Video Card upgrade for early 2008 MacPro

B & H Photo ran out of the Apple 5770s within about a week of Apple discontinuing them.

Genuine Apple cards have One DVI and two Mini DsiplayPort. There are some used cards on ebay as well as a whole flock of flashed PC cards (identifiable by their TWO DVI connectors). Flashed PC cards will generally not show any startup screens, Alt/Boot screens, Recovery mode, Safe Mode, or stand-alone Installer screens. First picture is when the Driver loads at the login screen.

The only reason to flash, is to have efi support, and that means boot screen, unflashed PC cards = no early video output.

hatter-

In 10.8.3 and later, you are right that some flashed cards will show the startup screens. But you need to shop very carefully, as features provided vary widely, depending on what was done to the card.

On older systems, you may get no picture at all unless the card is flashed.

Are you guys ready for some useful details and clarification?

As far as GPUs and EFI, there are 2 versions of cMP.

EFI32 (2006-7) and EFI64 (2008-12)

This matters for 100% of Nvidia EFI cards, they can only be one or the other.

The story is 100% different for AMD cards. They use something called "EBC EFI" * (Extended Byte Code) WHICH ALLOWS THEM TO FUNCTION ON EITHER SYSTEM. Note, the EFI has nothing, NADA, ZERO, ZILCH to do with OS on a HD.

You can verify this by pulling all your HD sleds out 1/2 inch and your EFI boot screen will still show up.

*6870/6970 is lone exception, Netkas used 64bit iMac EFI to make this work so it is 3,1 or later only*

EFI is a basic video driver for the card that interacts with the physical system before anything is loaded from HD or CD or whatever.

So, there are more facets to this. The ability to flash 5770 and 5870 was worked out by Netkas with a little help from myself some years back. AMD/Apple hard coded the display definitions into the EFI. The EFI lives a separate existence from the BIOS on a card. So, even using a cards native PC BIOS combined with the Mac EFI results in a flawed card. Since Apple had 2 @ MDP and a DVI on 5770/5870 and no PC cards came that way, we never got boot screen on the digital ports on PC cards. (there is a way tricking EDID onto opposite channel, not worth it)

So, flashed 5770 and 5870 cards only show boot screen in one place, on a DVI to VGA adapter. ONLY an analog boot screen. AMD EFI is like that.

As long as flashed card matches ports of original card, things went better. So flashed 2600, X1900, 3870, and 7950 can be basically perfect. But 4870 lost Dual Link DVI on flashed cards on one DVI port since Apple had MDP on that port and MDP only carries a legacy Single Link DVI. The 5770 and 5870 were far more problematic since they varied so much from Apple cards. 7950/70 are based on reference cards so possible to have same 4 ports as Apple 7950. Non-reference ones usually lose HDMI first, 2nd DVI port as well if they have one.

Here is where it gets tricky. The 7950 can show a beautiful EFI boot screen on ANY Mac Pro, including a 1,1 or 2,1. BUT..........without OS mods, no 1,1 or 2,1 can run an OS that supports these cards. As a final cruel bit of kneecapping, Apple had AMD ship these with a 10.7.5 driver disk...BUT THE 32 bit DRIVERS ON THIS DISK ARE BROKEN!!!! Any use of a 7950/70 on a 1,1 or 2,1 requires an OS mod. I have the Tiamo mod on a 2,1 here and use a 7950 with ease in 10.9.4. You swap 2 files and it acts like a standard machine, never think about it again.

Nvidia EFI defines monitors differently so it is possible to "fix" these via PC BIOS portion. But since they are all 64 bit starting with GTX285, you only get EFI bonus on 3,1 or later. So, easier to have a card with boot screens on any and all ports, but not on a 1,1 or 2,1.

As far as the use of UNFLASHED PC cards, if you Google "ATY_Init" you will see that it was a little kext written by Netkas a few years back that allowed the use of PC cards back in 10.6 (maybe earlier, I don't remember exactly). If OS X had drivers, this little kext allowed the cards to work. All that happened recently was that both AMD and Nvidia allowed this function to be built into their drivers. They can "self initialize" without an EFI or helper kext.

And here is the part that is so poorly understood due to the Apple "mystique" of exoticness. There were only 2 Mac GPUs for Mac Pro that ran off just an EFI. They were the X1300 and X1900XT. (X1300 an Xserve card mostly) Apple must have found this to be a royal pain and gave up. (They had to include the PC BIOS in the main machine EFI to have it work in bootcamp)

So EVERY Apple card after, from lowly 7300GT to vaunted Quadro K5000 uses an EFI to get those boot screens then hands off running the card to the PC BIOS. Each and every card has an EFI and a PC BIOS. Clock speeds, fan profile, etc are all run from PC BIOS. This is why it was so easy to have these cards start working without EFI and instead rely on PC BIOS, they WERE ANYWAY.

Wow, just had my buddy point out it looked like I was writing an encyclopedia. Just hate to see urban legends/myths get propagated. I imagine I'll repost this on some other sites too, may help some people.

As far as OP's question. He has the option of any AMD card that is flashed, but should be clear with seller about what ports show boot screens versus which ones start working after driver loads. For 5770/5870 I suggest getting used Apple OEM cards unless you have a VGA display in daily use. Flashed 6870 will only have boot screen on DVI IIRC. 7950 you ma as well buy the real Sapphire card as a way of thanking them for making in first place.

The real question is will anyone offer one last EFI card for Mac Pros? 10.10 carries R9 290X drivers (Hawaii) but without an EFI .....no boot screens.

Latest 10.10 Nvidia drivers carry GTX750 (Maxwell) drivers, but again, if no EFI is ever released, we already have the last boot screen cards.

Send some nice emails to AMD/Nvidia.

BTW, last addition to "GPU Mythbusters"...the newer cards for PC all carry "UEFI" which is 100% useless to a Mac Pro, either version. So our Mac EFI probably won't work in a UEFI board and a UEFI GPU will NOT work in EFI mode on a Mac Pro. The UEFI gets ignored and the PC BIOS works normally.

Any questions?

That is great information (for folks technical enough to understand it)!

But what does that mean for a novice user with a dead card who needs a replacement?

It sounds like that means the 32-bit EFI Macs should forget about NVIDIA Cards (unless running 64on32 or equivalent)? Is that right?

What else does that tell the novice user about selecting aftermarket cards?

Not familiar with 64on32 but anything that is on a disk has no effect on boot screens.

For an EFI32 Mac (Model Identifier 1,1 or 2,1) there are 3 official Mac Nvidia cards:

1. 7300GT

2. Quadro 4500

3. Nvidia 8800GT

And even here it gets tricky, there were 2 versions of 8800GT, the EFI32 one and EFI64 one for 2008 and later machines. Either one can be flashed to be the other but RESERACH PRE PURCHASE IS THE KEY !!!!!

Avoid a seller who gives generalized answers like "it works in mine, it'll work in yours" unless they can provide details on the machine they have.

It IS very confusing. Sadly, the other 2 choices are not supported in OS after 10.7.

So for those using the Tiamo boot.efi mod to run 10.8 or 10.9 they are bad choices.

MacVidCards created a few additional Nvidia options for EFI32 Macs.

1. GT120 (Dual DVI)

2. Quadro 5600

3. Quadro 4600

4. A variety of 8800GTS cards in 320/640/768 Meg sizes

5. 8800GT 1GB

A variety of people now sell these cards, again the CRUCIAL part is research and asking questions. And keep in mind, these are all the cards that give boot screens. Starting in 10.7.3 or so, Nvidia drivers started self-initing. (For further details on this functionality, check at MacRUmours in the Mac Pro section, there is a sticky with ALL of the details) So you can use a EFI32 GT120 for boot screens and run a PC GTX680 for everything else.

I strongly advise people to keep an EFI card handy. When you end up with system trouble, if you can't get to desktop, you will only see black with a non-efi card.

Also note, that if your goal is boot screens and Mercury Playback engine support in Adobe products from same card you are further limited to GT120 1GB EFI32 or (much better) the 8800GT 1GB. While many other cards above can meet the 768 Mb cutoff, only the GT120 and 8800GT meet the CUDA version cutoff line.

THE ABSOLUTE CRUCIAL PIECE IS TO ASK QUESTIONS AND BE 100% CERTAIN THAT THE SELLER IS OFFERING AN EFI32 CARD THAT SHOWS BOOT OPTIONS IF YOU HOLD OPTION KEY DOWN AT BOOT TIME.

There is much mis-information about (in this thread even) and the ability to self-init has fooled some into thinking they have a "Mac card".

The crucial piece of an EFI card is that it can show that list of available hard drives if you hold option key at boot. There are EFI64 versions of all those cards I listed above except for 7300GT and Quadro 4500 so just finding a "Mac 8800GT with boot screen support" is meaningless if you can't verify the EFI32 part.

64 on 32 is a little helper program that makes Tiamo's booter even easier to use.

http://oemden.com/?page_id=531

The 7300 and 8800 don't have very good reliability records, so I am not sure they are serious contenders for a reliable replacement.

So for NVIDIA Cards, that seems to leave the GT120 (dual DVI) and the Quadros you mentioned if you shop very carefully.

Hi folks,

I recently (Jan 2015) installed an Nvidia GTX660 PC card (PCI 3.0 / 2GB DDR5) into an Early 2008 Mac Pro (3,1). I do not have a boot screen, the mac chimes on start-up as usual, and the desktop loads; the card works perfectly otherwise. I do not use a login screen. The card is listed as 'NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2048 MB' in the About This Mac window. I am running Yosemite 10.10.1.

How did I know that this card might load up the desktop and (other than the absence of a boot screen) function fine? I looked at the graphics chipsets put in the iMacs in 2012, and saw that the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR5 memory comes as standard. My reasoning was that Apple already has the operating system drivers working for the GTX660M in an iMac (except for a notebook version of the GTX660). Therefore the GTX660 drivers are included in the OS. Therefore there was a high probability, according to my not totally foolproof reasoning, that the drivers would also work for a full-size card installed a Mac Pro 9 (3,1-5,1).

If you don't need a boot screen, and want additional options to consider for an updated graphics card for a Mac Pro (3.1-5.1) consider following the trail of the graphics chipsets used in the iMacs. You might need to do some investigation first to determine other people's experiences of using these cards with Yosemite. Here are the graphics chipset descriptions from Apple support web pages about the iMac models released from 2011 to 2014:

• 2011 iMac used: (27" used AMD Radeon HD 6770 and HD6970) (21.5" used AMD Radeon HD6750 and HD6770)
• 2012 iMac used: (27" used NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M) (21.5" used NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M and GT650M)
• 2013 iMac used: (27" used NVIDIA GeForce GTX780)
• 2014 iMac used: (27" used AMD Radeon R9 290X and AMD Radeon R9 295X)

If I had the cash to purchase each of these cards, I would be more than happy to test their compatibility and report on the findings!
Best of success with your upgrading.

Hi Jim

I am considering upgrading my video card and have the same machine as you. You mention you don't get a boot screen and you don't use a login screen. If you have a login screen, would it show up after the boot is complete?

Thanks

-- Scotte

you have to stay with pre-GTX 6xx so look for a 5xx and definitely check with MacVidCards

you have to stay with pre-GTX 6xx

What determines that you have to do this?

because your is a 2010 his is a 2008. He should keep the original to install properly OS X if need be, the 5770 will install but open GL will be null during the install. Other than that it will run fin.

I was fishing for the exact parameters, e.g., the 2008 and previous are limited to the pre-GTX 6xx because of {PCI slot implementation, firmware, memory size, Power, other issues} so that I could give accurate advice going forward.

can you fill me in?

When someone jumps into thread and has a 2006-7 like this:

GTX 660 in a MacPro? Will the fact that my PCIe bus is 1.0 prevent it from working in my Mac?

I cannot find where I read about GTX 5xx vs 6xx and Mac Pro's with EFI32 😟

Some research I dug up -

Sticky: Frequently Asked Questions About NVIDIA PC (non-EFI) Graphics Cards ( 1 2 3 4 5 6 ... Last Page)

• Best: Currently, the highest-performing graphics card that can provide boot screens in a 2006/2007 Mac Pro is a properly-Mac-flashed AMD Radeon R9 280X 3GB/AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition (~10-15% faster clocks from the AMD Radeon 7970). This does not include the 6GB version of the R9 280X which has issues when flashed for a Mac Pro. MacVidCards sells a fully Mac Pro-ready AMD R9 280X 3GB card and also offers flashing services for customer-supplied cards.
• Note that if for some reason you still need to boot OS X Lion or early Mountain Lion versions that all AMD Tahiti-based cards (7950/7970 and R9 280/280X) are only properly supported by OS X 10.8.3 or higher, although there are OS X 10.7.5-10.8.2 AMD Tahiti graphics card device driver kernel extensions that may work in a 2006/2007 Mac Pro when used with tiamo's boot loader.

A properly-Mac-flashed R9 280X will only work in Lion with a 64-bit kernel, new 64-bit AMD Tahiti kexts, and tiamo's bootloader. If you're willing to do that, the R9 280X should be fine.

But if out-of-box Lion with a 32-bit kernel is your requirement, a real Apple OEM ATI Radeon 5780 is the fastest with boot screens. Flashed PC 5780s only show a boot screen via a VGA adapter on the lower DVI port.

There are 32-bit AMD Tahiti kexts (for a 7950/7970/R9 280/280X) that are meant to work with Lion, but I've never seen anyone able to get them to work.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1847987

FAQ: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1440150

Hi Scotte,

Yes, I do see a login screen. I tested it by switching the system preferences to show a login screen, and rebooted. The login screen appeared about 30 seconds after rebooting, and after I tapped-in my password the desktop loaded immediately.

On rare occasions, when I start the machine I do see a grey boot screen, however it is only for a second or two. Usually I see a blank/black screen, and then the monitor receives an input signal from the mac, and the desktop shows on the monitor.

The specs of my machine according to the About panel, and Hardware Overview panel are:

• OSX 10.10.2 Yosemite
• Mac Pro (Early 2008) (3,1)
• 2 x 3GHz Quad-Core Xeon
• 16GB 800 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM
• 240GB Sandisk SSD - SATAIII
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX660 Ti 2048MB
• Boot ROM Version: MP31.006C.B05
• Bus speed: 1.6GHz

I have had the card running for the past month with zero problems, and the mac is left on for most of the day, and sometimes put to sleep. The mac sleeps and awakens from sleep free of problems, and the GTX660Ti card is much quieter than the stock Nvidia 8800GT 512MB card.

I hope that this information helps you!

James