Installing a Video Card in Mac Pro
Hi;
We are trying to change a Video Card in a Mac Pro. It presently has in a NVidea Geforce 7300 which is flickering and pixelating among other issues. The client bought another NVidea Geforce although I am not yet clear of the exact model, we are trying to get this.
The second card is detected when installed with the first but it does not show so output is only through the old card. The machine fails to boot from the new card alone.
I am not very familiar with Mac so your help is appreciated.
We are trying to change a Video Card in a Mac Pro. It presently has in a NVidea Geforce 7300 which is flickering and pixelating among other issues. The client bought another NVidea Geforce although I am not yet clear of the exact model, we are trying to get this.
The second card is detected when installed with the first but it does not show so output is only through the old card. The machine fails to boot from the new card alone.
I am not very familiar with Mac so your help is appreciated.
ASKER
The card is NVidia GeForce 8800GT, and it is a Mac Pro running OS/X 10.6. I need a way to switch to this new card. The machine detects it, but when I plug the display into it, there is no response on the screen. When I place it back into the original one, it displays. When I remove the original card, and use the 8800GT only, there is no response on the screen.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
It would help if you indicated the model of MacPro and version of OSX as this will have a bearing on the compatible models also.
This article reviews performance of MacPro (2010 model) compatible cards
http://www.barefeats.com/rogue02.html
Did your client buy the video card from Apple or confirm it was compatible?
If it is a non-supported card all is not lost as it seems that you need to bypass the boot screen and apple hardware check and install the OSX drivers
http://www.nvidia.com/object/macosx-270.00.00f01-driver.html
As far as I remember there is an app called Pandora which allows you to change the bootloader to bypass the hardware check but this is in effect what you'd need to do
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/files/file/11-pandoraapp/
To be honest if its not an Apple-approved/supported GPU you're into "hacking" the Mac to get it to work. You're stepping into a different area of expertise and I'd recommend opening another question for this.