Mac Pro 3.1 (early 2008) New Graphics Card, What are the options?

Found out it was software. I installed a tweak to get the colored sidebar back, and it was causing problems. It works for my friend, so it could be a weird incompatibility thing. It still freezes rarely because Mountain Lion seems to want to access an external drive when I resize a Finder window sometimes, and disk access is not its own thread, so it hangs as an external hard drive wakes from sleep. I hope they fix this in Mavericks :/

I can't get my GTX 780 to work in my Mac Pro 3.1 2008.. The mac restarts a couple of times, then turn off.. Should it work? Is there something i have to install? I dont know what this EFI thing is...

Thanks a lot for your reply. is MB motherboard? I plugged the 2 and only 6-pin powercables into the gtx780.. I will try with external power tomorrow.. Could it be because i need to remove or to install old and new driver?

I followed your post in http://www.liftgammagain.com/forum/index.php?threads/about-gtx-780-in-mac-pro-an d-about-usb-3-0-vs-esata.1783/page-3

where you state that you managed to get a EVGA GTX 780 (standard edition, not overclocked) working in a Mac Pro 4.1, Mac OS X 10.8.4

Have you tried the same graphics card in your Mac Pro 3.1 (2008-model). I'm hoping to upgrade my 2008-model with the same type of card (fingers crossed). Also, do you have a direct link to the graphics card, since there are many different version around...

Thx

So d00dbro, did/do you have any issues with running the GTX 780 in the Mac Pro 3,1? Is it a standard PC-version of the GTX 780, like this:

http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=03G-P4-2781-KR

Or a flashed version, like MacVidCards supply..? Details please 🙂

I read posts here and there of the standard PC-version might work but that it reverts to PCI 1.0 in either MacOS or Window since the computer can't recognize the card properly.

I can always buy the GTX 680 Mac edition, worst case scenario, but it seems like such a bummer since it's more expensive and obviously not as fast as the 780... Also the 780 draws 250W compared to the 680's 195W. Wondering if that's an issue also..?

Thanks!

What about the PC motherboards that have EFI? How do they cope with the graphics cards? Do you know? Maybe they use a combo of BIOS and EFI. I dunno…

Thanks ScottieB for your great answers. I love the idea of putting a eVGA GTX 670 4GB SC in my early 2008 MacPro 3.1.

Will it work without being flashed EFI straight out of the box in OSX 10.10?

These links apparently are no longer valid. So say my graphics card died in my 3,1 and I sent it to Apple. What would they replace it with?

Apple's advice should be to put in the same underpowered over-priced failure-prone card that shipped in your Mac when new. Once a system is no longer sold new, they do not make any changes.

I don't know what that means. Sounds like you should be a PC user. Anyway I have an ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT which has worked without a problem since 2008.

With all those sold what did people replace them with? I'm talking about a simple replacemrnt. What does Apple replace them with if you send the Mac in for repair?

I just installed a GTX 650Ti Boost in my Mac Pro 3,1, and it works great in Mountain Lion. However, I'm kinda stuck now because I want to upgrade my main bootup disk to Mountain Lion (now that I can get off Snow Leopard), but the installer disc is 10.8, not 10.8.3, so I can't use it!

Can I put my old ATI Radeon HD 2600 back into PCI slot 3 of my Mac Pro, connect the DVI cables to that, and boot normally into the installation? Will it know to use that GPU and not the GTX I have in slot 1?

Yes you can. Just attach the monitors to the older card and os x will use that one. But you want to be careful of power draw.

I'm not familiar with that radeon card - if it uses any auxiliary power you may not be able to run both at the same time. But it's ok. You can swap out the old card, install os x and then put the new card back in. I keep my old 8800gt around for that very reason - any time I need the EFI boot screens I change out the cards. It is fine - OS X will recognize the new card once you swap it.

I have ordered the FSP BOOSTER X5 to power the card, will see if that works tomorrow.. It says that the gtx card need a minimum 600W power supply, and i dont know what power supply a mac pro 3.1 contains..

I made a post here, and a guy says it is impossible... http://www.liftgammagain.com/forum/index.php?threads/about-gtx-780-in-mac-pro-an d-about-usb-3-0-vs-esata.1783/#post-10774😟