Mac Pro 2008 & 6870 video-out issues

[ambeth]

Some quick background - my friends mac pro 2008 model had it's gfx card die a while back, so we replaced it with a XFX 6870 1gb graphics card. He mainly uses windows and never boots into OSX - so when the card installed fine he didnt make a fuss over it and left it at that.

Today he needed to boot into OSX to use final cut pro - and noticed that the boot menu never came up with holding down the option key. He selected 'boot into OSX on restart' - but that didnt improve anything, and now he cannot boot back into windows 7 either.

I am assuming this is because the XFX 6870 does not support EFI & bootcamp - hence we cannot see any video out - and the version of snow leopard that is on there also doesnt support the 6870.

I noticed this thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1325488/

But could not find any links to download to get the firmware that slughead made.

Are there any other options at this point? He doesnt want to lose the data on his osx / windows partitions. At the moment no combination of pressing different startup keys seems to make a difference.

Would upgrading to mountain lion work?

Thanks for any help / advice.

 

[kapowaz]

I have a 2008 Mac Pro and run a Radeon 6870 in it — until very recently I was running Snow Leopard on it, too. I'm not sure if that guarantees that there are drivers for this model with Snow Leopard (they may have come with an update, since I kept it up to date and only upgraded the card about a year ago), but it does narrow the choices down.

One option would be to check eBay for a cheap second-hand Mac Pro graphics card; the stock card that came with the Pro around that time was I believe a GT120, so I have to imagine you would be able to pick up a second hand one for not too much.

 

[MacVidCards]

If you don't use Bootcamp Utility to format the bootcamp drive you end up in this mess where you NEED an EFI card to pick Windows.

Another option is to remove all other drives and try to force it to use Windows.

But flashing the 6870 is best option if you are using DVI to connect with.

Netkas was the genius behind the 6870 EFI. There are threads on his site about how to make one and flash it.

Read a bunch before asking questions.

 

[Phrygian]

I have a 2008 Mac Pro and run a Radeon 6870 in it — until very recently I was running Snow Leopard on it, too. I'm not sure if that guarantees that there are drivers for this model with Snow Leopard (they may have come with an update, since I kept it up to date and only upgraded the card about a year ago), but it does narrow the choices down.

One option would be to check eBay for a cheap second-hand Mac Pro graphics card; the stock card that came with the Pro around that time was I believe a GT120, so I have to imagine you would be able to pick up a second hand one for not too much.

it would be cheaper to get a new hard drive with lion installed on it and then use that drive to back up and wipe the current drives.