ATI graphics card not recommended

[fredfries]

Hi everybody,
I seem a bit confused. I was looking at the buyers guide for Custom builds, and all recommended graphics cards are Nvidia. How come ATI is not on the list? When I look at the customizable mac pros at Apple store, it is only possible to choose ATI...

/fred

 

[Supermulti]

Current-Gen AMD cards (HD 7xxx) are not supported, only previous-gen (6xxx) are.

The reason why the Mac Pro is using those is because it hasn´t been updated in a while.
You could get one of the supported ones but they aren´t such a good bang for your back.
But if you could get a used one cheap and don´t care for the lower performance go for it!

 

[Going Bald]

Current-Gen AMD cards (HD 7xxx) are not supported, only previous-gen (6xxx) are.

The reason why the Mac Pro is using those is because it hasn´t been updated in a while.
You could get one of the supported ones but they aren´t such a good bang for your back.
But if you could get a used one cheap and don´t care for the lower performance go for it!

Ha! You can't even find the retail, unused, brand new HD5770, HD5870 and the HD6770, HD6870 are scarce in any of the main etailers like Newegg, Amazon, TigerDirect or Provantage. AMD just doesn't make them any more.
Amazon has a few used ones, ebay has a lot of used ones, but who knows what they have been through?

 

[sonicseamus]

Ha! You can't even find the retail, unused, brand new HD5770, HD5870 and the HD6770, HD6870 are scarce in any of the main etailers like Newegg, Amazon, TigerDirect or Provantage. AMD just doesn't make them any more.
Amazon has a few used ones, ebay has a lot of used ones, but who knows what they have been through?

I mean, I bought a used 5770 off eBay almost a year ago and it's been working flawlessly since (except that it has black bars around the screen on bootup). So that could be an option. But to the OP: there's not much wrong with NVidia, but you can wait until 10.8.3 rolls around to see if apple adds some new ATI drivers.

 

[fredfries]

The reason why I'm annoyed (that would be at Apple) is due to my ATI XFS HD5870 is pretty noisy, the fan never slows down.
Then I bought a Zotac Geforce GT430, but that graphics cards gives me the hiccups with every resolution change (http://www.tonymacx86.com/127-nvidi...ics-cards-issues-mountain-lion/comments2.html ).

So what do I do now, use my noisy HD5870 or buy a new Nvidia graphics card?

 

[Going Bald]

The reason why I'm annoyed (that would be at Apple) is due to my ATI XFS HD5870 is pretty noisy, the fan never slows down.
Then I bought a Zotac Geforce GT430, but that graphics cards gives me the hiccups with every resolution change (http://www.tonymacx86.com/127-nvidi...ics-cards-issues-mountain-lion/comments2.html ).

So what do I do now, use my noisy HD5870 or buy a new Nvidia graphics card?

You could remove the box and fan from the card and install a case fan blowing directly onto the gfx card heatsink. Or do some research as to what will fit and buy a different heatsink fan setup to install on the card. People who use liquid cooling do this all the time.