Here it is, the GTX 285 from NVIDIA, quite a jump from the ancient 8800GT. As HardMac reports:
[It's] price tag is most likely designed to directly compete with the Radeon HD 4870: 436.66 USD. Interestingly, the Mac Edition is “only” 60 USD more expensive than the PC version (from the same website). This will be a cheaper alternative to the Mac Edition Radeon HD 4870. However, as we reported it earlier, the PC version of the Radeon HD 4890 might be a perfect alternative too.
As HardMac reported earlier in the month, EVGA are developing this card and is available to order now, but probably won’t be sent out till next month.
I’m glad that we’re getting some better cards. My Mac Pro, both in MacOSX and Windows, has begun to suffer when playing the most recent games. I’m still playing through Prince of Persia for Mac – and enjoying it – but it can be very laggy unless you have one of the newer NVIDIA GPUs or the HD4870.
”However, as we reported it earlier, the PC version of the Radeon HD 4890 might be a perfect alternative too.”
What do they mean by this?
I’ve tried the 4890 in a Hackintosh ”experiment” and it didn’t work. Someone told me the chip in that card won’t be supported until Leopard is released (at the earliest).
Take a look here:
http://www.hardmac.com/news/2009/05/18/installing-a-radeon-hd-48×0-pc-version-in-a-mac-pro-has-never-been-so-easy
and here: http://www.hardmac.com/news/2009/05/13/install-a-radeon-hd-4890-pc-in-a-mac-pro-without-flashing-it
For how to install 48×0 based cards in your Mac.
I hope to get a PC 4870 and 4890 to test at some point.
That’s really awesome!
I’ll try to get the 4890 I have working tomorrow when I have some time.
Thanks for the info Alex.
Let me know how it goes.
The guys at HardMac know a lot more than me about this. They’re always willing to help, so stop by their forum if you have questions!
Back to trying to source some GPUs…
Oh my… That’s all I can say. I now have the luxury of having probably one of the worlds fastest gaming ”Macs”.
It works, and it works well! All games I have tried simply flies even at the highest settings in 1920 x 1200 resolution: World of Warcraft, Call of Duty 4, Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars, Halo and Unreal Tournament 2004. Even when there’s a lot of action the frame rate is maintained. The rather old Halo felt like a new game when we were 14 players online and everything still went super-smooth.
What was the process you went through – just the same as HardMac say? No problems?
I went through the process here:
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=149505
I got a bit disappointed price wise (I live in Sweden and all models got a quite hefty price increase) when Apple released the latest Mac Pro, so I decided to try and build a Hackintosh.
I also installed the package that are linked to at end of that Hardmac article:
http://www.hardmac.com/news/2009/05/13/install-a-radeon-hd-4890-pc-in-a-mac-pro-without-flashing-it
The package ”Patched ATIRadeonX2000.kext, for exotic cards…”:
File is called ”QE_CI_Exotic_cards.pkg” and I downloaded via netkas.org (from the article about Radeon HD for 10.5.7): http://netkas.org/?p=101
Interesting.
I built a Hackintosh last summer with an EFiX module. I think I might take a look at running OS X on generic hardware without an EFiX device, like you’ve done.