I have a mid 2010 intel Mac Pro and one of my video cards is an AMD Radeon HD 7950. When I look that card up on AMD's site, it says it's a PC video card. I'm wondering if I can put any "PC" video card into my Mac. With Mac's now having integrated video, I fear that I'll never find a "Mac" video card made new again, so I'm hoping I can purchase any card and make it work.
Thank you!
Mac Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10)
It should work but you will not see anything on the screen until all the drivers are loaded during the boot up process. That applies to Lion and later.
User Tip: Mac Pro silver tower (2006-2012) Replacement Graphics cards
That's really awesome to know, thank you! Now I have two video cards driving four monitors - if I have one "mac version" card and one PC card, will I still get the boot screen on the "mac" card and just not on the other? That way I can have my cake and eat it too 🙂.
put down that fork for a minute. You don't get to have your cake just yet.
You need power for those cards. There are only two six-pin aux power connectors inside your Mac. No eight-pins. No others.
The "approved method" for getting more power than that is to install a 450W power supply in the second Optical Drive slot, and make way for the power cables inside your chassis. Great project!
I have it running right now by using a splitter on the two existing 6 pin aux power connections. I'll research the 2nd power supply option, I've never heard of that before - but will I still be able to get the boot screen with the second card? Would I just have to make sure my "main" mac card is in slot #1?
The main problem folks run into is when you start to do a Simulation or Ray Tracing session, your Mac powers down from power overdraw. Mac OS X does not know where the power comes from, and does not care.
The boot screen comes up on genuine Mac card that is set as the Primary display -- the one with the tiny white MenuBar in this pane:
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Ok so hold up... I can install "any" graphics card in my Mac Pro (mine is a 2008) and it will work just fine minus the boot screen? If that's true it opens up a whole new world of possibilities.
I know I'm a year late to this post (sorry about that) but can someone please confirm this? Any card will work in my 2008 Mac Pro?
There are some caveats, and some things that don't work with each other. Read this article carefully:
User Tip: Mac Pro silver tower (2006-2012) Replacement Graphics cards
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The Sapphire 7950 is available in a Mac specific edition version, and there is the standard PC version, both work in a Mac but only the Mac edition shows a screen during the boot phase. It is possible to 'flash' the firmware on a PC version card to turn it in to a Mac edition card.
The same applies to various other cards in particular the Nvidia GTX-680, GTX-780, and GTX-980. However while an accomplished user can do the GTX-680 themselves the others need to be done by MacVidCards.com
Note: The GTX-680 can still be bought as an official Mac edition card but the 780 and 980 cannot, for those either you stick with the PC versions, or go to MacVidCards.com
As previously mentioned for running multiple cards you will likely need an additional power supply, for example the built-in power supply can only support one Sapphire 7950 or one GTX-680. There are various ways to do this such as using an external PCI chassis which has its own power supply, or fitting an internal auxiliary power supply inside the Mac Pro which goes where the optical drives would normally be, or using an external PC style power supply.
Have a look at this as one example http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1472518
or http://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2011/20110406_1-PowerHungryVideoCards--howto .html
PC Video Card in Mac Pro
