ati radeon hd 4870 for 1st generation mac pros?

That only says it is officially supported.

ATI might do what they did with the 3870 and have EFI32 support also.

New = better? you think mini display is what you want? Or pick up a 24" Dell SP2409W.

BUt are there not ati hd 4870 branded videocards for pc which also
plays on pci express 1.0 ?? ore is it then better using the 38xx...
Have a x1900xt , does it improve upgrading to 38xx or 48xx radeon??
I mean a 2x benefit??

The PCIe 2.0 is not the real issue PCIe 2.0 is backwards compatible. the Issue with the new 4870 will be if it has efi 32 support or not. If you want to be sure to get a card that works in OS 10 and is faster than your x1900 then the 3870 mac and PC edition is what you should get.

I think it's a power issue. The first generation Mac Pros (I'm assuming Intel) only have a 300W power supply, and this video card needs more power. I'm also searching for an upgrade to the GeForce 7300GT that came with my machine, but struggling - primarily cause of the power supply limitation.

Can you upgrade the power supply in these boxes?

My Nvidia 9800GTX uses two aux power connectors, which the earliest Mac Pro has on the motherboard. There would be trouble using this plus 8800GT....

The Mac Pro has 850-1100W PSU. It is the PCI slots that are limited to 300W.

Your best upgrade is either 3870, or 8800, or wait and see what gives and get 4870 after it is confirmed if it works or not.

4870 works in ALL Mac Pros.

Trust me, or trust Barefeats. Your call.

I just read OWC blog, and they say "no go" for 1st gen Mac Pro.

I'll trust them.

http://blog.macsales.com/602-testing-those-new-graphics-cards

I trust Barefeats.

rob-ART also booted the 1st gen Mac Pro with the drive from the 09 Mac Pro which contained the driver for the 4870.

OWC guys weren't using the drivers from their new MacPro so that's why it didn't work.

Rob-ART from barefeats did it right. He took the drive from new MacPro and put it into his 1st Gen MacPro and it works fine.

His initial benchmarks are here:
http://barefeats.com/nehal05.html

I saw Rob saying "it will, but have to wait" and then I read OWC's, before Rob posted actual results, and all that between afternoon one day, and AM the next.

Then I see actual results. But at the time, OWC had had the only actual hands on attempt.

And then there is the whole speculation about future OS update.

I link to Barefeats so often, I almost feel I should put a disclaimer that I have no relationship of any kind with the site or its personnel! And Rob has always been "right on" and quoted statements from site regularly.

Derek Cooper2 wrote:
I think it's a power issue. The first generation Mac Pros (I'm assuming Intel) only have a 300W power supply, and this video card needs more power. I'm also searching for an upgrade to the GeForce 7300GT that came with my machine, but struggling - primarily cause of the power supply limitation.

Can you upgrade the power supply in these boxes?

The 1st gen Mac Pro's have a 1000watt power supply, there's more than enough power to handle the 4870.

It is the PCI bus that is limited to a total of 300W.

The information on the AMD/ATI site actually says the 4870 has lower power requirements than the 3870.

The PCIe power limit of 300W is the same for the 2008 Mac Pros as the 2007 8-core Clovertown Mac Pro. Power is not an issue. EFI appears not to be an issue either as Rob's tests have shown.

Can anyone give a logical or technical reason why the 4870 is not being made available to 1st Gen Mac Pros like the 3.0 GHz 8-core. I can't think of anything.

Surely Apple aren't restricting this cards use in an effort to persuade users to upgrade? Are they?

I've read a couple reviews, can't find recent that had a table of results for various cards, where 225W was quoted for 4870s.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ati-nvidia-geforce,5636.html

If I can dig up the one that I saw two weeks ago...