Can a nVidia Quadro FX4500 graphics card work on a MacPro 1,1 running OS 10.6.8?

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Level 1

9 points

Can a nVidia Quadro FX4500 graphics card work on a MacPro 1,1 running OS 10.6.8?

I have a Mac Pro 1,1 running OS 10.6.8 (1st-generation 2.66MHz dual Quad core) and my old video card (a nVidia GeForce 7300 GT) failed due to two blown capacitors. I bought a replacement video card (a nVidia Quadro FX 4500) that is a refurbished original MacPro 1,1-compatible card (not a flashed PC card).

When I installed the new card, it boots and the screen appears properly, but none of the card acceleration works and the card shows in system profiler as only having 9MB of VRAM (when the card has 512MB) and the video is sluggish and not calibrated.

If I restart from a hard disk running a non-updated version of 10.6, the card works great, shows up in system profiler correctly, and is fully calibratable.

There seems to be a driver problem introduced somewhere between 10.6 and 10.6.8. Is there any way to make the Quadro card work with 10.6.8? If not, do you know the highest level of system upgrade I can install where it will still work?

Thanks for your help.

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), NEC PA241W LCD Display

Posted on Jan 4, 2013 6:56 PM

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Answer 1

jay902 Author

Level 1

9 points

Jan 5, 2013 12:08 PM in response to jay902

The problem seems to be fixed.

For the benefit of anyone who might experience something similar:

I think I messed up the nVidia drivers when I was trying to limp along with the broken 7300GT card. I had removed the nvidia drivers from the system/library/extensions folder to disable the 7300's graphics acceleration so I could keep going at a basic level until I got the 'new' card. I put the drivers back in their proper place when I installed the new card, but I think the system didn't view them as having been properly installed, so they weren't active and the display drivers didn't load properly with the FX4500.

I ended up reinstalling the 10.6 system from the install DVD and then updating the software to 10.6.8. This restored the drivers and the display is working properly now.

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Answer 2

numan

Level 1

5 points

Apr 29, 2014 4:41 PM in response to jay902

I hope you see this over a year later...

I am indeed having similar driver issues with this card.

As a starving artist type, I buy evil bay specials and acquired a MacPro1,1 2.66 "quad" with a working stock GeForce 7300GT however, my G5 that's only a year older experienced graphics related issues which prompted me to at least "upgrade" to an Intel-based Mac. At least I can update Safari now. Yay. : \

So now I have a MacPro1,1 "original" and bought a used (of course) FX 4500 for it.

I figured that I'd swap out my cards and keep the GeForce as a spare. That's where my problems started.

nVidia does not have drivers available for Mac for the Quadro FX 4500 despite every Apple related community thread pointing to that card as an officially compatible upgrade/special order card which is not only totally confusing but IMHO quite asinine.

My question to you is this: will I have to take the arduous path of reinstalling my truckload of music apps, yea, even my entire system if I "downgrade" back to 10.6.3 from my retail disc? I have the original 10.4.7 disc as well. (The guy kept everything!) Does the 10.6.3 disc have the proper drivers that may be destroyed when Software Update brings the system up to .6.8?

This FX 4500 is recoginzed by System Profiler as a "G70 Board- q348-0" with nvidia listed as vendor but won't display my system but only lights up the displays with the blue-grey background and no Apple or "booting" indicator. That's when the Quadro is the only card in the machine.

However, when the oem GeForce card is sitting next to it in slot 2 and both DVI cables are in the Quadro, I get both displays but the "main" display is on the second and vice versa and the Quadro's fan is slow enough to almost count the fan blades as it turns despite Expansion Slot Utility claiming it's running at full speed and again, unless I have BOTH cards installed, I get nothing but empty blue-grey screens.

I did not mess around with any previous drivers and the ones I downed from nVidia are quite wrong as I've discovered. I downed the "Quadro 4000 for Mac" drivers assuming that it was a 4000 *SERIES* similar to the PC counterpart, for example, when you need a printer driver or something. Silly me.

I'll take this to the community now to see if I have a paperweight or if at least I can flip it.

Thanks Peace Blessings

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