Installed new ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB display card, Seems not fully functional!

Thanks for the info. I got my newer early 2009 Mac Pro (4,1) running and it has 64GB of RAM. The ATI Radeon 5770 is still acting funny. Oh well, the products does state that it's for Mac Pro mid 2010.

Chiravouth Noradom-

the products does state that it's for Mac Pro mid 2010

There are two reasons for that:

1) the pre-2008 models have PCIe 1 slots, and it WILL run a bit slower than the typical benchmarks.

2) Apple's policy is to only test with what is currently shipping. When the 5770 came out, only the model you referenced was currently shipping. That's what they tested it with. They only recommend what they have actually tested.

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I continue to believe your particular card that is "acting funny" has some problems.

There is a tech note (why they don't have links on product pages to knowledge base?) about HDMI audio or something. VERY minor.

The 2010 is a tweaked 2009 with better support for processors and DDR3 1333 and Apple doesn't ship firmware updates once a new model is out - some people do use 2010 firmware on their 2009s in part to use W3680 in the past (popular $600 upgrade to have 6-core 3.33 cpu).

Something else at work.

Try 10.6.8 or clean Lion, your two best. (dual boot if you need Lion or later and keep 10.6.8 for work and production).

Upgrades carry old "stuff" that you may wish you didn't.

I think so, too. I began to suspect it's a defected card. Don't understand why it worked perfectly on Snow Leopard. My current early 2009 Mac Pro (4,1) runs on Mountain Lion. Don't get it.

I did a fresh install (not upgrade) on my early 2009 Mac Pro (4,1) but with Migration Asistant being used. This time I will try on a second hard drive and re-install again without using Migration Asistant and see what happen. 5770 is an awesome card. I did a Cinebench test and it yeilds at 27.46 fps vs. 14.04 fps on stock video card that came with this Mac.

No go. Fresh Mountain Lion installed on second hard drive with nothing else on it. Symptom still persists. I gave up. I put the card back to Mac Pro 2,1 with Snow Leopard and that's the only configuration where it works.

I changed the dead gaphic Card on an early 2008 Mac Pro to The same ATI Radeon HD 5770 you mentioned.

It worked so well that I bought an LED Cinema Display to go with it.

Now If I run System Information ->PCI Cards , I get exactly the same text which puzzled you, with the mysterious Hoolock Parent.

I guess this has something to see with the fact that the card takes 2 slots on the back of the beast and that you can connect anoyher display to it.

I don't worry since everything works hyper well. I suggest you do the same.

If you like the ATI 5770 performance, you should check out nVidia's GTX 680 ... oh wait, nevermind, can only do that on a PC 😉

Who knows, maybe some day Apple will keep up with industry wide hardware changes and stop hiding behind the false claim of "stability" ... but I doubt it.

Just remember that OSX (Mountain Lion) is stuck at OpenGL 3.2 ... which is a very old version of OpenGL (which is currently at OpenGL 4.3 on the PC side). OpenGL 3.2 is about equivalent to DX9c (released in 2004) Win7 supports DX11 ... so graphics wise Apple is about 7 years behind the curve.

Just Sayin'

MacPro is a joke. Luckily I don't own one at home, only use it at work. It's supposed to be upgradable but the lack of driver-support is no funny business when you invested $6000-$8000 on the hardware. MacPro is disposable, not upgradable. The lesson here, max out your video card when order it online for full compatibility down the road when upgrading the latest OS. This is because if you are installing a hardware that the original configuration is not supported, you are taking a huge chance when upgrading your OS.