This is great news, but will I still see the grey screen and the pinwheel?
With the PC flashed cards, you couldn't see the boot screen until it changed to blue then to the desktop.
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Radeon HD 6990
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This is great news, but will I still see the grey screen and the pinwheel?
With the PC flashed cards, you couldn't see the boot screen until it changed to blue then to the desktop.
I was being sarcastic.
Oh, don't scare me like that
Anyway, my 6-core mac pro most likely will be my LAST one since I don't even use it for what it was meant to be used for, let alone a 2012 mac pro, though I still think Nano has a valid point.
I can see people wanting to upgrade a 4870 to a 6970 but what is the point of 6870 when a 5870 is faster and it is already available flashed and everything? I guess price. And upgrading a 5870 to a 6970 is a 5-10% boost of waste. Now if you ever get a 6990 going that would be worth futzing with.
Well I have a base MP with a 5770. The 6870 is roughly twice as fast. It costs $225 and I could sell the Apple 5770 used for almost that.
So a 2x increase for almost free, with no need to flash, and all outputs working.
Netkas forums report that the 69xx cards aren't working even though they are listed.
I was thinking about waiting, but if the 6870 truly works as well as reported, there may be a flood of Apple 5770's hitting Ebay.
So a 2x increase for almost free, with no need to flash, and all outputs working.
Netkas forums report that the 69xx cards aren't working even though they are listed.
I was thinking about waiting, but if the 6870 truly works as well as reported, there may be a flood of Apple 5770's hitting Ebay.
Well I have a base MP with a 5770. The 6870 is roughly twice as fast. It costs $225 and I could sell the Apple 5770 used for almost that.
So a 2x increase for almost free, with no need to flash, and all outputs working.
Netkas forums report that the 69xx cards aren't working even though they are listed.
I was thinking about waiting, but if the 6870 truly works as well as reported, there may be a flood of Apple 5770's hitting Ebay.
Would love that 6870 but with no DVD Player working I'll wait until a solution is found.
Really? How is that a deal breaker? Just use VLC or any other of the 100+ media players?
Flashed cards have always showed bootscreen, that was the point of flashing instead of using injector kext.
DVDplayer is so much better than VLC at playing DVDs. It has a remote actually designed for DVDs and chapter thumbnails, fullscreen is better implemented, and VLC has some bugs in menus.
Plus DVD player uses the GPU to decode mpeg2, which is why I believe it crashes on radeon 6000 cards.
Plus DVD player uses the GPU to decode mpeg2, which is why I believe it crashes on radeon 6000 cards.
Flashed radeon 5000 show no boot screen. For me the main point is that you don't need to install extensions after each OS update, so you still get acceleration on a unmodified OS X, like an install DVD.
I am really curious to know if these work well.
Any one tried it out?
Gotta try this out.
Is it really? What price point is it going for?
Where can I find a comparative / comparison table for these cards?
Well I have a base MP with a 5770. The 6870 is roughly twice as fast. It costs $225 and I could sell the Apple 5770 used for almost that.
So a 2x increase for almost free, with no need to flash, and all outputs working.
Netkas forums report that the 69xx cards aren't working even though they are listed.
I was thinking about waiting, but if the 6870 truly works as well as reported, there may be a flood of Apple 5770's hitting Ebay.
Any ideas on when we might be able to find them updated?
There are lies, damn lies and Apple compatibility reports.
Crashnburn asked:
Originally Posted by derbothaus:
I can see people wanting to upgrade a 4870 to a 6970 but what is the point of 6870 when a 5870 is faster and it is already available flashed and everything? I guess price. And upgrading a 5870 to a 6970 is a 5-10% boost of waste. Now if you ever get a 6990 going that would be worth futzing with.
Where can I find a comparative / comparison table for these cards?
These guys bench PC GPU's till the cows come home: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU11/188
Rominator states that there are still issues to be addressed with the 6xxx series cards so check his data before going further: http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,804.0.html
Personally I would hold off till Lion retail version is released, as Apple could retract some of the functionality on a whim, with a "fix".
Crashnburn asked:
Originally Posted by derbothaus:
I can see people wanting to upgrade a 4870 to a 6970 but what is the point of 6870 when a 5870 is faster and it is already available flashed and everything? I guess price. And upgrading a 5870 to a 6970 is a 5-10% boost of waste. Now if you ever get a 6990 going that would be worth futzing with.
Where can I find a comparative / comparison table for these cards?
These guys bench PC GPU's till the cows come home: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU11/188
Rominator states that there are still issues to be addressed with the 6xxx series cards so check his data before going further: http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,804.0.html
Personally I would hold off till Lion retail version is released, as Apple could retract some of the functionality on a whim, with a "fix".
Looks like only the 68xx series is usable for now, then. I'd wait for Rominator's updates before trying the 69xx. According to him, the 6870 had the best functionality anyway.
Radeon 6870 in Mac Pro 1,1
I'm using an XFX PC Radeon 6870 in my Mac Pro 1,1 (2006 model). I was running Lion 10.7.3 but switched back to Snow Leopard (10.6.8) due to the fact I hate the "iOSification" in Lion and I* find Snow Leopard overall faster. In regards to this thread, my 6870 runs flawlessly (MANY THANKS to netkas for this!). Yes, you CAN use the 6870 and I would assume any of the other cards that have been mentioned on this thread with the exception of the 6990 doing the same thing.
I knew about the DVD player issue but went ahead anyway as that was a non-issue for me personally, I prefer VLC and have for years on other unixes/linuxes. What really screwed me up was the lack of ANY Steam game in OS X (10.6.x or 10.7.x). It turns out that these are also all affected by the same bug that affects the DVD Player application. The fix is extremely simple. Deals with the ATY_init. I have numerous games I own in Steam from Half-Life to Civilization V and dual booting to Windows 7 in order to play games that I owned natively for OS X was a MAJOR pain in the ass.
My 6870 has only 1GB RAM and I'm looking to upgrade again in the near future as I'm changing my display setup. Currently I have a 20" Cinema and a 20" CRT. To get around the lack of the "BIOS" screen as well as the lack of the second DVI port becoming non-functional after the update, I have retained the original nVidia 7300GT that came stock with the machine, changed the PCI-e slot to a 4x and gave the Radeon 6870 the 16x slot. I keep the CRT plugged into the 7300GT and I get boot screen there, and when OS X loads, both displays work flawlessly. In the near future I'm going to be changing screens to either 3x 20" Cinema Displays or 2x 23" Cinema Displays. So I want a Radeon with 2GB RAM to push the higher res and possibly even get into Eyefinity (in Windows mode anyway). I still boot Windows for a couple games such as Skyrim and Battlefield 3. I'm looking at a Radeon 6970 2GB for this purpose. If anyone has suggestions for me in regards to screen setup (2x 23" Cinema or 3x 20" Cinema) that would be great. Thanks again!
I'm using an XFX PC Radeon 6870 in my Mac Pro 1,1 (2006 model). I was running Lion 10.7.3 but switched back to Snow Leopard (10.6.8) due to the fact I hate the "iOSification" in Lion and I* find Snow Leopard overall faster. In regards to this thread, my 6870 runs flawlessly (MANY THANKS to netkas for this!). Yes, you CAN use the 6870 and I would assume any of the other cards that have been mentioned on this thread with the exception of the 6990 doing the same thing.
I knew about the DVD player issue but went ahead anyway as that was a non-issue for me personally, I prefer VLC and have for years on other unixes/linuxes. What really screwed me up was the lack of ANY Steam game in OS X (10.6.x or 10.7.x). It turns out that these are also all affected by the same bug that affects the DVD Player application. The fix is extremely simple. Deals with the ATY_init. I have numerous games I own in Steam from Half-Life to Civilization V and dual booting to Windows 7 in order to play games that I owned natively for OS X was a MAJOR pain in the ass.
My 6870 has only 1GB RAM and I'm looking to upgrade again in the near future as I'm changing my display setup. Currently I have a 20" Cinema and a 20" CRT. To get around the lack of the "BIOS" screen as well as the lack of the second DVI port becoming non-functional after the update, I have retained the original nVidia 7300GT that came stock with the machine, changed the PCI-e slot to a 4x and gave the Radeon 6870 the 16x slot. I keep the CRT plugged into the 7300GT and I get boot screen there, and when OS X loads, both displays work flawlessly. In the near future I'm going to be changing screens to either 3x 20" Cinema Displays or 2x 23" Cinema Displays. So I want a Radeon with 2GB RAM to push the higher res and possibly even get into Eyefinity (in Windows mode anyway). I still boot Windows for a couple games such as Skyrim and Battlefield 3. I'm looking at a Radeon 6970 2GB for this purpose. If anyone has suggestions for me in regards to screen setup (2x 23" Cinema or 3x 20" Cinema) that would be great. Thanks again!