Apple Mac Pro Graphics Card Upgrade
Discussion
I got my Mac Pro back in 2008 as a 'sorry mate' crazy-discount favour from Apple after my ridiculously expensive Quad G5 started to fail after two years of use. The liquid cooling system was starting to fail and it was a LOT cheaper for Apple to offer me an 8-core Intel Xeon box than repair the monstrously complicated logic board of the Quadzilla.
However, in typical Apple style, an insanely powerful machine was delivered with an anaemic, limp graphics card. Dual quad-core Xeon CPUs at 2.8 GHz, crazy memory bandwidth, 10 GB of FB-DIMM RAM, and now Intel SSDs - my box is FAST. But it has a Radeon 2600 HD with 256 MB of video memory. I suppose it'd be OK running a small display but I've got a 30" Apple display (2560x1600 resolution) and a couple of 18" LCDs. It really struggles - I don't play games but that is largely because they simply don't run well - I used to absolutely love certain games (Half Life on the PC was my favourite of all time), but Doom 3 for the Mac struggles to break 10 FPS on my box. And yes, in number crunching apps, it really is as powerful as those specs suggest, especially under Snow Leopard with a 64 bit kernel (for optimised apps). That GPU really is embarrassing.
So I've decided to buy an upgrade. The PC gamers here will scoff, but this is Apple we're talking about, and back in the bad old G5 days, you couldn't even order the upgrade GPU for your G5 unless you had it built to order in the first place... if your machine arrived with the base GPU, then Apple *would NOT sell you* the faster GPU - you had to buy an entire new £4500 system...
At last, Apple now offer a selection of upgrade cards for the Mac Pro that work with OS X (you could try hacking any PC card into a Mac Pro if you were running Windows natively, but I don't do that... and there's the EFI vs BIOS issue to deal with). There's the Geforce 285 GTX and the Radeon HD 4870. Previous experiences with nVidia cards on the Mac platform have been experiences of crazy noise and overheating GPUs and early death
so I plumped for the ATI card.
Haven't installed it yet, but blimey I feel like I've got my money's worth. The card is a full-length PCIe card - and weighs nearly as much as my Macbook Air. It has a dual-link DVI for my 30" screen and a mini Displayport which I've got adapters for depending on what I connect the second display to.
Are the PC cards as heavy as this? It must have half a kilo of copper heatsink on the thing. Hopefully the fan on the unit will not shriek like the nVidia cards I've had in the past - but if Jobs has had anything to do with it then the card should be reasonably quiet, especially in the brilliantly-designed Mac Pro case.
Anyone running one of these in a modern Mac Pro and know how much faster it'll make my graphics? Currently I don't use Exposé on my main workstation as much as I'd like because I've got around 80 windows open and the measly VRAM on the base GPU just chokes on it. I've found out that someone has ported Half Life 2 (yes, I know it's an old game, but I'm an old bloke and I loved the original) to OS X on Intel Macs (a shim layer between the Windows EXEs and DLLs) and I'm interested in trying it out. My current GPU really won't do a good job at 2560x1600 resolution - this new one may do though
However, in typical Apple style, an insanely powerful machine was delivered with an anaemic, limp graphics card. Dual quad-core Xeon CPUs at 2.8 GHz, crazy memory bandwidth, 10 GB of FB-DIMM RAM, and now Intel SSDs - my box is FAST. But it has a Radeon 2600 HD with 256 MB of video memory. I suppose it'd be OK running a small display but I've got a 30" Apple display (2560x1600 resolution) and a couple of 18" LCDs. It really struggles - I don't play games but that is largely because they simply don't run well - I used to absolutely love certain games (Half Life on the PC was my favourite of all time), but Doom 3 for the Mac struggles to break 10 FPS on my box. And yes, in number crunching apps, it really is as powerful as those specs suggest, especially under Snow Leopard with a 64 bit kernel (for optimised apps). That GPU really is embarrassing.
So I've decided to buy an upgrade. The PC gamers here will scoff, but this is Apple we're talking about, and back in the bad old G5 days, you couldn't even order the upgrade GPU for your G5 unless you had it built to order in the first place... if your machine arrived with the base GPU, then Apple *would NOT sell you* the faster GPU - you had to buy an entire new £4500 system...
At last, Apple now offer a selection of upgrade cards for the Mac Pro that work with OS X (you could try hacking any PC card into a Mac Pro if you were running Windows natively, but I don't do that... and there's the EFI vs BIOS issue to deal with). There's the Geforce 285 GTX and the Radeon HD 4870. Previous experiences with nVidia cards on the Mac platform have been experiences of crazy noise and overheating GPUs and early death
so I plumped for the ATI card.Haven't installed it yet, but blimey I feel like I've got my money's worth. The card is a full-length PCIe card - and weighs nearly as much as my Macbook Air. It has a dual-link DVI for my 30" screen and a mini Displayport which I've got adapters for depending on what I connect the second display to.
Are the PC cards as heavy as this? It must have half a kilo of copper heatsink on the thing. Hopefully the fan on the unit will not shriek like the nVidia cards I've had in the past - but if Jobs has had anything to do with it then the card should be reasonably quiet, especially in the brilliantly-designed Mac Pro case.
Anyone running one of these in a modern Mac Pro and know how much faster it'll make my graphics? Currently I don't use Exposé on my main workstation as much as I'd like because I've got around 80 windows open and the measly VRAM on the base GPU just chokes on it. I've found out that someone has ported Half Life 2 (yes, I know it's an old game, but I'm an old bloke and I loved the original) to OS X on Intel Macs (a shim layer between the Windows EXEs and DLLs) and I'm interested in trying it out. My current GPU really won't do a good job at 2560x1600 resolution - this new one may do though
Intel SSDs are next on my shopping list...
I wouldn't expect it to make much in the way of noise CF.
It'll only be under lots of 3D work, rendering big pics or video that it starts to get noisy.
I wouldn't expect it to be noisy at all... If it is a little too noisy for you, I'd be tempted to rip the stock fan off (which is unlikely to be that good) and stick on a decent aftermarket heatsink with a good quality fan.
Oh and yeah modern cards are quite heavy and large.
Google 8800GTX though and see the bad boys that are in my PC... They are huge and very heavy and there are two of them!
It'll only be under lots of 3D work, rendering big pics or video that it starts to get noisy.
I wouldn't expect it to be noisy at all... If it is a little too noisy for you, I'd be tempted to rip the stock fan off (which is unlikely to be that good) and stick on a decent aftermarket heatsink with a good quality fan.
Oh and yeah modern cards are quite heavy and large.
Google 8800GTX though and see the bad boys that are in my PC... They are huge and very heavy and there are two of them!
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