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AMD 7950 freezing and restarting under load

S

swaproot

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 10, 2013
16
0
Hey guys, I'm experiencing some issues with my reference AMD 7950. It is flashed with Sapphire's MAC 7950 rom and works at full 5GT/s in PCIE 2.0 in my 4.1 Mac Pro. However, after maybe 15-20 min of watching any kind of flash video or editing in final cut pro x, it just freezes, display shows stripes and then it either restarts or turns off. I then have to wait about 2 min to turn in back on because if I do it earlier, it doesn't show my bootscreen or the OS.

I already tried both SMC and PRAM reset but no luck. Card's fan spins faster when the system is booting but once it's in the OS, it's at its lower speed and remains there even when I edit videos and therefore, it runs very very hot :/

Does anyone have similar issues? Can it be overheating? - if so, how do I check the card's temperature?
 
hmm, I was kinda stupid and didnt save the old rom. is there any place where I can get it?
 
to be honest, I didnt use it too much before I flashed it, but as long I remember, there were no problems with it
 
soo I tried every single rom that I could find and it all generated the same result - mac pro restarting or shutting down after 15 min of video playback on 2 monitors :/

it just won't speed up the freakin fan. The fan goes always faster when the machine is booting but then once loads the OS, it drops to the slowest/quietest setting and stays there no matter what.

Im thinking that I may install win 7 tmrw and try if it also does the same thing there.

Does anyone know if AMD has any kind of firmware update utility? I would update it under windows and maybe create mac rom if it works well afterwards
 
You need the original rom for your card.

ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS back up original rom before flashing. There is literally no reason not to.

Could be a fault with card, or fan but you won't know for sure without original.
 
I know now... I just thought that the reference card wouldn't have any problems with the .rom for the sapphire mac card... I guess my last bet is to at least see how it works under windows
 
after installing windows and running catalyst software, I can see that the card doesn't return any temperature or power usage info. In win, I can manually adjust the fan speed but that doesn't help me in mac os x.

any ideas on what are my options at this point?

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Last edited:
exactly which card do you have?
take pics of the card and post here, preferably the model numbers\part numbers.

techpowerup has a VGA database, so maybe if you post pics we can see exactly what card you have, then make you an EFI BIOS.
 
I tried techpowerup's rom already and got boot screens and everything but overheating was still there. I just dont understand how come Catalyst and GPU-Z can't read the temperature but HWiNFO can.

Here are the pics of my card. It's the 679a model, reference design from amd.

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iDRFw3yNzTyWy.JPG

full res link to the last image is here: http://i2.minus.com/iDRFw3yNzTyWy.JPG
 
You may be able to use RBE (radeon Bios editor) to up the fan speed. Reflash with new faster fan rom.

If temp isn't being reported, may be a failure of card temp sensor.
 
yea I tried RBE but it doesn´t support roms from 7XXX cards :/ If there is another way of setting the fan speed to a set value, I would definitely try it. Using HWiNFO, and its readings from sensors for current temperature and power usage (because as I said earlier - no other program can read them) I found that 40% fan speed will cool the card enough to for it to stay at 45-47 degrees Celsius even if I play full hd movies on 2 monitors in full screen.
 
Do a haven benchmark. Keep finger on heatsink. If it burns, then your GPU is overheating.
The temp sensor is not being found by the ROM, and it thinks it is running at 0C.
 
yep, exactly as described, it's burning like crazy. Do you think it can be fixed with the right rom or is it a hardware issue?
 
now after trying 6 different roms, I can confirm that not a single one was returning the gpu temperature.

that means that I have three options:

1. create/edit existing rom with fixed fan speed - idk how since RBE doesnt work on 7xxx roms.

2. create/edit existing rom and make it change rpms on the fan not according to gpu temp, but based on the vrm temp - which my card still returns.

3. disconnect the fan from the gpu, connect is to the power source, install analog potentiometer in between and manually adjust fan speed according to what kind of stuff Im doing - video editing will probably need more cooling than browsing facebook...

Does anyone here know how to do at least one of those things?
 
It sounds like the card is new. If that's the case, pull out the credit card, order another one exactly like it. If it works as needed (reads signal from sensor and doesn't overheat/power off), dump the rom file and save. Then put the original card back in and re-flash with the dumped rom file from the newly purchased card.

Don't misunderstand. I'm not saying try to pass off the older card as the newer one for a refund. I'm saying that if it's still within the time limit for return, they'll probably take it back once you flash the the firmware back to original. It probably IS a defective card out of the box. It happens...

Just a thought....
 
yea, that´s a really good idea, but I got if off ebay so that makes my life even more difficult... what´s more, it´s a reference card and they are quite hard to find in retail chains like bestbuy so I will have to dig a bit to find it somewhere
 
swaproot said:
yea, that´s a really good idea, but I got if off ebay so that makes my life even more difficult... what´s more, it´s a reference card and they are quite hard to find in retail chains like bestbuy so I will have to dig a bit to find it somewhere
Click to expand...

Hello,

Could you please do these steps?

- Logon onto windows
- Download Furmark
- Run Furmark, click on GPU Shark
- Post that info here please

Then, at resolution 1280 x 720, run Burn-in test, monitor your card temperature in the window. Please make sure not to run it for more than 30-45 seconds (you can stop the burn in by closing the window of the application)

Please post your findings and the GPU Shark Window, thanks.
 
Thanks swaproot, interesting, could you please check one last thing for me.

Your motherboard pcie aux power A - is it connected to the left pcie power plug of your VGA card or right?

Could you please try this;

Power off your mac and disconnect it from the power source/outlet

Check your PCie power cable and connect it like this;

Connect PCie Aux A to the left power plug on the VGA card
Connect PCIe Aux B to the right power plug on the VGA card

And boot into mac this time and do some tests, please let me know where your power plugs are connected.
 
MacVidCards said:
You may be able to use RBE (radeon Bios editor) to up the fan speed. Reflash with new faster fan rom.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately RBE does not support 7xxx ROMs.

kennyman said:
Check your PCie power cable and connect it like this;

Connect PCie Aux A to the left power plug on the VGA card
Connect PCIe Aux B to the right power plug on the VGA card

And boot into mac this time and do some tests, please let me know where your power plugs are connected.
Click to expand...

What's the difference, if you don't mind asking?

OP: get reference 7950 BIOS from techpowerup database -> check pic of the card and P/N if possible and make custom ROM from it. Reflash the card. It won't be worse than now.
 
Put the bios switch back to position two (locked bios) and try again. Please report back with temperatures and fan functionality. As this is the locked bios the card should run as stock fresh out of the box, excluding the fact that a resistor has been removed to make it run at 5 GT/s.

I have the exact same card, so if you want to flash the card back to it's original rom message me.
 
alright, so I tried swapping those two power cables and no luck there. Then I realized that for the two power cables I have one 6-pin and one 8-in so I disconnected the 8-pin and replaced it with another 6-pin and tried everything again... same results. no temperature reading in any of them.

Also, locked bios didn´t work for me from the moment I got the card and I don´t think it´s locked since I was able to replace it with atiflash. I remember that when I booted the OS with this bios, fans were spinning like crazy and my mac pro restarted within seconds of booting into the OS

I also tried all roms from techpowerup that were under reference section and none of them worked, but if you are wispy willing to send me your rom, I can give that a try and report back
 
I'll be surprised if you get this card working correctly. I think you need to replace the card sooner rather than later. If you don't have the funds, I would connect the fan to a power source and a pot so you can control the speed (a temp fix only). eBay is eBay and we take our chances some times. You need to buy another card I suspect.
 
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