I have a 2010 mac pro which came with the Nvideo GT120 video card. I upgraded to the Radeon 7950 video card. Problem is, the 7950 won't run 10.6 which I have on a separate hard drive. Can I insert the Nvideo card into slot 3 or 4 (from the bottom going up) and will it work for running 10.6. Also, with an adaptor, will it run 1 and/or 2 crt monitors off of the GT 120 card.
Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
Yes, you can, though you need to change the GT120 installed slot to 16 lane with /System/Library/CoreServices/Expansion Slot Utility.app.
Yes, you can, though you need to change the GT120 installed slot to 16 lane with /System/Library/CoreServices/Expansion Slot Utility.app.
This
Mac Pro (Early 2008 to Mid 2012): About the PCI Express slots - Apple Support
includes:
Mac Pro (Early 2009), Mac Pro (Mid 2010), and Mac Pro (Mid 2012)
The Mac Pro (Early 2009), Mac Pro (Mid 2010), and Mac Pro (Mid 2012) computers implement PCI Express revision 2.0 for all four slots. Slots 1 and 2 are x16 slots, and slots 3 and 4 are x4 slots. As with the Mac Pro (Early 2008), placing a revision 1 card in a revision 2.0 slot works and results in a revision 1 link.
The Expansion Slot Utility is not required for these configurations, since the number of lanes for each slot are permanently set.
I would just move the GT 120 to slot 2. My 2009 Pro has a PC 5770 card in slot 1 and a GT 120 in slot 2.
lllaassrecommendation of slot 2 (counting from the bottom) will get you the best performance.
But I think you should be able to get it to operate in any slot, because they sold a custom-order configuration of that Mac Pro with a GT120 in each slot for driving 8 displays.
" a 2010 mac pro which came with the Nvideo GT120"
Someone "downgraded" your 5,1 then
Kaz-k (and others who attempted to help):
Thanks for the help. Kaz, I need a little more information for what you are attempting to help me with, where do I go for system. To the others, the 7950 occupies the first two slots from the bottom so my choices to insert the GT120 card are slots 3,4 or 5. The person I bought the computer from did not down grade it, I had purchased the 7950 independently to install after they sent it to me and he put in the GT120 for me in case the 7950 was held up on delivery. Then when he found out that I wanted to install the hard drive from my older mac mini with 10.6.8 on it, he told me to keep the GT120 since the 7950 does work with 10.6.8.
Slot #1 is a double width slot but it only has one PCle connector. The double width slot is is call slot number one. The Mac Pro only have four PCle connectors
Illaass, does this mean that if I put the GT120 in the slot above the 7950 (I assume is slot #2) that it will work? I am new to the mac pro and am still learning the inner workings and lingo of the machine.
Yes, My 2009 has a PC 5770 in the double width slot (31) and the GT 120 in slot #2.
You need a graphics card with at least 1 GB of memory to use the GPU for app calculations.
Illaass:
Thanks a bunch for the help. I'm only going to use the GT120 to use 10.6 from my older mac mini; which has some software that will not operate in 10.8 or 10.9. I'm sure the GT120 is a much better card than what is in the early 2009 mac mini. The GT 120 has a half a gig of memory on it and you mentioned 1 gig is needed to use the GPU for app calculations. I'm not sure what that is (I'm starting a huge learning curve here to use the pro) but since the mini's card borrows a 1/4 gig from the main memory, I doubt it will affect my usage. I'll be basically using the 10.6 area no different than I did on the mini.
I moved from the mini to the pro because I do a lot of photography and some video (planning on getting a lot more into video). On the mini I was mostly using lightroom 3 and some photoshop CS4. My photo files were 10meg and my video was standard. When I moved to a camera with 24meg files and moved up to 1080P video, the mini was just took slow to handle it. On top of that I advanced to lightroom 5 which the program alone is much larger (takes forever to load) and just took forever for for adjustments to be made. I bought an SSD drive hoping it would help (running 10.8 on it). It did not, still took forever for everything to work. So I moved to the pro to handle things and put the SSD drive in the pro. I did some research and thought a better video card was in order than the 5770 and decided on the 7950 for the 3 gig of memory. After I bought it, I realized the 7950 would not support the 10.6. So that is where I came to wanting to put in the GT120 for the specific reason to transfer the hard drive from the mini to the pro so I could decommission the mini for me, put the drive in the pro and pass the mini to my sister and brother in law to set it up for foster children to use that have in their home.
Bernie
radeon 7950 video card and N-video GT120 card
