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tkmd · Aug 13, 2007, 09:29 PM

Lets assume that the new MP debuts in the next couple of months (realistically January macworld) and there are new video cards that are going to be offered. Will I be able to buy a video card offered in the MP from a store and plug it into the MP and the drivers for it are going to be in the OS ?

mduell · Aug 13, 2007, 10:03 PM

Yes, you'll be able to use any new video card released for the Mac Pro.

Unless they do something really weird and make them PCIe 2.0 only or something similarly crazy.

tkmd · Aug 14, 2007, 07:47 PM

OK so with that being said a 7600 GT card from an iMac 24" should, in theory, also work. Right?

mduell · Aug 14, 2007, 07:56 PM

No, it's a completely different interface; some mutation of MXM instead of PCI Express.

Simon · Aug 15, 2007, 03:29 AM

Originally Posted by tkmd

Lets assume that the new MP debuts in the next couple of months (realistically January macworld) and there are new video cards that are going to be offered. Will I be able to buy a video card offered in the MP from a store and plug it into the MP and the drivers for it are going to be in the OS ?

That should be possible if you assume they will actually sell that card by itself.

It has happened in the past that cards where available exclusively as BTO options with a MP or PM for quite a while before they turned up as items you could order by themselves. You also can't just buy the PC version of the card in a shop and expect it to work under OS X (although it should work under Windows).

MallyMal · Aug 15, 2007, 04:11 AM

Originally Posted by Simon

That should be possible if you assume they will actually sell that card by itself.

It has happened in the past that cards where available exclusively as BTO options with a MP or PM for quite a while before they turned up as items you could order by themselves. You also can't just buy the PC version of the card in a shop and expect it to work under OS X (although it should work under Windows).

And I can't tell you how much this pisses me off. I can't get a video card from 3rd party and I can't get an updated video card from Apple because they would rather keep pushing a year old card for a premium price.

chinolatte · Aug 23, 2007, 02:12 PM

so this means that PCIe cards don't just work in the MP? Sorry, I'm an MP noob, i'm considering buying an MP but only if upgrading it is possible.

mduell · Aug 23, 2007, 04:51 PM

Correct, a random PCIe card off the shelf at your local computer store probably won't work in the Mac Pro. If it doesn't explicitly say "OSX 10.4 compatible", it's reasonable to assume it won't work.

pk1 · Aug 23, 2007, 05:25 PM

Originally Posted by mduell

Correct, a random PCIe card off the shelf at your local computer store probably won't work in the Mac Pro. If it doesn't explicitly say "OSX 10.4 compatible", it's reasonable to assume it won't work.

So I take it that there are no such "OS X compatible" cards in the market, but the only ones that are supported are the few select ones that can be ordered with the Mac Pro, right? If this is the case, then why do people consider the Mac Pro an expandable solution...?

I assume that the reason behind this is lack of drivers - only Apple makes these? Can't the card companies (e.g. nVidia) sell a new graphics card with their own OS X drivers?

goMac · Aug 23, 2007, 05:50 PM

Originally Posted by pk1

So I take it that there are no such "OS X compatible" cards in the market, but the only ones that are supported are the few select ones that can be ordered with the Mac Pro, right? If this is the case, then why do people consider the Mac Pro an expandable solution...?

I assume that the reason behind this is lack of drivers - only Apple makes these? Can't the card companies (e.g. nVidia) sell a new graphics card with their own OS X drivers?

ATI generally made Mac graphics cards that were sold on the shelves of retailers. Mac Pro's seem to use general PC graphics cards, but with a special firmware on them that makes them work with EFI, the Mac's BIOS.

I think it's really more of an EFI problem than a driver problem. Once more PC graphics cards start supporting EFI out of the box, they'll start working in the Mac out of the box. The ATI Radeon drivers can in theory support any ATI Radeon card, so it's not really a question of drivers as much...

mduell · Aug 23, 2007, 06:55 PM

Originally Posted by pk1

So I take it that there are no such "OS X compatible" cards in the market, but the only ones that are supported are the few select ones that can be ordered with the Mac Pro, right? If this is the case, then why do people consider the Mac Pro an expandable solution...?

I assume that the reason behind this is lack of drivers - only Apple makes these? Can't the card companies (e.g. nVidia) sell a new graphics card with their own OS X drivers?

The only cards that work in the Mac Pro under OS X are the 3 Apple sells. Given their historical trends, there should be at least one more generation of cards available that will be compatible with the Mac Pro.
The Mac Pro is expandable in the sense that few things are soldered to the logic board; they can be replaced, although replacing them may be difficult. This is just like the PowerMac G5 CPUs; sure, you can physically replace them, but no one has been able to upgrade them.

Originally Posted by goMac

ATI generally made Mac graphics cards that were sold on the shelves of retailers. Mac Pro's seem to use general PC graphics cards, but with a special firmware on them that makes them work with EFI, the Mac's BIOS.

I think it's really more of an EFI problem than a driver problem. Once more PC graphics cards start supporting EFI out of the box, they'll start working in the Mac out of the box. The ATI Radeon drivers can in theory support any ATI Radeon card, so it's not really a question of drivers as much...

EFI adoption is, and will be, glacial. It suffers from both a lack of compelling reasons to switch (sure the BIOS has limitations, but the industry has been working around them for decades and knows them well) and the chicken and the egg problem (no one is demanding it, no one is producing it).
Even if EFI compatible cards start showing up on shelves, they may or may not work in the Mac Pro. There are already a few EFI cards out there (for Itanium EFI systems I think) and I haven't seen any reports that they work in Macs. Also, you still need compatible drivers; OSX has an 8600M GT driver, but does that driver work for the 8800GTX? Maybe, maybe not.

Simon · Aug 24, 2007, 02:49 AM

Originally Posted by pk1

If this is the case, then why do people consider the Mac Pro an expandable solution...?

Because in a Mac Po there's a lot more you could want to expand than just a graphics card.

goMac · Aug 24, 2007, 04:03 PM

Originally Posted by mduell

Even if EFI compatible cards start showing up on shelves, they may or may not work in the Mac Pro. There are already a few EFI cards out there (for Itanium EFI systems I think) and I haven't seen any reports that they work in Macs. Also, you still need compatible drivers; OSX has an 8600M GT driver, but does that driver work for the 8800GTX? Maybe, maybe not.

I'm not sure how NVidia writes their drivers... But ATI uses the one-driver-works-for-all-cards approach. The OS x86 forum people had very good success getting the Radeon drivers to work with different cards on their BIOS based systems, but that's an entirely different can of worms...