February 29, 2008
Upgrade your original Mac Pro with the Radeon HD 2600 X
Posted Feb. 29, ’08, 1:55 PM PT by Derik DeLong
Category | Hardware
Back when the 2008 Mac Pros were released, I noticed that they shipped with a new video card, the Radeon HD 2600 XT. Sure, I could purchase the Radeon 1900XT, but at $400 as an after purchase item, it wasn’t terribly economical. While the 2600 isn’t what you’d call high end, Apple’s own graphics page (88 fps versus 64 fps) shows it as a decent upgrade over the Nividia 7300GT that shipped with the original Mac Pros.
The trick is that although no Apple source specifically calls out the card as compatible with the original Mac Pro, it actually is by virtue of the backwards compatibility of PCIe 2.0. Barefeats has even gone as far as to do performance testing comparing the two cards (which is also how I learned the card was an option.
While it doesn’t exhibit the same level of performance that the 1900XT does, you’re looking at a double improvement in most cases. For $149, that’s not bad. I’m tempted to pick one up, but I must admit the lack of noise with a fanless card has been quite wonderful. Has anybody done this upgrade or can anyone comment on fan noise?
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AFAIK, mac drivers for this card only exist in Leopard, so Tiger users are out of luck (I tried moving the kernel extension over from a Leopard install...but no dice).