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Confirmed and Possible Flashable GTX 680 Models
- Thread starter xcodeSyn
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GPU Gurus
Okay....
Hypothetical question for you GPU Guru's. If one were to flash a non-reference card (with the 680 Mac rom) that has higher clock speeds I understand the card will then operate at the lower clock speeds of the Mac card. Makes sense.
Has anyone been able to hex edit the rom back to the proper (higher) clock speeds? I'd assume both the PC BIOS and the Mac EFI sections of the rom would need the edit.
Just wondering.....
Okay....
Hypothetical question for you GPU Guru's. If one were to flash a non-reference card (with the 680 Mac rom) that has higher clock speeds I understand the card will then operate at the lower clock speeds of the Mac card. Makes sense.
Has anyone been able to hex edit the rom back to the proper (higher) clock speeds? I'd assume both the PC BIOS and the Mac EFI sections of the rom would need the edit.
Just wondering.....
I'm sure it can be done, however from what I understand Nvidia EFI has 5 parts that have to line up perfect, or you get a brick\invisible card. I'm sure MacVideoCards can elaborate more on if he can keep the higher clock speeds, while adding EFI.
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It's my understanding that what you can do is extract the original rom from the graphics card and there is a script that will add the EFI part to it, then you flash it back onto the card. In this way you would preserve the original rom and clockings.
this is kinda true, on an AMD card you run the script to create EFI using parts of your stock BIOS (clocks). For Nvidia there is no script, instead just the full BIOS dump with EFI, so you get Mac Edition Speeds.
Bump for an update:
Confirmed and working with the following model:
MSI N680GTX Twin Frozr 2GD5/OC
HOWEVER, this one is also subject to the 10-second delay after the chime. It's a minor annoyance, but in my opinion is the best possible iteration of the 680 for Mac Pro purposes (cooling is far superior to reference design, 2x6pin power requirements means no 6-to-8 adapters). Shows up great on a Mac Pro 5,1 in OS X 10.8.4 and handles fine in Win 7 Pro with the latest NVIDIA drivers (320.49 as of this writing).
Many thanks to the community for supplying all the information needed to research this, I got a great deal on this card and saved probably 50% off the sticker price of an official 680 for Mac.
Confirmed and working with the following model:
MSI N680GTX Twin Frozr 2GD5/OC
HOWEVER, this one is also subject to the 10-second delay after the chime. It's a minor annoyance, but in my opinion is the best possible iteration of the 680 for Mac Pro purposes (cooling is far superior to reference design, 2x6pin power requirements means no 6-to-8 adapters). Shows up great on a Mac Pro 5,1 in OS X 10.8.4 and handles fine in Win 7 Pro with the latest NVIDIA drivers (320.49 as of this writing).
Many thanks to the community for supplying all the information needed to research this, I got a great deal on this card and saved probably 50% off the sticker price of an official 680 for Mac.
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GTX680 4GB Cards now being flashed with EFI rom.
GTX680 4GB Cards are now being flashed with a modified Mac ROM Image - Full Boot Screens, No delay after Chime, Full Clock Rates & PCI-E 2.0 - 5GT/s.
Confirmed: EVGA GTX680 FTW+ 4GB - PN: 04G-P4-3687-KR
I also OC'd the card to "Classified" specs & speeds without any issue. The card is OC'd in Windows & Mac OS X.
More Info, Rom Image and tools are posted here.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1603260/
GTX680 4GB Cards are now being flashed with a modified Mac ROM Image - Full Boot Screens, No delay after Chime, Full Clock Rates & PCI-E 2.0 - 5GT/s.
Confirmed: EVGA GTX680 FTW+ 4GB - PN: 04G-P4-3687-KR
I also OC'd the card to "Classified" specs & speeds without any issue. The card is OC'd in Windows & Mac OS X.
More Info, Rom Image and tools are posted here.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1603260/
Dr. Stealth: Is Mac OS X still having issues leveraging CUDA on cards larger than 2GB? Last I saw, they were still requiring manual hex modifications to function properly.
The only issue I remember was with a couple Adobe products. I think raytracing support in AE was one. I haven't had any issues but I don't use AE...
My main requirement for CUDA is using Bunkspeed Shot in Win 7 (bootcamp).
Could you comment on the noise of the GPU card's own fans, as well as the Mac Pro's PCI fan, with this card?
The EVGA GTX680 card I am testing with right now wants to run the PCI fan too fast at idle such that it makes noise, while the video card itself runs rather cold with it's own fan running very slow.
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I'm running a stock ZT-60103-10P with no issues in a 5,1. Not flashed, but I don't need the boot screen.
770 rumors were correct. I'm impatiently waiting for the GTX 680 prices to fall. So far the 680 still costs MORE than the faster 770.
Confirmed working:
GeForce GTX 680+ 4GB w/Backplate, PN: 04G-P4-2686-KR
Flashed with the GTX680 4GB rom from Dr. Stealth's thread.
GeForce GTX 680+ 4GB w/Backplate, PN: 04G-P4-2686-KR
Flashed with the GTX680 4GB rom from Dr. Stealth's thread.
Got this running in my 4,1 great card easy to flash and also goes for a good price in the UK. Been hammering Diablo and Starcraft in my spare time, the card just laughs at them both.
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With the PC versions dropping in price (or sold out) I was wondering the same thing. Can you make a bootable free DOS disk or something with the tools required when you don't have Windows or is the only real option to find a friend with a suitable PC to do it for you?
NVflash is DOS based so yes, you could do that. It's just a lot easier if you have Windows because a bootable DOS CD is read-only which won't let you save your current ROM (very unsafe because you can't go back).
A bootable USB stick is writable, but historically it has been tricky in OS X to make a working bootable DOS USB stick. I haven't tried in a long time so I don't know if that's improved at all.
Also, the step-by-step writeups I've seen here have been written for Windows, so you'll have to adjust accordingly.
The thing is, on Windows, flashing the 680 is like a 5-minute task. If you're spending hours trying to get bootable DOS stuff working, it'd be easier to just take the card to a friend's house with a Windows computer.
I remember some Nvidia cards could be flashed via Terminal but that was a long, long time ago and I have no idea if it works with the GTX 680.
No, you can't flash from within any virtual machine.
You can use a hiren mini windows 7 boot usb but there's no way in the world I would do that, too risky flashing a PCIe device via a usb boot! Bootcamp or another windows PC is the only way. Took less than a few minutes, longest part was changing directories from an admin command prompt to the nvflash folder holding the utility and the EFI rom.
I flashed a PC stock evga 680 2gb and after a couple of reboots in windows faffing with the drivers it's been perfect. Osx worked fine straight away.
Last flash able cards in OSX were the GT200 series and since they all need new EEPROM, this was least of worries. Last OS that NVFlash worked in was 10.7 and you had to use 32 bit.
If a flash fix becomes needed for 680 or K5000 we might get a newer 64 bit one. Sadly all of the "built ins" have their rom mingled with system EFI. rMBP and iMac update their GPUs via overall system EFI, so we won't be getting a flasher from there.
Hello everybody,
I just installed a MSI GTX 680 with reference design (http://www.msi.com/product/vga/N680GTX-PM2D2GD5.html) in my Mac Pro 2009 (original 4.1 firmware), and went through some issues :
1- At first, I had my monitor and my LCD TV plugged on the two DVI ports, which made the Mac Pro blocked to a black screen at boot. I then left only the monitor plugged and all went ok. Got boot with no Apple logo, flashed the card with EFI rom, and then got a fully working GTX 680 under both 10.9 and BootCamp Win 7. First issue solved.
2- As soon as I switched from my original Radeon HD4870 to the new GTX 680, my Mac Pro didn't "check" the fans at boot anymore (you know, every time I boot/reboot, all the fans used to perform at full speed for few seconds, sort of boot test).
I tried switching the card slot from 1 to slot 2, no change. When I boot, the Mac Pro is just silent and doesn't get the fans speeding up.
I get the PCI fan speed issue which has been reported in many threads here, but nobody is mentioning this case (at least didn't find any one who did).
Is this dangerous that the Mac Pro is not performing the fans "full speed check" at boot anymore?
Thanks for any suggestion.
P.S. : I did a NVRAM and SMC reset few times, following Apple site procedure, with no change.
I just installed a MSI GTX 680 with reference design (http://www.msi.com/product/vga/N680GTX-PM2D2GD5.html) in my Mac Pro 2009 (original 4.1 firmware), and went through some issues :
1- At first, I had my monitor and my LCD TV plugged on the two DVI ports, which made the Mac Pro blocked to a black screen at boot. I then left only the monitor plugged and all went ok. Got boot with no Apple logo, flashed the card with EFI rom, and then got a fully working GTX 680 under both 10.9 and BootCamp Win 7. First issue solved.
2- As soon as I switched from my original Radeon HD4870 to the new GTX 680, my Mac Pro didn't "check" the fans at boot anymore (you know, every time I boot/reboot, all the fans used to perform at full speed for few seconds, sort of boot test).
I tried switching the card slot from 1 to slot 2, no change. When I boot, the Mac Pro is just silent and doesn't get the fans speeding up.
I get the PCI fan speed issue which has been reported in many threads here, but nobody is mentioning this case (at least didn't find any one who did).
Is this dangerous that the Mac Pro is not performing the fans "full speed check" at boot anymore?
Thanks for any suggestion.
P.S. : I did a NVRAM and SMC reset few times, following Apple site procedure, with no change.
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