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AMD FirePro Graphics Card Question?

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Mar 15, 2011
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Motherboard
Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD5-B3
CPU
i5 2500K
Graphics
2x HD 4850
So, I'm tired of having to do work arounds for my other cards to work. I want something that will work out of the box. Since Apple uses the AMD FirePro Cards, does that mean that all the AMD FirePro Cards that newegg is selling work out of the box?

Thanks in advance.
 
Apple actually does not use real FirePro cards in their MacPro. They're using normal consumer cards labled as "FirePro" to get some more $$$ out of them. E.g. their D700 card is just a rebadget, downclocked HD 7970.

To answer your question: Some FirePro cards are supported OOB, others need some more tweaking. To get an idea about the support state, you'll have to find a similar consumer-level AMD card and look up the support state: http://www.tonymacx86.com/graphics/171291-radeon-compatibility-guide-ati-amd-graphics-cards.html
Finally, you'll have to find out the device ID of the FirePro card and verify if the Apple drivers include it. If it's present, the drivers will pick the card up automatically, otherwise you'll need to spoof the device ID.
If you have a specific FirePro card in mind, I can assist you, but be aware that you can't be 100% certain about compatibility until you find someone who is sucessfully running the card in a Mac.

Additionally, please be aware that there's not a single advantage of getting a FirePro card in OS X, so unless you need it in a dual boot Windows setup, there's no reason to get one. The OS X performance is inferior to consumer cards due to decreased clock rate and the price is usually way higher.
 
I am running a w7000 and it just worked OOB. Performance/Rendering is great in Adobe Premiere.
 
I'm having all kinds of issues getting Premiere Pro to work with a GTX-960 and have been thinking about doing what you did. Can you tell me what exact card you got? Maybe a link to it if you know? That would be a good start for me to investigate it. I find my machine runs pretty solid until I start to push the GPU and then it's just a matter of time before I end up with a KP. Or, in some cases KP's all day long. After a year of dealing with it I'm ready to try something else.

Any advice or additional information is appreciated.

Tom
 
I'm having all kinds of issues getting Premiere Pro to work with a GTX-960 and have been thinking about doing what you did. Can you tell me what exact card you got? Maybe a link to it if you know? That would be a good start for me to investigate it. I find my machine runs pretty solid until I start to push the GPU and then it's just a matter of time before I end up with a KP. Or, in some cases KP's all day long. After a year of dealing with it I'm ready to try something else.

Any advice or additional information is appreciated.

Tom
 
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