Mac Pro 3.1 (early 2008) and nVIDIA Quadro FX5600

Hi all,

I am triying to install nVIDIA Quadro FX5600 on a Mac Pro 3.1 (early 2008).

Well, indeed I have been using this graphics card in this computer already, however, a few hours after installing the card, I updated the Mac OS, and there began the problems.

Characteristics:

-Mac Pro 3.1 (early 2008)

-2 x 2,8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon

-12GB 800 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM

Graphics cards:

-slot 1: ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT

-slot 2: nVIDIA Quadro FX5600

The story is a little bit long, however I think it is important to give the maximum information:

1-I purchased the nVIDIA Quadro FX5600, and took the computer and the card to an apple reseller to install it.

2-They installedit, physically, in slot 2, and left in slot 1 the ATI Radeon, the card included in the computer when I purchased it.

3-They told me that after installing the drivers in Mac OS 10.10.2, when restarting the computer after installing, they had kernel panic problems.

4-They installed the card in another Mac computer with Mac OS 10.9.5 to check if the card was compatible with Mac, and it worked perfectly.

5-And finally, "they say", that they repeated the same operation than in point 2 and 3, also in my computer, and this time they didn't have kernel panic problems. So I took the computer at home, ready to use my new graphics card 😀

6-When I arrived at home, I worked about 4/5 hours with the computer, and before ending the day and closing the computer, I installed two Mac updates. One of them was a security update and the other one an iMovie update. The first one worked, however the iMovie one didn't, it gave an error. I decided to give no importance and close the app store.

7-Just after closing the app store, it appeared a message from nVidia controller, saying that there was a new update. So I install it, and once installed, it recommended to restart the computer, so I restarted.

8-When the computer restarted, before loading the Mac OS desktop, they appeared the kernel panic problems, and seconds after the computer restarted automatically again. The same thing continuosly, all the time.

9-The computer's disk is divided into two parts, Mac OS and Windows 7 professional. So I decided to erase all the content in the Mac OS part and install the OS 10.10.2 again from zero (I have a copy in time machine of all my documents).

10-Once Mac OS 10.10.2 (14C1510) installed again, I have installed the Quadro & Geforce Mac OS X driver release 343.02.02 again which is the driver compatible with the operative system.

11-The same problem has occured, when restarting the computer after installing the drivers, the same problem as in point 3 occurs again.

12-I repeated the same operation as in point 9 and 10, however, this time, before restarting the computer after installing the nVIDIA drivers, I installed the CUDA 6.5.46 driver, and the same problem has occured.

The key is that the computer has been working with this graphics card, however, the story has turned crazy...

Anyone has experienced the same problems? Any clue about it?

Many thanks in advanced!