Mac Pro :: Flash Nvidia 8800 GT (made For 06) To Work In 08?
Feb 11, 2010
This is my first post here, hopefully i can begin posting a bit more and learn more about my mac pro. I just got a hold of an Apple Graphics Card Upgrade. The part# is MB560Z/A. It's an Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT, but it's the 2006 version with EFI32 firmware (or do i call it BIOS or ROM?) and won't work with the 2008 Mac Pro... and of course my dilemma is i want to use it in my 2008 Mac Pro. So is it possible for me to flash it (which i'm pretty sure it is) and more importantly is it easy to do and could someone tell me how (or point me in the direction of simple instructions) of how to go about doing it? Also, I understand there's always some risk doing these type of things, but would the chance of me screwing up the card be considered minimal? Is it easy to restore to the factory default if i want to place it back in a 2006 mac (i have no plans for that, but it'd be nice to know i have that option).
There seem to be a few reports of problems running 750gb F1 Spinpoints with Nvidia chipsets. Does this apply to us with the 8800 or is it a Windows thing?
Anyone out there happily running a MacPro (08) with an 8800 and F1 spinpoints?
From the reading I've done it's apparent that the NVidia 8800 card that ships as an option for the MacPro (jan '08) is slow for Pro App's.
I've read at some sites that this may be remedied by NVidia by rewriting / releasing updated drivers for this card.
What's the likely hood of this?
Or is there something in the architecture of the card that makes it maxed out?
I'm not annoyed at NVidia as I wanted a reliable card.
I just fried my 4th ATI (Retail) 9800 Pro 128 MB card in my Digital Audio PowerMac in the space of three years. I can't believe how many of these cards have been so unreliable. The first three were replaced under warranty.
Early this year I replaced the stock video card in my 2006 Mac Pro with an Apple supplied Nvidia 8800 GT card. I'm driving a 30" Apple Cinema Display with no problems but occasionally, when encoding video or playing full screen games, the card emits a high pitched tone akin to a smoke alarm tone but continuous. When discontinuing the encoding or stopping the game, the tone stops.
Has anybody upgraded their Mac Pro's stock graphics card to the NVIDIA card?
Does it make a big difference?
I'm playing way to much X3 Reunion at the moment, and I've noticed that the graphics on the PC screenshots look a lot better than what my Mac Pro produces. I don't know if it's a Cider thing, or simply down to the stock graphics card in the Mac Pro being a bit pants?
I was thinking about a 3.06 Last Gen with 512MB Nvidia GeForce 8800. How does this card fair? is it similar to the Nividia GT 120 or 130? is it able to handle all games at least on low settings? (i.e. crysis, sims 3 etc)
I have an iMac with a 3.06 ghz intel core 2 duo processor, snow leopard 10.6.3, an nvidia geforce 8800 gs, and 2 gb of ram. I wanted to play games like Counter Strike: Source and Left 4 Dead 2. How would those games work on my iMac?
My 24" iMac has been exibiting strange behavior lately... It appears to be if a graphical nature where the screen will randomly flicker or go blank in a variety of colors (black or white or yellow or red or blue). Sometimes a preceeding indicator that this is going to occur is that the system becomes on responsive or extremely delayed, text and other graphics appear garbled/corrupted/scrambled.
I've used Mac Hardware Test, Disk Utility, TechTool Pro 6, anti virus software - even took it to a local authorized Mac repair shop (not Apple Store) and the results are the same - Everything LOOKS fine with no problems reported. I've reinstalled the OS and even gone as far as completely wiping the drive and starting from scratch, just incase it is/was some kind of odd software conflict. Yet, the problem persists and the Console always captures something like this just before another epic fail:
Okay so i own an imac. the specs of it are a 3.06 ghz intel core 2 duo processor, 500gb, 2gb of ram and an nvidia geforce 8800 gs graphics card with 512mb of video ram. Okay so like most people have asked this before, what is it? The GS only has 384mb of video ram, and this has 512mb of video ram. What is this graphics cards real name and what are the specs of it?
I purchased this card for my Mac Pro: "NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT (early 2008) Graphics Upgrade Kit for Mac Pro"
I spoke with multiple Geniuses. I spoke with AppleCare. Everyone is telling me that this is the card for my Mac Pro model. They looked up the model number and confirmed it. The original ATI card works in the machine.
I received the card, installed it, booted the machine, and had no video. Just two blank 20" displays. I tried using one display, reset power management, did a few other things while on the phone with a Genius. Nothing.
AppleCare sent me a new card (same model). Same issues. I'm looking at two blank displays right now. I'm as frustrated as I could possibly be. Are all the people I spoke to at Apple completely wrong and could this be the wrong card? Multiple people looked up the model number and they all point me to this card. It doesn't work, and since my ATI card works, I doubt it's the machine.
I have an Imac 24in that I purchased last June with the upgraded video card, NVIDIA GEFORCE 8800 GS W/512MB. Anyone know if it might be possible to upgrade it to one of the newer cards just released with the new imacs?
While the GeForce GT 330M featured in the new 15- and 17-inch MacBook Pros has already been found in competing notebook PCs, the new 13-inch MacBook Pro sports the Nvidia 320M, a graphics processor created just for Apple.
An Nvidia spokesperson told AppleInsider Tuesday that the new 320M was made especially for Apple, and is the successor to the GeForce 9400M, introduced in 2008. The 320M is an integrated graphics chipset for notebooks based on Intel's Core 2 Duo line of processors.
According to Notebookcheck.net, the 320M does not have dedicated graphics memory, but uses shared memory for the system for its graphics processing, giving it poorer performance than a GPU with dedicated memory. The 320M (not to be confused with the GeForce GT 320M) is based on the GT216 core, and offers 48 shader cores.
The report said the gaming performance of the 320M should be comparable to, but slightly better than, a 310M. The 320M also supports PureVideo HD for high definition decoding within the GPU. The processor can also be used to encode videos.
In announcing its new line of MacBook Pros on Tuesday, Apple revealed that the GeForce 320M GPU offers up to 80 percent faster graphics processing. It also helps the 13-inch MacBook Pro achieve 10 hours of battery life. Apple called the 320M the "fastest integrated graphics processor on the market."
The 13-inch model also includes faster Core 2 Duo processors, reaching speeds up to 2.66GHz and featuring a 1066MHz frontside bus with 3MB of shared L2 cache.
Featured on the 15- and 17-inch models is the 330M, which Apple said is more than twice as fast as the low-end 320M. Apple said the GT 330M "provides smooth, crisp on-screen graphics for the most demanding 3D games, creative software and technical applications."
The 15- and 17-inch MacBook Pros also include automatic graphics switching, which Apple has dubbed a "breakthrough" technology. It allows the system to switch graphics processors on the fly, giving users performance when they need it and better battery efficiency when they don't. AppleInsider first revealed Apple was planning dual graphics technology in its future MacBook Pros in February.
For some reason that I can�t explain I am unable to watch any youTube videos on my iMac. I have "click to Flash" installed and can watch flash content on all other sites. When I login to my account at youTube I also need to click to flash but then I get instead of the video, a "go Upgrade". I took this to mean that the flash player needed upgrading so I agreed to download the latest Flash Player and installed it. This has made no difference. I even went so far as to create a new YouTube account with a different e-mail address but nothing helps. Can anyone please give me some advice what I can do or try to get to watch the YouTube videos? This problem is only when I use Safari. Using Firefox I can watch youTube.
I updated the to the New Adobe Flash last night with hardware excel, and it has made my safari crash a lot. How do I go about downgrading it to 10.0 and not 10.1
I bought a NVIDIA 8800GTS, since I saw it was possible to flash the card (thread in these forums). So I got the same card and was all excited! Unfortuantely I do not own a PC but I hoped I could flash the card within my MacPro (early 2008). Too bad that the flash utility nvflash.exe has to be run in a DOS environment. After fighting for a while I want to post my findings and maybe somebody know the solution.
Standard Dos BootCD will work on the mac but the USB keyboard won't be recognized :/ After trying the Hiren's Boot cd - I could use the keyboard, but there was no way the Loader could mount a RAM disk - I guess the MacPro handles ram differently than the standard PC. All I wanted to do is to access the NTFS filesystem so I could save my original NVidia ROM. No success I tried the HP USB Flash utility which creates a bootable USB flash drive with DOS on it but the MacPro doesn't recognise the drive as a bootable disk :/ Tried the same with an iPod but no success neither. So all I want is to boot into Dos with my MacPro - have a "writeable" drive so I can save my rom with the nvflash.exe and flash the card with the new and EFI64 rom version (which can be also found within another thread). Any1 an idea ? I think I am at the end of my knowledge... A .dmg that can be used to restore a Bootable DOS FAT32 partition that can be modified via OS X would be the bomb.
I was able to try the new NVidia 3D-Shutter-Glasses on a PC, and I liked it.
It is something I dreamed off in my C64-days long time ago ;-)
I think about getting a MacPro and installing a flashed NVidia-Card with the connector for the shutter-remote. I hope to have the card running under OSX as a normal card and, when booting into Vista ( for games only), I then can enjoy the 3D-effect.
Now: is there a new generation Nvidia-card with the 3D-connector that will be flashable for OSX? That would be great news for me. I know the new Quattro-card has this connector also for OSX (?), but this thing is way off limits in terms of pricing.
Is it possible to flash a PNY/nvidia gforce 6200 256m PCI video card? I have searched google endlessly and have found no information regarding it.
I have a G4 AGP. The video card works well but I would like to set up multiple monitors and I prefer not having to purchase a new video card if possible.
Ive recon that when having your MBP's GT330M turned on, you can't play YouTube-videos in full-screen, my screen just turns white, and nothing happens.. Then you have to ESC yourself outta there..
The funny thing is that if you use the Intel HD Graphics processor, it works fine, but it gets very laggy if you have 720p res..
In OSX 10.7.4 all sections of iWork fail to initiate and quit with an error message. Each time a message page is sent to Apple saying that the program has quit followed by pages of data. Searching discussion groups has failed to provide a conclusive answer.
Info: iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.4), All parts of iWork fail to start
I'm basically trying to make a "save as" version of a project so I can change what I have without risk of losing everything I've done. But every time I save a new version of the project (and even rename it, store it on another drive, etc.), the changes I make to the new version are also made to the original.I'm also not getting the popup "duplicate project" window (which should give me a choice of where and how to save the project) I'm supposed to get when I click on "Duplicate Project." How can I simply save a fixed version of my project?
My old G5 dual 1,8 Ghz with FX5200 was not able to run HD video, so I bought nVidia 7800 GS AGP video card (PC card flashed for Mac) via eBay and now everything "work perfectly" - sometimes. ( Ha ha). The problem is: On booting, when the circle stop to rotate, display freeze (LG Flatron L192WS) and I must restart pushing power button. I repeat booting for 7-8 times and if I have luck 9th will start up my Mac. In SAFE MODE there is no problem with booting.
I do a lot of 3D work which is why I plan on purchasing said card, but wanted to ask: How does it fair for playing games? Not that I care, but I am just curious since nobody I find tests it for anything but 3D Software.
So, I bought myself new Macbook Pro exactly 21 days ago, and was disappointed to find out that they refreshed it today.
However, I am heading to Apple Store Friday afternoon to find out what I can do to get that refreshed one. (I waited 7 month, until the last day of the presentation)So, to people with 320m graphics, are there any big difference? Does the battery lasts longer?
