I came across a deal on a used Apple 8800GT, that came from a 2008 Mac Pro. The seller told me that to the best of his knowledge, this card is not useable by Windows. Is this true? I was looking at this card as an alternative to my GT120, to be used strictly for CUDA work.
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Apple GeForce 8800GT in Windows?
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Hmm. The card should work fine, in fact I've had that model Mac Pro with that card and have gamed in Windows with it, so I'd guess it'll work. No idea if it'll work with CUDA, it should though. Perhaps others will be able to chime in with more definitive answers.
What the seller probably meant is that it won't actually boot in a standard Windows PC, which would be correct.
But a Mac Pro running Windows via Bootcamp, different story.
But a Mac Pro running Windows via Bootcamp, different story.
It works fine. In fact, games run faster on Windows than OS-X, for the most part. I've played a variety of games on Windows XP, Windows 7, and OS-X, and the nVidia 8800 GT does a fine job. Maybe not as well as the more modern GPUs, but it does well enough (Portal 2 runs on High for everything, excluding Shadows at Medium, and x2 AA).
To my knowledge, the card carries a PC Bios as well as the Mac EFI, it should work fine in a PC.
There are some Mac Pro GPU's that wont work in a PC, I believe one of them is 1900XT. Instead of carrying a PC Bios on the GPU firmware chip, it's located in the Mac Pro Firmware Chip and loaded when user boots Windows via boot camp.