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Just got a mac pro 2.66Ghz & have questions

brenden

brenden

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 14, 2009
114
1
Florida, USA
I just purchased a mac pro with 2.66Ghz with a Xeon 5150. It has the Nvidia 7300GT 256mb.

My questions are as follows:
  • Is the graphics card PCI-Express?
  • What is the best graphics card this system will accept?
 
brenden said:
I just purchased a mac pro with 2.66Ghz with a Xeon 5150. It has the Nvidia 7300GT 256mb.

My questions are as follows:
  • Is the graphics card PCI-Express?
  • What is the best graphics card this system will accept?
Click to expand...

Congrats on your new toy. Yup Graphic Card is PCIe. Radeon 5770HD 1G or Nividia 8800GT 512mb are the cards I could think of. Some uses the Radeon 1900XT or Radeon 2600XT.
 
Mine happily ran an Apple-branded Radeon 5870, as well as the flashed PC equivalent reference cards.

The Radeon 6XXX series aren't a significant improvement, but the 7XXX series are. I'm not sure if the drivers work in 32 bit, though.
 
IMHO the best GPU your Mac Pro can take advantage of is HD4870 1GB flashed PC version. It's slightly faster than HD5770, even though it lack DX11 support. More powerful cards are bottlenecked by MacPro1,1's PCI-E 1.0 interface, so installing for example a HD5870 would be sort of pointless as you can't benefit from its extra power.

Nevertheless, if you want an Apple-branded card, get HD5770.
 
Personally I very much dislike ATI cards. They're missing a lot of features inherent to NVidia cards. This often makes them slower, less robust, and more incompatible with various commonplace shaders and other features unless the developer specifically took the time to write hundreds or thousands of lines of extra code just for ATI support.

Bla! Stay away if you can!
 
Colpeas said:
IMHO the best GPU your Mac Pro can take advantage of is HD4870 1GB flashed PC version. It's slightly faster than HD5770, even though it lack DX11 support. More powerful cards are bottlenecked by MacPro1,1's PCI-E 1.0 interface, so installing for example a HD5870 would be sort of pointless as you can't benefit from its extra power.
Click to expand...

This simply not true. I've had many ATI cards in my 1,1 and none was bottlenecked by PCIe 1.0. X1900XT, 4870, 5770, 5850, 5870 and 6870 (last one I use currently). Performance difference is dependent on application and you can see it in benchmarks too.

OP: what software you want to primarily use on this machine?
IMO best work/gaming card would be GTX 570, unless FCP is your main interest. If so, you'd get best performance using ATI card.
 
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I've been pretty damn impressed with this Mac Pro 1,1....Ive upgraded the ram to 8GB and just ordered a set of 5355's to replace the 5150s. Got a great deal off ebay. Also dropped in a 256GB Samsung 840 SSD. Next will i'll be upgrading the video cards to dual 5770s

For being 6+ years old this machine still screams.
 
brenden said:
I've been pretty damn impressed with this Mac Pro 1,1....Ive upgraded the ram to 8GB and just ordered a set of 5355's to replace the 5150s. Got a great deal off ebay. Also dropped in a 256GB Samsung 840 SSD. Next will i'll be upgrading the video cards to dual 5770s

For being 6+ years old this machine still screams.
Click to expand...

Congrats and good to hear your Mac Pro is super fast. Mac Pros usually last for many years despite new technologies coming out. I would recommended you push thru in changing the videocard, Nvidia 7300GT I used to own a 11 Mac Pro and the 7300GT died on me twice. You will notice the design of the 7300GT has no built in fan and just a heat sync. It's usually the capacitor that dies out I think. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1831300?start=0&tstart=0 The Radeon 5770HD would be good for your Pro.
 
But why not get a good video card?

The NVidia GTX 570 or GTX 680 work from what I'm reading. The HD 5770 seems like such a dog in comparison.
 
Colpeas said:
IMHO the best GPU your Mac Pro can take advantage of is HD4870 1GB flashed PC version. It's slightly faster than HD5770, even though it lack DX11 support. More powerful cards are bottlenecked by MacPro1,1's PCI-E 1.0 interface, so installing for example a HD5870 would be sort of pointless as you can't benefit from its extra power.

Nevertheless, if you want an Apple-branded card, get HD5770.
Click to expand...

Concerning this idea, which I have seen many posters spout.
Da' Facts
There is SOME performance not fully realized, but not as much as some would have you believe.
 
cal6n said:
Mine happily ran an Apple-branded Radeon 5870, as well as the flashed PC equivalent reference cards.

The Radeon 6XXX series aren't a significant improvement, but the 7XXX series are. I'm not sure if the drivers work in 32 bit, though.
Click to expand...

Take a look at this shot.
How many are 32bit, and how many are 64bit?
 

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TheEasterBunny said:
Take a look at this shot.
How many are 32bit, and how many are 64bit?
Click to expand...

These are processes, not kexts. Subtle difference ;)

10.7.5 7xxx drivers do not work in 32bit. Intentional Sapphire move or just a bug, IDK. I couldn't get them to work in 1,1 booting 64bit kernel too. 10.8 with built in drivers didn't work either. Maybe it's chameleon thing, even as I used its latest version.
 
I'm not entirely sure what you're asking but any process that isn't marked specifically as 64-bit is a 32-bit process.

Now, my understanding of the situation might be an over-simplification but I believe that the upshot is this.

1. Lion is able to run 32-bit drivers quite happily, whereas Mountain Lion requires 64-bit drivers. So your NVidia 7300 GT (for which there are no 64-bit drivers) is fully supported in Lion. However, it will not run under Mountain Lion.​

2. The drivers in Lion for the Apple-branded ATI Radeon HD 5770 and 5870 cards (and hence their flashed PC equivalents) are 32-bit and will work, although they're not officially supported. Obviously, the 64-bit versions are in Mountain Lion and are fully supported.​

3. The drivers supplied by Sapphire in order for the Radeon HD 7950 (and hence its flashed PC equivalents) to operate under Lion are 64-bit only. They'll only work in Mac Pro 3,1 and later.​

4. With NVidia, everything since the 8800GT (32-bit version) is 64-bit only and will not work in anything earlier than the Mac Pro 3,1.​

5. NVidia provide drivers for their Quadro series cards that also unofficially support some of their GeForce cards. Their 10.7.5 Lion drivers seem to support up to their GTX 5XX cards.​

TL;DR: Buy an Apple-branded 5770 or 5870. Either that, or flash one of their equivalent PC reference cards.
 
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Tesselator said:
Personally I very much dislike ATI cards. They're missing a lot of features inherent to NVidia cards.
Click to expand...

I tend to lean more on Nvidia cards because of the dual DVi ports. I don't feel comfortable using the mini-display port. Just my personal preference.
 
666sheep said:
These are processes, not kexts. Subtle difference ;)

10.7.5 7xxx drivers do not work in 32bit. Intentional Sapphire move or just a bug, IDK. I couldn't get them to work in 1,1 booting 64bit kernel too. 10.8 with built in drivers didn't work either. Maybe it's chameleon thing, even as I used its latest version.
Click to expand...

Ooops, I knew I forgot something!
 

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TheEasterBunny said:
Ooops, I knew I forgot something!
Click to expand...

It's only list of supported architectures in kexts. All these listed as 64bit Intel are dual architecture (i386 and x86_64). System profiler does not list currently used architecture here. If you're running Lion in 32-bit all kexts are using i386 code. You can see it in Software section of ASP: 64-bit Kernel and extensions: No.
 
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A little something I found:
"For one a limitation set by Apple is that Snow Leopard’s 64-bit kernel works only on Macs with 64-bit EFI. Technically a 64-bit kernel can be launched by a 32-bit EFI just fine."

Of course I am no longer on Snow Leopard, I am on Lion.

"Rule

A 32-bit processor can only run 32-bit stuff.
A 64-bit processor can run 32-bit and 64-bit stuff.
(stuff can be system, kernel, applications, drivers, etc)

So you need a 64-bit processor to run 64-bit anything

On a 64-bit processor:
A 32-bit Kernel can run both 32 and 64 bit applications.
A 64-bit Kernel can run both 32 and 64 bit applications.

A 32-bit Kernel can load only 32-bit kexts (kernel extensions).
A 64-bit Kernel can load only 64-bit kexts (kernel extensions)."

Point is some drivers can be 64 bit and still run on Mac Pro 2,1's, and the kernel could be 64 bit as well, but Apple made the call to prevent it in some models, with both 32 bit EFI's and 64 bit EFI's.

Link
 
TheEasterBunny said:
A little something I found:
"For one a limitation set by Apple is that Snow Leopard’s 64-bit kernel works only on Macs with 64-bit EFI. Technically a 64-bit kernel can be launched by a 32-bit EFI just fine."

Of course I am no longer on Snow Leopard, I am on Lion.

"Rule

A 32-bit processor can only run 32-bit stuff.
A 64-bit processor can run 32-bit and 64-bit stuff.
(stuff can be system, kernel, applications, drivers, etc)

So you need a 64-bit processor to run 64-bit anything

On a 64-bit processor:
A 32-bit Kernel can run both 32 and 64 bit applications.
A 64-bit Kernel can run both 32 and 64 bit applications.

A 32-bit Kernel can load only 32-bit kexts (kernel extensions).
A 64-bit Kernel can load only 64-bit kexts (kernel extensions)."

Point is some drivers can be 64 bit and still run on Mac Pro 2,1's, and the kernel could be 64 bit as well, but Apple made the call to prevent it in some models, with both 32 bit EFI's and 64 bit EFI's.

Link
Click to expand...

Funny, I have read this too.
Bolded most important IMO.
I've ran 64bit kernel in 10.7.5 and 10.8.3 mostly to test 7xxx Sapphire drivers in 1,1. In 64-bit they work exactly that same (i.e. don't work) as in 32-bit.
Lion drivers all are i386, x86_64, so they should work at least in one mode (as in 3,1 which is true 64-bit).
So far answer to question "is it possible to run 7950 in MP 1,1/2,1 with full acceleration" is: no, even using 64-bit kernel.
 
666sheep said:
Funny, I have read this too.
Bolded most important IMO.
I've ran 64bit kernel in 10.7.5 and 10.8.3 mostly to test 7xxx Sapphire drivers in 1,1. In 64-bit they work exactly that same (i.e. don't work) as in 32-bit.
Lion drivers all are i386, x86_64, so they should work at least in one mode (as in 3,1 which is true 64-bit).
So far answer to question "is it possible to run 7950 in MP 1,1/2,1 with full acceleration" is: no, even using 64-bit kernel.
Click to expand...

But the loss of performance is minimal, and still an upgrade. Of course this card would work a little better in a more recent machine, and when that upgrade day comes the card can come too.
 
666sheep said:
Would be minimal if the card would work in 1,1/2,1 ;)
Click to expand...

LOL, well not all cards work in all Macs. You should try to change one in an iMac or a Mini!
To the OP:
Seems like what was suggested so far is ATI 5xxx series and Nvidia GTX5xx or GTX6xx series.
 
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