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Problem with ATI 5770 and Mac Pro 2008, Problem with ATI 5770 and Mac Pro 2008

I am getting little green sparkles in black areas on my mac pro while using the 30inch apple display with the ATI 5770 on the dvi port no other monitors are connected to the card, my older video card does not have the issue and is running two other monitors.

It is only occasional. I removed the 5770 and only used my Geforse 8800 xt and it does not have the issue. Is it bad vram

perhaps. I got it from a friend who upgraded his mac pro 2010 to the 5870 so it could be tough to return it.

MP 2008 8 core 2.8,mac mini hdmi, iPhone4,ipad,ATV2, Mac OS X (10.6.5), 8 gigs ram, running three montitors

Posted on Jun 9, 2011 2:16 PM

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57 replies

Jun 10, 2011 8:25 AM in response to The hatter

I'm running 10.6.7 and perhaps it is a heat problem as I have my older geforce 8800 in the next pcie slot to run two other monitors. Can I move the 8800 over to the next slot to have a bigger gap between the two cards or is that not a good idea, not sure if it has the same bandwitdth rating. I will check the slot specs out later today here on the Apple site.

The fans seems to be working fine but the card is very hot to the touch and its been hot hear lately. So maybe it is heat realated.

Jun 10, 2011 10:46 AM in response to Lance Mcvickar

There is no support for the graphic card with older versions - that is one of the limitations of Apple's drivers, and lack thereof on DVDs.


Just as the 8800GT req'd 10.5.2. The 5770 requires 10.6.4 (10.6.5+ preferably, though later 2009/2010s can boot with 10.6.3 (one or two mentioned that) the 2010s had a special build of 10.6.4.


Windows, you don't have that limitation, there is basic video output w/o or in Safe mode.


Most of the requirements on product page (ie, 2009 or later, or PCIe 2.0) almost have to read between the lines or take with a grain of salt. Except minimal builds. Just as new Macs can't boot from older OS version.


You probably while trying to work through this out to try with just one graphic card or the other, and at least you have the 8800GT so you can boot from 10.6.0 or 10.6.3 DVDs. But you can't run or boot Leopard.


You might want to setup some clean Apple only emergency boot volumes - full updated - for maintenance purposes, and to build a solid OS that you can use to clone and build a full working OS.


ATI HD 5770 MC742ZM A


One concern we had was the existence of the two Mini DisplayPorts in addition to one DVI port. We can confirm that the 2008 and 2009 were able to drive our 23" Cinema displays with the Mini DisplayPorts (using Apple's Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter). I'm confident that the 24" LED Cinema display and soon-to-be-shipping 27" LED Cinema display will work fine as well. As for our 30" Cinema display, we used the DVI port while testing the 3G game listed above.


http://barefeats.com/wst10g2.html

Jun 10, 2011 11:26 AM in response to The hatter

My computer boots fine with both cards and I have a clone of it. It is really a minor issue and only happens every once in a while. Usually when I pull out the dvi connection and plug it back to the 5770 in the green pixels go away. The 8800 never had the problem by itself or when it is in the mac pro with the 5770 it's just 5770. I don't want to run thee monitors off the one card as I don't want to spend 200 dollars on mini port to hdmi adapters when I have a perfectly good video card that can run the two secondary monitors which also enables my 30 inch to have all the vram available to it instead of dividing it three ways among three monitors.


I really just wanted to see if anyone else out there has the same issue with the same setup.

2008 mac pro and ATI 5770. I could run just the 5770 as an experiment to see if it still does it without the other 8800 installed but it might take days for it to happen.

Thanks for the input you guys and I am keeping this open to see if anyone else has had the problem that actually has the 5770 and a 2008 mac pro.

Jul 7, 2011 12:50 PM in response to Lance Mcvickar

I've been having the same issue lately. I keep my Mac Pro temps at about 85 degrees for the processors and around 81 degrees so I don't think it's temperature related. I was using a black Desktop. Thanks to Jazzimus for the tip on the less black the better. I tried the Leopard Desktop and still got a few sparkles but when I tried the Tiger Desktop it was perfect right away. Thanks again guys.

Problem with ATI 5770 and Mac Pro 2008, Problem with ATI 5770 and Mac Pro 2008

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