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NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT upgrade kit now available for Apple Mac Pro
Thursday, April 17, 2008 - 12:00 AM EDT

NVIDIA Corporation today announced that an upgrade kit featuring the award-winning NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT GPU is now available for the Mac Pro. Priced at US$279, the GeForce 8800 GT upgrade kit allows first-generation Mac Pro users to optimize their Mac with the same powerful solution already available in second-generation Mac Pro systems to deliver powerful graphics processing for the most demanding professional and consumer applications.

With a unified shader core and massive memory bandwidth, the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT brings advanced performance to graphics-intensive applications like motion graphics, 3D modeling, rendering and animation. Featuring a PCI Express 2.0 interface for high bandwidth connection to the Mac Pro and two dual-link DVI ports for connecting up to two 30-inch Apple Cinema HD Displays.

"The computer is more visual than ever, and Mac users in particular demand an exceptional visual experience," said Ujesh Desai, general manager of GeForce desktop GPU business at NVIDIA, in the press release. "Adding a GeForce 8800 GT to the first-generation Mac Pro system will deliver a major graphics boost, resulting in faster processing for a complete range of visual computing applications."

The award-winning NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT features 112 high-powered processing cores and supports dual 30-inch Apple Cinema HD displays. Compatible with any Intel-based Mac Pro, the GeForce 8800 GT includes NVIDIA's video processing technology which offloads H.264 decode enabling silky smooth playback of high-definition video.

Customers can purchase the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT upgrade kit online from The Apple Store for $279.

Source: NVIDIA Corporation

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Apr 17, 08 - 12:59 am Comment from: Jim - TIV

My son is gonna be all over this like white on rice

Apr 17, 08 - 01:25 am Comment from: jtc

Well they say it's good for 3D animation and rendering... I wonder if Maya will actually work right with this card without any problems. Seems like it's been near impossible to find a video card that maya will accept and everything will just work with out limitations such as no hardware render... such a pain.

Apr 17, 08 - 02:08 am Comment from: Wow

Released just in time for the 9800s, good work Apple only one generation behind.

Anyway wouldn’t a pro user want a Quadro card instead of a GeForce gaming card?

Apr 17, 08 - 02:36 am Comment from: flappo

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/geforce8800/signatures.html

seems to have worked !

Apr 17, 08 - 06:32 am Comment from: macaholic

What the heck does "white on rice" mean anyway?

like 'flies on cow-flop" I understand, but white and rice? WTF?

Apr 17, 08 - 06:50 am Comment from: Ampar

". . . but white and rice? WTF?

Yep. That's a tough one.

:-p

Apr 17, 08 - 07:14 am Comment from: almux

@jtc

Maya works (almost) fine with the basic graphic card of MacPro rev 1.
But, rejoice, that 8800 will do much better job!

Apr 17, 08 - 08:59 am Comment from: jtc

I'm hoping by the time I get a mac pro autodesk will have smartened up and made a lot better support for more video cards. Sadly, I almost resulted in getting a windows PC till I can drop a few grand towards a mac pro. Though my dual G5 with 8GB ram seems to do well might just possibly be able to find a video card that will do hardware render.

Apr 17, 08 - 09:00 am Comment from: Blue Dream

@jtc...that's what happens when an awesome program is bought out by a stinker biased against Mac company AutoCad. or _Desk, whatever. Truth is, their code is older than dinosaurs and Photoshop and rewriting it for OS X would poop their party. Another giant like this will fall eventually.

Apr 17, 08 - 09:57 am Comment from: SMacSteve

You know the "White on Rice" thing always bugged me too. Some rice is brown!

Apr 17, 08 - 10:08 am Comment from: rdbvideo

I just wish they would update the driver for the original card. I got an 8800 GT with my 8 core MacPro, and now I wish I hadn't.

Whenever I use my HD video capture card as part of the desktop (Blackmagicdesign Decklink), the 8800 GT turns off Quartz Extreme in it's second monitor output. I've read other places online that they released this card with a half-baked driver. I hope they spent more time on this retro fit card.
:-(

Apr 17, 08 - 11:58 am Comment from: BSOD

Forgive my ignorance on this subject, but I have to ask.

Why does the first generation Mac Pro need an "upgrade kit"?

Also, with the current Mac Pro, can you upgrade to an 8800 Ultra or 9800 GX2?

Apr 17, 08 - 12:06 pm Comment from: Mac-nugget

@rdvideo
Well you know that the ATI card just got a new driver and firmware not to long ago. I think they probably will be releasing something pretty soon since more people are to stumble into problems, since they just widened their target market with this new release.

Apr 17, 08 - 12:10 pm Comment from: Mac-nugget

@BSOD, you can get 8800 for the new MacPro, but the card is different for the prior MacPro, this is what just got released. So in other words, yes new MacPro old MacPro get 8800 support, through different cards. Now I am not sure about the 9800 GX2.

Apr 17, 08 - 01:22 pm Comment from: BSOD

@Mac-nugget

I have always assumed that the drivers for Leopard were monolithic, like the ones for Windows. If they are, then in theory, a swap to 8800 Ultra would work.

I just did some double checking on nVidia's web site and they have monolithic drivers for each series (8 and 9) on Windows (Mac drivers are not downloadable their). Given these facts, we can safely assume that 9 series cards would not work in Leopard.

8 series drivers for Windows have not been updated since December. 9 series drivers were updated April 1.

Now the other question I have is why such tight control on Mac drivers? I can only assume that it is on Apple's part to maintain system stability. While I cannot fault this logic on the lower end systems and all laptops, I do with the Mac Pro. The Mac Pro is an expensive, high end machine that should be upgradeable.

The irony of this is that (and I am speculating here, since I have not actually tried) you can get a 9800 GX2 to run on a Mac Pro running Windows or Linux, but not Leopard.

Apr 21, 08 - 10:15 am Comment from: Dugsy

I have the early 2008 mac pro with the 8800 GT card....its been hell for me. 9 out of 10 times the computer starts up with horizontal lines
on the monitors and the computer freezes and dont boot up. When it does start up everything runs fine. I have tried everything...i have upgraded to 10.5.2...installed the graphics update....cleared PRAM....even the power management thing. None work.Has anybody else had this problem?

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