[geeks] Mac Pro 1,1 slow death (video)

[Shannon]

The other morning my Mac Pro died.

After some investigation it seems about a 99% the problem is that the
nVidia 8800 GPU has died.

In fact, I removed the GPU, and the machine will boot and run fine, I
just have only ssh access too it then without a head.

I went to several Mac vendors to ask for a replacement, and they all
wanted ridiculous prices for even the old outdated 8800, and even more
for things like the ATI 5770 or ATI 5850.

Since this is an original Mac Pro, it has various issues that keep it
from being able to use any other graphics cards without ugly hacks I
rather not do.

Anyone got any spare video cards for this thing cheap, or know where to
look?

So far the Mac vendors and most people on eBay want too much for these
ancient GPUs. This Mac Pro is just too old to invest a lot of $$$ into.

---------------------

In case you are wondering, I did consider just letting this old machine
die. It does have issues like 32-bit EFI and outdated PCIx slots, and is
in general hard to keep maintaining.

A Mac Mini is in many ways tempting since it will run two displays and
is almost double the speed of my old Mac Pro.

However, Apple has not updated the Mini in well over a year, and usually
that means it is better to wait until they do. The main issue I have
with the current Mac Mini is the Intel HD 4000 graphics are sometimes
slow, while the new Intel chipset is quite a bit faster.

Just musing mostly... I know if I buy a Mac Mini, Apple will release a
new one about a month later. If I don't... they'll take forever and I'll
plod along with my aging Mac Pro.

My car got hit last month, this month my Mac dies... every time my
gaming rig makes a funny noise now I get paranoid.

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