Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
HD 2600 XT and Mac Pro original?
- Thread starter Mah9933
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Hi there. This thread comes up down below in "Similar Threads":
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mac-pro-1-1-with-ati-radeon-2600-xt-with-mavericks.2019713/
Short answer: yes (works...not sure I'd say "runs great").
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mac-pro-1-1-with-ati-radeon-2600-xt-with-mavericks.2019713/
Short answer: yes (works...not sure I'd say "runs great").
But if HD 3870 Mac runs great (I believe, I can't test), it's possible HD 2600 XT runs great, as HD 5770 runs, right? For use with Mountain Lion.
Ah! Thanks for the reply!
What I mean is, in reading that thread, it probably won’t have great performance, hence maybe won’t “run GREAT”. But it should work.
I want few watts than power, if 7300 gt had the capability to run Mountain Lion, I won't buy another graphics card, I want something that consumes few watts and runs great, not in terms of performance, since I consider the performance of HD 2600 XT great for it's age.
Yeah, good point. I wasn’t recalling that earlier. I know one or two client 3,1s that had failure of that card (2600XT). The 1900 seemed to have similar issues as well.
The X1900 was possibly the worst GPU I've ever used, especially if it wasn't cleaned regularly every 4-6 weeks after the first few months of usage. It would endlessly clog and either overheat or make horrible fan noises. Nearly embarrassing with clients in the room. So bad that we started housing the towers in isolation booths for a period of time. The 5770 was a fantastic upgrade at the time. Too bad it's EOL'd with Mojave.
I can't use HD 5770. Here the electricity fee is very expensive, HD 2600 XT consumes low energy, so would be a solution.
If you’re worried about the GPU using too much power because electricity is expensive, then a Mac Pro is the wrong machine for you.
Get a Mac Mini.
Unless you’re rendering or gaming, the graphics card is idling most of the time and generally only sipping power.
What are you using the Mac Pro for?
I was gonna say the exact same thing, but you beat me to it. I don't want to tell you your business, Mah, but if you're that worried about the difference in power consumption between the 2600 and 5770, you might be looking at this all wrong by intending to use the Mac Pro.
I'd say that if electricity is THAT expensive, even if you already have the Mac Pro in hand, you'd likely offset the cost of a Mini or MacBook quite quickly in electric bills alone.
As much as I appreciate vintage hardware, I discourage many people from repurposing it for this exact reason. It makes no sense to setup an old Mac Pro 1,1 or 3,1 as a file server that will be on 24/7 when you can get a dead simple single NAS drive with an ethernet port to do the same thing and pay for itself within 6-9 months. If you are using the machine for something that "simpler" machines cannot accomplish, or with specialized equipment that only works with certain hardware/software (like many audio and video systems), the argument for keeping it operating is very valid.
Share some more info and I'm sure you'll get better recommendations.
Share some more info and I'm sure you'll get better recommendations.
For me its hard to imagine your problem. From a power consumption point of view, the question remains, why not go for used 2012 Quad Mac Mini, if a powerful GPU is not needed. Having said that, if you are looking for a low power consumption Apple Card, I guess a Nvidia GT120 would be your ticket. It is basically the precursor low budget standard card, that came early in the 2009 4.1 computer series, way before they introduced the crapy AMD 5770. The Nvidia GT120 does not need an additional power cable I think.
However, one question remains: Does the GT 120 run on a Mac Pro 1,1 / 2,1 ? Can someone else answer this question?
I prefer the Mac Pro for some reasons:
1- firewire connections; 2- great refrigeration; 3- Supports up to 4 HDDs or SSDs; 5- A lot of USBs; 6- I like the visual. I took off one of the Xeon processors to consumes less energy, now I want a new graphics card for Mountain Lion or if possible run Mountain Lion with 7300 GT without any problems for the card.
Ah! I tried to sell this Mac, no one want to give the real price I want for it, so I give up the sell option, as I appreciate the product and won't sell this very cheap. I live in BR and here things are expensive.
I am a music mixing engineer and mastering engineer.
Do you need BootScreens? Do you use BootCamp?
If not, you can use the MP4,1 GT120, has the lowest power usage of all Mac Pro cards, easy to find on MercadoLivre and you can install El Capitan with your MP1,1.
GT120 has EFI64, but will work once macOS loads the drivers.
Holy smokes, so now you just have a dual-core 2.66GHz Mac Pro?? That's next level (...or lower level??).
