ICON 4x4

Greetings from Ubuntu land,

My Mac Pro's GeForce 8800 has died, and it was a painful death. But my Mac will live again with a brutal new ATI 4870. Here's another tough little bastard I'd buy if I had the money.

djpimley wrote:Greetings from Ubuntu land,

My Mac Pro's GeForce 8800 has died, and it was a painful death. But my Mac will live again with a brutal new ATI 4870. Here's another tough little bastard I'd buy if I had the money.

Just put a 4870 in my MacPro1,1; hell of a difference! (Replacing a Radeon 3870 mac/PC retail card).

Kenners

Nice to read so, Kenners. The benchmarks look good but much more important to me is that it won't blow up after 3 years. My old PowerMac is with my parents, and the third-hand Radeon 8500 in it is still working beautifully after 6 years of service in my ownership alone. I'd pay handsomely for that kind of reliability, regardless of performance (hence the CJ3).

djpimley wrote:The benchmarks look good but much more important to me is that it won't blow up after 3 years.

LOL, the same happened to me 2 weeks ago, also with the GT8800, very painful death, the fan of the card was going full speed when using graphic intense applications the last 2 weeks before it died and the screen begun to flash, with the result that the mac wasnt able to boot anymore (hmmm... why do they not sell them anymore with the recent MacPros? ). Thx to Apple's protection plan, i got a new GT8800 running now, let's see how long this one is working.

Im wondering if the new ATI 5870, which comes with the new 6 core mac pros would work in my early 2008 (3,1). Do you know, when they are available and how much they are? havent seen the new cards at my apple dealer.

MaxDamage wrote:the same happened to me [...], also with the GT8800, very painful death, [...] with the result that the mac wasnt able to boot anymore (hmmm... why do they not sell them anymore with the recent MacPros? ). Thx to Apple's protection plan, i got a new GT8800 running now, let's see how long this one is working.

Same story here! I'm on my second GT8800 now. Note however, that it was pretty dusty in there when I opened up the computer after about a year of use... might have been partly my fault for not blowing the dust out of the cabinet at regular intervals.

MaxDamage wrote:the fan of the card was going full speed when using graphic intense applications the last 2 weeks before it died ... Im wondering if the new ATI 5870, which comes with the new 6 core mac pros would work in my early 2008 (3,1). Do you know, when they are available and how much they are?

Similar story but more sudden. On Sunday the GPU fan started ramping up to full speed, then going back to idle about a minute later. Then on Monday it was doing it more often, then the video output started going black, then the fan stuck at full speed and the screen stayed black.

It's out of warranty now and no AppleCare so I took the card to pieces, reseated the heat sink, checked for damage and reinstalled it. No dice. I think it is a design flaw in the 8800, though what exactly the failure was I am not sure. There certainly wasn't enough dust on it to do any harm. I've been playing a lot of Half-Life since Steam for Mac appeared and I wonder if that stress on the card has revealed a problem that was waiting to happen.

Seems to me Apple make it needlessly difficult to tell which cards will work in which Mac Pros. I bought this thing because of the expansion possibilities! Would it hurt them to put up a compatibility table?

djpimley wrote:
Seems to me Apple make it needlessly difficult to tell which cards will work in which Mac Pros. I bought this thing because of the expansion possibilities! Would it hurt them to put up a compatibility table?

exactly! Now the cards are available in the apple store, only for mac pros early 2009 and mid 2010 (which makes it more or less useless as an uprade card)
I dont know why it is not working with the older mac pros, prolly because of the power supply, size, PCIe 2.1 or the DDR3 RAM (ive read all of the points on the apple website, no idea which one is the reason)

MaxDamage wrote:

djpimley wrote:
Seems to me Apple make it needlessly difficult to tell which cards will work in which Mac Pros. I bought this thing because of the expansion possibilities! Would it hurt them to put up a compatibility table?

exactly! Now the cards are available in the apple store, only for mac pros early 2009 and mid 2010 (which makes it more or less useless as an uprade card)
I dont know why it is not working with the older mac pros, prolly because of the power supply, size, PCIe 2.1 or the DDR3 RAM (ive read all of the points on the apple website, no idea which one is the reason)

Thing that gets me is the 4870 is listed as only compatible with the newer PCIe 2.0 Mac Pros, but works JUST FINE in my MacPro1,1. It sucks that it takes experimentation on someone's part to find out it IS compatible.

K