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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. […]

2017-05-25T18:08:28-08:00Tags: , , , , , , , , |

Adding an SSD to a MacBook Pro for a Remarkable Speed Increase

After months of my wife’s complaints about her 5-year-old  15″ MacBook Pro 3,1 hanging during normal operations, I upgraded the hard drive to an OWC 240GB Mercury Electra 2.5″ 3G SSD and saw an amazing performance increase. I highly recommend adding an SSD to a MacBook Pro or MacBook to regain performance, extending the life of your computer. Please comment if you add an SSD to a MacBook Pro and let us all know your experience.

OWC Mercury Electra 3G SSD for Macbook Pro OWC Mercury Electra 3G SSD for Macbook Pro

Prior to the upgrade, the spinning rainbow interrupted just about everything she tried to do, including web browsing and e-mail. My wife uses her computer primarily for web browsing, email, iPhoto, Photoshop, and her web site design company, Plain&Simple Web Design, These aren’t particularly CPU intensive applications and still the MacBook Pro […]

2018-09-14T20:56:19-08:00Tags: , |

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 […]

2017-12-17T21:51:59-08:00Tags: , , , , , |

Converted from MacMail to Thunderbird

Over the last few months I decided to give Mozilla Thunderbird for the Mac a try. I was really excited when the interface on MacMail changed with Lion. It was cool, it was like the iPad, I liked it. However after using it to manage my 5 separate email accounts for the last 5 months I have found it a bit lacking. It is hard to really describe the reason, it is more of a felling. It is a feeling that I get from many of the Mac products, not so great for massive amounts of data/contacts/email.

For example take a look at iCloud’s dealing with files. I don’t want all my files in one flat directory. I have too many, it is hard to find the right file when you have 50 of them to scroll through on your iPad or any other device.

I don’t like the direction Apple seems to be taking of no files systems, no directories. Maybe Apple has some new way to manage email and information in store for us that will solve everything, be totally obvious once we see it, but totally allusive until it is revealed.

I will cover the details […]

2017-05-25T18:08:43-08:00Tags: , , , |

iStat Pro Menus shows 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon at 100%

As My iStat Pro Menus 3 clearly shows, all 8 cores in my early 2008 Mac Pro with 2 2.8 GHz Quad-Core CPUs are at 100%. It isn’t very often I utilize my Mac to its fullest potential, but the other day I was encoding video and noticed all all 8 cores maxed out!

iStat Pro - MacPro CPUs at 100% iStat Pro – MacPro CPUs at 100%

Love to see them all blue!

iStat Pro Menus is a great program for understanding what is going on with your system. Not only can you see the CPU usage you can also see memory, networking, and temperature of all they key systems in your computer. The statistics can help you understand performance issues with your computer.

For example, I was having very slow response on my Internet access for several months. I had Comcast out several times debugging it. They replaced the wire, I replaced the cable modem, nothing seemed to help. I had Comcast Tech support on the phone and they said to make sure no traffic was running over the connection. I had […]

2017-05-25T18:08:45-08:00Tags: , , |
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