06-05-2009, 06:53 PM

I just got a MacPro and my order of a 30" cinema display will not be here until Wednesday. Just to make sure there was not going to be any problems with the monitor hook up, I called Apple. Apple person said I would have to purchase the $99 mini display port to dual link DVD adapter because I have a new Mac and an older Apple cinema display. I went ahead and charged it. Then had second thoughts and called another Apple person who said I did not need to get an adapter as I'm only using one monitor. I tried to cancel the order but it was too late. They are going to allow me to return it and get my money back. Now, I'm wondering who is actually right as both people were absolutely certain they were right. Anyone recently purchased a MacPro with a 30 " cinema display? Thanks in advance for any help.

06-05-2009, 08:10 PM

Who is right? Good question. With the old monitor do you have the apple adaptor that has the DVI output or are you just dealing with the ADC connector? Older monitor - how old?

06-05-2009, 08:27 PM

It's the official 30" Apple display which is about 4-5 years old. I was hoping that a MacPro and an Apple display would be a perfect combination. It appears that I will probably have to wait and see what is in the monitor box because this appears to be a difficult situation to solve.

06-05-2009, 09:57 PM

If you have an older monitor with the ADC connector then yes for it to work nicely with the new Mac Pro you need the Apple Powered Adaptor with the DVI connection and it will work well.

06-06-2009, 02:37 AM

What graphics card do you have on the Mac Pro? If you let us know that we can check the specs on it.

Looking at the spec of the two cards that come with the Mac Pro, they both have Dual Link DVI connectors so assuming your Cinema Display is a DVI driven one, they should work correctly without an adapter.

NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 with 512MB of GDDR3 memory, PCI Express 2.0, one Mini DisplayPort, and one dual-link DVI port

ATI Radeon HD 4870 with 512MB of GDDR5 memory, PCI Express 2.0, one Mini DisplayPort, and one dual-link DVI port

06-06-2009, 02:42 AM

The 30" Display will plug right into the Mac Pro. I had not noticed but the new Mac Pros stock video cards have one Dual Link DVI and a new Apple Display port. So if you wanted to use Two 30" displays with one of the new cards, you would need an adapter for the 2nd 30".

To the other posters, the 30" Apple display never had a ADC plug and has always been DVI (Dual Link DVI).

06-06-2009, 07:48 AM

Thanks for the help. This makes more sense to me. I have the Radeon HD 4870.