Mac Pro wont boot unless...

[user1690]

Hey all!

So i scored myself a Mac Pro 4,1 (Early 09) 8 core setup, it had a Quadro 4000 2GB and i wanted to swap it with my GTX 660 3GB from the 3,1 Mac Pro i have, so i went ahead and swapped everything over, moved the hard disks out of the 3,1 into the 4,1 as well, pressed the power button, got the chime...then nothing. I knew there would be a black screen because of the GTX 660 being a PC card but i waited a good 20mins just incase it was doing something...nothing. I shutdown, i put the Quadro back in and suddenly its booting again...

If i have the Quadro AND the GTX 660 installed, again, perfect boot and i can swap my TV between the two, and the Mac recognises both are there, latest Web drivers for 10.9.5 are installed. But the Mac Pro seems to be putting the Quadro GPU ahead of the 660 despite the quadro being in a slower lane (4x vs 16x the 660 is in).

Anyone got any idea why this is happening? If not, does anyone know if its safe to have 2 GPU's like that? I'll happily leave the quadro in there since it seems to be the key to booting the Mac, but will it takeover the 660 in terms of my work? (I do video editing and occasional gaming).

Any info is appreciated!

 

[h9826790]

For gaming, only the GPU that connect to the card will be used (SLI is obviously not applicable in your case).

For video editing, depends on software, all GPU may be used.

I have 2x 7950 in my 4,1 (in slot 1 and 3). Some benchmark software e.g. openCL OceanWave will only shows shows the card that in the x4 slot. But FCPX able to use both GPU very well.

Anyway, to keep it simple, connect the monitor to the card that you want to be the primary card.

 

[user1690]

For gaming, only the GPU that connect to the card will be used (SLI is obviously not applicable in your case).

For video editing, depends on software, all GPU may be used.

I have 2x 7950 in my 4,1 (in slot 1 and 3). Some benchmark software e.g. openCL OceanWave will only shows shows the card that in the x4 slot. But FCPX able to use both GPU very well.
View attachment 626698
Anyway, to keep it simple, connect the monitor to the card that you want to be the primary card.

Excellent timing! Just discovered that myself, if i have the quadro installed (or even a GT 120 i just tested), if i DONT plug anything into it and just plug HDMI (or DVI) into the 660, the system puts the 660 first, hooray!

Thanks for the info all the same

 

[orph]

id just plug both displays in to the 660, the Quadro 4000 is a gtx470 down clocked so not shore what particle use it will have.

funny i just picked up a 5.1 with a Quadro 4000, and im about to move from my 3.1 with a 660.
did some benches and the 660 is about 3x the speed in Heaven and Valley benchmarks (and thats with it installed in my 3.1 and the Quadro 4000 in the 5.1 so it might even be faster once i swap it over).
+ got to say the Quadro 4000 is a lot hotter/nosier than my 660 (tho my 660 has the open dual fan cooler thing)

the one thing about the Quadro 4000 which might be cool is that it can do 10bit video out but this will only matter if you have a high end 10bit display which is unlikely

and the DVI to hidmi cables are cheep and can cary sound if thats what you want with the nvidia sound patch thing

ps i will have to check once iv moved to my 5.1 if both cards can be used in any apps to give any benefit, not seen many un-matched card benchmarks apart from with DaVinci Resolve but then the second 'week/slow' card dived the display and the 'fast' card rendered & even then the on newer cards tended to show it did not matter

 

[h9826790]

the one thing about the Quadro 4000 which might be cool is that it can do 10bit video out but this will only matter if you have a high end 10bit display which is unlikely

And if the software supported.

 

[orph]

yep it only matters with photo editing and some video editing in a color calibrated environment with displays that have LUT's

iv been googling about the Quadro 4000 (as i just got one) looks like they thanks to the small cooler can have dust problems,

 

[user1690]

got to say the Quadro 4000 is a lot hotter/nosier than my 660 (tho my 660 has the open dual fan cooler thing)

Yeah the Quadro 4000 is definetely hot, i dont know if it was just mine but the first time i went to remove it straight after shutting down i nearly burnt my hands as it was totally unexpected. Lesson learned not to do that again!