Mac Pro Video Card Upgrades

[Chiropteran]

I'm a total Mac newbie. I know in the past, when Macs were based on Motorola CPUs, you couldn't just use a PC video card- you could maybe trick one into working with some risky bios flash procedure but they wouldn't just work.

What is the deal now? Since modern Macs *are* regular intel based PCs, can you just buy a regular video card at newegg and toss it into a Mac and have it work great?

If so, what is the best gaming card that OS X has drivers for, under ~$200? I'll probably mostly game under windows, but I'd like the card to be supported under OS X as well.

 

[manly]

No, you pretty much have to get the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT card made for the Mac Pro. (BIOS flashing is a marginal option if you really prefer the road less travelled.)

Graphics card options/value is one reason why some people prefer to build a Hackintosh.

ATI is expected to release an aftermarket Mac Pro graphics card soon, although their Mac drivers have never been highly regarded. Then again, the GeForce 8800 GT has supposedly benchmarked relatively poorly in Mac gaming tests IIRC.

 

[keeleysam]

Modern Macs are not regular Intel based PCs, they do not have a BIOS, only EFI so most cards won't work without a BIOS flash of the card.

Without the flash, they will work only in Windows.

 

[Chiropteran]

Originally posted by: keeleysam
Modern Macs are not regular Intel based PCs, they do not have a BIOS, only EFI so most cards won't work without a BIOS flash of the card.

I thought I heard that several intel boards were already using EFI and they ran fine with windows and "normal" video cards, maybe I misread...


So, if the Mac Pro requires a special video card, is there going to be any problem using that card in Windows, or do they still use the regular nvidia drivers for windows?


Are there any good secondary sources for these "EFI enabled" video cards, or do you have to buy one from apple directly?

 

[ViRGE]

The card will work fine in Windows under Bootcamp. I'm not entirely sure what the Bootcamp driver situation is however, you may need to use a modded INF if you want to use newer reference drivers.

As for secondary sources, some of the 3rd party Mac retailers like SmallDog may be carrying video cards.

 

[manly]

Originally posted by: Chiropteran

Originally posted by: keeleysam
Modern Macs are not regular Intel based PCs, they do not have a BIOS, only EFI so most cards won't work without a BIOS flash of the card.

I thought I heard that several intel boards were already using EFI and they ran fine with windows and "normal" video cards, maybe I misread...


So, if the Mac Pro requires a special video card, is there going to be any problem using that card in Windows, or do they still use the regular nvidia drivers for windows?


Are there any good secondary sources for these "EFI enabled" video cards, or do you have to buy one from apple directly?

As ViRGE said, Apple's Mac Pro graphics cards work fine with Windows and Apple's Boot Camp drivers.

As far as flashing your own graphics card, I believe a key issue is that a viable graphics card needs both Mac & Windows bootable firmware on the flash ROM. So the ROM has to hold about twice as much code as your typical "PC" graphics card. Even then, Mac graphics card hackers are far & few, so it's very much YMMV with finding a good working solution.* I'd certainly consider a hacked card for a Power Mac G4 or G5 (considering the limited options). For any Mac Pro, I'd rather stick with the supported GF 8800 GT.

* I haven't researched hacked Mac graphics cards recently, so I hope I'm not terribly off. 😉

 

[ColdFusion718]

Rumor (from a contact on the inside) has it that Nvidia's drivers are actually native OS 9 drivers. The ones in OS X are hacked by Apple with a wrapper to make them work.

 

[ViRGE]

I seriously doubt that.