We also suggest you give feedback to the Mac Pro management at Apple. If you are very unhappy about it not working on your "old" Mac Pro, then sign our petition asking Apple to create a version that will. If you still want to order the GeForce 8800 GT kit, go to the Apple Store USA and search on "MB137Z/A" to find it. Otherwise, a special legacy version will have to be created by Apple or a third party.
It could be made compatible with the older Mac Pros by putting both a 32-bit and 64-bit EFI driver in the GeForce 8800 GT's ROM - assuming there's room for both. The ROM only has an EFI64 driver in its ROM. Turns out the aftermarket GeForce 8800 GT kit is for the "2008" Mac Pro ONLY. Though the GeForce 8800 GT is available in kit form, it is *NOT* compatible with the older Mac Pro (August 2006, April 2007) as we first thought. If you order it with the Radeon 2600 XT, it will take "3 to 5 days." (Since we plan to test both, we ordered our Mac Pro 3.2GHz with the stock Radeon and made a separate order for the GeForce 8800 GT kit - MB137Z/A.)ĪLERT TO OWNERS OF "OLD" MAC PROS! (CORRECTED) Note, however, if you order your Mac Pro with the GeForce 8800 GT (or Quadro FX 5600), it will take longer to ship. Considering how much you pay for a new Mac Pro, the extra $200 for the optional GPU is trivial. The gains to be had by the GeForce 8800 GT is well worth the $200 premium you'll pay at the time of ordering your Mac Pro. (SEE OUR "SHOOT 'EM UP" ARTICLE FOR MOTION AND IMAGINATOR RESULTS.)ĬOUGH UP THE $200 for the GeForce 8800 GT
So GPU does matter in some cases and the trend with pro apps is to use the GPU more and more. For example, when we render a RAM preview with Motion, we see as much as a 100% load on the GPU (according to Hardware Monitor) and we get different render times with different graphics cards. Apple has already shown with Motion and Aperture that certain graphics functions can be handed off to the GPU. Even though Photoshop CS3 is a "graphics" application, it does not use the GPU to render effects.
Up until recently, with the exception of high-end 3D apps like Maya, the GPU was not stressed by professional applications.