ati radeon hd 6870

ATI Radeon HD 6870 Video Card | How to Install on Mac OS X

This procedure for installing a PC ATI Radeon HD 6870 Video Card into a Mac Pro works for Mac OS Yosemite, Mavericks, Lion, and El Capitan. Starting with Mac OS X Lion, you don’t have to load the driver, Mac OS X includes the necessary ATI Radeon HD 6870 drivers required for a Mac Pro. Unlike supported cards, the screen still starts out black while the OS is booting.

Install ATI Radeon HD 6870 Video Card into Mac Pro Details

The default video card, GeForce 8800 GT, in my Mac Pro 3,1 Early 2008 wasn’t performing well for games, so I decided to replace it. After extensive research, I decided on the ATI Radeon HD 6870 1 GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express Twin Frozr II. This card, built on the ATI Radeon HD 6870 platform, has far superior performance to the Apple default GeForce card. It is most likely the quietest card due to the large heat sinks and two fans (instead of 1 like most video cards), and has two DVI, two mini DisplayPort, and an HDMI port. Customer comments confirmed it was quiet and ran cool. […]

ATI Radeon HD 6870 Video Card – Compatable with Mountain Lion

In my earlier article on the MSI HD 6870 Video Card I confirm that the ATI Radeon HD 6870 Video Card works in an early 2008 Mac Pro and how to install it. Upgrading to Mountain Lion appears to have no effect on the way the graphics card interacts with the Mac’s OS. I was able to upgrade from Lion to Mountain Lion with the card in the computer. I then tested each of the problems previously reported with running  with this card.

Current Non-Critical Issues with the ATI Radeon HD 6870

1) DVD Player – Crashes on start-up – Download VLC Media Player to play DVDs. This works fine on my system.

2) Slow Frame Rate after Sleep Mode – If you put your computer to sleep or it auto-sleeps the frame rate will be half to 1/3 after you wake the computer. I haven’t found a resolution for this yet.

3) Start-up Screen Doesn’t Display – This still happens, but doesn’t seem to cause any adverse affects. In the comments of my earlier […]

Go to Top