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Confirmed and Possible Flashable GTX 680 Models
- Thread starter xcodeSyn
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Confirming Gigabyte GTX 680 Windforce OC (2GB) card flashed successfully with the EVGA ROM and is working at full link speed (5.0GT) in a Mac Pro 3,1 (Slot 1) running Mac OS X El Capitan 10.11.6 using either Apple's driver or the latest NVIDIA Web Driver (10.11.14 (346.03.15f07)) + CUDA drivers (8.0.71). Full PCIe 2.0 link speed confirmed in Windows 10 (Bootcamp).
And the saga on how I got there...
I bought the GTX 680 on the bay for cheap in Feb. It was the lowest buy it now price I could find and I also had the option of applying a $20 discount at the check out (they had a valentines day promo at the time) so shipping was essentially free. The card sold for about a third less than the price of the typical PC stock EVGA GTX 680 cards and it was one of the very few 2GB models (most were 4GB).
The card arrived within a few days from an interstate seller in it's original packaging and I found it had 1x 6 pin + 1x 8 pin plugs for power. The multilingual instruction manual showed a diagram of 2x 6 pin plugs being plugged into these ports (6+8) with the only instruction being "connect to power". So I ordered in 2x mini-PCIe 6 pin to PCIe 6 pin cables from Hong Kong and after waiting 5 weeks, they finally arrived. I let it sit for a few days and then decided to take a crack at it after reading through these forums and collecting the right steps for flashing.
I first gave the card a thorough clean as it was absolutely caked in dust and the fans were choked with a thick rim of hardened crust. The seller described it accurately, so I couldn't complain about this. I then plugged the card into the PCIe x16 at slot 1 and connected it to the Mac Pro logic board power near the Airport and BT cards. The 6 pin cable plugged into the 8 pin port as "described" in the manual. With the GTX 680 installed as per instructions, I booted up and crossed my fingers.
This got me nowhere (no display). I was able to SSH into the Mac Pro to check system_profiler output and could only get an error message when reading the PCI report. I shut down and put my older GT 120 card into slot 2 and tried again. Booted up off the old card, I could see the GTX 680 was registered in System Profiler under Graphics/Display, but stated 128MB of VRAM. The PCI report still showed an error message.
I rebooted into Windows 10 to try nvflash. I was able to make a backup of the ROM and successfully flashed with the EVGA gtx680mac.rom. There were no error messages from nvflash, however Windows Device Manager reported an error and stated it could not use the card.
I took the GT 120 card out and booted again into Mac OS X. To my delight I could see my EFI boot loader (refind) and all appeared to be OK... However, once the boot process began it would simply hang with a half-loaded grey Apple boot screen. I felt we were getting somewhere, so I put the GT 120 card back in and booted up off that, System Profiler then reported all was OK and the NVIDIA Web Driver was loaded and functional.
Thinking it must be a problem with OS X, I rebooted again into Windows 10 and was greeted with a BIOS error screen stating "Shut down, connect the power cable to your graphics card and try again". Because of the behavior on the Mac side I figured it fails when OS X tries to enable hardware acceleration and coupled with the report in Windows I figured it *must* be a power related problem.
I pulled out the multimeter to test voltage at the two logic board PCIe power lines. Both cables tested 12.2v across their three pairs. I then began a series of trial and error attempts by shuffling PCI ports and power plugs, removing my other PCIe cards (USB3.1 and SATA III) and removing other devices (optical drives and hard drives) to try reducing power requirement in case it was a power supply issue.
During all the trial and error, I managed to somehow tear off a tiny (nearly microscopic) resistor on the little riser card at the back-end of the underside of the GTX 680. It must have gotten caught on something during all the card swaps. Feeling defeated, I left it for a few hours and came back to figure out if I could fix the card before I totally give up and just throw the thing out. So I took a drive to buy a small soldering iron and had a think about it all.
Ok, so I managed to re-solder the tiny little speck of a resistor back on the board using tweezers and a dab of superglue on the underside to hold it in place while I carefully melted the solder at the 3 little legs.
Back in the machine, booting started but STILL NO LUCK. Just a half-loaded Apple boot screen. So it wasn't faulting due to the damage it sustained. Windows / BIOS still asked me to attach the card to power and try again.
Further research of 8-pin PCIe diagrams revealed that the additional two plugs on the 8 pin plug are both 12v neutral. With this in mind, I hacked at a spare molex to 6pin adapter I had, cutting off two lines of the 6pin plug end which fit in the two "extra" ports of the 8 pin plug and rerouting those two lines to be centre pins on the molex end. I attached this to the optical bay's molex power (as the twin DL drives were removed) and connected this 3rd power line into the GTX 680.
I booted Windows and everything works 100%! Rebooted into Mac and hey presto all is A OK, registered and full 5GT link speed!
Next step was to tidy up and figure out how to keep everything connected and happy. I didn't want to keep buying adapters and waiting and I wanted to keep all my components installed. I figured I would splice the two inner pins from my custom molex-PCIe adapter and re-crimp them at the back end of a molex to SATA Y-splitter running around from the optical bay's power line which I am using to also power a USB 3.1 type A+C PCIe card in slot 2.
Photo 1 - Custom made "3rd" power source for the two left-side pins of the 8-pin plug.
Photo 2 - Overview of power routing. "Sleeved" power is a molex to SATA Y-splitter routed from the optical bay.
Photo 3 - (Blurry) shot of the back of the re-crimped SATA power plug I've used to piggyback from.
Photo 5 - And here it is in action playing nice with the other PCIe cards installed USB 3,1 A+C (powered) and 2 port SATA III / eSATA.
All appears to be working well. Games in my Steam Library absolutely fly in Windows. My collection is dated mostly before 2010 as I hadn't had the hardware for anything from the last 7(!) years.
On the Mac side I had to tell Adobe Premiere and After Effects (CS6) about the new card by adding it to the supported cards text files for CUDA and OpenCL in Premiere and Raytracing Previews in AE.
Da Vinci Resolve is super happy. Photos.app is silky smooth.
It's really worth noting that this card runs cool and is totally quiet. I haven't heard it crank up beyond the idle volume of the Mac Pro. Power consumption has increased however. I'd estimate approx 60 watt increase while idle (over the GT 120) and even during sleep it consumes quite a bit more than the previous card. I guess this is the trade off and I just need to be more mindful of switching everything off when I'm not using it.
Overall I am very impressed with this sub- AU$100 investment and I am glad I didn't pay $400+ for a conveniently pre-flashed second hand card of the same caliber.
Happy days!
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Thanks for sharing and compiling this very comprehensive post! Very well executed and great for other members who want this to do themselves!
Cheers
Not a problem. I hope it is useful for others even if it is just to prompt an attempt at flashing if anyone is feeling hesitant about it.
In my case, the pin arrangement stumped me as I could not find confirmation that anything other than 2x 6pin (like the reference EVGA cards) would work in a Mac Pro 3,1.
I got the impression that it should work with just 6 pin cables though and this appeared to be confirmed by the subpar user manual in the box. However as it turned out it, the "OC" card really did need more power.
I understood that flashing for Mac would drop the speed of the OC versions back to reference (which didn't bother me) and I assumed the power requirement would lower in relation to this...
("assumed" <- there's the problem)
I have seen 6 pin to 8 pin adapters which loop the two neutral lines directly off the lines on the adapter but like I said I didn't want to buy more adapters and also I don't want to overload the Logic Board power ports, so running "extra" power directly from the PSU made more sense to me.
Maybe I'm just overthinking things?
Most GTX 680 run just fine off of 2x6-pin cables, even overclocked models with an 8-pin socket. For example EVGA GTX680 FTW edition.
Including your report, I've now seen two models with an 8-pin port that insist on having an 8-pin source. However, people have checked with hardware monitor software and it doesn't use more power than a 6-pin would have provided anyway. In other words, the 8-pin socket is for show. It's the GPU enthusiast's equivalent of 4 chrome tail pipes out the back of a car where two of them are fake and don't lead to anything.
If you like, you can use Kepler BIOS Tweaker to restore your factory overclock settings.
So are you getting boot screens? I just flashed the same card and have all the same stats/specs showing that you show in your screen shots, but I don't get boot screens. Maybe has something to do with my 32" 4k Asus ProArt monitor?
Hi rdalrt, yes, I have boot screens working on the 2x DVI ports on a 27" Kogan WQHD display at it's native 2560x1440. I haven't tried DP or HDMI.
Can anybody confirm 4K boot screens working on this card?
The card will not be able to provide a 4k boot screen at 60 Hz. However, it may be able to provide one at 30 Hz. Assuming that you are using DisplayPort, try setting the stream to 1.1 (instead of 1.2) in the monitor's settings.
I'd be interested in knowing if this works. Although I suspect that like the stock GT 120 and 4k displays the boot screen may be intermittently black and scrambled... Some have also mentioned that the firmware doesn't support boot screens on DP. Perhaps you could also try DVI or HDMI.
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Not sure how you're connecting a 27" Cinema Display to the DVI port. They're DisplayPort (or TB) based, which can't easily be connected to a DVI port. What about disconncting your 4K screen and plugging the CinemaDisplay into the DisplayPort?
Note that those old GPUs won't provide a boot screen at DisplayPort 1.2. You'll get a black screen at best, or a freeze during early boot phase.
Note that those old GPUs won't provide a boot screen at DisplayPort 1.2. You'll get a black screen at best, or a freeze during early boot phase.
Hi, Please help me...and thank you in advance..
I have an EVGA GTX 680 2Gb EVGA 02G-P4-2680-KR and I tried to flash it 3 times without any luck.
I did the flash by bootcamp windows 7 32 bit.. all done as the instructions.
1. back up my rom
2. flashed the proper rom with -4 -5 -6 parameter got it from here.. https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-680-mac-edition.1565735/page-5#post-17132316
..tried also only with -5 -6
3. hit the "y" twice and all completed succefully
4. reboot to normal Os x El Capitan
5. BLACK SCREEN.. nothing...not even boot..was flashed in slot 1..tried to place it to slot 2...also nothing
Then i place the card to a PC and reflash it again with the back up rom and seems ok without ofcourse the gray bootscreen.
Please help me what I did wrong?
I have a macpro 3.1 with El Capitan..
Just thinking ...Im using 2 monitors..1 is connected to DVI and the 2 to display port...I was thinking after flashed if these outputs dont send any signal thats why not seeing anything?
I have an EVGA GTX 680 2Gb EVGA 02G-P4-2680-KR and I tried to flash it 3 times without any luck.
I did the flash by bootcamp windows 7 32 bit.. all done as the instructions.
1. back up my rom
2. flashed the proper rom with -4 -5 -6 parameter got it from here.. https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-680-mac-edition.1565735/page-5#post-17132316
..tried also only with -5 -6
3. hit the "y" twice and all completed succefully
4. reboot to normal Os x El Capitan
5. BLACK SCREEN.. nothing...not even boot..was flashed in slot 1..tried to place it to slot 2...also nothing
Then i place the card to a PC and reflash it again with the back up rom and seems ok without ofcourse the gray bootscreen.
Please help me what I did wrong?
I have a macpro 3.1 with El Capitan..
Just thinking ...Im using 2 monitors..1 is connected to DVI and the 2 to display port...I was thinking after flashed if these outputs dont send any signal thats why not seeing anything?
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Did you use the exact release of the nv flash tool? Later releases do not play nicely.
I tried with the newer version of NVFLash 5.412.0 but I couldn't flash the rom at all...because every time I execute the command .. nvflash -4 -5 -6 gtx680mac.rom... the help list comes up..
but 2 times I flash it with an older version of NVflash V.5.134.0.1....with no luck at all..
Hi All,
I followed Tomvos' instructions and made a video here. Thank you for the instructions.
I followed Tomvos' instructions and made a video here. Thank you for the instructions.
4GB is possible. Is there a typo in that model number? I cannot find any information on it.
Hey, all, I'm posting to let all y'all know that I was able to flash a MSI Twin Frozr III 2GB GTX680. I had to roll back to an older version of nvflash to make it work. "-4 -5 -6" were the augments I used. I like this one because it's only 2x 6-pin. I'll eventually figure out how to edit the bios to reflect the actual flash card...
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