ATI/AMD Radeon HD cards in Mac Pro
Comments (5) Update: Just went and exchanged the HD 6450 for an HD 6670. This one works great, runs Starcraft II on High and doesn’t crash the machine!
After some discussion with a coworker, I decided to try putting a Sapphire Radeon HD6450 into my Mac Pro, since the 8800GT was a real power hog and heater.
Just my luck that today the 10.6.8 update was released, containing – you guessed it – HD6xxx drivers!
So I ran the update, then popped in the HD6450, and what do you know, it works! Only two problems: First, no EFI support which means no boot screen (white/grey apple). Second, it seems to crash when launching any game. I tried Lord of the Rings: Return of the King and Starcraft II, and both caused the screen to go blank and kernel panic.
Anyway, nice experiment, and at least it works for regular desktop work….
For anyone interested, here are all the Radeon HD6000 series cards supported by the 10.6.8 kexts, IDs and names.
- 0x67681002 CAICOS 6450M
- 0x67701002 NI CAICOS [AMD Radeon HD 6400 Series]
- 0x67791002 NI Caicos [AMD RADEON HD 6450]
- 0x67601002 NI Seymour [AMD Radeon HD 6470M]
- 0x67611002 NI Seymour [AMD Radeon HD 6430M]
- 0x67501002 Turks [AMD Radeon HD 6500 series]
- 0x67581002 Turks XT [AMD Radeon HD 6600 Series]
- 0x67591002 NI Turks [AMD Radeon HD 6500]
- 0x67401002 Whistler XT [AMD Radeon HD 6700M Series]
- 0x67411002 NI Whistler [AMD Radeon HD 6600M Series]
- 0x67381002 Barts XT [ATI Radeon HD 6800 Series]
- 0x67391002 Barts PRO [ATI Radeon HD 6800 Series]
- 0x67201002 Blackcomb [AMD Radeon HD 6900M Series]
- 0x67221002 ATI Radeon HD 6950
- 0x67181002 Cayman XT [AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series]
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