Question on the Mac Pro (Apple's Desktop)

Hey, is it possible to change the videocard/soundcard on the mac pro?

I was thinking of getting it...and changing the cards to an X-FI for sound, and an nvidia 8800 GTX or ATI HD 2900 XT... is it possible to do that? or no?

 

not sure. when i go to work tomorrow and have the opportunity, i'll take a look inside one of our mac pro desktops to see how easy it is to replace the cards. it should be replaceable to my knowledge.

 

The graphics card is replaceable, but there are issues with OSX compatibility.

eVGA GeForce 8800 GTS on Pro, 3dMark 9800+ [from MacRumors]

 

So it's not exactly safe to put an 8800 GTX or HD 2900 XT?

 

Physically replacing the video card is just as easy as a PC.

Unless you can write your own drivers, I would recommend against this. Apple writes their drivers in house, not like Windows where nVidia and ATI provide them. Because of this, compatibility is limited to what apple uses.

 

Usually you don't buy Macs with the intention to upgrade them much, really (other than some extra RAM or HDD).

 

Yes, unfortunately. I see why Apple does this (no/much fewer compatibility issues, friendlier to use when "Apple takes care of everything") but I'd wish Apple would release a Mac desktop tower that was full customizable. That'd be nice.

 

I see it as more of a trade-off. Apple can concentrate in making more stable drivers and more feature-full products, while MS has to concentrate in ensuring they support a gazillion different vendors, and making sure customers can at least boot the computer with some vanilla default drivers right after they install Windows without BSODing.

The way I see it, I think Apple's model will prevail. With the exponential development of new hardware, trying to continually upgrade becomes expensive and less feasible. In my case, 5 yrs ago I bought an old eMachines with an Athlon XP 2000+. I added a GeForce FX 5200 so I could play Unreal Tournament and similar games. Then UT2004 came out, and my desktop just couldn't handle it. So I bought a nice gaming rig ago with a 939-pin socket for Athlon 64 and 2 GeForce 6600GT in SLI. 939-pin had just come out, so I bought slightly more expensive parts with the idea that I could upgrade later. It lasted again for a couple of years, and I had lots of fun with it. Now, when I tried to upgrade as I originally had planed to, I couldn't find a decent enough processor for that socket, because newer technologies had taken over the market. In other words, it was not worth to try to make this "future proof" machine unless I had been updating a lot more often, and that would end up being expensive anyways.

With time, the cost of doing continual little upgrades every 6 months to keep up with gaming and such will get closer to the cost of simply recycling computers every 2-3 years, and stability will become more of a deciding factor for a pleasant experience.

The thing is, older computers make nice replacements for home appliances. Instead of buying a Tivo, I can just buy a TV tuner (a rather cheap upgrade)and turn my older, outdated Athlon XP 2000+ into a DVR that will be better than anything Tivo has in the market. My Athlon 3000+ rig has become my file server. I also set up an ancient Pentium I laptop on my kitchen counter and my wife uses it to look up recipes on the Internet. Computers can be recycled easily within a home. An even older computer can easily become a proxy/filter machine. All the money I would additionally (and also incrementally) be spending in home entertainment or network appliances and such could be spent all at once in a nicer computer (I just got my MBP ).

I've decided that I'm done with the whole upgrading. I'll use my MBP for the designed use for 3 yrs or so, and then I'll simply buy another one that is up to specs. I can always find another use for the older one, so at the end it pays off.

 

Doesn't the Mac Pro have slots for multiple video cards?

I have no idea if this works, but here's a wacky idea... is there a way to have both the original card and your more powerful card in the machine in different slots, and you could have only the original one enabled in OS X, and only the more powerful card enabled in Windows? (I'm assuming you're doing this for gaming purposes.) Since each card would want to output a video signal, you'd probably need two DVI cables and a box to switch which video signal to send to the monitor.

 

swarmer, I believe that OSX recognizes any hardware changes right away, and would not like that extra card being in there.

If you could isolate the pci slot to allow for an on/off switch that you could flip when going between OSX and Windows, then your idea actually sounds pretty neat.

 

Could you upgrade and then run the card in Windows perfectly alright?

 

Well, if I were to get the mac Pro, should I go for its quadro 4200 or something like that or the ATI X1900 XT?

 

(You mean Quadro 4500, right? Just making sure we're looking at the same thing)

It all depends on what use you have in mind for this Mac Pro. What are you getting it for?

 

I was just wondering...cause I'll be doing some gaming for sure. Like Assassins Creed, Crysis, and battlefields 2 & 2142.

Which card is better like I said? Quadro 4500 or ATI X1900XT?

 

WOW, well, the Mac Pro is more of a high-end workstation than a gaming rig...

I'm not sure about the gaming performance of the Quadro 4500, it's probably similar to the performance of a GeForce 8800...Again, Quadros are workstation card usually used for special visualization applications or production-ready environments, and not really a consumer product. In fact, a Quadro uses drivers that are optimized and specialized, and I don't know if there may be some consumer-market features removed (I don't know, I'm just thinking aloud)

I could say "yea, it would make an awesome gaming machine!!!", and probably it would, but I'm not sure if the driver support for it is appropriate for gaming. I don't know if I'd like to burn $4000+ on a gaming rig to later find out the drivers don't work well with your games.

I'd say take your time, do your research, google for a week or so until you find people who have used a Mac Pro for gaming, which card they got, how well it worked and if it is worth the money. Buyer's remorse with a $4-5k purchase would be terrible...

 

I actually won't advise getting a Mac Pro if all you want to do is game on Windows. The fact is, there are not games that scale to 8-cores if you go with the octo-core. If you only go with the 2x2 Mac Pro, then you might as well stick with a regular Core 2 Quad or the QX6850. The FB-DIMMs in the Mac Pro add a lot of latency and kills gaming performance. The chipset used is also optimized for stability so I wouldn't be surprised if there is higher latency associated with the PCIe x16 slot either.

http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2832&p=12

In fact, a lowly 2.67GHz dual core E6700 easily beats a 2x Xeon 5160 at 3GHz in gaming.

EDIT: And the difference between the X1900XT and the Quadro 4500 is here:

http://www.barefeats.com/octopro2.html

 

I don't think anyone would get a Mac Pro just to game on Windows. But I could see it as a nice alternative to getting a Mac Pro (for other stuff) plus a separate Windows gaming machine.

 

Well, if you were to game on a Mac Pro (though that's a crazy expensive gaming desktop), you should go with the x1900XT. While I loathe ATi cards and their UNIX support, desktop Quadro cards are known to have issues in games. It would be better if they updated the selection to an 8800.

 

I think, with the current use of the 8600m's in the MBP, you may be safe to swap out a 7300 for an 8600. Not sure on this, so don't do it and then be mad at me if it doesn't work.

Does the Mac Pro support SLI if you were to get three 7300s? How would those compare to a single X1900XT?

 

I believe you can have all those 7300s in SLI (up to 4). SLI supports more than just dual configurations.

I'll have to go with ltcommander_data, a Mac Pro isn't a gaming machine. If you're getting it for something else (some other use such as scientific visualization, or extremely heavy video editing, or something), then sure, I'd try some gaming on it, since it's there But if you're just trying to get the best Mac that can do gaming, I'd get a MacBook Pro (they game pretty well!), or ditch the Mac idea and get a gaming PC.

 

You see, I need to buy a new computer, and I already have a Macbook Pro and a Sony AR with 8600m GT graphics..I need a desktop that is VERY POWERFUL that has awesome graphics for work and some medium gaming(just BF 2142, Crysis, and Assassin's Creed for PC)

 

Actually, the Mac Pro doesn't support SLi. It supports up to 4 graphics cards via 1 dual-slot PCI-E and 3 single-slot (giving you up to 4 7300s), but they don't actually work in SLi. They cards don't really work together to produce a single output image, they just work separately so that you can run up to four monitors at really high resolutions, something you would need to do if you were a photo/video editor or just an uber-nerd.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that the reason the Mac Pro doesn't support SLi is because it doesn't use an nforce board.

 

Yea I think you the MacPro would pretty much be a waste of money in that league for gaming. That amount would go much father if you built it yourself... or... the XPS 410, quad core with dual 512 geforces would probably be both cheaper and much faster than the macpro. There is pretty much only one reason to get a mac pro and one reason only. Final Cut Pro.

I mean on the 410 you can get Quad 2.4 ghz, nVidia 8800 GTX 768mb and 2gb 800mhz ram and a 20" screen for 1799. That would blow away the comparable MacPro+Cinema Display for power and cost (Clocking in at a rediculious $3775 WTF?!!!!).

Anyways, buy 2-3 normal computers or one mac pro.

 

Well, I'm getting the mac pro no matter what(don't ask why). my question is which video card is better for gaming in general and work(movie editing)? ATI X1900 XT or Quadro 4500?

 

The ATI will be better for gaming, but not by much. The Quadro will be better for move editing and rendering, but not by much. Unless you work for Valve or Pixar there's no reason to spend that kind of money on a Quadro. They're just not built for gaming.

 

why? I would get an iMac and a gaming desktop...