ATI Radeon 5770 in 2006 Mac Pro with Lion

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ATI Radeon 5770 in 2006 Mac Pro with Lion

Hit an issue with my 2006 Mac Pro when the video card died in late October. At that point I was running Lion and had kept on top of software updates. Being on a restricted budget, I have purchased and installed an ATI Radeon 5770 card from the Apple store as I cannot afford a new Mac Pro. I knew that before I did this there may be incompatability problems with this card and Lion on the older Mac Pros, and this seems to be the case.

However, having trawled through the forums it seems some users are able to run this card on 1.1 machines with Lion. So I am now wondering if I have another issue - I'd much rather stick with Lion if I can rather than revert to Snow Leopard. Now I have installed the card things seem fine with the display - the 30" cinema display no longer has blocks of pixels all over it. On boot up the screen is a pale grey, the Apple logo appears in the centre with the busy timer underneath. I also get a loading bar for about 20 seconds. This gets to about 20% then disappears. Everything sounds like the machine is booting normally but it just won't progress beyond this point. I have tried holding shift to boot it in safe mode but the same things happens.

If anyone can help point me in the right direction of what I should try next I'd be profoundly grateful!

Vinny

Mac Pro 2.66 Dual-Core, 4GB 667 MHz RAM

Posted on Nov 29, 2012 12:51 AM

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Answer 1

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Grant Bennet-Alder

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126,979 points

Nov 29, 2012 10:09 AM in response to Vinny Blood

I knew that before I did this there may be incompatibility problems with this card and Lion on the older Mac Pros,

Although some users have complained of problems, their wounds may be self-inflicted. Use of a non-Apple ATI 5770 or failure to upgrade to at least 10.6.5 are high on the list. The main "issue", if you can even call it that, is the card runs more slowly than its published benchmarks due to PCIe 1 slots in the Mac Pro 1,2 and 2,1.

I also get a loading bar for about 20 seconds. This gets to about 20% then disappears.

That progress bar is indicative of unresolved Hard Drive problems. You need to boot to an alternate source of software (Hold Command-R at startup for Recovery_HD if you are running later than 10.6.8) and check the SMART Status and then select Macintosh_HD or whatever you renamed it and ( Repair Disk ). Repeat until all problems are resolved or it gets stuck. If you need help, copy the EXACT error message back here.

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Answer 2

Vinny Blood Author

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Nov 30, 2012 1:06 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Grant - thank you so much for pointing me in the right direction. There was indeed a problem with the Mac-HD. Repair disc was unable to resolve the issue - but thankfully I had backed up on TM about a week before the graphics card failed. I restored from TM, and I am delighted to say I am typing this reply on my Mac instead of my PS3! 🙂

Hopefully this will keep my dear old 2006 machine going for a couple more years.

Thanks once again!

Vinny

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