ATI + PC NVIDIA CARD in 2010/11 MAC PRO?

[pjnissim]

Hey Gang,

I was curious to see if it was possible to keep the ATI Radeon HD 5770 in the tower and also add a CUDA supported NVIDIA Quadro FX4600 as well.

I have a Quadro FX4600 in my possession that was once in a PC and I'm hoping to be able to salvage that investment.

Firmware/Driver will obviously be the concern. Is there a hack, forceware, etc?

Let me know. Hoping to get DaVinci Resolve up and running.


Thanks

 

[MacVidCards]

Your best bet is to use 10.6.8 and then install Nvidia's Quadro drivers.

If you then install ATY_Init, ANY NVIDIA CARD INCLUDED IN THE DRIVERS WILL WORK !! All by itself, no helper card needed !!!

This only applies to 10.6.8 with those drivers, but it gives same functionality as 6870 that people have made such a hoopla about.

ie, no boot screen but Nvidia cards will get inited and fire up on desktop.

You could test out your 4600 then and see if it is really useful or not. The 4600 is a G80 card and supports an earlier version of CUDA than do the later cards. It may NOT be sufficient for Resolve. But there is only 1 way to find out.

Sadly, the 768 Megs of RAM won't enable the Mercury Engine either. (896 is min)

Don't be surprised if the 4600 doesn't prove as useful as you might hope. It is old tech by now.

There is no easy way to flash most Nvidia cards. Their EEPROM chips are almost ALWAYS too small for the ROM file once a Mac EFI has been added to the PC BIOS. Resolderng a ROM chip moves most Nvidia cards out of the "do it at home" level.

 

[Cindori]

wb

 

[pjnissim]

Sadly, the 768 Megs of RAM won't enable the Mercury Engine either. (896 is min)

Don't be surprised if the 4600 doesn't prove as useful as you might hope. It is old tech by now.

Is it possible to combine (2) Quadro 4600 cards? Or would it just be worth dropping the extra money on a fresher card?