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Mac Pro 1,1 10.9.2 (Tiamo) Graphic Card Suggestions

hi Hennesie2000, thanks for reply.
my mac pro 1,1 has the Nvidia 8800 GT.
unfortunately the GT8800 has problems: it has already passed through the oven, now to make it work well the cooling fan always runs at full speed.
the noise disturbs.
the question was another.
for example, I read that the ATI 5450, passively cooled, works well on the Mac Pro 1,1.
while the ATI 4870 need the flash.
then return to the original question: which cards not Mac can be used "Plug & Play" in the Mac Pro 1,1.
if they exist for your experience.
THANKS!
 
Last edited:
robertorossi said:
hi Hennesie2000, thanks for reply.
my mac pro 1,1 has the Nvidia 8800 GT.
unfortunately the GT8800 has problems: it has already passed through the oven, now to make it work well the cooling fan always runs at full speed.
the noise disturbs.
the question was another.
for example, I read that the ATI 5450, passively cooled, works well on the Mac Pro 1,1.
while the ATI 4870 need the flash.
then return to the original question: which cards not Mac can be used "Plug & Play" in the Mac Pro 1,1.
if they exist for your experience.
THANKS!
Click to expand...


I am not sure about AMD cards, I only use NVIDIA cards and most of them are plug and play with 10.7+.
 
Mac Pro 1,1 10.9.2 (Tiamo) Graphic Card Suggestions

robertorossi said:
Then the Mac Pro/Snow Leopard needs only.kext?
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Just update to Mavericks or Yosemite. Both can be done with a boot.efi mod and work fine. Your graphics issue would be much much simpler.

Snow Leopard you are going to need injectors and a helper card that has an EFI Rom or a card that has been flashed with an EFI Rom. In Lion or newer the drivers are there for a non EFI card and it will boot just without a boot screen. Pretty much any NVIDIA card will work oob.
 
I have a Mac Pro 1,1 and my PC-flashed 5770 may have just bit the dust. A friend is selling a GeForce GTX 750Ti -- anyone had any luck with those? I saw a couple people tossing the idea around in this thread, but no one actively confirmed whether it worked or not.
 
Hotdog Zanzibar said:
I have a Mac Pro 1,1 and my PC-flashed 5770 may have just bit the dust. A friend is selling a GeForce GTX 750Ti -- anyone had any luck with those? I saw a couple people tossing the idea around in this thread, but no one actively confirmed whether it worked or not.
Click to expand...


I know it works in a hackintosh. You must have the NVIDIA web drivers installed for Maxwell based cards and you might have issues getting the drivers installed, without having the card installed, so it might require some diver installer modifications. I can walk you through modifying the installer if needed.
 
Thanks. I've seen a lot of people mentioning the 640, and that it works out of the box. Is it a Kepler card? I don't want to jump through a lot of hoops to get the 750ti to work if I don't have to. I'm currently running Lion 10.7. Does the 640 need 10.8 or higher to run on my machine?
 
Hotdog Zanzibar said:
Thanks. I've seen a lot of people mentioning the 640, and that it works out of the box. Is it a Kepler card? I don't want to jump through a lot of hoops to get the 750ti to work if I don't have to. I'm currently running Lion 10.7. Does the 640 need 10.8 or higher to run on my machine?
Click to expand...


I'm pretty sure Kepler support started with 10.8. The stock OS X drivers should support that card which is why it works OOB but you can also install the NVIDIA web drivers for more updated support.

The Maxwell cards will work but you just need to have the driver installed. I'm running a GTX 970 on my hackintosh and it works great. But I have to make sure the driver is updated before I do the OS update.

Here are the answers to most of your questions: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1440150/
 
pixxelpusher said:
Like most on here I'm looking at doing some upgrades soon. I've done most of what FrankenPro has mentioned about a year back but wanting some better graphics performance with a new video card.

Something around the <$200 mark would be good. I'm kinda thinking something like the GTX670 / 680 or a AMD HD7950, any recommendations which way I should go?

I'd be upgrading from a HD5870 Mac edition, and using it mostly for gaming under Windows 7 (but a bit of video/graphics work in OSX).
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I'm in the same boat. Got a 1,1 (2,1) Mac Pro with x5365s, SSD in it, along with the Mac 5870. I'm generally happy with this card, but a better GPU is always welcome. I had thought that card was pretty much the best I could hope for in terms of bottlenecks. Having read through this thread, I'm now unsure. For gaming, what is generally considered the best card possible with a 1,1 rig?
 
I've been doing loads of benchmarking before picking a new card for my Mac Pro 1,1. I've uploaded the results of 4 OS's and it's nice to see a bit of an improvement in the new OS X versions, which in itself is a simple upgrade that gives a nice bit of a performance boost. I think I'm going to stick with 10.10.2 as my main OS.

I have some questions. Looking at Valley why would 10.7.5 give such poor results? Also, with this being a Mac card why does it perform the best under Windows 7?

My Specs:
Mac Pro 1,1 > 2,1 firmware
2x Quad Core Intel Xeon X5365 3GHz CPU's
32GB Ram
ATI HD 5870 Mac Version
OWC SSD

I've gone with Medium settings in Heaven and Valley with AA turned off (Settings used elsewhere on this forum for these kinds of cards).
 

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Also here's some results from LuxMark Sala.

I couldn't get it to run under 10.7.5 with it crashing every time. Anyone know why that would happen?
 

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pixxelpusher said:
Also, with this being a Mac card why does it perform the best under Windows 7?
Click to expand...


I assume it's because the drivers for Windows see a lot more updates.

I always noticed this when encoding HD video using the same software under Windows and OS X, both using CUDA. Under Windows it would always perform better.
 
Obocop said:
I'm in the same boat. Got a 1,1 (2,1) Mac Pro with x5365s, SSD in it, along with the Mac 5870. I'm generally happy with this card, but a better GPU is always welcome. I had thought that card was pretty much the best I could hope for in terms of bottlenecks. Having read through this thread, I'm now unsure. For gaming, what is generally considered the best card possible with a 1,1 rig?
Click to expand...

I'm still generally working this out as well but after more research and looking at lots of benchmarks, I'm thinking now I wouldn't go below a GTX 770 or an AMD R9 280X. They're fairly similar but from what I've read the 770 is better in games (and Nvidia cards generally do seem to be better for gaming), and has slightly lower power draw (230W vs 250W)

If you've got a bigger budget then a GTX 970 or GTX 780 would be my next step up. The GTX 970 being the sweet spot of low power draw (145W vs 250W) and high performance, however costs a bit more.

At the top end if you've got lots of cash to burn then a GTX 980 would be fantastic! Again low power draw (165W) and killer performance. A GTX 780ti would probably be cheaper with similar performance but higher power draw as well (250W).

I'm not sure if all of these cards work out of the box or not (still looking into that) and I've left out the AMD R9 290 as I've read some have had problems with it and its power draw seems a bit high (275W), but others may be able to comment on it.

Also if you're gaming you're probably going to see better results under Windows in Boot Camp.
 
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