Mac Pro support?

[jkreileder]

Does anybody know whether the current driver will work for Mac Pros, i.e. with EFI based graphics cards?

[Thunderbird]

I think the Nvidia drivers will work fine on a MacPro. EFI is only a replacement for the system bios, not for bioses/firmware of other hardware. As long as EFI / the system bios sets up memory addresses and so on for the videocard it could work. For windows there weren't any changes needed aswell (BootCamp was needed) but for the rest not anything. The same is true for MacBooks running Linux, so I think it will work.

[philipl]

Originally Posted by Thunderbird

I think the Nvidia drivers will work fine on a MacPro. EFI is only a replacement for the system bios, not for bioses/firmware of other hardware. As long as EFI / the system bios sets up memory addresses and so on for the videocard it could work. For windows there weren't any changes needed aswell (BootCamp was needed) but for the rest not anything. The same is true for MacBooks running Linux, so I think it will work.

The conclusion is correct, but the reason why is actually less elegant. The Mac graphics cards come with combination EFI/BIOS ROMs, which allows them to work with Linux and Windows. Without the BIOS part, VGA and vesafb consoles would not work. I fully expect the nvidia driver would work, but good luck getting everything set up with no console :-)

Unfortunately, this also means that off-the-shell cards won't work in a Mac as they need the EFI part of the ROM.

[Thunderbird]

I don't think there will be issues. Remember that he is talking about Intel Macs. On ppc Macs nvidia cards use a different ppc bios which works together with openfirmware but onIntel Macs I think there's no difference in the cards.

I assume he will use BootCamp as a bootloader (there's also some EFI linux bootloader I think) and I think it will work.

[jkreileder]

Originally Posted by Thunderbird

I don't think there will be issues. Remember that he is talking about Intel Macs. On ppc Macs nvidia cards use a different ppc bios which works together with openfirmware but onIntel Macs I think there's no difference in the cards.

Actually, as noted by philipl, you need special cards on Intel Macs. OS X doesn't work with cards that just have a BIOS ROM. (Windows works with those cards too but it looks like it's hard to find a matching power connector).

PPC Macs are different story. NVIDIA doesn't provide a driver for those, so you're left with the 2D-only nv driver.

[jkreileder]

Originally Posted by philipl

Unfortunately, this also means that off-the-shell cards won't work in a Mac as they need the EFI part of the ROM.

Yes, especially because so far you can only choose between the GeForce 7300 GT and the Quadro FX 4500. (I don't want the ATI card because of the worse Linux support). Otherwise it seems to be a nice developer machine.

Anyhow, thanks for the answers.

[Thunderbird]

Ok, that's new for me then. I didn't hear this before. What different power connector?

[jkreileder]

Originally Posted by Thunderbird

Ok, that's new for me then. I didn't hear this before. What different power connector?

See this thread on macrumors.com.