Netkas continued to work on the installation of Radeon PC version in a Mac Pro. He successfully developed a single extension which will work as a EFI BIOS. When the system is loading, it will read this extension on the Radeon PC card in order to identify its specifications (model, GPU frequency, VRAM, etc.), then it will activate the card on the Mac Pro. It should make it possible in theory to use any Radeon HD 4870, 4870X2, 4890, etc. You can download such extension from the following URL: http://rapidshare.de/files/47173322/ATY_Init.kext.tar.bz2.html
However, despite all his hard work, some points remains not fully fixed:
- Your display will remain black till the Mac and its system did not fully load the extension.
- Depending on the graphic card, you might have only one DVI output activated.
- For some unknown reason, the card will work as a PCI-Express 1X, and not 2X.
- You will not be protected from a software update that could break the compatibility extension.
- If you plan to use a card not supported by Apple yet, such as the HD 4890, you will also have to install 2 additional extensions to turn on the 3D finder acceleration: http://rapidshare.de/files/47140484/...cards.pkg.html
If you are ready to deal with such limitations, then you can install a very powerful card in your Mac Pro for less than 200 Euro, something impossible so far on a Mac. Warning: if you already had installed the previous set of extensions, ATY_Init and ATY_Natit, you will have to delete them before adding the new one.
If you do not want to play with such hack, then get a Radeon HD 4870 Mac Edition from the Apple Store, or wait for June and the release of the GeForce gTX 285 Mac Edition, expected to be around 400 Euro.
