According to Barefeats, Apple's ATI Radeon HD 5870 Graphics Upgrade Kit ($449) for the Mac Pro does indeed work in the 2008 Mac Pro. This is despite the fact that Apple only officially lists the 2009 and 2010 Mac Pros as supported hardware for the upgrade card.
We plugged the Radeon HD 5870 into the 2008 Mac Pro. It works like a charm. Runs Portal faster than the 6-core Westmere. Details coming soon.
This gives existing 2008 Mac Pro owners another video card upgrade option from Apple. We had previously reported when the video cards had become available for purchase from Apple's online store. Barefeats has posted some preliminary results on the forums:
Here's an appetizer. I'm benchmarking Portal First Slice (which all my remote testers are using).
At 1920x1200 with these settings: Model Detail = High, Texture Detail = High, Shader Detail = High Water Detail = Reflect All, Shadow Detail = High, Color Correction = Enabled Antialiasing Mode = None, Filtering Mode = Anisotropic 4X Vertical Sync = Disabled, Motion Blur = Enabled
The 6-core Westmere 3.33 (2010) with Radeon HD 5870 = 233 FPS avg The 8-core Harpertown 3.2 (2008) with Radeon HD 5870 = 250 FPS avg The 2008 model is faster!!
While the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices.
Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of March 2025:
Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone ...
Wednesday March 26, 2025 4:53 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple regularly refreshes the MacBook Pro models, and a new version that uses M5 series chips is in the works. Apple just finished refreshing most of the Mac lineup with M4 chips, and now it's time for the M5. Rumors suggest that we could see the first M5 MacBook Pro models this fall.
Design
There have been no rumors of a design update for the M5 MacBook Pro models that are coming this...
Wednesday March 26, 2025 12:19 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple is going all out with promotions for the popular Severance Apple TV+ show today, and as of right now, you'll find a new "Lumon Terminal Pro" listed on Apple's Mac site.
The Lumon Terminal Pro is designed to look similar to the machines that Severance employees like Mark S. and Helly R. use for macrodata refinement. The Terminal features a blue keyboard, a small display with wide...
Thursday March 27, 2025 1:59 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol
In the mid-to-late 2000s, Facebook was all about staying connected with friends and family. However, as the social media platform added new features and grew over time, that core experience began to get drowned out.
That changes starting now, according to Meta, which today introduced a new feature that will "bring back the joy" of classic Facebook.
Specifically, Meta has redesigned the...
Apple is expected to release iOS 18.4 to the general public as soon as next week, following more than a month of beta testing.
Apple's website says some iOS 18.4 features will be released in "early April," so the update should be out as early as Tuesday, April 1.
Apple this week seeded the iOS 18.4 Release Candidate, which is typically the final beta version, barring the discovery of any...
Wednesday March 26, 2025 4:06 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Update 7:25 pm: Based on comments from our forums, it appears the original Weibo post may have been mistranslated and "8K" actually refers to the high price of the device rather than 8K video recording capabilities. The iPhone 16 Pro currently starts at 7,999 yuan in China.
Our original article follows below.
Apple's forthcoming iPhone 17 Pro models are capable of shooting 8K video, up...
Thursday March 27, 2025 4:21 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Last week, we covered a report claiming that Apple's book-style foldable iPhone (or "iPhone Fold," as we are provisionally calling it here) will use liquid metal hinges to improve durability and help minimize screen creasing. Today, a Chinese leaker provided more details on the properties of this hinge material that help to clarify why Apple chose it for its first foldable device.
According...
The iOS 19 mockup images that leaker Jon Prosser shared today are not representative of the actual iOS 19 design, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said on social media.
According to Gurman, the images that are "floating around" are based on "very old builds" or "vague descriptions," and are lacking key features. Gurman says that we can "expect more from Apple in June."
Gurman made the same comment ...
Thursday March 20, 2025 12:01 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
If you pay for iCloud storage on your iPhone, Apple has a new perk for you, at no additional cost.
The new perk is the ability to create invitations in the Apple Invites app for the iPhone, which launched in the App Store last month.
In the Apple Invites app, iCloud+ subscribers can create invitations for any occasion, such as birthday parties, graduations, baby showers, and more. Anyone ...
I got the 5770 to support three displays by using one 30" Cinema on the DVI port, one 23" Cinema (with dual-link DVI to MDP adapter) on the first MDP, and one 24" LED Cinema direct to the second MDP.
Maybe one reason that all three lit up this time was the fact that the 30" Cinema is effectively an "active adapter" like the other two.
I'm continuing to experiment with every display combo on all models of Mac Pro with the 5770 and 5870 installed, so more to come on this.
I took time out of benchmarking with one display to experiment with multiple displays using the newest GPUs. (Special thanks to "Pegasusrjf" for his input.)
With the Radeon HD 5870 installed in the 2008 Mac Pro, I got three displays to light up and work with this setup: 1. 23" Cinema on the DVI port 2. 23" Cinema with MDP to dual-link DVI adapter on first MDP port 3. 24" LED Cinema with direct MDP connection to second MDP port
Tried the same setup with the Radeon HD 5770 in the 2008 Mac Pro: Only 2 of the 3 displays light up.
Here goes, gang. Seven games at 2560x1600 and 1920x1200 in the 2008, 2009, and 2010 Mac Pro -- all three with the Radeon HD 5870:
http://barefeats.com/wst10g2.html
Who buys a Macpro to play video games :confused: LOL
I personally know a husband and wife (yes, he's a doctor/surgeon) who each bought 8-core Mac Pros primarily to play World of Warcraft (that and also to encode videos to watch on their iPads for trips to europe etc).
I'm hoping when he gets bored of the 8-core he'll sell it to me for a song but I'm not counting on it.
