Windows audio drivers for Windows 10 on a Mac Pro 2008

Windows 10 runs surprisingly well on my (new) Mac Pro 2008. The Bootcamp driver download from Apple though is no longer supported on a 2008:

The main feature I’m particularly missing is the Bootcamp systray app in Windows to allow you to pick your boot drive, i.e. to select to boot back to MacOS from Windows. As long as you can get to the boot screen and pick which partition to boot from then this is ok (although since I’ve also added a PC version (unflashed) of an Nvidia 750 Ti, whenever I want to switch OSes, I have to switch my monitor cable between the stock Mac ATI card, and then switch it back to my 750 Ti after I’ve picked which OS I want to boot).

Without getting all the Windows drivers installed in one go from Bootcamp, the only other thing I missed initially (before finding this post), was Audio drivers. Windows 10 had installed some default drivers but the volume control didn’t have any control over the speakers plugged into either the front or rear audio out. Downloading the Realtek drivers direct from this site fixed this though. After installing the drivers, the names of the audio out devices changes on the volume control too:

Now I’m all set 🙂

20 Replies to “Windows audio drivers for Windows 10 on a Mac Pro 2008”

  1. Thanks for this. It also applies to 2009 and 2010 Mac Pros as well. That said, your link to the RealTek site doesn’t quite work. It shows a page where you have to agree to something, but when you submit that there’s an error. The link to the original blog appears to have an updated link. Here’s the link I was able to use to get to the download. http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=24&PFid=24&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false

    1. Looks like the Realtek site has changed, even search results from Google are getting 404s on their site. I’ll look around and let you know. If I have a copy of the installer I’ll upload it somewhere to share.

      1. Hi Kevin, thanks for the upload! I just bought a pair of 2008 3,1 Mac Pro’s and wanted to use 1 of them for Win10. I have been trying to find a way to get the sound working and it led me here. Really appreciate you sharing, now everything works great on the Mac Pro.

        1. Great! Glad these drivers helped you get it working! I’m sure they’re still on the Realtek site somewhere, but obviously the original link is no longer working 🙁

    1. Brian, you are a star!! My imac 2008 with 64 Bit Windows 10 Pro would NOT play audio, though I could see levels in the sound control panel. Ran that .exe and POP audio started out of the speakers. Thank you!

  2. RealTek.com has drivers too although the download was so slow I searched for the filename on google and found this much faster link:

    https://download.cnet.com/Realtek-High-Definition-Audio-Codec-Windows-7-8-8-1-10-64-bit/3000-2120_4-77507761.html

    Filename: 0009-64bit_Win7_Win8_Win81_Win10_R282.exe

    I was worried about which chipset I had on my 2008 3,1 but I discovered it’s the same download for their different audio chips so I gave it a shot and it worked great.

  3. My Mac pro 3.1 with the driver realtek has an output audio but not a input audio to plug an micro. And you ?

    1. No physical mic input jack, or no input showing in System Preferences? I think mine has both, but I usually use a usb mic on my Logitech headset

  4. What procedure did you use to install Win 10 on Mac Pro 3,1?
    I tried with BooCamp, but didnt work.
    I have Mojave and unflashed AMD RX 580 graphics card installed.

    1. Bootcamp doesn’t work on the 3,1 – you get the unsupported error I mentioned in this post. I burned the W10 ISO to a USB Flash drive and then booted from the USB holding down Option to select the Flash drive as the boot disk. I did run into issues when there were other disks in the machine. I removed the other disks so the empty hdd was the only disk in the machine, did the boot from Flash drive, completed the install and then put the other disks back in. You can easily boot from the Option boot menu to select either Mac OS or W10 disk, assuming you’ve got a video card that supports the boot menu. I’ve got an original ATI card connected to one monitor primarily for accessing the boot menu, and another unflashed Nvidia card connected to my main monitor.

      1. Hello Kevin, I cannot install Win10 from flash card, bootcamp did not see bootable flash card. And I made DVD-ROM bootable with Win10 and connected external USB DVD reader and installed Win10 without any problem. Exept driver for sound card and I hope this place help me.

  5. Thanx for the explanation. I’m trying to avoid 2 cards in the system, so looks like not having boot menu is an exclusive factor for me.

    1. Update: I actually managed to install Win 10 on my Mac Pro 3,1, using Virtualbox and installing it on a physical hard drive. I didnt install Apple drivers at all, but seems almost everything works.
      I have an unsupported Amd RX 580 an using Bootchamp to restart into Windows. Restarting from Windows boots straight into MacOs.
      I used some of these instructions: https://gist.github.com/b4nst/7a49bf16ba179eaf7d17af6689bb24b3

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