Alan Wood

Q: Is this is a good card for my 2008 Mac Pro?

My originial Nvidia card from my 3,1 early 2008 Mac Pro conked out. Thank God it was only the video card and not a logic board again which I have had replaced twice. With Applecare expired that would have been horrible news.

 

Anyway, not looking for the baddest or best since not a big gamer anymore. Looking to stay under $150 and also looking for a card that will be highly compatible without any major hassles.

 

Came across this one and wanted to ask advice here before I buy. It is $119.99 after $20 rebate. Is this a good card that will work out of the box? Haven't shopped for a video card in a long time so completely out of the loop.

 

EVGA SSC 01G-P4-3652-KR GeForce GTX 650 Ti 1GB

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=14-130-839&SortField=0&SummaryTy pe=0&Pagesize=10&PurchaseMark=&SelectedRating=-1&VideoOnlyMark=False&VendorMark= &IsFeedbackTab=true&Page=2#scrollFullInfo

Mac Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Mar 20, 2013 2:55 PM

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Q: Is this is a good card for my 2008 Mac Pro?

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  • by Kappy,Solvedanswer

    Kappy Kappy Mar 20, 2013 2:59 PM in response to Alan Wood
    Level 10 (271,184 points)
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    Mar 20, 2013 2:59 PM in response to Alan Wood

    Yes, that's a good card. A compromise of decent performance and price. I have the GTX 650 and it works well for me. The Ti has better performance than mine so you will be happy with it.

  • by Alan Wood,

    Alan Wood Alan Wood Mar 20, 2013 3:01 PM in response to Kappy
    Level 1 (35 points)
    Mar 20, 2013 3:01 PM in response to Kappy

    Thanks for the very fast reply, one more question I forgot to ask. Should I dowload this?

     

    http://www.nvidia.com/object/macosx-304.00.05f02-driver.html

     

    Running 10.8.3 btw.

  • by The hatter,

    The hatter The hatter Mar 20, 2013 3:05 PM in response to Alan Wood
    Level 9 (60,935 points)
    Mar 20, 2013 3:05 PM in response to Alan Wood

    If he says yes, great and there us GTX support out of the box? I have seen others with issues though on MACRUMORS forum with 660 and TI and you dobwant 8.3, maybe because a 650M us used in other Macs it works well but,  boot screen ?

  • by Kappy,Helpful

    Kappy Kappy Mar 20, 2013 3:12 PM in response to Alan Wood
    Level 10 (271,184 points)
    Desktops
    Mar 20, 2013 3:12 PM in response to Alan Wood
  • by Alan Wood,

    Alan Wood Alan Wood Mar 20, 2013 3:25 PM in response to Kappy
    Level 1 (35 points)
    Mar 20, 2013 3:25 PM in response to Kappy

    Thanks Kappy. So now worries with any issues as the The Hatter seemed to imply? Anything I need to be aware of? Boot screen not showing up or other things like that? Just want to be aware in advance what to expect.

  • by Kappy,

    Kappy Kappy Mar 20, 2013 6:12 PM in response to Alan Wood
    Level 10 (271,184 points)
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    Mar 20, 2013 6:12 PM in response to Alan Wood

    Frankly, I can't understand what he is saying. It makes no sense to me.

  • by Alan Wood,

    Alan Wood Alan Wood Mar 20, 2013 6:46 PM in response to Kappy
    Level 1 (35 points)
    Mar 20, 2013 6:46 PM in response to Kappy

    Neither could I except the part about boot screen issues which I had read about some other Nvidia cards havng that I hoped to avoid. I guess with over 53,000 posts I gave him the benefit of the doubt. But you have a very similar card with no issues which is good enough for me. Anyway, thanks again will buy this card and report back here once installed.

  • by Kappy,Helpful

    Kappy Kappy Mar 20, 2013 6:52 PM in response to Alan Wood
    Level 10 (271,184 points)
    Desktops
    Mar 20, 2013 6:52 PM in response to Alan Wood

    The boot screen issue is pretty well known. I have an original Mac Pro in which I put a Radeon HD 5770 non-Apple card. There was no video until the Desktop was deployed. A bit disconcerting. I happened to have a monitor with both DVI and VGA inputs so I ran a VGA cable and DVI cable to the card. When the computer booted the gray screen displayed but in VGA mode. At least that made it possible to use startup commands. You could give that a try if you have a monitor with a VGA port.

  • by Alan Wood,

    Alan Wood Alan Wood Mar 20, 2013 7:14 PM in response to Kappy
    Level 1 (35 points)
    Mar 20, 2013 7:14 PM in response to Kappy

    Ah okay, gotcha. I used to know the ins and outs of all video cards but haven't shopped for one in 5 years nor read much about them until today. I have a dual monitor set up with an ATI HD 2600 XT. I need to use 3 ports, 2 for my monitors and one to my HDTV which is why I want a new card since my old Nvidia just gave out. Plus that ATI card is really slow and I kept it just in case for what just happened. So maybe with the ATI card still installed it will still show the boot screen on that monitor in case I want to boot single user mode and do a fsck -fy for example.

     

     

    Does that also effect doing a reboot with Option selected too? I would just buy a Mac specific card but they seem far pricier and older models. Looked at those two guys on Ebay specializing in Mac cards referred by Rob from Barefeats but nothing too appealing at this price point. So a blank boot until desktop is a small price to pay.

  • by Kappy,

    Kappy Kappy Mar 20, 2013 7:44 PM in response to Alan Wood
    Level 10 (271,184 points)
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    Mar 20, 2013 7:44 PM in response to Alan Wood

    Yes, if there's no boot screen to see you cannot use OPTION booting.

  • by Alan Wood,

    Alan Wood Alan Wood Mar 20, 2013 8:26 PM in response to Kappy
    Level 1 (35 points)
    Mar 20, 2013 8:26 PM in response to Kappy

    I realized that was a stupid question after I posted but got distracted by a phone call and forgot to edit it out.

     

    Anyways, very good link with tons of info for others looking to update their Mac Pro with a non-EFI Nvidia card.

     

    http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1440150&highlight=gtx+650+ti

  • by Kappy,

    Kappy Kappy Mar 20, 2013 8:36 PM in response to Alan Wood
    Level 10 (271,184 points)
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    Mar 20, 2013 8:36 PM in response to Alan Wood

    Well, I think you know what your options are as well as what will be missing when you use one of these cards in a Mac Pro. They do have VGA ports, so if your monitor supports it then you can basically drive both the VGA and DVI sides with the same card.

     

    Oh, one thing I did forget to mention is be sure to check the type of connector on the card and what you have on your monitor. This might dictate a cable change. I recently bought a new monitor that used a dual-link DVI port so I had to buy a new cable to use. Took me a while to figure out why the cable I had already wouldn't work. Silly me.

  • by The hatter,

    The hatter The hatter Mar 21, 2013 5:00 AM in response to Alan Wood
    Level 9 (60,935 points)
    Mar 21, 2013 5:00 AM in response to Alan Wood

    There seemed to me to be so many variables with various models, whether you got video, what ports will function as sometimes only one DVI, that there is no simple answer on some. With the GTX 670 it seems easier, or just check and go with one from Macvidcards. Not all Nvidia cards have same size firmware and features and of course is there a device ID for it to be recognized and load extensions.

     

    So even if it has two DVI you may not get output from both.

     

    There is a lot of reading and information in a couple of threads on MacRumors Mac Pro forum.

  • by d00dbro,

    d00dbro d00dbro Jul 18, 2013 10:18 AM in response to Alan Wood
    Level 1 (55 points)
    Jul 18, 2013 10:18 AM in response to Alan Wood

    I got the EVGA NVIDIA GTX 650 Ti Boost. The reviews said that it was kinda noisy, but it's not, at least not compared to the whining lawnmower Radeon HD 2600 I had. People have said that using a non-Mac GPU will not allow you to use bootup keys. Despite there being no bootup screen, I CAN use bootup keys! I got it into Target Disk Mode normally by holding "t" at bootup, for example. Option might even work, but you wouldn't be able to see what you're doing.

     

    The only real problem I've noticed so far is that it doesn't seem to want to sleep when I tell the computer to sleep through the  menu. I'm going to look into it further.

     

    Does anyone know if there are NVIDIA drivers or control panels we could install for Mac? I know that in Windows, you have to use those to change any display settings, but they also give you other options and typically the GPU temperature. The Displays prefpane is supposed to do the job of a GPU control panel, but it lacks card-specific features.

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