I am by no means an expert, but based on my recent research it appears as though there may be opportunities to extend the life of the great 1,1 and 2,1 systems even further. Native Support for newer video cards: PCIe scaling: Based on the above, am I correct to assume that I could purchase a newer video card that has native support without any modifications (aside from the missing Apple logo upon startup), power it using an external power supply (or take a chance running as-is), and the performance wouldn't be that horrible when compared to a PCIe 2.0 or 3.0? - I successfully installed the 7970 in my Mac Pro 2,1 - see below for impressions and benchmark. Interesting question. Since you have been doing the research, you are actually the expert.

Have you seen this yet: Also check out Anyhow, a few points of attention pertaining to the 1.1 and 2.1 Mac you will probably know already: Although their internal architecture is true 64 bit, their EFI is only 32bit. Same deal with their original video cards.

So you are right: you will lose the startup screen. Even if you try to run those with a newer Mac EFI video card. Those might not run at all BTW.

In order to use an off-the-shelf PC card, you will have to run a recent OS. I've posted this before: Those old Mac Pros can run Mavericks, patching their 32 bit EFI to 64 using Sfott: About the extra power consumption: consensus seems to be most cards will run on the 6 pin Mac Pro power connector, though some newer cards carry an 8 pin connector.

If you want to solder your own, look here: If you take a very close look at those Molex pinouts, however, you may find the way to plug your old (e.g. From an original ATI X1900XT) 6pin connector into an 8pin Female Molex on a newer graphics card. Be really sure what you re doing in that case, otherwise you may ruin your MoBo and/or PSU. Hope this is useful, and good luck with more or less Hackintoshing your ancient Mac Pro.

This week, I've become the proud owner of a Mac Pro 2.1 wreck, so I'm reading up on it. I suspect it has been discarded because of a faulty X1900XT in the ex-recall range. Found it among some scrap iron, but it will need some fondling and spare parts (ram and ram risers).

I have upgraded my older MacPro 1.1 to 2.1. Stuck in extra RAM, upgraded the Xeon processors from dual core to quad core (big speed bump there!). As for the video card, i picked up a used PC Sapphire ATI HD5570 (1GB), similar to the Apple 5570 cards. I plugged it, zapped the PRAM, restarted and the card works great, just no Apple logo at startup.

Amd Driver 7970

The System Profiler shows the card as an ATi HD 5000. I did have to order the 6pin Apple power cord off ebay. The netkas forums are a great source of information, and suggest flashing the card with a mac EFI would make it show up correctly, but its working great in Lion.

Thanks for the info about the SFOTT, i would love to get this MacPro to run Mountain Lion or Mavericks, (Apple should have addressed this!). Iqr code for mac. These towers have a lot of power still. I've got some great news, everything works just fine! This 'ancient' machine (Mac Pro 2,1) has a whole new set of wheels on it - Gigabyte 7970. Some initial impressions: - the boot loader menu doesn't display on the monitor anymore.