How to: Upgrade your Mac Pro graphics card. GTX 660 3GB
- 11 years ago
If you have a Mac Pro you probably have an old graphics card in it, even if you opted for the most expensive Mac one when buying.
Those cards simply can't compete against newer ones, so why not upgrade it?
All NVIDIA 5xx, 6xx, and 7xx series cards are supported in OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.3 and up. You just need to make sure you have the correct PCIe power cables and that your card doesn't need more than 2 6-pin power cables.
Installing it couldn't be simplier, it's just plug & play essentially.
NOTE: If you're not using a MAC GPU, it means your card won't have the Apple EFO Boot ROM. This means that you won't get the startup screen, and your monitor will stay black until you have to log in. At which point the drivers kick in and everything is fine.
NVIDIA also support their cards through their own drivers, you just need to select Quadro instead of GeForce, and then your version of OS X.
At this time they only support up as far as OS X 10.8.4, and the current 10.8.5 drivers aren't available yet.
If you do install the NVIDIA drivers, they will NOT override the OS X ones. Instead you get a new icon where you can swap between them for which ever gives you the best performance.
Those cards simply can't compete against newer ones, so why not upgrade it?
All NVIDIA 5xx, 6xx, and 7xx series cards are supported in OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.3 and up. You just need to make sure you have the correct PCIe power cables and that your card doesn't need more than 2 6-pin power cables.
Installing it couldn't be simplier, it's just plug & play essentially.
NOTE: If you're not using a MAC GPU, it means your card won't have the Apple EFO Boot ROM. This means that you won't get the startup screen, and your monitor will stay black until you have to log in. At which point the drivers kick in and everything is fine.
NVIDIA also support their cards through their own drivers, you just need to select Quadro instead of GeForce, and then your version of OS X.
At this time they only support up as far as OS X 10.8.4, and the current 10.8.5 drivers aren't available yet.
If you do install the NVIDIA drivers, they will NOT override the OS X ones. Instead you get a new icon where you can swap between them for which ever gives you the best performance.