Can the new fermi GPUs gtx480/470 be put into a MAC?
PC graphics cards are not generally compatible with Macs because of the Mac use of EFI rather than the traditional PC BIOS. There have been hacks to get around this for previous cards, but generally speaking, you have to wait for someone to release a special Mac version of the card before you can use it.
I have got a 480 up and running in a 2008 Mac Pro but of course this is just under Bootcamp for now. I have powered the card with an external PSU to supply the necessary 6-pin and 8-pin power, and the 480 sits alongside the Mac edition GXT 285 which does the EFI boot.
Under Windows XP32 I am getting mixed performance.
nbody:
about 560 SP Gigaflops vs 495 for 285
about 117 DP Gigaflops vs 57 for 285
EDITED - with larger values of the number of bodies it is more like 700+ for the 480 vs 500 for the 285, and furthermore the 480 will do large numbers that kill the 285.
MonteCarloMultiGPU
nearly 120000 options per second on 480 vs 83000 for 285 (running the two together)
I had a bit of faffing with the drivers as Windows New Hardware “Wizard” fought with both the CUDA 3 driver and the PNY CD, but after about 5 restarts it all came up OK.
The Double precision figures are lookingvery encouraging, but I have mixed feelings about the perf so far. It’s early days of course.
We might be able to “inject” the cards to work under OS X without the EFI ROM(the 480 has replaced a PC 285 working under this plan) but obviously a full Mac edition might be preferable. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for drivers (OS 10.6.4??)
Snow Leopard 10.6.3 sees that there is a PCI device but does nothing with it.