where can I buy the new NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT for my existing Mac Pro?

Not recommended - see: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305346

Hey guys, As a first generation mac pro owner I am anxiously waiting for this card to ship and want it for my system. However reading the forum on www.macrumors.com I found a article and link to www.barefeats.com http://www.barefeats.com/york2.html stating that the 8800GT will not work in the first Generation mac pro's due to the EFI now being a EFI64 rom and not the EFI32 rom in the older mac pro's. See below.

Quote " ALERT TO OWNERS OF "OLD" MAC PROS! (CORRECTED)
The GeForce 8800 GT is NOT compatible with the older Mac Pro (August 2006, April 2007) as we assumed. I've been informed that GeForce 8800 GT uses an EFI64 ROM, the old Mac Pros "expect" an EFI32 ROM."

Now I am not completely sold on this and I wait for others who have ordered it directly from apple to try it in their older mac pro's. Has anyone talked to Apple support about this?

I hope barefeats is wrong.

Doug

If that ends up being true this will be the last Mac I purchase. I got mine in June and purchased the Mac Pro because my figuring was out of all the components I MUST be able to upgrade the Video Card, the CPU's, RAM, etc was fine and would be fine for me for the life of the computer but the Video Card would start showing age quickly.

I would have gone with an iMac if ultimately I would be unable to upgrade a single thing. Or I would have just decided to go with a PC.

Hi. This is Rob_ART of BareFeats. I hope I'm wrong, too. We have two older Mac Pros in our lab that we'd love to upgrade with the GeForce 8800 GT. But the information came from a Blizzard engineers of WoW fame. They are just as bummed as we are about the incompatibility.

Apple's tech note cited above seems to confirm the incompatibility with the words, "All of these cards are only compatible with the family of computers with which they shipped."

Once our GeForce 8800 GT kit arrives, we plan to try it on all three models of Mac Pro.

If it's a bust, there's always the hope that ATI/AMD will release some awesome retail upgrade -- like a Radeon HD 2900 or 3870.

I bought one of the first MacPros when they were announced back in 2006 and opted for the 7300GT because I didn't want to wait several weeks for the 1900 to become available.

I'm up in Canada, and for the past year and a half the price for me to order the X1900 XT off the Apple web site was, and still is $479! Nevermind that the Canadian dollar has increased in value relative to the US dollar, but the price to order the 8800GT is $349!

How is the X1900 worth more than the 8800GT?

Is this not something that can be fixed with a EFI update? If the old MP is "expecting" and EFI32, can't they update it to allow for an EFI64?

I don't know if there is a way to fix the GeForce 8800 GT to run on older Mac Pros. But I received a call from Apple Sales (Travis) asking me if I was ordering the kit for the pre-2008 Mac Pro. He confirmed that it only works on the newest Mac Pro.

Well, I'm going to MacWorld next week, so I'll sure have an earful for the Mac Pro PM if it turns out that this will never be possible.

Indeed, Tigerclaw from Blizzard is in discussions with Apple about an upgrade path for us Mac Pro users wishing to upgrade our graphics cards. The relevant thread is here:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=3881778599&postId=38815521 221&sid=1#1

I hope they are successful...

I did the same thing, plus i really believed that Apple would offer us an upgrade path down the road. After all, that is why Mac Pros have PCIx slots instead of soldered on graphics cards isn't it?.

Message was edited by: Teylaa

NewEgg in Stock $269.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150252

robert

I've created an online petition if you want to urge Apple to create a version of the GeForce 8800 GT that's compatible with older (2006,2007) Mac Pros:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/geforce8800