5870 is on it's way, but a few questions...

[SeaBass123]

Bonjour!

Well first off, yay! Finally I don't have to play games in windows on my 2600XT (which is teh suck), but there are some things I want to know.

Before I start asking, my system is the early 2008 MacPro 3,1 with the octo 2.8 processors, 6GB of RAM and a couple HDDs. Im also using the old Apple cinema HD display 23 inch (it looks like the silver 30 inch, but smaller. Need to replace this.)

So, for those of you who have done it, how hard is the installation? is it just straightforward, i.e. remove drives and PCI covers, put the card in and plug the two power cables in? And does it come with the cables?

Also is there some sort of release lever or something, just so I don't end up yanking out my logic board? I have done HDD installs and memory replacements btw. And on that note, any other little tricky things the instruction manual may not clearly cover?

On the note of of drivers, I already used Driver Sweeper to clean out the existing ATI drivers in Windows before installing the ATI Catalyst suite for my 2600XT. Will I have to do any more driver installation?

Finally, will the performance of the Apple EFI 5870 differ from the performance of, say, a Sapphire with identical specs? I guess I just dont know if the EFI changes anything.

Thanks guys.

 

[derbothaus]

The box should have all the needed info for you. Apple's good about that. The performance is the same as any ref card. 850Mhz on the core and 1200mhz on the memory. You can overclock it in Windows with catalyst drivers. Scores the same. I get roughly 19000 GPU in Vantage.

 

[SeaBass123]

Thanks for the response. Is overclocking in catalyst safe with the heat and power consumption?

And one more thing. Say I get a bad card, will apple replace it? I know they would for a 2009 or 2010 MP, but a 2008...

If not I could just lie and say my stepdad ordered a second one (he has a 2010)