It shouldn't be a problem at all. As Steam references OpenGL function calls, and as long as the driver for this card is loaded, should have no real issues aside from whatever bugs are already present within Steam's game clients themselves.
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Apple Radeon 5770/5870 in pre-2010 Mac Pro's: What We Know So Far
- Thread starter DualShock
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It shouldn't be a problem at all. As Steam references OpenGL function calls, and as long as the driver for this card is loaded, should have no real issues aside from whatever bugs are already present within Steam's game clients themselves.
Yes. As long as you have at least 10.6.4 + Snow Leopard Graphics Update 1.0 you're fine. 10.6.5 has all of the requisite drivers (and some under the hood bugfixes as well).
I plugged in a Radeon 5779 into my early 2009 mac pro and it works fantastically on the Windows 7 boot partition, but I get a blank screen when trying to boot to Os X. This is off the shelf and not the apple upgrade and I am running snow leopard with the latest graphics update. I managed to get a used card power cable out of my local apple store gratis.
Is there no choice but to pay about 2x from Apple, or can I get this to work?
Does the apple version come with drivers? I saw a forum post elsewhere about ATI extensions.
I am sure this has been answered before, but after spending a fair amount of time searching the forums I have come up empty.
Thanks,
--David
Is there no choice but to pay about 2x from Apple, or can I get this to work?
Does the apple version come with drivers? I saw a forum post elsewhere about ATI extensions.
I am sure this has been answered before, but after spending a fair amount of time searching the forums I have come up empty.
Thanks,
--David
A bit of self-promotion (ahem) but there is a step by step guide on my site (gullycat.wordpress.com)
Just a comparison for your information
I upgraded my MacPro 2009 Quad 2.66 with an ATI Radeon 5870.
A friend of mine has bought an iMac Quad 2.93 (2010) with an ATI Radeon 5750.
Here are some benchtests: MacPro vs iMac
Cinebench 28,8 fps vs 33,5 fps.
XBench
Quartz Graphics Test 262 vs 308
Open GL Graphics Test 275 vs 358
And I thought I had the fastest graphics card.
I paid more than 400 bucks for it.
The iMac beats the MacPro significantly.
I upgraded my MacPro 2009 Quad 2.66 with an ATI Radeon 5870.
A friend of mine has bought an iMac Quad 2.93 (2010) with an ATI Radeon 5750.
Here are some benchtests: MacPro vs iMac
Cinebench 28,8 fps vs 33,5 fps.
XBench
Quartz Graphics Test 262 vs 308
Open GL Graphics Test 275 vs 358
And I thought I had the fastest graphics card.
I paid more than 400 bucks for it.The iMac beats the MacPro significantly.
I use the same settings! The iMac outperforms the MacPro with an Ati Radeon 5870! However, its clock speed is faster (2.93 vs 2.66)
Screen Flicker / Snow
OK, I put the 5770 in my 1,1 a few weeks ago and all seemed well for the first couple of weeks. After that I noticed a flicker while playing a DVD and have noticed a few flickers since and a couple times, the monitor went to snow. The snow has gone away except for a little at startup, but the random flicker still remains. It happens both when using the dvi output and also when using an active adapter for the mdp. Any ideas???
Monitor: ASUS VE276Q
Computer:
Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro1,1
Processor Name: Dual-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 3 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 6 GB
Bus Speed: 1.33 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MP11.005C.B08
SMC Version (system): 1.7f10
OSX 10.6.5
OK, I put the 5770 in my 1,1 a few weeks ago and all seemed well for the first couple of weeks. After that I noticed a flicker while playing a DVD and have noticed a few flickers since and a couple times, the monitor went to snow. The snow has gone away except for a little at startup, but the random flicker still remains. It happens both when using the dvi output and also when using an active adapter for the mdp. Any ideas???
Monitor: ASUS VE276Q
Computer:
Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro1,1
Processor Name: Dual-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 3 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 6 GB
Bus Speed: 1.33 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MP11.005C.B08
SMC Version (system): 1.7f10
OSX 10.6.5
If it happens on your Mac Pro as well as your MBP with the same monitor, then the monitor's gone bad. I have a 5770 in my Mac Pro 1,1, and it works perfectly over DVI, except the EFI boot screen. No DVD flicker. I'm waiting on a Displayport to Mini Displayport adapter to try out my new 27" Apple LED Display.
Edit: I apologize, I misread MDP as MBP
I would think that if the card was fine to start with, you either have a case of overheating (which is unlikely if it's a new/dust free card), or a defective card.
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First, have you tried using a thicker gauge HDMI cable? I assume via the DVI port you're using DVI to HDMI adapter of some sort. I usually go with a small DVI to HDMI adapter and use a 22 AWG HDMI cable from monoprice.
As for the active adapter...why are you using such a device? MDP has the exact same specs as DP, and as such needs only a simple MDP->DP cable. You only need an active adapter if using MDP->Dual Link DVI connection.
I upgraded my MacPro 2009 Quad 2.66 with an ATI Radeon 5870.
A friend of mine has bought an iMac Quad 2.93 (2010) with an ATI Radeon 5750.
Here are some benchtests: MacPro vs iMac
Cinebench 28,8 fps vs 33,5 fps.
XBench
Quartz Graphics Test 262 vs 308
Open GL Graphics Test 275 vs 358
And I thought I had the fastest graphics card.
The iMac beats the MacPro significantly.
What operating system are you using? From what it seems, you don't have full driver support installed. Something is definitely wrong if you are seeing lower scores from an iMac vs. Mac Pro with a card that's about 120% more powerful (the 5750 is roughly equivalant to the 4870 minus a few texture units, and the 4870 is half as powerful as the 5870 is).
Edit: I just ran CB 11r5 myself on my Mac Pro and I get 22.85 FPS on the OpenGL test. Since this shows as lower (by a significant margin) than the 4870, I'm going to have to assume that two things are involved: 1) Poor OpenGL support. The PC benchmarks blow the Mac benchmarks away, even on seemingly lesser cards, and 2) OS X Radeon 5000 series drivers are....less than stellar. Put those two together and you see what I mean. World of Warcraft, on a Mac Pro 1,1 (mine) with 7 GB RAM and HD5870 gets 30 FPS average, though can reach 60 FPS in some spots, while the same hardware booted into Windows via bootcamp shows between 60-100 FPS with no camera issues in World of Warcraft.
These cards are powerful. It's Apple you get to blame for this one. Lack of modern OpenGL (we are still using a five year old OpenGL), and pitiful driver support means these cards will not shine in OS X. 10.6.6 WILL NOT solve this as the drivers did not change (I'm running 10.6.6 dev seed).
CB is heavily thread dependent though - you and I have the same number of corse (2x dual core for me, 1x quad core for you). This pans out in the cores/threads benchmarks with systems that have 8 or 12 cores.
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Not sure what size the cables are, but they are dvi cables, not hdmi. Also, the active adapter is in anticipation of using all ports to run three monitors. Without two active adapters, the card will only run two monitors.
I am leaning toward the monitor being the problem as my 42" vizio runs fine with no flicker.
No, we're not. : sigh :
1) Apple has already implemented 99% of OpenGL 3.0. They're just missing one extension to keep from full certification.
2) The version of OpenGL has nothing to do with rendering speed.
Yes, the OpenGL drivers have speed issues. But they don't have anything to do with the version of OpenGL Apple supports. The next person who suggests that needs to be... I don't know. Tared and feathered?
(And, for future reference, the nice thing about OpenGL is you can use the advanced features of a card with the OpenGL version having to be rev'd. So even that argument is stupid.)
(Also, the drivers did change in 10.6.6.)
Mac Pro 1,1 with 5870
A quick note to share my experience.
I have an original 2006 Mac Pro 1,1 3.0 Quad Xenon with firmware MP11.005C.B08, 12 GB RAM, OWC Mercury Extreme SE Pro RE SSD boot drive. I was able to install an Apple version of the Radeon 5870 without any difficulty, simply plugging in the card and attaching the two included power connectors to the easily accessible motherboard connectors. I attached an original 2006 Apple 30" cinema display to the DVI port via the Apple ACD-DVI convertor box, and two HP 30" LP3065 displays each with an Apple Mini Displayport to Dual Link DVI adapter with firmware 1.3 to each of the minidisplay ports of the 5870. All DVI cables are appropriate dual-link capable. I am running OS X 10.6.5. I also have a total of five internal drives in addition to the optical drive. The two power connectors were directly on the motherboard, without any need to split the power from any drive.
Everything was recognized immediately with full resolution and without any display artifacts or issues. There was also no significant problem using all three displays in bootcamp running Windows 7 Pro 64-bit.
Performance seems fine - this was done more for having all three monitors than any other reason.
From the many posts on this thread, I was very concerned but everything runs great.
A quick note to share my experience.
I have an original 2006 Mac Pro 1,1 3.0 Quad Xenon with firmware MP11.005C.B08, 12 GB RAM, OWC Mercury Extreme SE Pro RE SSD boot drive. I was able to install an Apple version of the Radeon 5870 without any difficulty, simply plugging in the card and attaching the two included power connectors to the easily accessible motherboard connectors. I attached an original 2006 Apple 30" cinema display to the DVI port via the Apple ACD-DVI convertor box, and two HP 30" LP3065 displays each with an Apple Mini Displayport to Dual Link DVI adapter with firmware 1.3 to each of the minidisplay ports of the 5870. All DVI cables are appropriate dual-link capable. I am running OS X 10.6.5. I also have a total of five internal drives in addition to the optical drive. The two power connectors were directly on the motherboard, without any need to split the power from any drive.
Everything was recognized immediately with full resolution and without any display artifacts or issues. There was also no significant problem using all three displays in bootcamp running Windows 7 Pro 64-bit.
Performance seems fine - this was done more for having all three monitors than any other reason.
From the many posts on this thread, I was very concerned but everything runs great.
Is the age of the chassis at fault?
Would the following differences make the iMac faster?
The i7 chip's clockspeed is 2.93 x 8 when hyperthreaded making a max total core clock of 23.44 GHz across 8 cores where as your 2.66 x 8 is hyper threading to a total core clock of 21.28 GHz across 8 cores.
The i7's clockspeed is turbo boosted on single core applications to much higher speeds too.
The i7's memory is much faster 1333 MHz DDR3 vs 1066 MHz DDR3. That is a 21% speed difference.
Just conjecture but Bare Feats have already shown that the new i7 iMac is nearly as powerful as a Mac Pro that replaced yours in 2010.
http://www.barefeats.com/imac10v.html It kicks all the other iMac's arses too
Its predecessor was not far off your own machine when they both had the older GPUs too: http://www.barefeats.com/imi7.html.
Note the test machine there was a 2.93 GHz quad Mac Pro not 2.66GHz.
I upgraded my MacPro 2009 Quad 2.66 with an ATI Radeon 5870.
A friend of mine has bought an iMac Quad 2.93 (2010) with an ATI Radeon 5750.
Here are some benchtests: MacPro vs iMac
Cinebench 28,8 fps vs 33,5 fps.
XBench
Quartz Graphics Test 262 vs 308
Open GL Graphics Test 275 vs 358
And I thought I had the fastest graphics card.
The iMac beats the MacPro significantly.
Would the following differences make the iMac faster?
The i7 chip's clockspeed is 2.93 x 8 when hyperthreaded making a max total core clock of 23.44 GHz across 8 cores where as your 2.66 x 8 is hyper threading to a total core clock of 21.28 GHz across 8 cores.
The i7's clockspeed is turbo boosted on single core applications to much higher speeds too.
The i7's memory is much faster 1333 MHz DDR3 vs 1066 MHz DDR3. That is a 21% speed difference.
Just conjecture but Bare Feats have already shown that the new i7 iMac is nearly as powerful as a Mac Pro that replaced yours in 2010.
http://www.barefeats.com/imac10v.html It kicks all the other iMac's arses too
Its predecessor was not far off your own machine when they both had the older GPUs too: http://www.barefeats.com/imi7.html.
Note the test machine there was a 2.93 GHz quad Mac Pro not 2.66GHz.
Looking beyond speed
I just help a friend setup a new iMac i7. I did not do any benchmarks but I came away whit one observation. The amount of heat the computer generates in that little case can not be good. So while it may be faster in a few benchmarks in the real world in not going to last.
I just help a friend setup a new iMac i7. I did not do any benchmarks but I came away whit one observation. The amount of heat the computer generates in that little case can not be good. So while it may be faster in a few benchmarks in the real world in not going to last.
Heat is always an issue unless you design for it.
iMac have run hot for a long time, my G5 iMac from 2005 regularly hit 85ºc without damaging itself, still going strong in 2011. Apple have long been aware of the temp issue and limit CPU activity as it reaches the predetermined setpoint.
Laptops suffer far worse from overheating, the GF's son has a Macbook Pro from 2007 with a GT8600M GPU, this regularly fried itself to over 85ºc and would hang the whole laptop. After the logicboard failed in 2009 (presumably due to the frying) Apple replaced it under warranty (£700 job for free!).
To avoid having the same thing happen again I installed SMCfancontrol and set the pair of fans to 5500 rpm when the GPU was in use. It has not fried since.
By replacing the plastic cases on MBPs and iMacs with 1 piece aluminium (or aloominum if you are a Yank) enclosures, Apple have vastly increased the heat dissipation of their products and reduced the chances of heat based lockups.
iMac have run hot for a long time, my G5 iMac from 2005 regularly hit 85ºc without damaging itself, still going strong in 2011. Apple have long been aware of the temp issue and limit CPU activity as it reaches the predetermined setpoint.
Laptops suffer far worse from overheating, the GF's son has a Macbook Pro from 2007 with a GT8600M GPU, this regularly fried itself to over 85ºc and would hang the whole laptop. After the logicboard failed in 2009 (presumably due to the frying) Apple replaced it under warranty (£700 job for free!).
To avoid having the same thing happen again I installed SMCfancontrol and set the pair of fans to 5500 rpm when the GPU was in use. It has not fried since.
By replacing the plastic cases on MBPs and iMacs with 1 piece aluminium (or aloominum if you are a Yank
) enclosures, Apple have vastly increased the heat dissipation of their products and reduced the chances of heat based lockups.