Flash EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS for efi 32/Mac Pro 1,1?

[paredown]

I'm very late to the party, only now working on old Mac Pros--but I wanted to confirm that I can flash the EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS card to work on a MacPro 1,1 (efi32)?

I found this old thread (with bios files) where someone successfully flashed these cards for efi64 machines--the problems people were having were solved by adding the x86 efi32 section -- just wanted to confirm that I am not buying land fill, and it will work on my 1,1:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/8800-gts-macpro-08-revisited.603976/

I'm assuming that I would use the straightup Apple efi32 rom for the GT cards. Should work, right???

Cheers,
Dean

 

[ActionableMango]

I would not under any circumstance buy an 8800GT today. They are horribly obsolete and extremely prone to failure. They date from a time that I think Nvidia was switching solder and used crap solder. Google "8800GT bake" and you will see countless videos of people trying to resurrect their cards.

In any case, yes you need the efi32 ROM to get boot screens on a MP 1,1. Furthermore, IIRC (and I could definitely be wrong), I seem to remember that PC cards didn't have a large enough ROM chip, so you needed to replace it with a higher capacity one.

So they are really not worth buying, IMHO. Even if you got one free I don't think they are worth the time involved for the project.

The typical go-to card on the low end (with EFI32 for MP 1,1) is I think the GT120.

 

[flyinmac]

The video card in my Mac Pro 1,1 (flashed 2,1) is an EVGA 8800 GT with 768 MB of RAM. Works fine. I didn’t do the flashing on it myself. So I can’t speak to how simple it may work. But the card works flawlessly.

It is a power hungry beast though.

If I were making a purchasing decision today, I’d probably look for something more energy efficient that would work.

They have cards that don’t require the additional power leads that will work. But whether any are compatible with an efi 32, I don’t know. Most cards will work if you don’t need the boot screen. However, in my case I do, because I switch operating systems frequently.

I have such a card from ATI in my hackintosh, and it works great. But obviously efi32 wasn’t a concern there.