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it's already been proven you can.
if you have d300 or 500, a user can put a d500/d700 in there.. the things are removable/serviceable/replaceable
I think he is talking about upgrading to something other than d3/5/700
Which could be problematic as the Roms for the cards are on the logic Board of the nMP and not in the graphic cards themselves. Basically it would require an firmware update for the nMP itself. Would Apple allow third parties to compile their own firmware? Absolutely not. Could the rom be on the cards themselves and be forced to be initialized? Possibly. Is it worth the effort to reverse engineer that, create your own boards (2 different at that) and then sell them to a really small group of people? Not if you aren't going to force users to buy the upgraded cards for as much as a new computer...

Only Apple could ever possibly offer affordable updates
 
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I think he is talking about upgrading to something other than d3/5/700
Which could be problematic as the Roms for the cards are on the logic Board of the nMP and not in the graphic cards themselves. Basically it would require an firmware update for the nMP itself. Would Apple allow third parties to compile their own firmware? Absolutely not. Could the rom be on the cards themselves and be forced to be initialized? Possibly. Is it worth the effort to reverse engineer that, create your own boards (2 different at that) and then sell them to a really small group of people? Not if you aren't going to force users to buy the upgraded cards for as much as a new computer...

Only Apple could ever possibly offer affordable updates
i also think GPU upgrades would be from apple.. the best chance at a 6,1 user upgrading(internally) to something other than d300/500/700 will be with the gpus available for 7,1.
is this something we can agree on?
 
i also think GPU upgrades would be from apple.. the best chance at a 6,1 user upgrading(internally) to something other than d300/500/700 will be with the gpus available for 7,1.
is this something we can agree on?

I don't think so, unless someone develope a tool like the 4,1 -> 5,1 firmware upgrade. Otherwise, it's still hopeless because the GPU info is stored on the Machine's firmware, but not on the card.

Besides, I don't believe Apple will give out such tool even the 7,1 is exactly the same as 6,1 but only minor upgrade like the 4,1 and 5,1.

Furthermore, I don't think Apple will only do a minor upgrade after 3 years the 6,1 release. If they do, it may be the biggest joke in the MP's world.

The chance is their, everything is possible. However, from an objective point of view, I think we know that the chance is very very small, which almost zero chance in real world.
 
i also think GPU upgrades would be from apple.. the best chance at a 6,1 user upgrading(internally) to something other than d300/500/700 will be with the gpus available for 7,1.
is this something we can agree on?

Yes, I agree on Apple being the best shot at getting upgrades.

Personally I'd love if they could release a nMP with the daughter board replaced by more or less a passive backplane, each "card" being used for different purposes (1 as logic board for CPU:s, RAM and Storage, 2 as Graphics cards or maybe 1 GPU and the third card for something else, port board replaceable with a faceplate).

Much like network chassis based switches are built (like the Cisco 6500, which has been expanded and built upon since its introduction in 1997 or so).

In that way Apple could basically sell GPU cards, CPU-cards (with RAM and storage) and have the same base plate for years to come. As long as they lsee to it that they release upgraes with decent intervals. the chassis and backplane itself wouldn't cost much, so the upgrades would still be more or less like an entire computer in cost if you choose to upgrade it all at the same time. In that way Apple wouldn't lose much income (if any) either.
 
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I've moved away from looking at Create Pro based on info on here.

I've got a machine lined up that is much more powerful than the one I originally looked at and cheaper than Create Pro too.

Question is I've a choice between the nVidia 970 and 980 (not the Ti version).
Is it going to be worth the upgrade cost?
I'm going to be using it for photoshop and lightroom. No video editing.
 
My understanding is that both photoshop and lightroom are CPU intensive, not GPU (even though GPU acceleration is avail for some task). So even 970 may be overkill, but since the 970 is not something ridiculous expensive, it sounds like a balanced choice.

HOWEVER, make sure you know how to install and select the Nvidia driver before you make that purchase. The 970 won't work without the Nvidia driver, and if it's a non-flashed card, and there is no any other GPU in you Mac (e.g. GT120), you won't able to see anything until the Nvidia web driver is correctly installed and selected. This will affect your OSX update every single time (until Apple include the Maxwell driver in OSX).
 
My understanding is that both photoshop and lightroom are CPU intensive, not GPU (even though GPU acceleration is avail for some task). So even 970 may be overkill, but since the 970 is not something ridiculous expensive, it sounds like a balanced choice.

HOWEVER, make sure you know how to install and select the Nvidia driver before you make that purchase. The 970 won't work without the Nvidia driver, and if it's a non-flashed card, and there is no any other GPU in you Mac (e.g. GT120), you won't able to see anything until the Nvidia web driver is correctly installed and selected. This will affect your OSX update every single time (until Apple include the Maxwell driver in OSX).

Thanks. I've ordered it now and went for the 980 in the end, purely because the deal was so good, it would have been silly not to.
 
Hi all,

I've now got my Mac Pro 5.1 currently running Yosemite.
I'd like to install El Capitan 10.11.3 (latest version).

I have the nVidia 980 graphics card. Do I go to the MacVidCards site, download the 10.11.3 driver, install that and then download and install El Capitan from the Mac App Store?
I'm assuming that the driver for 10.11.3 will run Yosemite but not the other way around?
 
I think each web driver only works with the corresponding OSX, you can't install the 10.11.3 driver on Yosemite.

Also, the newest vision at this moment is 10.11.4 beta.
 
[MOD NOTE]
This thread is getting derailed by petty bickering, a number of posts were removed. Please stay on topic, otherwise the posts will be removed.
 
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