Mercuricoxide Posted March 4, 2008 Share Posted March 4, 2008 Hi, I understand that this forum may not be for people with actual macs, but I think you guys are the only people who could help. I have a Mac Pro (early 2008), with a HD 3870 X2 which I use for Vista in slot 1 and a HD 2600 XT which I use for OSX in slot 3. Both cards work fine in Vista, no issues. But while in OSX, the X2 has it fans rev up really high, which is annoying and could possibly damage the card as it is constant. I know people have gotten OSX to recognize the card here, so I would like some help on getting my Mac Pro to do the same. I do not need the card to fully function and do every program, the 2600 is fine for that. I just want OSX to at least recognize the card so the fans will slow down and not damage the card by constantly being at full blast. But if it's easy to get the card fully functioning, then I welcome that advice. Also, if by having a Mac will help you guys with any particular files you may need to better your systems, I will be glad to help in return. Thanks for any advice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ripp3r Posted March 18, 2008 Share Posted March 18, 2008 I would love to know this as well. I don't quite have the money to upgrade to a Mac Pro at the moment, but when I do, I'd rather not have to get rid of a few things, like my new SATA DVDRW (easy enough to fit), my two SATA drives (easy enough to fit and connect), and my graphics card, but the problem being that the card is an HD3850. The damned things don't have modded BIOS for Macs, since Apple doesn't offer them, and the only solution would be to install the Natit drivers, but would this work as a solution on unmodified OS X Leopard? I'm hoping someone can shed some light on this, but in the mean-time, if you're feeling adventurous: http://netkas.org/?p=56 That's for some of the other Radeons, but it does mention the 3870 X2. I feel it's a useless card for OS X though, you might have better spent your money on something from the 8800 series, and used modded drivers, since the second GPU won't work with the first one to accelerate games, but rather, it'll just act as an extra display, like having a second 2600. If the fans are driving you nuts, then a BIOS mod can help there, try techpowerup.com for that, haven't been there in a while, but they had a 3850/3870 BIOS editor, and the 3870 X2's BIOS might be moddable to lower the fan speeds. I think the fan speeds might not be affected by the BIOS when it coems to Leopard though, so YMMV. Either way, don't worry about the chances of damaging the card, I've had fans at 100% 24/7 for years, with only one fan having failed (and I think it might have gotten metal shavings inside it) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyclonefr Posted March 18, 2008 Share Posted March 18, 2008 from what I saw, there is no way to make it work : natit is a no go on real macs since it doesn't like to see 2 CARDS. You can always try natit from netkas.org, but i'm 99% sure it'll result in a kernel panic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DiaboliK Posted March 18, 2008 Share Posted March 18, 2008 thats with two of the same cards. it will work if you have 2 different cards. ie 2 diff device id's Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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