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. […]