compiled to 32bit, 64bit assembly, or EFI bytecode.
If Nvidia really was working on it, they just would have to take the code they wrote for the 64bit driver, then switch the compiler for a 32bit one, and click the "recompile" button ... Then fixing portability issues should have taken them a few days maximum.
So, either all software people at Nvidia are incompetent, or Apple is keeping it on hold, hoping that every rev1 Mac Pro owner will just get bored and buy a new one ...
What can be done now, for people who have a PC Geforce 8 card they want to use in their Mac Pro, would be to write an email to their card manufacturer's support, asking if they have plan about EFI.
Possibly, if enough of us do so, the request will be escalated to Nvidia, which might eventually allow its third parties to redistribute EFI enabled cards and firmware updates. Support contacts are available here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/support_aic.html
I've been lurking around here for a while to see how this story develops and it just disgusts me.
It disgusts that I have an 8-core mac pro that I got last May (not even a year old), and it cannot be upgraded to the newest video card. This is the whole reason I bought the Mac Pro, so that I could make updates myself. I love Apple, but it's things like this that really rub you the wrong way.
It disgusts that I have an 8-core mac pro that I got last May (not even a year old), and it cannot be upgraded to the newest video card. This is the whole reason I bought the Mac Pro, so that I could make updates myself. I love Apple, but it's things like this that really rub you the wrong way.
I dont believe the problem is on Nvidia's end. The problem is that they have not received any support from Apple to go ahead with a version of card thats 32 bit EFI probably. They are not going to create anything just for the fun of it 
Ok, I'm confused guys...!?
...I have a brand new MacPro, but I wont to update to the NVIDIA GEFORCE 8800 GT GRAPHICS CARD-INT...I made a order to the Apple Store but it's backordered and it seems it will take a while still before I get my hand on it...
...Now that said, I see that you guys make reference to the NVIDIA GEFORCE 8800 GT for the PC with the HDTV connector and with a shipper price has well...
...Now my question is, am I doing the right thing of buying from Apple Store or should I get the oder model with the HDTV connector...? Will it work properly on my Mac if I do that...?
...Thanks for the help...!
Ben
...I have a brand new MacPro, but I wont to update to the NVIDIA GEFORCE 8800 GT GRAPHICS CARD-INT...I made a order to the Apple Store but it's backordered and it seems it will take a while still before I get my hand on it...
...Now that said, I see that you guys make reference to the NVIDIA GEFORCE 8800 GT for the PC with the HDTV connector and with a shipper price has well...
...Now my question is, am I doing the right thing of buying from Apple Store or should I get the oder model with the HDTV connector...? Will it work properly on my Mac if I do that...?
...Thanks for the help...!
Ben
All speculation, but ...
It seems clear to me, the video card manufacturers have relatively LITTLE interest in making custom versions of their products for the Mac community.
It could well be an issue where nVidia is waiting on some specs or info from Apple - but I'm ALSO willing to bet that nVidia isn't exactly calling Apple's people up daily, harassing them to "hurry up and get us that info".
I've kept up with some of the more technical Apple-specific web sites for long enough to know, the video card makers usually assign a very small "team" to work on Mac video cards and driver support for them. (I remember a guy who went by "Bero" being about the ONLY guy at ATI you seemed to ever hear from if you had detailed questions on Mac versions of their products.)
Truthfully, I think they still see the Mac as too much of a niche market. If the total sales of Mac is still well below 10% of overall computer sales (and it is!), that means 9 out of 10 cards they sell are going to go to platforms that use their generic Windows-compatible version of a card. Now, factor in the fact that every time you come out with a new Mac-compatible card, you fragment up your market-share that much more. (EG. ATI released the Radeon 9800 Mac edition, and all of a sudden, they were stuck with a bunch of 9600/9700 class cards in Mac editions that REALLY got hard to sell to anybody. Then they released a 9800 "special edition" with 2x the video RAM on-board, but that probably effectively cut sales of the regular 9800 Mac edition right in half too.)
Apple, I'm sure, thinks it's in their best interest to keep requiring custom versions of video cards - because that allows them to deal with FAR fewer potential issues in OS X that relate to graphics driver incompatibilities or bugs. (A very LARGE proportion of Windows errors and crashes turn out to be related to video drivers.) But going this route means Mac users are probably NEVER going to see much selection in video cards or upgrades as their machines age. The card makers simply don't care to waste their time on Apple products, UNLESS Apple themselves commit to buying a big number of them up-front (which they'd usually only do for a whole new system release).
It seems clear to me, the video card manufacturers have relatively LITTLE interest in making custom versions of their products for the Mac community.
It could well be an issue where nVidia is waiting on some specs or info from Apple - but I'm ALSO willing to bet that nVidia isn't exactly calling Apple's people up daily, harassing them to "hurry up and get us that info".
I've kept up with some of the more technical Apple-specific web sites for long enough to know, the video card makers usually assign a very small "team" to work on Mac video cards and driver support for them. (I remember a guy who went by "Bero" being about the ONLY guy at ATI you seemed to ever hear from if you had detailed questions on Mac versions of their products.)
Truthfully, I think they still see the Mac as too much of a niche market. If the total sales of Mac is still well below 10% of overall computer sales (and it is!), that means 9 out of 10 cards they sell are going to go to platforms that use their generic Windows-compatible version of a card. Now, factor in the fact that every time you come out with a new Mac-compatible card, you fragment up your market-share that much more. (EG. ATI released the Radeon 9800 Mac edition, and all of a sudden, they were stuck with a bunch of 9600/9700 class cards in Mac editions that REALLY got hard to sell to anybody. Then they released a 9800 "special edition" with 2x the video RAM on-board, but that probably effectively cut sales of the regular 9800 Mac edition right in half too.)
Apple, I'm sure, thinks it's in their best interest to keep requiring custom versions of video cards - because that allows them to deal with FAR fewer potential issues in OS X that relate to graphics driver incompatibilities or bugs. (A very LARGE proportion of Windows errors and crashes turn out to be related to video drivers.) But going this route means Mac users are probably NEVER going to see much selection in video cards or upgrades as their machines age. The card makers simply don't care to waste their time on Apple products, UNLESS Apple themselves commit to buying a big number of them up-front (which they'd usually only do for a whole new system release).
I dont believe the problem is on Nvidia's end. The problem is that they have not received any support from Apple to go ahead with a version of card thats 32 bit EFI probably. They are not going to create anything just for the fun of it
Err, we are talking about EFI here, it's an open standard. Nvidia does not need any help or support from Apple here. They already have the code (which they used to build the 8800GT 64bit EFI driver), and they probably also have an "old" Mac Pro and 8800GT to test it ... All in all, it should take them less than one person/week.
I guess that the slow part in the process would be Apple testing the driver Nvidia sent them, deciding whether or not they want to market it, and when, and with which stickers in the package, and when they want the production started, and when they want to update their store with it ...
I guess that the slow part in the process would be Apple testing the driver Nvidia sent them, deciding whether or not they want to market it, and when, and with which stickers in the package, and when they want the production started, and when they want to update their store with it ...
There is nothing like "custom Mac cards". Macs are using EFI, which is supposed to replace PC BIOS in a few years, so it's highly probable that Nvidia, ATI, Intel would already be working on making their hardware EFI compliant even if Apple wasn't using it right now.
Cards already existing, etc.
Well, my point was addressing more of the overall video card situation when it comes to the Mac. (I think it's important to keep that in mind, if you're one of those people who claims he/she bought a Mac Pro primarily because of the idea it was "upgradeable". The reality is, yes, it has slots in it and it IS advertised as very expandable/upgradeable. BUT, Apple's definition of upgradeable doesn't necessarily extend to the video hardware. It may well be they ONLY have a card in a video slot on a Mac Pro because Intel isn't willing to engineer integrated video on an Intel Xeon class motherboard that uses higher-performance 3D chipsets with discreet video memory?)
In this specific case, sure, I have no doubt Apple has at least SOME motivation to delay releasing 8800GT cards that work with last-gen. Mac Pros. (If you were in their shoes, wouldn't you want to get all the sales you could out of those folks who just HAVE to have the latest thing NOW? If you can sell them a whole computer instead of just a video board, you're going to want to do it, right?)
Still, the "obstacle" remains, in the fact that nVidia would have to create new packaging and stock 2 different lines of the same 8800GT boards, because firmware on one would be for the old Mac Pro, while firmware would be for the new Mac Pro on the others. (Alternately, they could release a newer revision of the board with 128K of firmware on it, vs. the 64K on the currently shipping ones, and make one board compatible with EFI32 and EFI64.)
The later MAY not be an attractive option for nVidia either, though - because the Windows versions of the cards only need 64K of firmware space. Most of the 8800GT cards for PCs indeed ship with only 64K flash chips on them. They may want the flexibility of grabbing any board from their stock and flashing it to either PC or Mac on an "as needed" basis? If the Mac needs the 128K flash chip, that means they can't do this without needlessly putting the more costly 128K chip on ALL of their boards....
Well, my point was addressing more of the overall video card situation when it comes to the Mac. (I think it's important to keep that in mind, if you're one of those people who claims he/she bought a Mac Pro primarily because of the idea it was "upgradeable". The reality is, yes, it has slots in it and it IS advertised as very expandable/upgradeable. BUT, Apple's definition of upgradeable doesn't necessarily extend to the video hardware. It may well be they ONLY have a card in a video slot on a Mac Pro because Intel isn't willing to engineer integrated video on an Intel Xeon class motherboard that uses higher-performance 3D chipsets with discreet video memory?)
In this specific case, sure, I have no doubt Apple has at least SOME motivation to delay releasing 8800GT cards that work with last-gen. Mac Pros. (If you were in their shoes, wouldn't you want to get all the sales you could out of those folks who just HAVE to have the latest thing NOW? If you can sell them a whole computer instead of just a video board, you're going to want to do it, right?)
Still, the "obstacle" remains, in the fact that nVidia would have to create new packaging and stock 2 different lines of the same 8800GT boards, because firmware on one would be for the old Mac Pro, while firmware would be for the new Mac Pro on the others. (Alternately, they could release a newer revision of the board with 128K of firmware on it, vs. the 64K on the currently shipping ones, and make one board compatible with EFI32 and EFI64.)
The later MAY not be an attractive option for nVidia either, though - because the Windows versions of the cards only need 64K of firmware space. Most of the 8800GT cards for PCs indeed ship with only 64K flash chips on them. They may want the flexibility of grabbing any board from their stock and flashing it to either PC or Mac on an "as needed" basis? If the Mac needs the 128K flash chip, that means they can't do this without needlessly putting the more costly 128K chip on ALL of their boards....
You forgot about shipping them all via the SLOW boat to China, unpackaging, reflashing, repackaging and shipping them all back. Plus the contractual costs for the labour to do it. As several people pointed out, Nvidia does not make the cards and would not have the facilities to do this, nor would Apple.
What's far more likely is that they are shifting all the present inventory with 2008 Mac Pros (which they actually work on), and when that stock is gone, introducing a new model with enough space for both EFI drivers on it. The other way would be far too expensive to consider, given the small market that we constitute.
Not quite true....
The cards aren't "custom" in the sense that a Mac card has different types of video ports on the back of it, or some requirement of a different GPU on it or anything. But the EFI is only HALF of the code flashed onto one of the card's firmware chips.
I'm pretty sure the *other* half is code that's still PC or Mac specific. (EG. I can't take a PC/Windows 8800GT, flash only the EFI64 part onto it, and expect it to suddenly work in a Mac. I'd have to flash BOTH the EFI64 code AND the ROM code that follows it - which is different for Mac than PC.)
The cards aren't "custom" in the sense that a Mac card has different types of video ports on the back of it, or some requirement of a different GPU on it or anything. But the EFI is only HALF of the code flashed onto one of the card's firmware chips.
I'm pretty sure the *other* half is code that's still PC or Mac specific. (EG. I can't take a PC/Windows 8800GT, flash only the EFI64 part onto it, and expect it to suddenly work in a Mac. I'd have to flash BOTH the EFI64 code AND the ROM code that follows it - which is different for Mac than PC.)
Yes this "other half" is a vgabios, no difference at all between 32 or 64bit ...
Would it help if we all started calling in and making complaints to apple? We all pick a day and call at random times and ask why there is no geforce available for our macs, and when they will be available?
Someone pointed out that this is borderline fraud from apple.....there should be NO reason why we should let this slide.
Someone pointed out that this is borderline fraud from apple.....there should be NO reason why we should let this slide.
Or, they could just sell the cards as they are (EFI64), and provide an EFI32 re-flashing utility in Software Update, or download from apple.com. Those early mac Pro owners could just download and run the utility. No need to ship a separate SKU.