What is the best Video Card I can get for an Early 2009 Mac Pro?

- it's OS 10.6.8

- had only one cord to attach card to board, so I had to remove original card and tried booting with just the new card.

[is there anyway to have both these cards work together? given that there are only 2 6 pin connections on the board?]

card was in #1 slot (lowest position) where the old one was.

I don't think I got the chime... certainly not the apple logo. I think I got nothing and had to hold the power button down to shut it off.

I've since taken the card back because the store policy was 14 day return. I Ordered a 2nd 6pin PCI power cord but it will not be here until end of Aug, so I could have been stuck with the card if the power is not problem.

side of the package said 960 wants 400 watts.

is this not a Mac compatible card?

they tried to sell me on a smaller card (with one fan) - still required 400 watts but had a 6 pin connection but I didn't take it till I get more info.

Not with 10.6.. The first ink in my previous reply includes:

What OS versions will work?

In order to boot with an NVIDIA PC card, you need to have:

• 10.7.4 with the 270.00.00f06 driver installed
• 10.7.5
• 10.8 and beyond

That is, all versions from 10.7.5 and beyond (including 10.8.*, 10.9.* and 10.10.*) will work with NVIDIA PC cards out-of-the-box.

Note that the Fermi generation cards work with Lion, but in almost all cases the Kepler cards require Mountain Lion. You may find a GK107-based card that boots in 10.7.5, but it is highly recommended that you use Mountain Lion since there appears to be much better driver support in that OS in general.

To be clear, the stock Apple drivers now contain basic support for all currently-shipping cards. This means that you no longer have to swap out the card when doing a Software Update to the next OS version. In all cases, it is recommended that you update to the corresponding NVIDIA web driver, as those drivers tend to have more bug fixes and/or performance improvements than the stock Apple drivers.

The 400 watts is for the computer power supply, not what the card needs.

Was/is the original card a GT 120? That came with my 2009. If moved that to slot #2 and installed a PC 5770 card in slot 2. I am running Yosemite. Nothing on the 5770's screen until the drives load which is right before the login screen.

original card

Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT

Type: GPU

Bus: PCIe

Slot: Slot-1

PCIe Lane Width: x16

VRAM (Total): 512 MB

Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)

Device ID: 0x0611

Revision ID: 0x00a2

ROM Revision: 3233

my machine came with higher OS version. Not sure if it was called Yosemite but it was unstable with my software, FCP suite 7 and Adobe Creative Suite Cs6. I was told by downgrading, the software would work better so I did. Since the computer came with no start up disks, I cannot go back to the newer OS.

Since the computer came with no start up disks, I cannot go back to the newer OS.

Not correct.

Once you have 10.6.8 installed, you can re-download:

any other operating systems showing on your Purchases page on the Mac App Store.

or download:

a version of 10.7 Lion available by purchase at the Apple Online store, and fulfilled in three days by an email access code and instructions provided by email.

even if I upgrade, I think my programs will not work. I was having problems with both adobe and apple packages.

Yes, many older apps were developed for the old Power PC processors and only run on an Intel Macs with Rosetta. 10.6 was the last OSX version to included Rosetta

Upgrading to 10.7 and above, don't forget Rosetta!

GTX960 requires 10.10.3 and Nvidia Web Driver

not willing to upgrade my OS, since that would require changing all my software, so what 4GB card can I use with my system and OS 10.6.8?

None that I know of. They just were not available when 10.6 was developed

what about flashing? can a 960 be flashed and work?

Googling did not get hits on flashing a 960

IIf you are married to 10.6.8 you are also married to cards of that era.

a Flashed 960 would just show you a lovely bootscreen before crashing since OS would have no idea what to do with that card.

best Nvidia card for 10.6.8 are the GTX470/480

the OS itself was limited to 2GB GPUs

So what you are saying is the only way out of this, is to upgrade OS, then change all my software to match, and get a better card?

what performance difference would I notice from GTX470/480 compared to 960?

and even if did change the OS, you are saying I cannot put more than 2GB card?

rendering a 5 minute video for example, what time difference would there be? Are we talking seconds or much longer?

"I also created partititons for OS 7.x, OS 8.x, and OS 9.x ..."

Are you saying you are running those OSs on your Mac Pro?