Monitor blacking out and flickering MacPro1,1

Most graphics card that old have died of overheating a while ago.

RE: Mac Pro silver tower (2006-2012) Replacement Graphics cards

1) Apple brand cards,

2) "sold in the Apple store" cards, and

3) "Mac Edition" cards ...

... show all the screens, including Boot up screens, Safe Mode, Installer, Recovery, debug screens, and Alt/Option boot screens. At this writing, these choices include:

1) Apple brand cards:

• Apple-firmware 5770, about US$250** works near full speed in every model Mac Pro, Drivers in 10.6.5. (This card has just been discontinued and is no longer available from Apple dealers. There may be some new, old stock still available at resellers)

• Apple-firmware 5870, about US$450

2) "sold in the Apple store" cards

• NVIDIA Quadro 4000 Fermi, about US$1200

• NVIDIA Quadro K5000 Kepler, about US$2500

3) "Mac Edition" cards -- REQUIRE 10.8.3 or later:

• SAPPHIRE HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 MAC Edition, about US$480** Vendor recommends Mac Pro 4,1

• EVGA GTX 680 Mac Edition, about US$600

The cards above require no more than the provided two 6-pin aux power connectors provided in the Mac Pro through 2012 model. Aux cables may not be provided for third-party cards, but are readily available.

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If you are Meet ALL of these:

• running 10.8.3 or later AND

• don't care about "no boot screens" etc AND

• can re-wire or otherwise "work out" the power cabling, THEN:

You can use many more cards, even most "PC-only cards".

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One more thing--

Flashed PC cards: There are a good many EFI flashed cards that offer boot screens and behave like official cards. "for more information about using and flashing non-Apple cards, please check out the various sites like Netkas (and others) that focus on and discuss what is known and available. (Not supported or endorsed by Apple.)"

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AHT has never found GPU problems.

If you take it out and look you might find one or two capacitors that have bulged.

If you had asked earlier, the Apple 5770 was still available adn would better support Lion.

At this point, there really is the 5870 ($449), or flash a 6870 PC card, or look into a PC GTX 550 type variety.

What graphics card are you using now, and what adapters and cables are you using to connect to what kind of port on your display? what is the optimum resolution of your display?

I can say that I got an XFX Radeon HD 6670 working in a MacPro1,1 but not with x16 under 10.6.8. I will try to update as I learn more and let you know if it is stable. I am using DVI connection have not tested the others. I did not have to Flash the card.

In order for it to work I had to leave it at the 3rd setting in the "Expansion Slot Utility" which is 3-x8 Lane 1-x1 Lane. I have the 6670 in slot 1 the bottom most slot and under this setting that is an x8 lane. The Utility tells you that the Graphics Card is running below the x16 mark but when I tried one of the x16 settings for slot 1 the card did not appear to work and I had to VNC in to change it back.

To find the "Expansion Slot Utility" and manually launch it goto /System/Library/CoreServices/

I have also heard but not tested that these PC Graphics Cards function better under higher Mac OS's and that HDMI may even work on this card in Lion or higher.