[aiongiant]

Hi

I'm planning to buy a Nvidia 7950Gx2 card.. specifically XFX 7950Gx2 XXX Edition for my Mac Pro 3Ghz.

ive read on the net some ppl having sucess with the 7950gx2 under the windows enviroment
unfortunaetly it causes a kernel panic when booting into OSx??
does the new updates 10.4.8 or the new firmware update for the Mac Pro fix this problem?

or rather anyone out there have luck running this card on thier mac pro?

mainly casue i don't want to buy the card only to find out it doesn't work...

Thanks in advance!
Lester

[macgeek2005]

The card is not made for mac right now. It works in windows because the Mac Pro is like a PC then. To make it work in OS X would require doing whatever apple did to the X1900XT to make it work under OS X.

[aiongiant]

oops sorry forgot to mention that i plan to use the 7300gt for OSx and the 7950gx2 for Windows
my monitor supports dual inputs so i will jsut switch inputs depending on the OS

THanks

[goMac]

Under Windows it will work because the Mac will shift into BIOS emulation mode and emulate all the right BIOS hooks for the card.

Under OS X, the BIOS emulation mode is never used, and the card has to be EFI compatible.

[macgeek2005]

Originally Posted by aiongiant

oops sorry forgot to mention that i plan to use the 7300gt for OSx and the 7950gx2 for Windows
my monitor supports dual inputs so i will jsut switch inputs depending on the OS

THanks

You mean you don't even have to unplug the monitor from one card and plug it in another? The monitor has TWO DVI plugs on the end?

[aiongiant]

my monitor can take a vga and a dvi input so my plan is to have a vga calbe plugged in for the windows card and dvi plugged in the mac card... that way when i dual boot i can jsut change the input on my lcd to which ever cable its using

but this won't mean anything if the MacPro does a kernel panic with the 7950gx2 when going into OSx
althoguht ppl have used the 7900 and the 7800 no problem

[Leonard]

It panics likely because there are no drivers for the Nvidia 7950GX2.

This is the same thing that happened to the first users of the Geforce 6800 Ultra on PM G5's when users tried to reinstall OS X with a Geforce 6800 Ultra in the machine. The current OS X didn't have drivers for the Geforce 6800 Ultra (the drivers came on a separate CD) and the machine kernel panic'ed. Until there are drivers in OS X for the card, you can't use it.

[aiongiant]

althougth i don't plan to use that card in the OSx enviroment
casue like msot ppl using the 7900 osx sees it but since no proper drivers it jsut ignores it

[mduell]

I don't think the chipset used in the Mac Pro supports SLI... but having both GPUs in one socket may eliminate that need.