ATI RADEON HD 4870 Mac

Yes, the apple 4870 runs perfectly. I have installed and used one personally on my 2006.

I call that the party line. Take it with a grain of salt. There are a LARGE number of people running it on early 2006 Mac Pro. There is nothing technical that it won't (unlike the eVGA GTX 285).

Apple doesn't like 32GB RAM as supported; or 1TB and larger drives, too.

And, there really is just the 3870 which is an ATI retail card, and the 4870, at this point as upgrade options.

Apple doesn't say no really, they just say things that don't make sense like "PCI Express 2.0."

Well, I'm telling you yes. Search 4870 in the forum if you like, there are loads of threads confirming this.

OpenCL isn't part of Leopard.

Find me one person with an Apple Radeon 4870 having a true problem (yes, there are problems with 3rd party monitors and displays, and that affects any/everyone).

I just got my ATI Radeon 4870 a few days ago for my Mac Pro '06. It works great.

I am running 2 24" Dell monitors, one through DVI and one through a the minidisplay port with the mini to DVI converter I bought at Apple, and they run flawlessly.

I run World of Warcraft at full setting without a hitch. I also play a lot of games on my Windows 7 install, dual monitor, and everything works FLAWLESSLY. I play Crysis at max resolution with some high settings (no AA though), and it plays great too.

There's not much else I can say other than the card works fantastically on my Mac Pro '06. Don't hesitate, just get it 😀

Great to hear - especially FLAWLESS part!

+(Assume the X1900 has since found a new resting place?)+

An install video?? For what?
The installation is plug n play, as with any mac video card.
If you buy the 4870, there are instructions on how to install in the documentation included with in the box.

As long as you have 10.5.7 on, you'll be fine with the drivers.

Yes, the X1900 was put in the bag and box the 4870 came in and now sits in my closet. I'll keep it around in case I ever sell my Mac Pro for a newer Mac Pro so I can keep my 4870 :P

But, yes, even a few days later, my card works great. Absolutely nothing goes wrong. And I also can't hear a difference in idle fan sounds and think the 4870 is quieter while gaming. The X1900 would rev up its fans when I played World of Warcraft, my 4870 sounds like it's still idle after playing for hours at max settings. I don't know if it's because it can handle more and hence WoW isn't taxing, but I've yet to hear the fans rev up. Same with using it on Windows 7, the card stays relatively silent.

I think it's a smart purchase if you have the extra money.

quick question it says on your sig file that you have an xXx 4890 running on your mac pro 06, is this just a standard PC version and you just install it and it works without a problem on the mac pro 06 ? if not how did you get it to work ?

regards

Bob

Yes it's an pc XFX 4890 (regular stock clocked model; not XXX version). I have it working in osx via injectors. I've been trying to flash it recently, as a rom has become available, however things aren't going very well... 😟 It seems possible that my later version xfx 4890 is not very compatible with the rom. Seems like people with earlier versions, had better success.

If I can't get it to flash correctly, might just change to a more compatible brand.

This thread can help answer all your questions:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=713428
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=751062

Word to the wise though, if you're not comfortable fiddling around with stuff inside your comp, it might not be a good idea. It can cause a lot of headaches~

i just bought one but cant seem to get it working, after installing it in my mac pro, i turn it on but theres nothing on the display just a black screen.. i have a MP 2.66 dual intel, with 9GB memory. my old ATI Radeon X1900 is giving me issues and is really noisy ..
any suggestions??

I've been reading the threads for days trying to figure out if I should get one for my 1st gen Mac Pro. The only folks that are having problems are the ones using non-Apple-branded displays. Some 3rd party displays seem to not like this card, though I'm not smart enough to explain to you why...

What kind of display are you using? Do you have another one you could borrow or use to try that? Again, after reading all the threads, everyone seems really pleased with the card, and the only folks reporting problems are reporting problems with some 3rd party displays. I have my own question out there asking what displays WILL work with the card, but haven't gotten too many responses...

Good luck! Let us know what kind of display you're using...