New Mac Pro line anytime soon?

[Ben McCarthy]

From what I've read there's not enough power, you'd have to down clock it.

Works without any work arounds or hacks but at PCIe 1.1 speeds.

But I'm only quoting what I've read, hopefully it works ok

[FrankMcPartland]

Gizmodo: Report: New MacBook Pros Will Be Retina Display, USB 3.0 Monster Machines

http://gizmodo.com/5910010/report-ne...nster-machines

[Jeff Kilgroe]

The PCIe downgrade to 1.1 speeds is NOT true. Not sure where you read that. Plenty of PCIe cards out there don't have an EFI firmware on them and there's no downgrading of their status because of that. Not having Mac EFI support on the video card only means that you can't do tasks outside the OS before specific drivers load -- like Option-Boot to choose which drive partition to start from or to run the OSX installer, etc..

The GTX580 does indeed draw more power than what is spec'd in the Mac Pro power profile. However it does work, just be aware that you could overdraw and cook your logic board or overload your PSU if you have the system fully loaded up otherwise. If it's a stock GTX580, you should be fine. A more hopped-up version like the SuperClocked cards or the EVGA Classified Ultra model is probably too much. I have a couple of those here and my try one just for grins when I get a chance.

Stick with OSX 10.7.3 and the current drivers from nVidia.com. 10.7.4 will break those drivers, we'll have to wait for an update from nVidia before updating the OS. Be sure to install the drivers first, then power down and install the GTX card.

[Ben McCarthy]

The PCIe downgrade to 1.1 speeds is NOT true. Not sure where you read that. Plenty of PCIe cards out there don't have an EFI firmware on them and there's no downgrading of their status because of that.

If you could confirm you can run GPU-Z on bootcamp? Not sure if the Bus Interface comes up in System Profiler.

[Ben McCarthy]

Btw nvidia had updated the drivers for 10.7.4

Though no GTX 670-690 drivers yet.

It looks like Nvidia is serious about Apple finally

http://www.nvidia.com/object/macosx-...06-driver.html

[Jeff Kilgroe]

If you could confirm you can run GPU-Z on bootcamp? Not sure if the Bus Interface comes up in System Profiler.

No point in running CPU-Z or booting to Windows if we're trying to determine operability within OSX...

Link speed is shown in Profiler -- 2.5GT/s for PCIe 1.x and 5GT/s for PCIe 2.0.


Not that I really have time to do it, but I'm as curious as anyone else on this one. I've got an EVGA GTX580 Classified Ultra (45MHz Overclock) sitting here just begging me to try it in a Mac Pro. I'll do that here shortly. :)


One thing that these other GPUs do, and this is a driver issue, is the nVidia drivers (unless the update the other day fixes it for 10.7.4), is cap their RAM usage at 2GB. I don't know if that's global or just for CUDA, but there is a cap...

[Will Keir]

Can anyone confirm the GTX 580 actually works on Mac Pros without workarounds or hacks?

The GTX 580 should work without an extra power supply, and with OSX 10.7.3 it works without any workarounds or hacks. nVidia will probably come with 10.7.4 drivers for the GTX 5xx..

[Will Keir]

I've got an EVGA GTX580 Classified Ultra (45MHz Overclock) sitting here just begging me to try it in a Mac Pro. I'll do that here shortly. :)

I look forward to that test Jeff. Looks like my GTX 285 mac edition is starting to go out on me and I'll need a replacement. Not sure if I should go for another 285 or the 580. This is a computer that runs boot camp.

[Grant H]

Can anyone confirm the GTX 580 actually works on Mac Pros without workarounds or hacks?

With 10.7.3 it'll run just fine with no flashing, hacking or editing.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I spoke too soon on my GTX580 CLASSIFIED ULTRA test... I forgot it REQUIRES one 6-pin and *two* 8-pin power connectors. I went ahead and installed it and tried to power it with what I could come up with, but the system wouldn't come up / post at all. For a brief moment, I had visions of trying to adapt another power connector for the card from the 4 drive bays. And while I have PhD in redneck engineering and jury rigging, I still lacked enough of the necessary connectors and began to question whether this was really a good way to spend my afternoon.

Here's a pic of the card just before I slotted it into an otherwise card-free '09 Mac Pro. And a close-up of the connectors. Yes, all are indeed required. A stock GTX580 requires one 6-pin and one 8-pin and a simple 6 to 8 pin adapter on one of the onboard PCIe power connectors will do the trick. Just be aware that it does over-draw that connector a bit the way it's distributed through the logic board.