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Radeon HD 3870 for Mac coming end of May

Pressure said:
With 3 cards you are not close to maxing out 300 Watt from the PCI-Express ports. 3 x 75 Watt = 225 Watt. The rest is pulled directly form the power supply.

CrossfireX will always clock all the cards down to the slowest of the cards.

Any chance you can mail the firmware to me?
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Yeah but is that Watt usage @ idle or load?
 
I'm currently running an X1900 and an HD 3870x2 together in the same machine with no power problems whatsoever. Both cards are connected to the auxiliary PCIe power sockets on the motherboard of my Clovertown 2006 Mac Pro - a single to dual PCIe splitter cable feeding the X1900 and one of the X2's power sockets with a straight PCIe 6 pin in the other 8 pin PCIe socket on the X2.

Bear in mind that a single X1900 draws more power than a single HD 3870 :eek:
 
Pressure said:
With 3 cards you are not close to maxing out 300 Watt from the PCI-Express ports. 3 x 75 Watt = 225 Watt. The rest is pulled directly form the power supply.
Click to expand...

ATI told me yesterday that 85 watts peak for the 3870 Mac & PC card. If you have three of them, you are safely under 300 watts.

But my overclocked MSI 3870 X2 peaks at over 200. I'd be living on the edge to pari it with one 3870.

I suppose I could try it and pull the plug really quick when the smoke starts pouring out. ;-)

Or you can try it and report back. ;-)
 
barefeats said:
ATI told me yesterday that 85 watts peak for the 3870 Mac & PC card. If you have three of them, you are safely under 300 watts.

But my overclocked MSI 3870 X2 peaks at over 200. I'd be living on the edge to pari it with one 3870.

I suppose I could try it and pull the plug really quick when the smoke starts pouring out. ;-)

Or you can try it and report back. ;-)
Click to expand...

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 is still only getting 75 Watt from the PCI-Express slot.

The rest is pulled by the cable connecting the graphic card to the power supply.

The Mac Pro has a 1kW (1.000 or 1.200 Watt) power supply. It can easily run it.

Sigh, you can max pull out 75 Watt per PCI-Express slot.
 
Pressure said:
The Radeon HD 3870 X2 is still only getting 75 Watt from the PCI-Express slot.

The rest is pulled by the cable connecting the graphic card to the power supply.

The Mac Pro has a 1kW (1.000 or 1.200 Watt) power supply. It can easily run it.

Sigh, you can max pull out 75 Watt per PCI-Express slot.
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I'm still confused over this whole 'Maximum Power' question. I don't understand the relationship between power limitations of the PCi Express bus the cards requirements.
I think in an earlier post by barefeats he was running an nVidia 9800GX2 in a MP but had to switch cards when running Windows to avoid maxing out the 300 watt power limitations of the bus.
Why is it a problem several having high power consuming cards in a MP if they can pull all they need from the PS without overloading the PCi Express bus?
Someone please enlighten me. :confused:

And is the 3870 X2 a dual system card (i.e. same card supports Mac and PC)?
 
does 3870 need leopard

Guys I`m running 10.4.11. Will I need leopard for the 3870 as the 8800 does.THANKS
 
How does a unsupported (in os x) graphics card behave if you boot os x with both the card and the HD 2600XT installed at the same time?
Does the PC card waste a lot of power and produce noise doing nothing or does it simply shut down and stop the fan?
I would like to install a supplementar gfx card for gaming under bootcamp, but it should either work also in OS X or shut down completely... is it possible?
 
i think OS X will use the one in "slot 1," so put the 2600 in slot 1 and the other one in another slot.
 
macz1 said:
How does a unsupported (in os x) graphics card behave if you boot os x with both the card and the HD 2600XT installed at the same time?
Does the PC card waste a lot of power and produce noise doing nothing or does it simply shut down and stop the fan?
I would like to install a supplementar gfx card for gaming under bootcamp, but it should either work also in OS X or shut down completely... is it possible?
Click to expand...

Nope. Mac OS X will most likely not even boot with a non-EFI compatible card installed.
 
The end of June is fast approaching; has anyone bought and installed these yet (forgive me for I have not drudged through the thread from start to finish).
 
macz1 said:
How does a unsupported (in os x) graphics card behave if you boot os x with both the card and the HD 2600XT installed at the same time?
Does the PC card waste a lot of power and produce noise doing nothing or does it simply shut down and stop the fan?
I would like to install a supplementar gfx card for gaming under bootcamp, but it should either work also in OS X or shut down completely... is it possible?
Click to expand...

OS X ignores the unsupported non-EFI card and boots fine with it installed.

In my case I have a 3870x2 in the double-wide slot and the x1900 mac card in the slot above it. The fans do go full blast on the non-EFI card as the bios can not communicate with it to instruct it to throttle down, no big problem though as it is drowned out by the x1900's fan :p
 
supercooled said:
The end of June is fast approaching; has anyone bought and installed these yet (forgive me for I have not drudged through the thread from start to finish).
Click to expand...

I don't think anybody has this yet except Barefeats.
Overall, I think the ATI Radeon HD 3870 would be the best card to have in the Mac Pro right now. It also has better image quality and makes Mac OS X more smoother than 8800 GT. :p
 
kabunaru said:
I don't think anybody has this yet except Barefeats.
Overall, I think the ATI Radeon HD 3870 would be the best card to have in the Mac Pro right now. It also has better image quality and makes Mac OS X more smoother than 8800 GT. :p
Click to expand...

A shame he doesn't post the ROM for the community.
 
I want a 4870!! and the mac version of the 3870 isn't even available yet.... AARGH!
 
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