NVIDIA readying GeForce 8800 GT upgrade for earlier Mac Pros

[AppleInsider]

After owners of the first-generation Mac Pro desktop voiced frustration that they couldn't upgrade to the GeForce 8800 GT video card, its creator NVIDIA is pledging an updated version that will work with both new and old Apple towers.

The graphics card maker's PR director has contacted Engadget with word that an updated version of the $349 add-on kit will contain firmware that supports all models of the Xeon-based workstation.

Currently, the card on sale through Apple's online store will only function with new-generation Mac Pro systems due to firmware that requires the new, faster PCI Express 2.0 interconnect standard, which was introduced for the first time to the Mac with the new towers. This has caused an uproar among owners of the initial computer, which has been limited to the now two-year-old ATI Radeon X1900 XT as their fastest mainstream graphics choice.

"I am afraid they don't care and prefer forcing people to buy a new high-end machine just to have a graphics card update," says one user from Apple's discussion forums.

The restriction has also been unusual in the graphics upgrade market, as many video cards for Windows PCs that support the version 2.0 standard also include backwards compatibility for the outgoing format.

The new Mac Pro's default video card, the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT, is not available as an upgrade kit but has been successfully tested with older Mac Pro units, according to multiple reports.

NVIDIA's press director has not said precisely when the company's replacement video card will be available, only noting that the new GeForce 8800 GT for Macs will be available "in a few weeks" from Apple's website.

[rain]

Only a $200 upgrade on Apple's site. Thats a pretty good deal.
I wonder if the retail price will be twice as expensive as its PC counterpart? ...which has usually been the case in the past, with ATI anyways.

[onlooker]

What a crazy story? It stinks from line one on through on many points.

#1 PCI-E 2.0 cards have 8 pin power connector. PCI-E has 6. The cards are never going to work in both systems regardless of the firmware.

#2 Nvidia doesn't make graphics cards. The make GPU's, and they design the specs for those GPU's to be applied to 3rd parties to manufacture their cards, and they design motherboards, and other crap, but they don't make anything physical other than GPU's.

#3 AFAIK Apple contracts their 3rd party hardware manufacturer to build their (Apple's) Nvidia based cards for them.

#4 Apple writes their own Nvidia drivers from the same source code provided them from Nvidia that everyone else has.

WTF is this all about? It's like fairy tale BS story coming from either some Nvidia rep to smooth over the backlash, or it's just a complete lie because Nvidia wouldn't be readying anything.

Your never going to get an 8 pin PCI-E 2.0 power connector into a 6 pin PCI-E Mac Pro. It's just not going to happen.

When it was designed, PCIe was supposed to be a real futureproofing - 75W of power and 2.5Gbps of bandwidth (a 16x card could pull nearly 8Gbps) right through the slot. This eliminated the need for external power and greatly exceeding AGP's not even half-used bandwidth constraint. Of course, the latest cards (such as the NVIDIA 8800 GTX) are already on their second independent power connector, drawing a whopping 185W of power.

In order to compensate, PCIe 2.0 has modified the power standard. The previous 6-pin 75W connector has now been retired, moved instead to an 8-pin 150W connector. Bus speeds have also increased to 5Gbps, meaning that a 16x card can now potentially pull up to 16Gbps. Of course, current cards are a long way from even maxing out the PCIe 1.1 interface, so this is much more of a theoretical improvement.

Intel will be expected to release the first compatible chipsets in the start of 2Q 2007 with the Bearlake codename. Along with the new PCIe 2.0, these boards will feature the ICH9 southbridge, DDR3 support, and a 1333MHz FSB. The PCIe 2.0 interface will be backward compatible with current-generation cards, so you don't need to worry about buying new graphics cards if you buy one of these boards.

Whether the move is necessary for anything but the convenience of the new power connector is not something we can easily determine. However, it does provide that much more theoretical headroom to play with - hopefully, we'll start seeing cards make use of it.

As it says you can use an old card with a new board, but how are you supposed to use a new card with an old board? I don't think it's possible.

[Haggar]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

The new Mac Pro's default video card, the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT, is not available as an upgrade kit but has been successfully tested with older Mac Pro units, according to multiple reports.

Both the Radeon HD 2600 XT and Geforce 8800GT are available from the Apple online store. They can be found by using the Search box at the top left corner.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by rain

Only a $200 upgrade on Apple's site. Thats a pretty good deal.
I wonder if the retail price will be twice as expensive as its PC counterpart? ...which has usually been the case in the past, with ATI anyways.

I recall one of the two companies in the past preferring to keep the same pricepoint between PC and Mac so they would make the Mac card slower to reduce the cost of materials or whatnot.

[onlooker]

Originally Posted by rain

Only a $200 upgrade on Apple's site. Thats a pretty good deal.
I wonder if the retail price will be twice as expensive as its PC counterpart? ...which has usually been the case in the past, with ATI anyways.

The upgrade kit is $349.00. I'm not sure where your getting $200.00 from.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by onlooker

The upgrade kit is $349.00. I'm not sure where your getting $200.00 from.

That's the number In the built-to-order section - it's upgrading a machine that hasn't shipped yet.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by onlooker

What a crazy story? It stinks from line one on through on many points.

#1 PCI-E 2.0 cards have 8 pin power connector. PCI-E has 6. The cards are never going to work in both systems regardless of the firmware.

Are they just power? The Mac Pro has two six pin power connectors, if the rails are the same voltage but more of them, then I don't see a problem with a Y connector to feed in power from the second connector.

[Foo2]

Another example of Apple being over-zealous in its quest for dollars.

[ascii]

What baffles me is why the current one takes 5-7 weeks to ship. I can walk in to any computer store on the high street and buy an Nvidia 8800GT today, and my understanding is that the only thing different about Apple's one is the firmware. Does it take 5-7 weeks to reflash a firmware?

There must be something funny going on somewhere in Apple.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by ascii

What baffles me is why the current one takes 5-7 weeks to ship. I can walk in to any computer store on the high street and buy an Nvidia 8800GT today, and my understanding is that the only thing different about Apple's one is the firmware. Does it take 5-7 weeks to reflash a firmware?

There must be something funny going on somewhere in Apple.

Doesn't Apple do a dual firmware deal, requiring a bigger or second flash chip?

[buddha]

If anyone can get some sort of confirmation on this that would be great - onlooker's points trouble me. I really hope this is true.

[onlooker]

Originally Posted by ascii

What baffles me is why the current one takes 5-7 weeks to ship. I can walk in to any computer store on the high street and buy an Nvidia 8800GT today, and my understanding is that the only thing different about Apple's one is the firmware. Does it take 5-7 weeks to reflash a firmware?

There must be something funny going on somewhere in Apple.

Is EFI just a simple firmware? I don't know enough about it.

[onlooker]

Originally Posted by buddha

If anyone can get some sort of confirmation on this that would be great - onlooker's points trouble me. I really hope this is true.

I'm not sure which part your hoping is true, but I'm hoping that the availability of the second card is a sign that Apple is about to release a SLI driver because I would buy a second one in a heartbeat.

[buddha]

Originally Posted by onlooker

I'm not sure which part your hoping is true, but I'm hoping that the availability of the second card is a sign that Apple is about to release a SLI driver because I would buy a second one in a heartbeat.

I'm just hoping to be able to upgrade my x1900 to an 8800 - whatever means necessary (excluding buying a new computer )

I'm pretty sure EFI is just a simple firmware, too.

[FuturePastNow]

Originally Posted by onlooker

Your never going to get an 8 pin PCI-E 2.0 power connector into a 6 pin PCI-E Mac Pro. It's just not going to happen.

All 8800GT cards have a six-pin PCIe power connector.

[Haggar]

Originally Posted by rain

Only a $200 upgrade on Apple's site. Thats a pretty good deal.
I wonder if the retail price will be twice as expensive as its PC counterpart? ...which has usually been the case in the past, with ATI anyways.

Does anyone know the GPU speed and memory speed of the cards from Apple?

[onlooker]

Originally Posted by FuturePastNow

All 8800GT cards have a six-pin PCIe power connector.

Your probably right, but being that these cards are for Apple only, Apple may have opted for the 8 pin connector when having them built. I've read that the problem is that the new Mac Pro's are using UEFI 2.01, and the old ones are using UEFI 1.2 in which the new Mac Pro's have EFI64, and the old ones have EFI32.

[onlooker]

Originally Posted by Haggar

Does anyone know the GPU speed and memory speed of the cards from Apple?

Standard Nvidia spec. They are not over-clocked.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by onlooker

Your probably right, but being that these cards are for Apple only, Apple may have opted for the 8 pin connector when having them built. I've read that the problem is that the new Mac Pro's are using UEFI 2.01, and the old ones are using UEFI 1.2 in which the new Mac Pro's have EFI64, and the old ones have EFI32.

This is all very confusing

[Joe_the_dragon]

Originally Posted by onlooker

I'm not sure which part your hoping is true, but I'm hoping that the availability of the second card is a sign that Apple is about to release a SLI driver because I would buy a second one in a heartbeat.

you also need a sli bridge

[onlooker]

Originally Posted by Joe_the_dragon

you also need a sli bridge

That I can get anywhere though. But I see what your saying. If Apple isn't offering the bridge..... Maybe we should start a petition?

[melgross]

Originally Posted by onlooker

What a crazy story? It stinks from line one on through on many points.

#1 PCI-E 2.0 cards have 8 pin power connector. PCI-E has 6. The cards are never going to work in both systems regardless of the firmware.

#2 Nvidia doesn't make graphics cards. The make GPU's, and they design the specs for those GPU's to be applied to 3rd parties to manufacture their cards, and they design motherboards, and other crap, but they don't make anything physical other than GPU's.

#3 AFAIK Apple contracts their 3rd party hardware manufacturer to build their (Apple's) Nvidia based cards for them.

#4 Apple writes their own Nvidia drivers from the same source code provided them from Nvidia that everyone else has.

WTF is this all about? It's like fairy tale BS story coming from either some Nvidia rep to smooth over the backlash, or it's just a complete lie because Nvidia wouldn't be readying anything.

Your never going to get an 8 pin PCI-E 2.0 power connector into a 6 pin PCI-E Mac Pro. It's just not going to happen.




As it says you can use an old card with a new board, but how are you supposed to use a new card with an old board? I don't think it's possible.

Not true!

The standard provides for BOTH forwards AND backwards compatibility.

In fact, manufacturers are supposed to provide just that. That Apple hasn't done so is a decision on their part to not do so. They had to think, "We aren't going to allow them to use this board on the older machine." Or, the first mobo's were improperly designed (or designed that way on purpose).

Here's a quote from the Anandtech article:

Unfortunately, there have been some reports of new PCI-E 2.0 graphics cards refusing to POST (Power On Self-Test) in motherboards containing chipsets without PCI Express 2.0 support. We can assure you this is not by design as the PCI-SIG PCI Express 2.0 Specification is very clear on the issue - PCI Express 2.0 is backward-compatible with PCI Express 1.x in every case. With this in mind, and knowing that some PCI Express 1.x motherboards have no problems running the new graphics cards while others do, we have no choice but to blame the board in the case of no video.

This is the best article on Express 2, express 1, and some Express 3 information, I've yet read. It details the compatibility situations and explains how it works.

This is the page where that's explained, though it just starts in the page before:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=3192&p=3

You can link to the first page of the article from the Index menu at the bottom.

This also doesn't mean that Nvidia can't, and won't, make a board available. We don't know just what Nvidia is planning.

Right now, they are stuck between a rock and a hard place. With AMD owning ATI, and Intel releasing its own high performance gpu's in 2009, they may feel as though they have to do more than they are now.

The word has also been out that Nvidia wants to buy AMD, but was rebuffed by the computer industry investors in Taiwan.

[mdriftmeyer]

Originally Posted by onlooker

What a crazy story? It stinks from line one on through on many points.

#1 PCI-E 2.0 cards have 8 pin power connector. PCI-E has 6. The cards are never going to work in both systems regardless of the firmware.

#2 Nvidia doesn't make graphics cards. The make GPU's, and they design the specs for those GPU's to be applied to 3rd parties to manufacture their cards, and they design motherboards, and other crap, but they don't make anything physical other than GPU's.

#3 AFAIK Apple contracts their 3rd party hardware manufacturer to build their (Apple's) Nvidia based cards for them.

#4 Apple writes their own Nvidia drivers from the same source code provided them from Nvidia that everyone else has.

WTF is this all about? It's like fairy tale BS story coming from either some Nvidia rep to smooth over the backlash, or it's just a complete lie because Nvidia wouldn't be readying anything.

Your never going to get an 8 pin PCI-E 2.0 power connector into a 6 pin PCI-E Mac Pro. It's just not going to happen.




As it says you can use an old card with a new board, but how are you supposed to use a new card with an old board? I don't think it's possible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Exp...CI_Express_2.0

PCI-SIG announced the availability of the PCI Express Base 2.0 specification on 15 January 2007.[4] PCIe 2.0 doubles the bus standard's bandwidth from 2.5 Gbit/s to 5 Gbit/s, meaning a x32 connector can transfer data at up to 16 GB/s in each direction.
PCIe 2.0 is completely backwards compatible with PCIe v1.x. Graphic cards and motherboards designed for v2.0 will be able to work with v1.1 and v1.0, and vice versa.
The PCI-SIG also said PCIe 2.0 also features improvements to the point-to-point data transfer protocol and its software architecture.[5]
In June 2007 Intel released the specification of the P35 chipset which does not support PCIe 2.0 only PCIe 1.1.[6] Some people may be confused by the P35 block diagram[7] which states the Intel P35 has a PCIe x16 graphics link (8 GB/s) and 6 PCIe x1 links (500 MB/s each), for simple verification one can view the P965 block diagram which shows the same number of lanes and bandwidth but was released before PCIe 2.0 was finalized. Intel's first PCIe 2.0 capable chipset is the X38 and boards are already shipping from various vendors (Abit, Asus, Gigabyte) as of October 21, 2007.[8] AMD started supporting PCIe 2.0 with its RD700 chipset series. NVIDIA has revealed that the MCP72 will be their first PCIe 2.0 equipped chipset.[9]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_8#8800_GT

The 8800 GT, codenamed G92, was released on October 29, 2007. The card is the first to transition to 65nm process, and supports PCI-Express 2.0.[8] It has a single-slot cooler as opposed to the double slot cooler on the 8800 GTS and GTX, and uses less power than GTS and GTX due to its 65 nm process. While its core processing power is comparable to that of the GTX, the 256-bit memory interface and the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory often hinders its performance at very high resolutions and graphics settings. The 8800 GT, unlike other 8800 cards, is equipped with the PureVideo 2 engine for GPU assisted decoding of the H.264 and VC-1 codecs. Performance benchmarks at stock speeds place it above the 8800GTS (640MB and 320MB versions) and slightly below the 8800GTX. Presently, cards utilizing the chip are retailing from approximately USD $249 (reference models) to USD $299 (for overclocked models) (512MB) MSRP in the US, and £165 for reference models and up to £195 for overclocked versions in the UK. A 256mb version of the 8800GT which lower stock memory speeds (1.4 GHz as opposed to 1.8 GHz) but with the same core is available for about $199 (Overclocked versions costing more). Performance benchmarks have shown that the 256 MB version of the 8800 GT has a considerable performance disadvantage when compared to its 512 MB counterpart, especially in newer games such as Crysis.
The release of this card presents an odd dynamic to the graphics processing industry. At a NVIDIA projected street price of around $200, this card outperforms ATI's flagship HD2900XT and HD3870 in most situations, and even NVIDIA's own 8800GTS (previously priced at an MSRP of $400). The card, only marginally worse in synthetic and gaming benchmarks than the 8800GTX, also takes much of the value away from NVIDIA's own high end card. This release was shortly followed by the 8800GTS SSC (the original 8800GTS re-released with 128 shader processor units), and ATI's counter, the HD3800 series.
Shortly after the release, an incompatibility issue with older PCI Express 1.0a motherboards was unmasked. When using the PCI Express 2.0 compliant 8800GT in motherboards with PCI Express 1.0a slots, the card would not produce any display image, but the computer would often boot (with the fan spinning at a constant 100%). Some mainboard (Motherboard) chipsets had a workaround, which was to re-flash the graphics card's bios with an older GEN1 BIOS (which effectively made it into a PCI Express 1.0 card, not being able to utilize the PCIE 2.0 functions. but since the card itself could not even utilize the full capacity of the regular PCIE 1.0 slots, there was no noticeable performance reduction). A workaround to this is to flash the BIOS of the motherboard to the latest version. The flashing of the BIOS, however, voided the warranties of most cards thus making it a less-than-optimum way of getting the card to work properly. In relation to this compatibility issue, the high numbers of DOA (Dead On Arrival - cards that are broken out of the box)(As much as 13-15%) were believed to be inaccurate. When it was revealed that the G92 8800GT and 8800GTS 512Mb were going to be designed with PCI Express 2.0 connections, NVIDIA claimed that all cards would have full Backwards-Compatibility, but they completely failed to mentioned that this was only true for PCI Express 1.1 motherboards. The source for the BIOS-flash did not come from NVIDIA or any of their partners, but rather AsRock, a mainboard producer, who mentioned the fix in one of their motherboard FAQ's. ASUSTek, which produces their own versions of the 8800GT, posted a newer version of their 8800GT BIOS on their website, but did not mention that it fixed this issue. As of the date of this article (Dec 26 2007) there has not been any official word on this issue from either NVIDIA or any of their partners. One could speculate that this is because they do not want to harm their sales figures, by possibly turning away customers who are unsure of their motherboard specifications.

Stuff marked in bold is strike-through on Wikipedia.

[melgross]

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Exp...CI_Express_2.0



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_8#8800_GT



Stuff marked in bold is strike-through on Wikipedia.

In reference to all of that, I'll quickly post this from the Anandtech article I posted last post:

Thankfully the cases of incompatibility seem to be few and far between.

[onlooker]

Originally Posted by melgross

............ That Apple hasn't done so is a decision on their part to not do so. They had to think, "We aren't going to allow them to use this board on the older machine." Or, the first mobo's were improperly designed (or designed that way on purpose).

......................

I'm calling bull shit.

What is with you conspiracy theorists. It's obvious Apple didn't do it on purpose because they released the card as an upgrade for older systems. It wasn't until other manufacturers motherboards started reporting compatibility issues that Apple realized the spec they were using was also incompatible. Now Nvidia is apparently altering their driver code to be inline with the PCI-SIG specification. Because it's not just Apples motherboard that isn't working. It's a group of PCI-E 1.0a motherboards that are not working.

[melgross]

Originally Posted by onlooker

I'm calling bull shit.

What is with you conspiracy theorists. It's obvious Apple didn't do it on purpose because they released the card as an upgrade for older systems. It wasn't until other manufacturers motherboards started reporting compatibility issues that Apple realized the spec they were using was also incompatible. Now Nvidia is apparently altering their driver code to be inline with the PCI-SIG specification. Because it's not just Apples motherboard that isn't working. It's a group of PCI-E 1.0a motherboards that are not working.

Look, facts are facts!

You can get your's wrong, but please don't argue with the correct ones. You were saying that it was impossible for the card to work in the old machines because the standard power connections wouldn't allow it.

Now you're down to charging conspiracy theories instead!

I didn't say for sure that Apple did this on purpose, I said that it could have.

Either Apple screwed up the Express 1 mobo's, by mistake or design. Or they screwed up the new boards, either by mistake or design.

That's it! There's no other reason why the cards won't work in the older machines. Even for the 1.0a boards out there, only SOME don't work. Do you know for SURE that all of Apple's Express 1 machines use 1.0a? And I don't mean know, the way you knew that there was no backward compatibility before:

#1 PCI-E 2.0 cards have 8 pin power connector. PCI-E has 6. The cards are never going to work in both systems regardless of the firmware.

There's no argument here. The standard REQUIRES backwards and forwards compatibility. You argued otherwise. Just say you were wrong.

If you bothered to read Anandtech's article, you would see that incompatibility is rare. Most of the time, it can be corrected with a firmware update to the mobo.

[emig647]

Originally Posted by onlooker

I'm calling bull shit.

What is with you conspiracy theorists. It's obvious Apple didn't do it on purpose because they released the card as an upgrade for older systems. It wasn't until other manufacturers motherboards started reporting compatibility issues that Apple realized the spec they were using was also incompatible. Now Nvidia is apparently altering their driver code to be inline with the PCI-SIG specification. Because it's not just Apples motherboard that isn't working. It's a group of PCI-E 1.0a motherboards that are not working.

When did apple release the upgrade for older systems? All I saw was it on the UK Apple store... as an upgrade... and it didn't list the original Mac Pro as compatible. Just like they released the 7300GT and x1900xt on the Apple store the day the original Mac Pro was released.

As far as the 8 pin / 6 pin stuff... they make adapters.

http://www.frozencpu.com/products/60...27&id=n9dsaV5H

Very few power supplies have the 8 pin connectors right now.

[Haggar]

Post deleted

[onlooker]

Please ask Apple to enable SLI in it's drivers, and sell an optional SLI bridge with the 8800 GT upgrade kit. Even if your not interested in SLI' it's important that Mac users have the same benefits that PC users have available to them.
If Apple sees that graphics are important to us there is also a chance of better graphics options in more machines than just the Mac Pro in the future.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macpro.html

[StuBeck]

I'd ask for more video card choices first. SLI is only useful when you can get a really good deal on the second card, but 95% of the time just upgrading to the faster card, and selling your old card, will be faster and cheaper. You'll also usually get better features out of it too. For most people, having SLI in their computer is just a "wow-wee, look at me, I spent a lot of money on something which isn't useful."

[onlooker]

Originally Posted by StuBeck

I'd ask for more video card choices first. SLI is only useful when you can get a really good deal on the second card, but 95% of the time just upgrading to the faster card, and selling your old card, will be faster and cheaper. You'll also usually get better features out of it too. For most people, having SLI in their computer is just a * "wow-wee, look at me, I spent a lot of money on something which isn't useful."

More video cards is going to increase Apple inventory, and thus be less likely than just a driver update, and an SLI bridge. This has to potential to reduce inventory which is better for Apple.
Keep your opinion, don't ask, but don't insult others by pretending to know why they'll use SLI technology vs. how useful you deem it to be for yourself, or how you would react.

* Thanks for being yourself.

Better frame rates in games, or faster real time rendering in 3D applications may not be useful to you, but others may appreciate it.

[french macuser]

Originally Posted by melgross

That's it! There's no other reason why the cards won't work in the older machines. Even for the 1.0a boards out there, only SOME don't work. Do you know for SURE that all of Apple's Express 1 machines use 1.0a? And I don't mean know, the way you knew that there was no backward compatibility before.

PC 8800GTs work on old Mac Pros under bootcamp.

[onlooker]

Originally Posted by melgross

That's it! There's no other reason why the cards won't work in the older machines. Even for the 1.0a boards out there, only SOME don't work. Do you know for SURE that all of Apple's Express 1 machines use 1.0a? And I don't mean know, the way you knew that there was no backward compatibility before:



There's no argument here. The standard REQUIRES backwards and forwards compatibility. You argued otherwise. Just say you were wrong.

#1 I didn't argue about what the standard required anywhere. I don't know where you get this crap.

And #2 I didn't say I know if it's every board, but there is only two boards in the last Mac Pro's AFAIK. The ones that have 3GHz Quad cores. and the ones that have Dual cores. What I do know is Apple is now put up a compatibility post saying that the upgrade kit requires Mac Pro's that have PCI-E 2.0. http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPL...SLID?find=8800 That was it. No need to go all freakshow about it and start making shit up.

[emig647]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think adding SLI is as easy as making drivers and adding a bridge between the cards. You need the Northbridge to support it don't you? This is why you can NOT get SLI support on Intel Chipsets yet. Only nvidia chipsets. And why a lot of the Intel chipsets only have Crossfire. Am I missing something? Don't the cards still need to communicate through the Northbridge with SLI? I know that Crossfire is a little different. If it was that possible to add SLI, I believe a lot more people would be doing it on Crossfire boards.

[Abster2core]

Originally Posted by Foo2

Another example of Apple being over-zealous in its quest for dollars.

How do you come to that conclusion?

[onlooker]

emig647, Using hacked drivers Windows users are using SLI in Mac Pro's so why shouldn't we be able to?

[emig647]

Originally Posted by onlooker

emig647, Using hacked drivers Windows users are using SLI in Mac Pro's so why shouldn't we be able to?

Can you send a link about this? Everything I've read about SLI is the cards have to communicate through an nvidia northbridge, which the Mac Pros do not have.

The first thing I read on requirements is SLI Motherboard. I don't see how drivers can make up for a hardware loss in configuration...

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2284&p=3

Don't bother pasting this thread. These guys don't know what they are talking about
http://discussions.apple.com/thread....2359&tstart=50

This is off of wikipedia:

In order to use SLI, a motherboard with an nForce4, nForce 500, nForce 600 or nForce 700 SLI chipset must be used. Although with the use of hacks and older drivers, one can make SLI work on motherboards with Intel, ATI and ULi chipsets, NVIDIA has stated that only their own chipsets can allow SLI to function optimally, and that they will not allow SLI to work on any other vendor's chipsets. Some early SLI systems used Intel's E7525 Xeon chipset, which caused problems when NVIDIA started locking out other vendor's chipsets as it limited them to an outdated driver set. In 2007, Intel has licensed NVIDIA's SLI technology for its SkullTrail platform.

So someone is seriously mistaken here as the Mac Pro motherboard DOES NOT have those chipsets.

[onlooker]

Originally Posted by emig647

.....................So someone is seriously mistaken here as the Mac Pro motherboard DOES NOT have those chipsets.

Unless they are using that old driver, or a modified version of it. I'll look for that guy's SLI'd Mac Pro, but it was a long time ago.

[onlooker]

This is funny. Look at what my google search turned up.

http://www.google.com/search?client=...UTF-8&oe=UTF-8


After that: Look at this. This is where I saw it, but look at the google search first. I was like holly shit!

http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...threadid=66134