frankiee Posted May 31, 2008 Share Posted May 31, 2008 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyclonefr Posted May 31, 2008 Share Posted May 31, 2008 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 ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frankiee Posted June 1, 2008 Author Share Posted June 1, 2008 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? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frankiee Posted June 2, 2008 Author Share Posted June 2, 2008 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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