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Upgrading old Mac Pro to 8800 GT graphics?

antzona said:
In this case, everyone who bought a Mac Pro knew that they weren't going to have 20 cards to choose from 6 months down the line. However, this computer was advertised as the most expandable Mac ever. That means you can upgrade more than the hard drive or RAM, which you can do with any Mac. It should mean that after 18 months there is at least one more option as far as video cards are concerned. Apple store employees were making sales while telling customers that there would be new video cards at some point in the near future.
Click to expand...

You're making an assumption. When I bought my B&W G3, 18 months later, Apple didn't have an upgraded video card available for me to buy. When I bought my G4 towers, it was ATI who offered an after market solutions. None were offered from Apple. The fact that some cards worked in older machines were just coincidence and Apple never marketed those cards to owners of older models.

Which ever Apple sales rep made those statements would likely get reprimanded if Apple ever found out because it just isn't true. Apple has never done this.
 
pastrychef said:
You're making an assumption. When I bought my B&W G3, 18 months later, Apple didn't have an upgraded video card available for me to buy. When I bought my G4 towers, it was ATI who offered an after market solutions. None were offered from Apple. The fact that some cards worked in older machines were just coincidence and Apple never marketed those cards to owners of older models.

Which ever Apple sales rep made those statements would likely get reprimanded if Apple ever found out because it just isn't true. Apple has never done this.
Click to expand...

Your G3 and G4 were never advertised as "the most expandable Mac ever!" Neither of them had Intel chips either. You are comparing Apples to oranges, well, Apples to APPLES. Apple has to make an effort to make sure that their new products are not expandable or upgradable.
 
antzona said:
Your G3 and G4 were never advertised as "the most expandable Mac ever!" Neither of them had Intel chips either. You are comparing Apples to oranges, well, Apples to APPLES. Apple has to make an effort to make sure that their new products are not expandable or upgradable.
Click to expand...

"The most expandable Mac ever" can be interpreted in many different ways. At the time, no other Mac was ever expandable to 16GB of RAM...

Just because current Macs use Intel CPUs doesn't make a difference. It's not like any video card designed for Windows will run. It still has to be an Apple compatible card.

Just because some Intel iMacs had MXM video card slots doesn't mean that you can grab any MXM video card, plug it in and expect it to work.
 
pastrychef said:
"The most expandable Mac ever" can be interpreted in many different ways. At the time, no other Mac was ever expandable to 16GB of RAM...

Just because current Macs use Intel CPUs doesn't make a difference. It's not like any video card designed for Windows will run. It still has to be an Apple compatible card.

Just because some Intel iMacs had MXM video card slots doesn't mean that you can grab any MXM video card, plug it in and expect it to work.
Click to expand...

You would be able to grab any old video card designed for Windows if Windows was using EFI instead of BIOS. That should be happening fairly soon. When it happens all the video cards will have EFI instead of BIOS and we will be able to grab any old card, as long as their are drivers. There is no other difference as far as these cards are concerned. Having Intel processors makes a world of difference as far as expandability is concerned. Until EFI is used universally we are stuck relying on Apple to work with ATI and nVidia to insure the cards they request are backwards compatible. Thus, the predicament we are currently in.

"The Most Expandable Mac Ever" is ambiguous, and as a result quite misleading.

You seem hellbent on absolving Apple from any wrong doing, which I find curious. Regardless of who made the initial mistake, Apple has done a terrible job of communicating with their customers who have expressed a concern with this issue. You can talk about how they didn't used to make computers that were expandable and we should assume the Mac Pro should be the same, but they are very different. Apple had every intention of making these cards available for older Mac Pro owners, and engineers didn't realize they were incompatible until after they had already gone on sale on the Apple Store web site. That is precisely what an Apple engineer told me the day after this fiasco started. That was the mistake! They didn't test the cards to make sure they would work in older Mac Pros. They called us and told us they wouldn't work after we had already purchased them. Now we have waited two months and they have yet to tell us what is happening with this issue officially. That is why people are upset. When Fonzie is finally able to say "I made a m-m-m-m-m-m-mistake" and "I'm s-s-s-s-s-s-s-sorry" and fixes the mistake, we can move on.

It doesn't matter if you don't think the Mac Pro's video card is expandable or upgradable or compatible with other cards. It doesn't matter if your G3 or G4 wasn't expandable. The fact is this card was supposed to work in older Mac Pros and it didn't. Sure, they don't have to go back and engineer a card that will actually work, but that would be a ridiculous decision considering the fact that they meant for the card to work in the first place.

If you want us to stop complaining and offending your beloved computer of choice, it's not going to happen. Ultimately Apple is responsible for this problem, and they will have to resolve it.
 
antzona said:
You would be able to grab any old video card designed for Windows if Windows was using EFI instead of BIOS. That should be happening fairly soon. When it happens all the video cards will have EFI instead of BIOS and we will be able to grab any old card, as long as their are drivers. There is no other difference as far as these cards are concerned. Having Intel processors makes a world of difference as far as expandability is concerned. Until EFI is used universally we are stuck relying on Apple to work with ATI and nVidia to insure the cards they request are backwards compatible. Thus, the predicament we are currently in.

"The Most Expandable Mac Ever" is ambiguous, and as a result quite misleading.

You seem hellbent on absolving Apple from any wrong doing, which I find curious. Regardless of who made the initial mistake, Apple has done a terrible job of communicating with their customers who have expressed a concern with this issue. You can talk about how they didn't used to make computers that were expandable and we should assume the Mac Pro should be the same, but they are very different. Apple had every intention of making these cards available for older Mac Pro owners, and engineers didn't realize they were incompatible until after they had already gone on sale on the Apple Store web site. That is precisely what an Apple engineer told me the day after this fiasco started. That was the mistake! They didn't test the cards to make sure they would work in older Mac Pros. They called us and told us they wouldn't work after we had already purchased them. Now we have waited two months and they have yet to tell us what is happening with this issue officially. That is why people are upset. When Fonzie is finally able to say "I made a m-m-m-m-m-m-mistake" and "I'm s-s-s-s-s-s-s-sorry" and fixes the mistake, we can move on.

It doesn't matter if you don't think the Mac Pro's video card is expandable or upgradable or compatible with other cards. It doesn't matter if your G3 or G4 wasn't expandable. The fact is this card was supposed to work in older Mac Pros and it didn't. Sure, they don't have to go back and engineer a card that will actually work, but that would be a ridiculous decision considering the fact that they meant for the card to work in the first place.

If you want us to stop complaining and offending your beloved computer of choice, it's not going to happen. Ultimately Apple is responsible for this problem, and they will have to resolve it.
Click to expand...

Yes, you are correct in regards to EFI being the barrier vs. big endian/small endian. But the fact remains effort is needed to make them compatible at the moment and no one is doing it unless OEM'ed by Apple. No one is adding support for EFI of their own volition.

Yes, "the most expandable Mac ever" is ambiguous, yet you decide that it means Apple will be offering video card upgrades in 18 months.

I'm not hellbent on absolving Apple of all their wrong doing. I don't really see any wrong doing. You yourself understand that they didn't go out of their way to cause this incompatibility. Yet, there are lots of others on this thread who seem to feel that way and suggest things such as lawsuits. Even if the card is never made compatible, the fact is they never promised that there will be new video cards in the future. If you really feel the need for a new video card, they've made the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT available.

I really don't think you're ever going to get an apology or any admission of being wrong.

Maybe the 8800GT was supposed to work... Obviously, it doesn't. If Steve Jobs told you they were working on a solution, who's to say they didn't come in to some sort of technical issue.

I'm not in love with Apple. I don't care if you continue to complain until your final days. Whatever gives you joy. I was just trying to point out how pointless it is and how much of it isn't Apple's fault and direct your efforts at more effective/useful efforts.

Look at the bright side, if you are correct about EFI being used more commonly among Windows machines soon, you'll have plenty of video cards to choose from soon.
 
pastrychef said:
Look at the bright side, if you are correct about EFI being used more commonly among Windows machines soon, you'll have plenty of video cards to choose from soon.
Click to expand...

Not necessarily. Microsoft, for instance, only supports 64bit EFI: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/firmware/efibrief.mspx ... And given their position on the market, I guess that a lot of motherboard manufacturers will then go for 64bit EFI too, just to be "vista EFI capable".

So, probably our 32bit EFI will become completely obsolete and unsupported, by the time EFI becomes more popular.
 
As a side note, does this mean early 08 users don't have to worry that this is going to happen to them as well? I mean if the problem is that the card only supports EFI 64, and everything is going to be that, does that mean that in the future all new Mac Pro cards will be at least EFI 64, and thus work on the 08 models?
 
DaSal said:
As a side note, does this mean early 08 users don't have to worry that this is going to happen to them as well? I mean if the problem is that the card only supports EFI 64, and everything is going to be that, does that mean that in the future all new Mac Pro cards will be at least EFI 64, and thus work on the 08 models?
Click to expand...

That's my understanding...
 
DaSal said:
As a side note, does this mean early 08 users don't have to worry that this is going to happen to them as well? I mean if the problem is that the card only supports EFI 64, and everything is going to be that, does that mean that in the future all new Mac Pro cards will be at least EFI 64, and thus work on the 08 models?
Click to expand...

From EFI point of view, I'd say you'd be safe, yes. But then, you would also need Mac OS X drivers, if you want to use this OS.

Edit: Ah sorry, I misread your question ... So, unless Apple come up with some trick to make them incompatible, you should be safe, as long as x86-64 is the architecture used by Mac Pros.
 
Please, stop all the Apple defense bickering!

Read this: http://boeglin.org/~alex/nvidia_fails_to_deliver.html

Here we can see claims that Nvidia did provide Apple with EFI32 and EFI64 for this card. All we are asking is that apple release the EFI 32 for the card in order to provide us pre 08 MP users with a decent video card solution... that is it.
If it come in the form of 8800 or 9800 as other claim, I don't care, I just want to be able to use Aperture and Final Cut Studio which I paid a premium for and they are both tied to the Apple Mac OX platform. I am tired of beach balls with the 7300 or the HD 2600XT and the crashes I had with the X1900XT... period.
I(we) am asking for is a stable and productive environment to do my work. No... I could care less for games or running Windows, but if things continue in this path, I will sell it all, and get me a Dell to run Windows and alternative solutions like LightRoom and AdobePremier. :mad:
 
antzona said:
You would be able to grab any old video card designed for Windows if Windows was using EFI instead of BIOS. That should be happening fairly soon.
Click to expand...

I've heard that Vista SP1 has EFI support. What that means,
I cannot say. I would guess it might mean reflashing some
chip or other on the motherboard, as it's doubtful Vista and
OS X would have identical EFI implementations.
 
antzona said:
Regardless of who made the initial mistake, Apple has done a terrible job of communicating with their customers who have expressed a concern with this issue.
Click to expand...
Well, since a got a Mac, the only way I've ever seen Apple acknowledge an issue, was them deleting customer messages from their discussion boards ...

Apple had every intention of making these cards available for older Mac Pro owners, and engineers didn't realize they were incompatible until after they had already gone on sale on the Apple Store web site. That is precisely what an Apple engineer told me the day after this fiasco started. That was the mistake! They didn't test the cards to make sure they would work in older Mac Pros. They called us and told us they wouldn't work after we had already purchased them.
Click to expand...
Actually, after my "talk" with NVidia support, I now think that they were at fault, here, and not Apple... What do you think of this scenario:
- Apple makes a deal with NVidia for a EFI 8800GT
- Apple announces the early 2008 Mac Pro
- NVidia is late, does not manage to build a EFI ByteCode driver (whereas, in the same time, ATI successfully delivers the EFI ByteCode for their HD2600 to Apple)
- Apple has to pull back the delivery of 8800GT cards for a few weeks, starts to deliver Mac Pro with HD2600
- NVidia is very very late, still does not manage to produce a EFI ByteCode driver, decides to fall back to 64bit EFI, probably loses a few bucks in their contract with Apple
- Apple gets the 64bit EFI driver from NVidia, starts producing the cards, is forced to announce incompatibility with older models
- People with old Mac Pro get angry
- NVidia says "we are working on it", recompiles driver as 32bit EFI and delivers to Apple
- Apple has a huge backlog of 8800GT to produce for their "new customers" with early 2008 Mac Pro
- once Apple catches up with 64bit version of the 8800GT, they'll finally start production of 32bit version of the 8800GT
- the end ... until next time
 
pipomolo42 said:
Not necessarily. Microsoft, for instance, only supports 64bit EFI: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/firmware/efibrief.mspx ... And given their position on the market, I guess that a lot of motherboard manufacturers will then go for 64bit EFI too, just to be "vista EFI capable".

So, probably our 32bit EFI will become completely obsolete and unsupported, by the time EFI becomes more popular.
Click to expand...

I've heard the 2008 MPs use a 64-bit EFI implementation. But then
I could find no really authoritative source, so it could be speculation.
In any case, it may be a radically different implementation to the one
that Microsoft uses:

http://homepages.tesco.net/J.deBoynePollard/FGA/efi-boot-process.html

Who knows what this means for Boot Camp?
 
DaSal said:
As a side note, does this mean early 08 users don't have to worry that this is going to happen to them as well? I mean if the problem is that the card only supports EFI 64, and everything is going to be that, does that mean that in the future all new Mac Pro cards will be at least EFI 64, and thus work on the 08 models?
Click to expand...

I wonder if the firmware of pre-2008 MPs could be flashed
to make them use 64-bit EFI too, if indeed the 2008 models
use it. Or maybe there's a hardware limitation? Good luck
finding documents about this online ;)
 
Infrared said:
I've heard the 2008 MPs use a 64-bit EFI implementation. But then I could find no really authoritative source, so it could be speculation.
Click to expand...
Yes, 2008 MP use 64bit EFI, otherwise they could simply not work with Apple's 8800GT ...

In any case, it may be a radically different implementation to the one that Microsoft uses:

http://homepages.tesco.net/J.deBoynePollard/FGA/efi-boot-process.html
Click to expand...
You should take the infos in this page with a grain of salt, the bashing part is not very accurate. And although Apple has made some extensions to EFI, it is still compatible with the standard, AFAIK.

Who knows what this means for Boot Camp?
Click to expand...
BootCamp is just a BIOS emulation for EFI. It works on both old and new MPs. Well, the CSM implementation that Apple uses looks a bit crippled, but it's good enough to allow booting a BIOS based OS (Windows, Linux ...).

Any Operating System needs a bootloader, which is loaded by the machine's firmware, and takes care of loading the OS Kernel. Until now, the bootloaders were written for BIOS on PC, OpenFirmware on PowerPC and SPARC, and so on ...

Now, to support EFI completely, an OS needs a way to be loaded by the EFI firmware, through an EFI bootloader. And this is the part that Vista's SP1 has to offer: a bootloader application, that will be launched by the EFI firmware, and that will in turn launch Vista's kernel. And the kernel has to be able to use EFI system calls, instead of BIOS system calls.

What does all this mean for Mac Pro owners, you might ask ? For owners of pre-2008 Mac Pro, it means nothing, as Microsoft only provides a 64bit bootloader, incompatible with their firmware, so their only option is to boot the BIOS version of vista through bootcamp. For 2008 Mac Pro owner, this mean they could get rid of bootcamp: install a bootmanager, like rEFIt or grub2, and have the bootmanager boot vista's EFI bootloader directly, without going through EFI, just as it is done with Mac OS X.
 
Infrared said:
I wonder if the firmware of pre-2008 MPs could be flashed
to make them use 64-bit EFI too, if indeed the 2008 models
use it. Or maybe there's a hardware limitation? Good luck
finding documents about this online ;)
Click to expand...
Well, getting the 64bit EFI image from a 2008 Mac Pro, and flashing it on a 2006-2007 Mac Pro is the easy part ...

The hard part is: what do you do is the machine then refuses to boot?

I think that the 2006-2007 and 2008 versions have a lot in common, so just flashing it might work ... But if it does not, the only option would be to use the recovery disc currently.

It might be interresting to gather more information about the Mac Pro logic board first: what are the switches and jumpers for, where is the firmware stored, how can it be reflashed "in emergency" ;) , is the flash chip soldered or socket mounted, is it easy to replace ...
 
pipomolo42 said:
Yes, 2008 MP use 64bit EFI, otherwise they could simply not work with Apple's 8800GT ...


You should take the infos in this page with a grain of salt, the bashing part is not very accurate. And although Apple has made some extensions to EFI, it is still compatible with the standard, AFAIK.


BootCamp is just a BIOS emulation for EFI. It works on both old and new MPs. Well, the CSM implementation that Apple uses looks a bit crippled, but it's good enough to allow booting a BIOS based OS (Windows, Linux ...).

Any Operating System needs a bootloader, which is loaded by the machine's firmware, and takes care of loading the OS Kernel. Until now, the bootloaders were written for BIOS on PC, OpenFirmware on PowerPC and SPARC, and so on ...

Now, to support EFI completely, an OS needs a way to be loaded by the EFI firmware, through an EFI bootloader. And this is the part that Vista's SP1 has to offer: a bootloader application, that will be launched by the EFI firmware, and that will in turn launch Vista's kernel. And the kernel has to be able to use EFI system calls, instead of BIOS system calls.

What does all this mean for Mac Pro owners, you might ask ? For owners of pre-2008 Mac Pro, it means nothing, as Microsoft only provides a 64bit bootloader, incompatible with their firmware, so their only option is to boot the BIOS version of vista through bootcamp. For 2008 Mac Pro owner, this mean they could get rid of bootcamp: install a bootmanager, like rEFIt or grub2, and have the bootmanager boot vista's EFI bootloader directly, without going through EFI, just as it is done with Mac OS X.
Click to expand...

Thank you for that. You obviously know a lot more about this than
I do (or rather, am struggling to do) :)

Do you know, has anyone booted vista on a MP using Vista's
EFI bootloader?

Thanks.
 
pipomolo42 said:
Well, since a got a Mac, the only way I've ever seen Apple acknowledge an issue, was them deleting customer messages from their discussion boards ...


Actually, after my "talk" with NVidia support, I now think that they were at fault, here, and not Apple... What do you think of this scenario:
- Apple makes a deal with NVidia for a EFI 8800GT
- Apple announces the early 2008 Mac Pro
- NVidia is late, does not manage to build a EFI ByteCode driver (whereas, in the same time, ATI successfully delivers the EFI ByteCode for their HD2600 to Apple)
- Apple has to pull back the delivery of 8800GT cards for a few weeks, starts to deliver Mac Pro with HD2600
- NVidia is very very late, still does not manage to produce a EFI ByteCode driver, decides to fall back to 64bit EFI, probably loses a few bucks in their contract with Apple
- Apple gets the 64bit EFI driver from NVidia, starts producing the cards, is forced to announce incompatibility with older models
- People with old Mac Pro get angry
- NVidia says "we are working on it", recompiles driver as 32bit EFI and delivers to Apple
- Apple has a huge backlog of 8800GT to produce for their "new customers" with early 2008 Mac Pro
- once Apple catches up with 64bit version of the 8800GT, they'll finally start production of 32bit version of the 8800GT
- the end ... until next time
Click to expand...

Agreed,

This is most likely the chain of events that's led us to where we are now. Question is, has Apple caught up yet? Has Nvidia delivered the PCIe V1.0 bootloader yet?

M>
 
pipomolo42 said:
Well, getting the 64bit EFI image from a 2008 Mac Pro, and flashing it on a 2006-2007 Mac Pro is the easy part ...

The hard part is: what do you do is the machine then refuses to boot?

I think that the 2006-2007 and 2008 versions have a lot in common, so just flashing it might work ... But if it does not, the only option would be to use the recovery disc currently.

It might be interresting to gather more information about the Mac Pro logic board first: what are the switches and jumpers for, where is the firmware stored, how can it be reflashed "in emergency" ;) , is the flash chip soldered or socket mounted, is it easy to replace ...
Click to expand...
If you can find some info on how to do this, I wouldn't mind testing it on my machine.
 
So, I just had a look at the Mac Pro's Logic Board, and this might be the firmware chip: http://www.st.com/stonline/books/pdf/docs/9353.pdf

It's located between the Airport and Bluetooth ports, and is definitely not easily replaceable ...

Edit: I also looked at other chips surronding it: the small ones below are just logic gates, and I think the big one above is a microcontroller (H8S, manufactured by Renasas) which might be used for bluetooth. So, nothing related to Firmware, it seems.

Edit2: from a quick look at the datasheet, it seems this chip does not provide an "easy to hook" interface that would allow an emergency reprogramming. But it doesn't tell us how likely it is to turn the machine into a brick ... If Apple and Intel did their job correctly, the restoration CD could fix it in a few minutes. Otherwise, the unlucky tester might just have to replace his Logic Board (which costs something like 500 $) ...
 
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