Mac Pro 1,1 – any CUDA options?

[Nevin Styre]

Someone posted a couple days ago that he developed and sells on ebay a custom mac 8800gt 1gb card that works in the mac pro 1,1 and is the only card that will work in it to accelerate the mercury playback engine. search ebay for mac pro 8800 gt and look for the one that says “enable mercury playback” in the title.

[Chris Borjis]

looks like there are 3 available on ebay right now.

$ 220 sounds like a great deal.

[Michael Murphy]

I dont know what the OS or driver requirements are, etc.

But just about ANY Nvidia card with 1Gb or more of RAM and 96 or more CUDA cores can be enabled via a small software “hack.”

Basically, you just need to edit a line in a text file to enable GPU acceleration with any Nvidia card that meets the above requirement. I cannot say which have successfully worked on older Mac’s.

For a desktop PC, that includes a $20 GT 430 card. This site has a lot of detail:

https://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/PremiereCS5.htm

The desktop cards starting with the GTX 550TI and GTX 560 SE at $100 are pretty functional, up to about $160 for the full GTX 460 or 560 will get you to a good cost/benefit point.

Good luck!
Michael

[Greg Jones]

This thread has some interesting points on Cards for old Mac Pros:

https://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,1123.0.html

[Joseph Hung]

I was in the same position and went ahead and upgraded my Mac Pro 2.66 GHz Quad (1,1) to a 3.0 GHz 8 core (2,1) by swapping out the CPUs. I also went ahead and bought an Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT 1GB VRAM from Macvidcards on ebay. The ebay auction states that this will work with 2,1 Mac Pros and with the CUDA hack for GPU acceleration.

I would recommend to the OP to do this, HOWEVER, I’ve come across a little problem.

I updated to the latest cuda drivers from Nvidia. The latest Nvidia driver (256.02.25f1v1) will not install on my computer (states: This computer will not support this NVIDIA graphics solution). This makes sense since the driver is for Mac Pro 3,1 and up, as stated by Nvidia. I also found on some forums that I don’t need to update to this as it’s already bundled with the OS. So I skipped this step. I proceeded with the hack, followed the instructions perfectly. In Terminal, I got the “1 device supports CUDA” confirmation. I went to modifiy the cuda_supported_cards.txt file in Terminal, and nothing comes up. No list of supported cards. I added my card’s name anyways, and Terminal tells me that the txt file doesn’t exist.

Fired up Premiere Pro CS5.5 (master collection) to check this and yep, the Mercury Playback Acceleration software only is greyed out.

Any ideas out there? many thanks.

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[Greg Jones]

The Cuda will not work on the Mac1,1 or 2,1 because those computers boot into 32bit kernel mode only. There is a hack to get them to boot into 64bit kernel mode, but it’s a little complex. That is why it will not recognize it. Here is a link to the 64bit hack if you are brave:

https://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,1123.0.html

I tried it, but it was too unstable for me. When it did work, it was awesome. I ended up taking out the GTX570 and putting the AMD5770 back in and booting normally. If I upgrade to a newer macpro I’ll put the GTX570 back in.

Greg Jones

Greg Jones
Orlando,Fl.
https://www.d7-inc.com

[Joseph Hung]

Well, that answers all of our questions I guess. Thanks.

[Joseph Hung]

Actually, I realized my sudo nano path in Terminal was incorrect. I altered it a little bit and now Terminal lists supported cards. I added my card, and voila I can now choose Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration. It seems to be still a question in the forums about booting in 32bit kernel so I’m not entirely sure if I’m using the CUDA capabilities at it’s fullest. I am seeing a little difference in performance however, so maybe it does work? I’m no expert and don’t have hard numbers so it’s just a visual feeling I’m guessing from…

[Greg Jones]

I stand corrected. Maybe since the 8800 works with older macs it’s 32bit capable.

Greg Jones

[Aldy Waani]

i use Quadro 4000 for Mac on my Mac Pro 1,1. Surprisingly it work, but yes no CUDA enabled, though i installed it’s later CUDA driver. Also, you can not see the Apple boot logo. Just black screen for a couple of second, then white/grey screen appear and then your desktop.
This graphic card is original for Mac. Not a flash one. I use this on my Mid 2010 Mac Pro that’s been dead for months.