Mac Pro Graphics Cards

irchsirchs
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
Hello all,



I have an iMac atm, and when running windows natively, driver updates are a massive pain. Apple, and other OEM manufacturers, force ATI and nVidia to not include the cards that ship with iMacs and the various laptops in the windows driver sets that are updated regularly.



My question is, is this the case with the cards that come with the mac pro? They are interchangeable with any PCI express graphics card, so to me it doesn't make sense to limit the cards in this way. And am I right in assuming that I can put any graphics card I wish in the mac pro at a later time after purchase?



Cheers



Jan

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 4
    joe_the_dragonjoe_the_dragon Posts: 931member
    The cards in the mac pro need EFI roms for them to work.
  • Reply 2 of 4
    futurepastnowfuturepastnow Posts: 1,772member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by irchs View Post


    And am I right in assuming that I can put any graphics card I wish in the mac pro at a later time after purchase?



    No. You can only use a video card from Apple with OSX.
  • Reply 3 of 4
    benroethigbenroethig Posts: 2,782member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by FuturePastNow View Post


    No. You can only use a video card from Apple with OSX.



    Any company could make a graphics card with EFI firmware. However, the whole $2500 professional workstation bit makes its near impossible to sell enough units to make it profitable.
  • Reply 4 of 4
    futurepastnowfuturepastnow Posts: 1,772member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by BenRoethig View Post


    Any company could make a graphics card with EFI firmware. However, the whole $2500 professional workstation bit makes its near impossible to sell enough units to make it profitable.



    "Could" is the operative word, there. And aside from the low-volume, I imagine there would be driver issues if it's not a GPU Apple already sells.
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