Mac Pro 2008 and ATI Radeon HD 5770

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Level 1

5 points

Mac Pro 2008 and ATI Radeon HD 5770

According to many other threads in this forum the ATI Radeon HD 5770 graphics card is said to work fine with the Mac Pro 2008 (model no. 3,1) though the Apple Store lists the Mac Pro (Mid 2010) under system requirements. Well, before I’m going to upgrade my Mac against Apple’s will, I’m just curious to know if anyone has found out why Apple restricts the compatibility to Macs from mid 2010 on. Is there an issue that affects only a small number of machines? Or is there a software incompatibility popping up under rare circumstances? What is the reason for this? Why does Apple not grant downward compatibility?

Quad-Core Intel Xeon 2 x 2.8 GHz, 8 GB RAM, Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on May 24, 2011 9:45 AM

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Answer 1

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

May 24, 2011 11:15 AM in response to Rainer Dorau

Apple does marketing and doesn't do a bang-up job on writiing technical requirements on hardware upgrades and testing. It doesn't make sense, there is no reason for not just "works with 10.6.5 or later on ALL Mac Pro models."

something nice and clear and so avoids all the questions and discussion.

Radeon HD 5870 versus 5770

2008 has PCIe 2.0 so no lose of bandwidth.

And I guess you ignored the numerous comment section on the product page? where people said it works.

ATI Radeon HD 5770 MC742ZM A

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Answer 2

harryb

Level 1

30 points

May 24, 2011 5:33 PM in response to The hatter

And Mac specialist OWC advise that even the 5870 is compatible with the Mac Pro 1st Generation, 1.1:-

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Apple/6615719/

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