Video Card replacement for my Mac Pro A1186

[the87th]

Hello!

I have a Mac Pro A1186 running snow leopard 64 bit. Its video card died, and I would like to replace it with something a bit better than what it had originally.

old card: GeForce 7300 GT
new card: hopefully something with 1GB ram and a snappy GPU? or just something that's not broken and is inexpensive?

my question is, what are my options? How can i know which nvidia cards will work with my mac? i think i can use x16 pci-e cards, but i don't know if i should be using 2.0 or 2.1. can i just go onto newegg and buy any old PCI-E card? the one below seemed really good and costs less than $100:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130395

thanks!

 

[ActionableMango]

The only Apple card for roughly $100 would be an Apple Nvidia GT120.

The fastest Apple card you can make use of in a MP1.1 is the Apple ATI 5770, at about $250.

You need to buy Apple compatible cards unless you are prepared to do things like flash the ROM, deal with missing boot screens, and possibly have stuff break at the next OS update.

 

[goMac]

Apple Radeon 5770 is your best bet, although it's out of your $100 price range.

Without hacking, you can't really use normal PC cards at the moment. And the GeForce 9500 is most definitely not a snappy card. Better than the 7300, but by no means snappy.

 

[gpzjock]

To find a 1 GB GFX card within your budget you would have to flash a secondhand PC based 5770 or 4870. Trot over to the Flashing thread at Netkas.org for more details.

This is a good starting point: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/877441/

This looks like a good candidate and beats the crap out of that old Nvidia one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102873&cm_re=5770-_-14-102-873-_-Product
but check if it will take a BIOS flash to convert it to Mac OS first.

The Apple one is a bit more pricey: http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC742ZM/A?fnode=MTY1NDA5OQ&mco=MTg2OTU0NzM
and the GT120 is pants by comparison: http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC002ZM/A?fnode=MTY1NDA5OQ&mco=MTA4MzU2MzE

 

[alust2013]

Check out a GT120. Definitely better than what you've got, and pretty cheap too.

 

[the87th]

This is a good starting point: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/877441/

this is my backup plan, seems easy enough to do also.

and the GT120 is pants by comparison: http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC002ZM/A?fnode=MTY1NDA5OQ&mco=MTA4MzU2MzE

Check out a GT120. Definitely better than what you've got, and pretty cheap too.

will the GT120 really work with my mac pro? all the comments on apple's site seemed to imply otherwise. is there anything i would have to do to it to make it work? this seems like a really good option if it weren't for all the comments saying it won't work on an original mac pro.