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8800GT with 1024MB VRAM - possible?


frankiee
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Hello!

 

I wonder if it is possible to use a Nvidia 8800GT Card with 1024MB VRAM. Keep in mind that this should happen on a Mac Pro (early 2008).

 

It would also be important that the card both works in Vista and OS X, but I wouldn't mind if the additional 512MB is only recognised in Vista. The question is if this is possible at all. I've been searching the forums for hours, but I haven't find an answer yet. So I hope to find some Experts here to help me :)

 

I know that there are several cards with 512MB which flash OK, but I am unsure if this works also with more VRAM. There should be absolutely no problems arising from that when using OS X, since I use this OS for work! A collegue told me that he thinks that VRAM Size is irrelevant in regard to the BIOS, but is instead dynamically detected by the driver. If this is correct, I have some hope that the original mac 8800GT ROM will indeed work if the card has at least 128KB ROM.

 

I also wonder if it is possible to mix the PC part of the ROM (the original one which came with the card) with the EFI-64 one (coming from the Mac 8800) if using the whole original ROM does not work.

 

So, I would really appreciate if anyone here could give me some insights :)

 

TIA!

Frank

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i'm not sure but you need to know that if you use a 512MB natit (which is basically the same as flashing the EFI rom for a REAL mac), system profiler WILL report 512MB but it seems OSX will still use 1GB.

 

Now, would flashing a 512MB firmware damage your card ? i don't think so but i'm not 100% sure !

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Now, would flashing a 512MB firmware damage your card ? i don't think so but i'm not 100% sure !

 

Well, after researching a bit more and posting in different forums I got one person who reported that he had no luck flashing a EVGA 1GB Version. (especially EVGA has a good record with flashable cards). The flash seemed OK, but he got major artefacts and graphics corruption in _both_ Vista and OS X. On the other hand, I haven't found a single report of someone who actually managed to get a 1GB version working in a Mac Pro. The fact that he also got problems when booting in OS X indicates that the idea of a "mixed" BIOS version like described in my original post - if possible at all - would be of no use, at least not without changing something else. Btw, has anyone managed to get such a card to work on a non mac? (with OS X and Vista dual boot of course)

 

So this indeed sounds like bad news, the only hope remaing would be that something else failed with that particular EVGA card. I don't know if I should take the hassle with another model but first, I have to find a 128KB Version anyway. I actually bought a 1GB card from MSI but it only had a 64KB ROM, so this wouldn't have worked.

 

Any other Ideas?

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FYI: I have actually talked with some guys from Asus and Gainward and I am now pretty sure it won't work. Why? Very simple: the memory configuration is set in the BIOS. So at least you would have to modifiy the ROM to get this working, which is something I wouldn't dare doing myself.

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