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Decent Video Card for 1,1 Mac Pro?

\-V-/ said:
I've been in a place where I install OS X on unsupported Macs ...



Your budget is $50 and you're asking about cards for video professionals and pulling a card out of an old DELL to flash? The best card would be the one you can spend the most on within your budget. Your budget doesn't really give you many options though. You also seem to be ignoring everyone in this thread.
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I'm not ignoring anybody, but just throwing out a card number doesn't give me a reason to buy one. I may go up in budget a little, but that defeats the purpose of what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to take a 1,1 and for a little bit of upgrades make it close to an ashtray as possible. I really need to understand what the differences in the cards are, as far as when they were created, performance specs, etc. Also, if there is a cheaper PC version that isn't flashed then I might go that route and flash it myself to work with mac. I'm trying to find the best card that is the latest version for the least amount of money that will appeal to video professionals. So far nobody has addressed that.
 
And now you have a new graphics API called Metal. I doubt any of these older cards will even support that.
[doublepost=1467588077][/doublepost]
\-V-/ said:
Nobody has addressed that because your budget is too low.
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Ok so what would you buy and how much will it cost?
[doublepost=1467590955][/doublepost]Hmm a guy down the road has a ATI 4870 512MB - 1x mini display port 1x DVI-D - $100

I wonder what the resolution is and if its better to have two DVI ports or just one DVI with a mini-display port.
 
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\-V-/ said:
I've been in a place where I install OS X on unsupported Macs ...



Your budget is $50 and you're asking about cards for video professionals and pulling a card out of an old DELL to flash? The best card would be the one you can spend the most on within your budget. Your budget doesn't really give you many options though. You also seem to be ignoring everyone in this thread.
Click to expand...

lol yeah professionals.....like you? lmfao.
 
blut haus said:
lol yeah professionals.....like you? lmfao.
Click to expand...

Yeah the guy seems to be missing every point I make and he's oblivious to the fact that you can install El Capitan on 2006 macs. I think he's here just to stir up the pot.
[doublepost=1467604530][/doublepost]
\-V-/ said:
Nobody has addressed that because your budget is too low.
Click to expand...

I just bought a Dell ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB GDDR3 2x DVI PCI-e card for $40 online.

I'll just flash it and boom its a $250 mac graphix card. Thats the type of **** I'm looking for.
 
Apple Master said:
Yeah the guy seems to be missing every point I make and he's oblivious to the fact that you can install El Capitan on 2006 macs. I think he's here just to stir up the pot.
[doublepost=1467604530][/doublepost]

I just bought a Dell ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB GDDR3 2x DVI PCI-e card for $40 online.

I'll just flash it and boom its a $250 mac graphix card. Thats the type of **** I'm looking for.
Click to expand...

You appear to have missed the discussion where Sierra can't run on 2006/2007 era machines because of a lack of SSE4.1.

While you can add drivers, flash cards and use workarounds to run El Cap, Sierra at its core requires things that your CPU just can't provide.

There have been suggestions for a couple of ways round it;

Creating a translation layer from SSE4.1 to SSE3 (this would likely be quite slow).

Patching the microcode on the CPU to handle SSE4.1 (would require an interactive BIOS, compatible PC board, the patch to run (not sure this even exists))

So, when people on this forum say something can't be done, it probably can't, as we're normally the ones who work past limitations in the first place.

Check out Netkas' posts about Sierra and the MacPro1,1/2,1, you'll see what I mean.

You also mentioned 'Adobe CC Support'. This is a little too vague, as different products require different things. However, some elements of CC require at least 2Gb VRAM to function correctly, which the 4870 does not have.

While I appreciate you couldn't really amend your budget due to your financial situation, I'd have thought any money you spend would need to be justified. And spending $40 on something that isn't going to do what you want it to do is worse than dropping $100 on something that will.
 
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blut haus said:
lol yeah professionals.....like you? lmfao.
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Profound. Really. I just got finished putting together a new video editing studio at my work. We just upgraded our aging hardware to bring everything current. We do, you know, actual professional video editing. I also do graphics work related to advertising. I'm glad you find this hilarious.


Apple Master said:
Yeah the guy seems to be missing every point I make and he's oblivious to the fact that you can install El Capitan on 2006 macs. I think he's here just to stir up the pot.
Click to expand...
What on earth are you talking about? I told you you can't natively run MacOS Sierra on your Mac as the minimum requirement is 2010 and newer for the Mac Pro. I wasn't saying this as an attack on you. It was literally to just inform you. I also said you're going to run into issues trying to get it to run on unsupported hardware. I wasn't saying this as some means of declaring my superiority. I said it because it's true. Telling me "JUST INSTALL DUH HACKED VERSION AND IZ ALL GOOD YO" is not how it works. What you're saying does not align with reality. And more importantly, I literally didn't say anything related to 2006 Macs or El Capitan. That is an entirely different topic. You're literally making things up to make yourself feel good or something. Pretending to have knowledge while telling everyone they're stupid really doesn't invite much help in your thread. You're clearly the one trying to stir up the pot.
 
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Apple Master said:
And now you have a new graphics API called Metal. I doubt any of these older cards will even support that.
[doublepost=1467588077][/doublepost]

Ok so what would you buy and how much will it cost?
[doublepost=1467590955][/doublepost]Hmm a guy down the road has a ATI 4870 512MB - 1x mini display port 1x DVI-D - $100

I wonder what the resolution is and if its better to have two DVI ports or just one DVI with a mini-display port.
Click to expand...

if its already a mac card or flashed that might not be a bad deal. One thing to think about if you use a better card like a R9 280 or GTX 680 boot screens will be limited to newer hacked OS installs if you still need snow leopard on a hard drive forget it won't work.
 
CapnDavey said:
One thing to think about if you use a better card like a R9 280 or GTX 680 boot screens will be limited to newer hacked OS installs if you still need snow leopard on a hard drive forget it won't work.
Click to expand...
GTX680 will never show boot screen on 2006/07 cPM because it has 64bit EFI only.
R9 280(x) (and also 7950/70) will show boot screens, if flashed, on everything from Tiger to El Capitan but will properly work (QE/CI, fans etc) on ML 10.8.3 and up. Radeon did make drivers for 10.7.5 but they are 64bit drivers and i don't know how you can run 64bit Lion on 1,1 Mac Pro.
(Good guy) Sapphire did include 32bit EFI in HD7950 Mac Edition, so it's a godsend for everyone using new OS (10.8-10.11) on these machines.
 
Draeconis said:
You appear to have missed the discussion where Sierra can't run on 2006/2007 era machines because of a lack of SSE4.1.

While you can add drivers, flash cards and use workarounds to run El Cap, Sierra at its core requires things that your CPU just can't provide.

There have been suggestions for a couple of ways round it;

Creating a translation layer from SSE4.1 to SSE3 (this would likely be quite slow).

Patching the microcode on the CPU to handle SSE4.1 (would require an interactive BIOS, compatible PC board, the patch to run (not sure this even exists))

So, when people on this forum say something can't be done, it probably can't, as we're normally the ones who work past limitations in the first place.

Check out Netkas' posts about Sierra and the MacPro1,1/2,1, you'll see what I mean.

You also mentioned 'Adobe CC Support'. This is a little too vague, as different products require different things. However, some elements of CC require at least 2Gb VRAM to function correctly, which the 4870 does not have.

While I appreciate you couldn't really amend your budget due to your financial situation, I'd have thought any money you spend would need to be justified. And spending $40 on something that isn't going to do what you want it to do is worse than dropping $100 on something that will.
Click to expand...

So what mac pros support SSE4.1. And as far as Adobe CC suport ... Now you tell me after I bought a card that was also suggested by other people. o_O
 
I don't get why is this still active?

OP was all over the place,
1. 50$ GPU for MP1,1
2. To bring it to the "status of new"
3. To make it as close as possible to 6,1 with a "little bit of upgrades".

The biggest crash seemed to be when support of OS X Sierra was mentioned and i don't see anyone with interest, time and knowledge willing to play with SMC/Firmware to make 1,1 able to boot with 3,1 CPUs (SSE4.1!!!).
 
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owbp said:
I don't get why is this still active?

OP was all over the place,
1. 50$ GPU for MP1,1
2. To bring it to the "status of new"
3. To make it as close as possible to 6,1 with a "little bit of upgrades".

The biggest crash seemed to be when support of OS X Sierra was mentioned and i don't see anyone with interest, time and knowledge willing to play with SMC/Firmware to make 1,1 able to boot with 3,1 CPUs (SSE4.1!!!).
Click to expand...

You are already making assumptions and its not even out yet? Wow.
 
Apple Master said:
Wow
Click to expand...
?

Didn't make any assumption, just plain experience with 10.12 Developer Preview.
Many things can happen until 10.12 final release, but looking back the GM usually brings few more restrictions, not the other way around.
Layers of code can be added to simulate SSE4.1 but it will result in (much) slower OS - so no point of doing that except to say that it CAN be done.
As i said before, the other way seems to be dead end but maybe now, when it is the only option left, someone will do some patching to the SMC.
Screen Shot 2016-07-08 at 04.25.33.png


Just want to add, its great thing for a 10 year old Mac to run OS X 10.11 and Windows 10 better than some 2016 machines, but if you're doing all this just because of Sierra... Don't know how smart move it is.
Especially for all of the US participants here, since the base 4,1 can be bought in US for a few bucks more than 1,1s here in Europe.
 
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owbp said:
Layers of code can be added to simulate SSE4.1 but it will result in (much) slower OS - so no point of doing that except to say that it CAN be done.
Click to expand...
I really hope the Apple OSX has a better design than this.

Since the early 1980's to handle processors with different capabilities it's been the norm for the system to ship with multiple shareable libraries or loadable modules (e.g. one with native SSE4.1 support, and one without - not code that emulates SSE4.1, but uses other native instructions with the same results without actual emulation overhead). At initialization, the system dynamically loads the best libraries/modules for the actual hardware. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_abstraction )

This is the case for both the kernel and applications - there are hardware specific kernel modules as well as hardware specific application libraries.

A great example of this was Digital's VMS operating system. After V4 or V5, the kernel OS (named sys.exe) contained no executable code. The entire code base of the OS was in library files, and the boot loader would dynamically link the system on each boot - choosing the best libraries for the hardware. (And if the system drive was on removable media, it would link a different OS set depending on the current boot system.)

On the other hand, a cynic would think that Apple is simply using SSE4.1 as an excuse to obsolete whole classes of older systems and artificially drive new hardware purchases.
 
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@AidenShaw Thanks for the clarification and the link!
So does that mean that kernel patch, like the one Hackintosh community uses for AMD CPU builds, will be sufficient?
Of course, depending on how deep SSE4.1 implementation is and what is Apple trying to do with it...


AidenShaw said:
On the other hand, a cynic would think that Apple is simply using SSE4.1 as an excuse to obsolete whole classes of older systems and artificially drive new hardware purchases.
Click to expand...
:D
 
owbp said:
?

Didn't make any assumption, just plain experience with 10.12 Developer Preview.
Many things can happen until 10.12 final release, but looking back the GM usually brings few more restrictions, not the other way around.
Layers of code can be added to simulate SSE4.1 but it will result in (much) slower OS - so no point of doing that except to say that it CAN be done.
As i said before, the other way seems to be dead end but maybe now, when it is the only option left, someone will do some patching to the SMC.
View attachment 639706

Just want to add, its great thing for a 10 year old Mac to run OS X 10.11 and Windows 10 better than some 2016 machines, but if you're doing all this just because of Sierra... Don't know how smart move it is.
Especially for all of the US participants here, since the base 4,1 can be bought in US for a few bucks more than 1,1s here in Europe.
Click to expand...

No not really for Sierra but when you go to sell your mac, which I will soon, its always best to have the latest and greatest softwares on it.
 
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