Finally got the video card up for a workout under Win7 via Bootcamp on the Mac Pro. Still some major issues, like apparently there’s a long-standing no-audio-out bug associated with correctly installed Win7 under Bootcamp, for example. I was able to work around that by using an external USB audio module I had to hand, but come on.

I still don’t think my objective of a true single-box dual boot device is gonna work out here. With the stock card installed, the new card won’t work at all in Windows. With the stock card removed, there’s no boot screen, so you can’t option-key at startup to select the boot volume. With both cards seated, Mac OS 10.9 won’t boot at all, so even if I commit to a dual-boot machine, I have lost my standardized local OS setup, and will likely cave and go to 10.10 on all the machines, inevitably compromising performance and breaking software.

Anyway, so next week will be more banging on the actual Windows machine to try to bring the card up. The conventional opinion seems to be that the card and machine combo needs a 750w power supply. I’m gonna have to do the math myself, because the card actually seems to be designed and marketed with a lower power draw than the card it will replace on the Dell. If it’s not power, the next most favored choice is the BIOS, which is both only editable in limited ways on the Dell and quite possibly the source of the issue. I don’t have a definitive answer from either Dell or the card manufacturer about the compatibility of the devices, so I need to initiate that again.

I have been posting here and there about this and have a long narrative document written which I used to clarify the issues I was addressing. I should add more explicit technical detail to the doc and round up all the links to post here so I can refer back to it, including, one hopes a calendar and hour-budget timeline. That way, the next time I want to buy hardware, I can remind myself TO NOT DO IT.