Hope it works out.... I only have 7800 GS AGP(from Leadtek) so I dont know much. I did save a 7900GTX from scraper once with the Aquamac bios.
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Flashing A Quadro FX 4500 For Power Mac G5 Compatibility
- Thread starter SuperKerem
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I just wanted to say thanks to the OP for the guide on how to flash a Quadro FX 4500 for G5s! I flashed 2 Quadros successfully today for my 2 PowerMac G5s. It is really easy if you can track down the correct version of the card (the one with memory chips on the backside). I got a hold of them after a long search online (about 3 years) for a great deal (15€ per card, brand new). As far as I can tell they came from a HP system but the seller told me they were never in use and pretty much were lying around as a backup for the last 16 years. Below some impressions of the flashing process:
First of all, this is the card I've used for flashing:
After preparing the USB stick according to the OP's guide, I got my gaming PC from my mid-teens which I haven't been using for the past +10 years. I emptied it pretty much and made sure that the only PCIe card left was the GPU which I attached via a riser cable (out of convenience since said PC will be my "flashing station" from now on):
I had to read the motherboard manual because I couldn't remember how to access the BIOS options (I've been using Macs only for quite some time now ...):
Typing the necessary command:
Confirm all prompts. It actually seems to have worked!
In goes the Quadro FX 4500 (and out goes the GeForce 6600):
Of course I did everything shown above twice and I can happily report that both cards work in both G5s:
I'm really happy that I'm now in the FX 4500 club but I honestly have to say I do not notice the potential improvements right of the bat. So the next thing to do is to try some benchmarks and games
First of all, this is the card I've used for flashing:
After preparing the USB stick according to the OP's guide, I got my gaming PC from my mid-teens which I haven't been using for the past +10 years. I emptied it pretty much and made sure that the only PCIe card left was the GPU which I attached via a riser cable (out of convenience since said PC will be my "flashing station" from now on):
I had to read the motherboard manual because I couldn't remember how to access the BIOS options (I've been using Macs only for quite some time now ...):
Typing the necessary command:
Confirm all prompts. It actually seems to have worked!
In goes the Quadro FX 4500 (and out goes the GeForce 6600):
Of course I did everything shown above twice and I can happily report that both cards work in both G5s:
I'm really happy that I'm now in the FX 4500 club but I honestly have to say I do not notice the potential improvements right of the bat. So the next thing to do is to try some benchmarks and games
Strange issue with my flashed double sided FX4500
It works fine in Slot 2 but refuses to allow machine to boot if its in Slot 1. I've tried 3 times thinking maybe I didnt seat it correctly.
Its not the Slot 1 cos I put a flashed X1900 in their no problem or the original GF 6600 no problem.
I guess its NOT a major issue since I might stick a Radeon X1600 in that slot for MorphOS but.... it bugs me somewhat
And to add insult to injury, MacOS WAS happy at 1920*1080 but now wont display with monitor reporting it needs a 1920*1080x60 signal.... So, maybe have to reinstall MacOS ???
It works fine in Slot 2 but refuses to allow machine to boot if its in Slot 1. I've tried 3 times thinking maybe I didnt seat it correctly.
Its not the Slot 1 cos I put a flashed X1900 in their no problem or the original GF 6600 no problem.
I guess its NOT a major issue since I might stick a Radeon X1600 in that slot for MorphOS but.... it bugs me somewhat
And to add insult to injury, MacOS WAS happy at 1920*1080 but now wont display with monitor reporting it needs a 1920*1080x60 signal.... So, maybe have to reinstall MacOS ???
Boot in single user mode (hold Command and S after powering on), remount / read-write (it tells you how) and try
rm -rf /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist
rm -rf /Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist(If the second file isn’t there no problem.)
Does it work using another monitor?
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The GTX has 24 Pixel shader processors, four more than the GT.
It has 8 Vertex shader processors, one more than the GT.
And 24 Texture units, four more than the GT.
Tho I'm not sure Dave unlocked this stuff in the FCode ROM when he created it, and what needs to be unlocked by the drivers that may not exist in OS X.
Other than that you just have higher clocks and twice the VRAM. In situations where you are filling more than 256MB of VRAM you are going to see huge gains.
The Quadro 4500 was fully supported so I would somehow imagine that these drivers exist/could be adapted for the 7800 GTX (512Mb version). It also has 24 pixel shaders , 8 vertex shaders, 24 TMUs and 16 ROPs like the 7800 GTX 512. I think the FCode ROM was adapted from the that of the Quadro 4500?
It would be interesting to find out if everything is enabled on both the firmware and driver level, but I don't know of any tools for the Mac that will tell us.
Me neither. On the PC side though, there are tools that can read and decode FCode roms (I distinctly remember editing a GF2 MX FCode ROM on a PC before flashing) and I thought mac ones. Otherwise from the performance table? The only thing that I can read are the frequencies from the performance table from the ROM in mine:
649112020000003903 (100% fan speed, 1.45V core voltage, 545 Mhz core frequency, 825 Mhz memory frequency x2=1650Mhz DDR, all very close to the PC specs 550 Mhz core and 2x850 Mhz memory)
But maybe it's possible to read further details e.g shaders TMUs ROPs etc from it?
As for the actual operation no idea under osx even less under ppc, if only there was a port of GPU Caps Viewer
!Had same issue with a X1900 flashed card.
Tried your tip and didnt help. Then tried boot into Safe Mode (hold shift down on boot) and changed resolution.
Funny thing is that BOTH cards HAVE displayed 1920*1080P successfully but can't seem to get it to stick. I seem to recall there is some util that is a free alternative to SwitchResX that should enable custom resolution/timings?
Many thanks for this guide.
I've now successfully flashed a single-sided card (Unbranded Revision A00, no metal plate on the back) and it's working great in my G5 Quad
Things I've discovered along the way:
1) NVFlash wouldn't work on my system (3770K/Z68) if the boot drive was created with the HP tool - kept crashing with General Protection Faults. Works flawlessly with Rufus/FreeDOS
2) Flashing with the ROM in this thread didn't work with my single-side card - the G5 could clearly recognise it but there was nothing but artifact on the display
3) Flashing with the ROM in another forum (https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/troubleshooting-quadro-4500-fx-in-g5-quad.40165/), described as being specific for single-sided cards worked great
4) After this first flash, I had the same issue that Aaron111 described - SIGSEGV error and card then identifying as a GO 7800 until reboot. Having run out of things to try, in desperation I rebooted, erased the EEPROM with 'nvflash --eraseeeprom', then immediately flashed with the correct ROM. Fortunately, the gamble paid off - successfully flashed with the single-side bios and it worked in the G5!
Can't comment on what would happen if the machine were rebooted between erasing the EEPROM and re-flashing it - I suspect my 'fix' may only have worked because the system was already aware of the card's existence and probably wouldn't have found it after rebooting.
I've now successfully flashed a single-sided card (Unbranded Revision A00, no metal plate on the back) and it's working great in my G5 Quad
Things I've discovered along the way:
1) NVFlash wouldn't work on my system (3770K/Z68) if the boot drive was created with the HP tool - kept crashing with General Protection Faults. Works flawlessly with Rufus/FreeDOS
2) Flashing with the ROM in this thread didn't work with my single-side card - the G5 could clearly recognise it but there was nothing but artifact on the display
3) Flashing with the ROM in another forum (https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/troubleshooting-quadro-4500-fx-in-g5-quad.40165/), described as being specific for single-sided cards worked great
4) After this first flash, I had the same issue that Aaron111 described - SIGSEGV error and card then identifying as a GO 7800 until reboot. Having run out of things to try, in desperation I rebooted, erased the EEPROM with 'nvflash --eraseeeprom', then immediately flashed with the correct ROM. Fortunately, the gamble paid off - successfully flashed with the single-side bios and it worked in the G5!
Can't comment on what would happen if the machine were rebooted between erasing the EEPROM and re-flashing it - I suspect my 'fix' may only have worked because the system was already aware of the card's existence and probably wouldn't have found it after rebooting.
Has anyone ever had any success with the Quadro FX 4500 x2 (or 7800 GT dual)? I know some people tried it but it's it doesn't look like anyone kept on trying
Or with x2 cards on macs at all for that matter, what's the consensus on those?
Or with x2 cards on macs at all for that matter, what's the consensus on those?
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At least on Intel Macs, the consensus is that dual GPU cards don't work.
FYI, a 2024 Update here
Using this process I successfully flashed two Quadro FX4500 (single sided VRAM). Attaching pictures of the board here for everybody's reference (bought them on ebay, came from a server with a bracket which I removed)
Attachments
I have an identical card to the poster above and flashing it with the single sided ROM seems to have bricked it :\
I used NVFlash 5.31 on an Intel PC motherboard (using the iGPU) via FreeDOS, a setup I used successfully multiple times with my GeForce 7800 GT for flashing G5 ROMs.
The Flash completed successfully with no errors or alerts. The G5 won’t chime with it in and in the PC board NVFlash no-longer sees it.
EDIT: I realise an error I made now, I missed the -j flag in the nvflash command - would that brick it?
I used NVFlash 5.31 on an Intel PC motherboard (using the iGPU) via FreeDOS, a setup I used successfully multiple times with my GeForce 7800 GT for flashing G5 ROMs.
The Flash completed successfully with no errors or alerts. The G5 won’t chime with it in and in the PC board NVFlash no-longer sees it.
EDIT: I realise an error I made now, I missed the -j flag in the nvflash command - would that brick it?
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Just thought I'd share some experiences recently doing some BIOS mods on PCs with old GPUs. The version of NVflash DOES matter. One card took a flash from a newer version of NVflash but then cared wouldnt boot but was discovered in Windows and NVflash then reported card as a Go (Mobile) version...
So when flashing I would suggest an OLD version of NVflash... like 5.25 or earlier?
So when flashing I would suggest an OLD version of NVflash... like 5.25 or earlier?
Does anyone know WHAT the components at L512-L513-L514 are (bottom right of pic in this post above) .... I picked up a FX4500 but there is no pic on either DVI port. Card IS detected and flashable but no pic on PC... and then I find L514 is missing/cracked off... Think I could get a new part on and maybe fix it?? L is usually an inductor? how do I get the value?
This opens up new possibilities. That said, he didn't really show how the Mac ROM flash went, except that it was done. Also, he didn't give any specific details on the original Rev version of the card, which could help us differentiate the many versions of this card. That would help as well.
But I'm also glad to read that others have been successful in flashing single sided memory cards, which is very encouraging.
UPDATE: I followed up the rest of the thread and I see that there is a Mac ROM for a single sided VRAM version of the Quadro FX 4500. In case anyone is looking for it, here it is:
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Reviving this old thread! I'd like to become part of the Quadro FX 4500 G5 club! I'm looking to buy a card locally from a seller on FB Marketplace. The picture shows a single sided VRAM (no bracket) with REV A01 on it. Does anyone know if I need to do something special besides using the the ROM designed for single sided VRAM cards?
Thanks in advance! JP
Thanks in advance! JP
I ran into the same issue with mine and realized that I wasn't seating it properly in Slot 1. If you don't hear the fan revving up and then quiet down after a few seconds, it means it's not seated properly.
UPDATE: I picked up a REV 01 card a couple of days ago. Spent most of yesterday attempting to flash it. Most of my time was spent setting up my old Windows XP/7 machine, which is close to 20 years old. To add complexity, it wouldn't boot from a bootable USB Win98 SE boot disk image and the mobo doesn't have a 6-pin connector. Ultimately I had to burn the image to CD, booting up from the CD while keeping another USB drive connected with the NVFlash and single sided quadro.rom file. FYI: my NVFlash was version 5.67. In addition, I had an even older Windows 98/ATX mobo machine that had an SLI certified PSU with the right 6-pin connector. Alas, this Win98 machine is AGP only (I kept going down the rabbit hole). So this second machine was on to feed juice to the 6-pin connector of the Quadro FX4500 on the first WinXP/7 machine?!
To summarize:
1. Connected Quadro FX4500 single sided card Rev 01 to my Win XP/7 machine while the 6-pin connector was connected to the PSU of my Win 98 machine
2. Inserted Windows 98 SE CD burned image into CD/DVD optical drive AND a flash drive with the pertinent files (quadro.rom, nvflash.exe., etc.) to one of the USB ports
3. Booted up the Win XP/7 and Win 98 computers (for power to the 6-pin power connector)
4. Once at the command prompt, I typed nvflash --check to confirm type of card
5. Next, I typed nvflash -4 -5 -6 -j quadro.rom. It told me that there was a mismatch in the identifier and if I wanted to override it, I said 'Y', followed by the confirmation prompt to flash the ROM file onto the card, to which I said 'Y' again
6. After a few seconds, it said it completed successfully. I rebooted the Windows machine just for kicks and there was no longer output from the card. At that point, I removed the GeForce 6600 from the G5 and plugged in the Quadro FX 4500 into Slot 1. I also had to finagle to connect the mini 6-pin cable to the logic board and then to the card. This process took a few minutes as I had to get a fan out of the way to reach the connector on the G5 logic board.
7. After booting the G5, I got NO output and was discouraged. I was also upgrading RAM from 8GB > 16GB at the same time. So using process of elimination, I removed the Quadro FX 4500 and reinserted the GeForce 6600 to confirm one upgrade at a time.
8. After a second reboot, I had output from the 6600 and the RAM was recognized up to 16GB so I was good with the RAM.
9. I powered off the G5, removed the 6600 and reinserted the Quadro FX 4500 into Slot 2. Rebooted and BOOM! the card came to life!!
10. Finally, I powered it down again and reinserted it into Slot 1 very carefully. I'm not sure why it doesn't look like it quite sits properly. That's why I suggested to the previous poster to be very careful when seating the card. This third reboot with the card properly seated in Slot 1, I heard the fans revved up then quiet down, and FINALLY I had output with the grey Apple logo and full resolution at 2560 x 1600 on my 30" CinemaDisplay. Woohoo! I'm stoked!
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