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Ati 5870 Power cable and support

T

tstbrice

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 25, 2012
9
0
Hi,

Having looked around countless forums and sites to get info its all a mix bag at the moment, i was given a ati radeon 5870 (pc version) and i can't figure out if this will work out of the box including boot screen (i read lion now has support) on my Mac Pro 2.8 Quad core 2010 model also realising that i need an extra mini pci to standard 6 pin pci power cable which took a bit of research, is there an extra one in there that i can use till i get one ordered couldn't find any mini to standard 6 pin in any shop so online it will have to be so to clarify :

1. Can i use the pc 5870 out of the box including boot screen and full support without flashing ?
2. Is there another gpu power supply i can use in the mac for the time being ?

Thanks for any feedback
 
  1. No. You will not get a boot screen using an unflashed PC card. Period. Also various applications, including the bundled DVD player and Steam games will not run.

    Once the card has been properly flashed, the above mentioned applications will run just fine but you will only get a boot screen on a display connected using a DVI-VGA adapter.

  2. No. You need 2 power cables to run a 5870.

    These can be bodged using various molex adapters but really you will need 2 of these.
 
Now that i have what i need and having plugged it in the card works straight away without the need to flash but it shows up as a 5000 series not the 5870 trying to now flash it with no success after 2 hours of trying is there a straight forward updated guide to doing this ? ive searched netkas and others but cant get the terminal command to work without getting 'bs must be between..etc'' message, any ideas ?
 
What card are you trying to flash? Do you have a link to the exact model?

It's worth reading the whole 20-odd pages of this thread, as many problems you might encounter have already been solved somewhere along the way. It seems like voodoo at first until you understand what you're trying to achieve and then it kind of all falls into place and makes sense.
 
thanks for the info i started from scratch including partitions for windows etc (windows wasnt showing up on my startup disks) finally flashed the card which immediately stopped the fan noise now the card sounds like my 5770 next to no sound so very pleased, to clarify it was the xfx ati 5870 still not getting the boot screen with the flashed rom but bootchamp is the saviour for now till i can find a better rom very happy with the performance increase over the 5770
 
Is it showing up as a 5870 in the System Profiler? And is your DVD player app working? If yes, then you're probably good.

Even if it's all flashed correctly, you'll only see a boot screen when connected to a VGA display using a DVI-VGA adapter. Bootchamp is a lifesaver for this reason.
 
its still showing up as a 5000 but performs well ill admit, huge decrease in my render times and gaming the main thing for me was the fan noise completely stopped. i havent tried the dvd player but i very rarely use it so not a huge problem if i can still get it to show up as 5870 in profiler id be happier having that peace of mind
 
No i still have a copy of it, thanks for the help ill attach it tonight once i get home
 
I've attached the rom this time, again thanks for the help
 

Attachments

  • XFX5870.ROM.zip
    46.1 KB · Views: 57
the good news is that one sorted out my system profiler it showed up as the 5870 but the fan was spinning way to fast and loud from startup constantly so i had to revert back to the other one i was using, thanks for creating the rom though!
 
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