I've researched but am still unclear whether NVIDIA GTX660 or Zotac GeForce GTX 760 will just slot into my Mac Pro 2009 without buggering about with power supplies etc.
Mac – Will either a NVIDIA GTX660 or GeForce GTX 760 plug n play with Mac Pro 2009
gpumac pro
Related Solutions
Unfortunately, OS X Lion does not have driver support for the XFX R6770 Core Edition video card. You will have to upgrade to OS X Mountain Lion for the graphics card to work.
Since your MacPro (1,1) is "officially" unable to upgrade to Mountain Lion, you will have to "trick" your MacPro into thinking it is actually a MacPro(2,1). The reason for this is because a MacPro(2,1) can have Mountain Lion on it.
To do this, you will have to follow this guide to change the kernel of your MacPro. I have summarized the procedure of the guide if you prefer, so continue reading.
Before Reading: Please look to the links at the bottom, which are links on how to do some of the things mentioned in this guide
Explanation
The first issue (lack of EFI64 on MacPro(1,1)) can be dealt with by using the Chameleon bootloader. Chameleon will emulate EFI64 and therefore load 10.8. Chameleon has to be booted by your Mac as if it were Windows. Apple calls this BIOS emulation “Legacy Boot”. Legacy boot will only boot from internal connectors like the SATA, so no USB or Firewire drives.
Requirements
This will require a spare HDD in addition to the drive that your OS is on.
- Download 10.8 From the app store. (you will need to do this on a supported mac)
- Download Xcode from Apple.
- Download Chameleon-2.1svn-r192
- Go into
Disk Utility
and partition your spare HDD. Click the options button and chooseMaster Boot Record
. Choose two partitions, the first 1GB (namedBOOT
) and the second can use the remainder of the disk (namedInstaller
). Both partitions are formatted Mac OS Extended Journaled. - Run the
Chameleon
installer. - Change the install location to the
BOOT
that you created earlier. - Click
Customize here
and chooseStandard
under theChameleon Bootloader package
. - In Terminal: run
sudo bless --folder /Volumes/BOOT --file /Volumes/BOOT/boot --setBoot --legacy
- Download this folder and place it in the root of BOOT.
- Inside, add your serial to the SMBIOS.plist and in
org.chamleleon.boot.plist
set the default partition to 0,2 which is the installer partition.
Now to the installer.
- Locate your 10.8 installer. Right-click and chose ‘show package contents’. Locate InstallESD.DMG in the SharedSupport folder. Double ckick on InstallESD.DMG to mount it.
- Open Terminal and navigate to the Mac OS Install ESD drive.
cd /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Install\ ESD/
should do it. - Still in terminal, you need to mount the hidden BaseSystem.DMG type
open BaseSystem.DMG
and hit enter. - Now open
Disk Utility
. Click onBaseSystem.DMG
on the left, then click restore, then drag your installer partition into the destination field. - Click
Restore
. This will put everything but the packages and kernel on the installer partition. (You may need to rename your installer partition back to “installer” as it may now be called MacOS BaseSystem.)
Next steps are to copy mach_kernel from MacOSInstallESD to the Installer partition.
- In Terminal navigate to the Installer ESD with:
cd /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Install\ ESD
then copy mach_kernel to the installer partition withcp mach_kernel /Volumes/Installer/mach_kernel
. Have a quick look in terminal to see that it’s there with:cd /Volumes/Installer/
thenls
. You should see it there. - Now in your installer partition there is a system folder, and in that is an installation folder, in there is a packages symlink. Delete it and the copy the packages folder from the MAC OS Install ESD.
- Finally you need to open
OSinstall.mpkg
with flat package editor which is part of the XCode install. - Drag
Distribution
to your desktop and open it in text edit. - There is a section headed
var PlatformSupportValues
there is a list of board IDs in speech-marks and separated with commas. likeMac-F42D88C8
,Mac-F2218EA9
,Mac-F42D86A9
you need to add your mac’s board it to it. This is specified in thesmbios.plist
in the Extra as Mac-F4208DC8 so if you’re using that smbios.plist then add that value. close TextEdit and go back to the flat package editor. deleteDistribution
from the package and then drag the one you edited from desktop into flat package editor, then save the package.
The Ultimate Moment
- Now re-boot and hold down Option to bring up the list of drives, choose boot, then franticly tap the up or down arrow key until the Chameleon list of bootable drives appears. Choose Installer.
- (The disk with osx on should be the
GUID partition scheme
). When the installer has completed, Chameleon will keep trying to boot the installer so editorg.chamleleon.boot.plist
. - Set the default partition to your Mountain Lion partition. It will probably be 1,2 or 2,2.
- After the installation had completed, I used
nano
to create anfstab
file in /etc. This has two entries in it which stop theboot
andInstaller
mounting when OSX boots so they dont appear inFinder
. The entries look like this for each Partition you want to hide: UUID=39C933A6-E5A4-3CFB-8841-21C89B0EDF77 none hfs rw,noauto change UUID to the appropriate one. The UUID of a partition can be found in system report under Serial ATA.
Links and Resources
I guess you figured this out a year ago now -
but you need a PATA -> SATA power adapter [couple of quid/bucks/shekels from Maplin's/Radio Shack etc] & run it from one of the old superdrive power-supplies you'll find ready & waiting in that bay.
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Best Answer
The GTX 760 has two connectors to provide it power. You will need two adapter cables to go from the Macs 6 pin to the video card 6 pin, as they are different sizes. Here is a link to one on Amazon.
The 660GTX only has a single power connector, so you will just need one if you went that route.
Here is a video showing the installation of a GTX 660.
You may want to also consider leaving in the original video card so that you will have the ability to see the screen during boot, or when booting holding Option to select the boot disc. I installed my original card in the top slot, and have it connected to my monitor via VGA and my upgraded card connected via DVI. That way I can fairly easily switch between them. It is not required to do this, but may help you down the road.