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Radeon HD6850 wont run on my 2008 mac pro...

S

SmashWilliams

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 13, 2010
7
0
So, It all started when I wanted the new 27" led cinema display, and obv my 2008 mac pro with some old crappy geforce card doesn't have a mini displayport, so I thought I'd upgrade my graphics card at the same time..

Bought me a HIS 6870 first thinking that would work, but realized it needed double power cables and my mac pro only had one, ofc the apple service center didnt have the cable in stock so I tried running it with only one cable, it started and could hear windows startup sound but no picture.

Figured it was due to lack of power so I went back to exchange it for the Sapphire 6850 which said it only needed 1 power cable cause I didnt wanna wait 4 days for the shipping of a second cable when I already bought the cinema display, but now when I try to run it with this card the same thing happens...

I'm almost sure im not running bootcamp (hard to remember these days), and only have win 7 installed..

Can it be lack of power? My sapphire 6850 toxic has connections for two 6 pin power cables but the box says it needs only one unless u wanna run it in dual mode.

A friend of mine also has the 2008 pro and a sapphire card and he said his fired up right away when he booted with only his ssd disk with windows on it, but also said his card only had slots for 1 power cable.

Help me out here please, I'm going on sick monkey tilt over this bull soon...
 
As far as I know the Radeon HD 6850 only requires a single 6-pin power connector (it uses under 150 Watt, so 75 Watt from the 6-pin and 75 Watt directly from the PCI-Express slot).

The Radeon HD 6870, however, needs two 6-pin connectors.

Have you tried changing the power cable position, if it comes with two 6-pin connectors?

It should work if you only boot Windows.
 
Okay, got excited thinking maybe that would solve all my problems, put in the old card, deleted the driver for geforce 8800gt or whatever it was in the device manager... then entered new card and still nothing :(

Is there somewhere else i need to delete drivers other then the device manager?
 
Tried booting the computer with only a disk with no OS on it, nothing happens.

I even tried forcing the new radeon drivers on my old gefore card in windows before turning it off and switching the cards, nothing :(

I'm getting extremely frustrated, there is nothing that pisses me off more then electronics that dont work and I cant figure out why, makes me feel powerless :p
 
The thing is that I'm pretty sure that windows starts but just doesnt show a picture on the monitors, cause when I switch back to the old card it says "resuming windows", and I made a proper shut down the last time i was in windows with the old card, meaning that when I try starting it with new card windows boots...

Pretty retardedly put but I hope it makes sense.
 
Yeah during most of the testing ive had my windows dvd in the reader, not sure if i got it to boot from the dvd as i havent gotten a picture, but i tried holding/clicking random buttons to make sure I was pressing something during the "press any key to boot from cd..." phase, but no picture.
 
Yeah still no luck..

I clearly hear the sound that win 7 makes when it reaches the login screen so we know it boots windows.

I tried disconnecting the disk with windows on it and had my win 7 dvd in it so im pretty sure it tried to boot from that, and still pitch black.

It seems to act exactly the same way as it does with the old geforce card with the only difference being that it doesnt send out any signals to the monitors...

Im running out of ideas here, someone should have had a similar problem at some point? :(
 
Is it possible for you to try any of the other display connectors with an adapter?

Like HDMI or DVI?

I know it won't display at the full resolution but it is worth a shot.
 
SmashWilliams said:
Okay, got excited thinking maybe that would solve all my problems, put in the old card, deleted the driver for geforce 8800gt or whatever it was in the device manager... then entered new card and still nothing :(

Is there somewhere else i need to delete drivers other then the device manager?
Click to expand...

sigh

driver sweeper
/thread :)
 
Cindori said:
sigh

driver sweeper
/thread :)
Click to expand...

I wish this was true, tried the driver sweeper but didnt help, and wouldnt only having a disk with no os on it produce the same result?

As for the the other tip about connecting the screen with an adapter, I'm already trying to get it running with my old dvi screen so cant really get any more basic then that...
 
I hope you know that a regular PC 6850 or 6870 will not work in Mac OSX unless you flash it with its designated EFI drivers. A PC card runs on bios whereas a Mac video card utilizes EFI. It's as simple as that. :D
 
Second Port

Hey man, you do realize there is a second power source on your board, all you need is a second cable, don't you?
 
Interesting.

Right now I have a Mac Pro 1,1. I installed the netkas drivers that didn't need an ejector to run my 6870 on my mac. It works flawlessly. Yet when I try to boot into my windows 7 64bit I crash to blue screen right after the windows logo. Could it be that I am running windows 64bit on the mac? Or does this have something to do with efi? I would appreciate any help. (Also, I do have the two supported cables.)
 
I have the MP2008 and a sapphire 6850 running windows 7 native.

I had the 6800 in windows before, just exchanged cards and booted up.

It's just black until the windows-animation starts.


When I installed it i had 4 discs:
1: osx+old windows bootcamp
2,3 misc
4: ssd with win 7 i wanted to use

It was just black, nothing happened and I thought I was screwed. Then I removed disc 1 and then it booted from disc 4, windows did it's magic and after a while a some reboots and installations it was running fine.

I am really happy with the card, it is silent and does SC2/ACB/DA2 in 2560 with no problems and has been stable.

Hope you get it to work!
 
ildondeigiocchi said:
I hope you know that a regular PC 6850 or 6870 will not work in Mac OSX unless you flash it with its designated EFI drivers. A PC card runs on bios whereas a Mac video card utilizes EFI. It's as simple as that. :D
Click to expand...

But even if it didn't work on Mac OSX, would it still work on Windows 7 through Boot Camp?
 
ildondeigiocchi said:
I hope you know that a regular PC 6850 or 6870 will not work in Mac OSX unless you flash it with its designated EFI drivers. A PC card runs on bios whereas a Mac video card utilizes EFI. It's as simple as that. :D
Click to expand...

this idea was overturned when drivers in 10.6.8 and Lion magically started initializing BIOS cards without flash needed.
 
Well if you can live with not going with the latest and supposedly the greatest. you can look into getting a 5770. It is a great video card and it has a dvi an 2 mini display ports. So you can hook up 3 monitors at the same time.

SmashWilliams said:
So, It all started when I wanted the new 27" led cinema display, and obv my 2008 mac pro with some old crappy geforce card doesn't have a mini displayport, so I thought I'd upgrade my graphics card at the same time..

Bought me a HIS 6870 first thinking that would work, but realized it needed double power cables and my mac pro only had one, ofc the apple service center didnt have the cable in stock so I tried running it with only one cable, it started and could hear windows startup sound but no picture.

Figured it was due to lack of power so I went back to exchange it for the Sapphire 6850 which said it only needed 1 power cable cause I didnt wanna wait 4 days for the shipping of a second cable when I already bought the cinema display, but now when I try to run it with this card the same thing happens...

I'm almost sure im not running bootcamp (hard to remember these days), and only have win 7 installed..

Can it be lack of power? My sapphire 6850 toxic has connections for two 6 pin power cables but the box says it needs only one unless u wanna run it in dual mode.

A friend of mine also has the 2008 pro and a sapphire card and he said his fired up right away when he booted with only his ssd disk with windows on it, but also said his card only had slots for 1 power cable.

Help me out here please, I'm going on sick monkey tilt over this bull soon...
Click to expand...
 
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