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Flashing R9 280X for boot screens/PCI System Information

Wow, MVC, take it easy.

Also, since you said only 2 people are currently working on cracking these bios, then I must ask, what about rominator?

Anyways, looks like the recommended MSI cards are not longer available at newegg,

Which brand is a good alternative?
 
Sorry this is not about the R9 280X but could someone kindly create a 7970 rom for me so i can use the card in my Mac Pro 2,1 and get the boot screen if I upload the rom file?
 
Antoni Nygaard said:
Sorry this is not about the R9 280X but could someone kindly create a 7970 rom for me so i can use the card in my Mac Pro 2,1 and get the boot screen if I upload the rom file?
Click to expand...

Oddly enough you are both wrong and right.

7970 = R9 280X = D700

They all share vendor and device id.

So the EFI is same except for what name it puts in system profiler. If your card has a BIOS switch you can get sloppy and start trying any and every 7970 or R9 280x rom.

When Atiflash says "Rom not found" it means exactly that. In DOS you are limited to an 8 character name. If you save the rom as "myAMD7970.rom" and then try to flash it with that exact spelling it will say "rom not found".
Do a dir/w to see list of names.

In my example it would be listed as "myAMD7~1.rom" IIRC due to the 8 character limit. You can either rename it or type it exactly as it shows up in dir/w. There is a rename command in DOS that is easy to use.

If not found running atiwinflash you have a different issue. But an error in the rom will be flagged as such, not finding it is exactly what it sounds like.
 
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MacVidCards said:
Oddly enough you are both wrong and right.

7970 = R9 280X = D700

They all share vendor and device id.

So the EFI is same except for what name it puts in system profiler. If your card has a BIOS switch you can get sloppy and start trying any and every 7970 or R9 280x rom.

When Atiflash says "Rom not found" it means exactly that. In DOS you are limited to an 8 character name. If you save the rom as "myAMD7970.rom" and then try to flash it with that exact spelling it will say "rom not found".
Do a dir/w to see list of names.

In my example it would be listed as "myAMD7~1.rom" IIRC due to the 8 character limit. You can either rename it or type it exactly as it shows up in dir/w. There is a rename command in DOS that is easy to use.

If not found running atiwinflash you have a different issue. But an error in the rom will be flagged as such, not finding it is exactly what it sounds like.
Click to expand...


oh thx for the info. didn't know they were the same.

There is a BIOS switch on the card. Is there a place where there a rom listed for these cards?
 
Antoni Nygaard said:
oh thx for the info. didn't know they were the same.

There is a BIOS switch on the card. Is there a place where there a rom listed for these cards?
Click to expand...

Some are posted in this thread and there are also some at Netkas.org.

If you don't overthink it making the roms is easy. You just take the UEFI off the card, it is 2 separate roms, usually divided at half way point. (65536) You copy the BIOS part (from 0 to 65536) then you open ANY of the 7970 or R9 280X EFIs in Hexeditor and CUT the first 65536 so that rom starts with 55AA and has word "Hamachi" somewhere in first 1K on right side.

Paste your BIOS in front of this. Verify that EFI still starts at 65536. 55AA should be on far left, starting right at 65536.

Save this and flash. Always keep one switch position as "original" and use the other side to test with. BE VERY CAREFUL ABOUT THIS.

If you start with the UEFI version of original rom it will already have last rom indicators and checksums correct. If you use the BIOS only rom you will have to fix last rom indicator and checksum on BIOS part.

BTW, if you are Denmark then you have likely seen many commercials that I Art Directed. I did a few campaigns for "KiMs Chips" with lovable Jorgen. Fave was the "10%" music video. I also did 2 or 3 campaigns for "Nordea" bank, back when people held up clear plexiglass and drew their dreams on them over a background. I did a couple Aquafresh commercials as well, a great one where a girl dumps boyfriend by throwing his stuff form a 3rd floor window. And an entire campaign for Carlsberg beer a few years back. Your version of Carlsberg is much better then the one they sell in the states, ours tastes like Bud Light in comparison. Sadly, the ad agency tried to bring an entire pallet of beer over and customs made them dump every single bottle down the drain. I had to buy cases of American Carlsberg and a capping machine to recreate the European bottles. You guys still re-use bottles like we used to do for Soda.

Anyhow, i digress, had lots of fun doing commercials for Denmark, fun group of folks I worked with from there.
 
MacVidCards said:
Some are posted in this thread and there are also some at Netkas.org.

If you don't overthink it making the roms is easy. You just take the UEFI off the card, it is 2 separate roms, usually divided at half way point. (65536) You copy the BIOS part (from 0 to 65536) then you open ANY of the 7970 or R9 280X EFIs in Hexeditor and CUT the first 65536 so that rom starts with 55AA and has word "Hamachi" somewhere in first 1K on right side.

Paste your BIOS in front of this. Verify that EFI still starts at 65536. 55AA should be on far left, starting right at 65536.

Save this and flash. Always keep one switch position as "original" and use the other side to test with. BE VERY CAREFUL ABOUT THIS.

If you start with the UEFI version of original rom it will already have last rom indicators and checksums correct. If you use the BIOS only rom you will have to fix last rom indicator and checksum on BIOS part.

BTW, if you are Denmark then you have likely seen many commercials that I Art Directed. I did a few campaigns for "KiMs Chips" with lovable Jorgen. Fave was the "10%" music video. I also did 2 or 3 campaigns for "Nordea" bank, back when people held up clear plexiglass and drew their dreams on them over a background. I did a couple Aquafresh commercials as well, a great one where a girl dumps boyfriend by throwing his stuff form a 3rd floor window. And an entire campaign for Carlsberg beer a few years back. Your version of Carlsberg is much better then the one they sell in the states, ours tastes like Bud Light in comparison. Sadly, the ad agency tried to bring an entire pallet of beer over and customs made them dump every single bottle down the drain. I had to buy cases of American Carlsberg and a capping machine to recreate the European bottles. You guys still re-use bottles like we used to do for Soda.

Anyhow, i digress, had lots of fun doing commercials for Denmark, fun group of folks I worked with from there.
Click to expand...


I have to be honest i'm not that technical to do this kind of stuff with hex editing. That's why I asked if anyone could do it here for me I would appreciate that allot., i'm currently trying to flash some of them out in this thread one of them worked it just shows cosmetic wrong in about this mac with amount of RAM om the card and the fan was a little louder than normal.


And yes I live in Copenhagen. I'm currently sitting here and eating some KiMS Chips# he's called Jørgen here with ø. Sure i remember the Nordea Bank with the plexiglass and where girl dumps the boyfriend. That sound pretty cool that you Art Directed all those for danish commercials. of course the beer here is better we also have Turborg beer. it's a small world ;D I work with 3D modelling and rendering
 
As I asked before, but was hidden in my other question.

Looks like MSI is not longer selling the 280X, at least in Newegg, which other brand is recommended?

I hear on Netkas that XFX are to be avoided.
 
I managed to create my own bios with EFI for my 7970 ghz edition, found a simple guide on this site. it says it's a 7950 but as i can understand that is only cosmetic. Only one thing i found weird is when it's booting the logo the loading bar comes up like normal but when it comes up to 1/3 bar the screen goes black and the loading bar comes back down i the left corner. where the rest of the screen is black.
 
Antoni Nygaard said:
I managed to create my own bios with EFI for my 7970 ghz edition, found a simple guide on this site. it says it's a 7950 but as i can understand that is only cosmetic. Only one thing i found weird is when it's booting the logo the loading bar comes up like normal but when it comes up to 1/3 bar the screen goes black and the loading bar comes back down i the left corner. where the rest of the screen is black.
Click to expand...

Mine did something similar until I went into the display settings and changed it from scaled to Default for monitor.

I think what's happening is that once the OS loads to a certain point, it reads in the custom monitor setting and puts it into effect while still loading (changing seems to be occurring and causing black screen). I'm not sure if that's what's really happening, but that's what it feels like to me.
 
Thanks MacVidcards it was worth your abuse to get the information ;-) I was making the rom correctly so I had worked it out from the combined posts on here and netkas however having not done it before I was not confident I was actually doing it right. Armed with this new knowledge I determined it was the efi part I was using from zarniwoops rom that was causing the problems so I used the 7970.rom and now I have a booting card. It shows as HD7970 and I know that mr zarniwoop had the exact same problem (reported on netkas) so I will look into that once I am happy the rom is stable although I did edit the text in the rom so I guess its something with the SSID that I missed.

Problems to note though, I was doing this to complete the pimping of my mac and to add a 4k monitor for photo editing. I find the mac won't boot with the 4k monitor connected to mdp withought a second lower resolution monitor connected (I am using dvi) also when the 4k monitor is attached using hdmi (it will boot without second monitor) it does not show the correct resolutions although in system information it shows it correctly for the monitor, having a second monitor for booting is not a real issue for me as I will use that in portrait mode but I thought I would mention it.

I also mentioned the mac crashing with the tempo ssd pro card installed, I swapped the second ssd a kingston hyperx 3k for another one and the crashing stopped BUT the ssd unmounts after a while. I am using a samsung 840 evo for booting and that seems fine, so I will try another samsung at some point. Even more confuding for me is that lightroom is rendering previews immediately yet when running from the much faster ssd they take a second or two. I am not fully sure its not some other influence so will maybe look into that again at some point although i am happy with the performance from disk.

Once again thanks to all of you for your help
 
Last edited:
Mr. Zarniwoop said:
I've spent the last hour combing through post-by-post looking for one. :)

UPDATE: ok, found one. Appreciate you egging me on to keep looking.

The ROM I made from your work is attached in case it helps others. Thank you so much!

The card I used:

MSI RADEON R9 280X GAMING 3G (TWIN FROZR IV, OC EDITION)
part number 912-V277-067 (on box)
EAN 4 719072 314026 (sticker on card)
UPC-A 8 24142 01599 5 (sticker on card)

Information on the EBC firmware attached here:

Subsystem ID: 0x2775
Device ID: 0x6798
PC BIOS (stock as shipped): 113-MSITV277MS.350 TAHITI B0 XTL C38650 GDDR5 3GB, BIOS Version 015.041.000.000.003435, ROM Revision 113-C3865001-TU5
Mac EBC EFI: (replaced stock UEFI): ATY,Hamachi, ROM Revision 113-E2080C-101, EFI Driver Version 01.00.624
Click to expand...


I have the same card (MSI R9 280X GAMING 3G) and the ROM uploaded by Mr. Zarniwoop works great under OS X and is correctly identified in System Profiler, however, like another poster above said (mamfo), it crashes loading the AMD driver in Bootcamp.

One thing I noticed is that the BIOS I saved off this card is 256Kb whereas the one I downloaded is 128Kb. How does that impact the cut and paste of the EFI portion of the ROM?

I've uploaded my original ROM.
 

Attachments

  • r9280x.zip
    98.2 KB · Views: 231
Last edited:
How many ports do you have working on flashed MSI R280X 3G Gaming? I'm about to flash it however I'm a bit worried about how many ports will work.

Non-flashed MSI R280X 3G Gaming works OOB in Mac Pro, however, I can only get output on two ports at the time... Specifically, HDMI, DVI, 1st DP... but not all three at the same time.

I'm interested in other people's experience on this matter.

Thanks!
 
Mr. Zarniwoop said:
I've spent the last hour combing through post-by-post looking for one. :)

UPDATE: ok, found one. Appreciate you egging me on to keep looking.

The ROM I made from your work is attached in case it helps others. Thank you so much!

The card I used:

MSI RADEON R9 280X GAMING 3G (TWIN FROZR IV, OC EDITION)
part number 912-V277-067 (on box)
EAN 4 719072 314026 (sticker on card)
UPC-A 8 24142 01599 5 (sticker on card)

Information on the EBC firmware attached here:

Subsystem ID: 0x2775
Device ID: 0x6798
PC BIOS (stock as shipped): 113-MSITV277MS.350 TAHITI B0 XTL C38650 GDDR5 3GB, BIOS Version 015.041.000.000.003435, ROM Revision 113-C3865001-TU5
Mac EBC EFI: (replaced stock UEFI): ATY,Hamachi, ROM Revision 113-E2080C-101, EFI Driver Version 01.00.624
Click to expand...


Thank you! I will try to flash my MSI R9 280X Gaming 3G later today! Thank you for taking time to post so much information!

On the other note, can I use the card once flashed under Mavericks? I suppose I can since non-flashed works.

Thank you!!!!11
 
mnlth0 said:
How many ports do you have working on flashed MSI R280X 3G Gaming? I'm about to flash it however I'm a bit worried about how many ports will work.

Non-flashed MSI R280X 3G Gaming works OOB in Mac Pro, however, I can only get output on two ports at the time... Specifically, HDMI, DVI, 1st DP... but not all three at the same time.

I'm interested in other people's experience on this matter.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
All four ports are working for me. Three at 2560x1440 and one at 1920x1080.

27" Apple Cinema Display (MDP), Asus PB278Q (MDP), Asus PB278Q (DVI-DL), Dell S2409W (HDMI).
 
neomorpheus said:
I guess is too hard for anyone here to recommend another brand or some guidance, as requested.
Click to expand...
Look through ALL of this thread. There are several ROM files posted for several different cards and other stories of success with other cards. Pick one.

I got my MSI used off craigslist, but I'm sure their are similar cards on eBay.
 
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tpluth said:
Look through ALL of this thread. There are several ROM files posted for several different cards and other stories of success with other cards. Pick one.

I got my MSI used off craigslist, but I'm sure their are similar cards on eBay.
Click to expand...

Thanks for responding, since no one else bothered.

Regarding other brands, from this thread, everyone only talks about MSI, which are very hard to come by.

All I want to know is which other brands are recommended, very simple.
Thanks.
 
tpluth said:
All four ports are working for me. Three at 2560x1440 and one at 1920x1080.

27" Apple Cinema Display (MDP), Asus PB278Q (MDP), Asus PB278Q (DVI-DL), Dell S2409W (HDMI).
Click to expand...

Oh wow, that's good news! What model are you using?

Thanks!
 
The reason I personally chose the MSI gaming frozr version was because quietness was more important than performance ( I read a review and the frozr cam out quietest), plus I thought I could use the ready made rom, however I had a later bios version on my card.

It is quite easy to create one especially with the information macvidcards (thanks very much BTW, much appreciated) posted recently, I used hexfiend on the mac - I also used the 7970.rom from netkas for the second half and now it seems to be working flawlessly - I am using a 4k dell monitor and I had/have problems with it waking from sleep but I am having similar problems with my mac mini at work using the mDP so I think its a yosemite issue rather than the card. At home using the 280x I changed the wake up settings on the monitor to be quicker and I am also using a second monitor on the HDMI port so all seems well now. I am not bothered by the card showing as a 7970 as long as it works.

I flashed over the non legacy bios without saving it but I managed to get a new copy from MSI support although I haven't got around to reflashing that side of the card as I have had enough playing for now. My big mistake was too many changes at once - Graphic card, Ram upgrade, CPU upgrade and PCIe SSD tempo pro which mad eit difficult to track what was causing the crashing (2nd ssd on the SSD Tempo)

I haven't tried more than two monitors though as I don't have room on my desk
 
swisspace said:
The reason I personally chose the MSI gaming frozr version was because quietness was more important than performance ( I read a review and the frozr cam out quietest), plus I thought I could use the ready made rom, however I had a later bios version on my card.

It is quite easy to create one especially with the information macvidcards (thanks very much BTW, much appreciated) posted recently, I used hexfiend on the mac - I also used the 7970.rom from netkas for the second half and now it seems to be working flawlessly - I am using a 4k dell monitor and I had/have problems with it waking from sleep but I am having similar problems with my mac mini at work using the mDP so I think its a yosemite issue rather than the card. At home using the 280x I changed the wake up settings on the monitor to be quicker and I am also using a second monitor on the HDMI port so all seems well now. I am not bothered by the card showing as a 7970 as long as it works.

I flashed over the non legacy bios without saving it but I managed to get a new copy from MSI support although I haven't got around to reflashing that side of the card as I have had enough playing for now. My big mistake was too many changes at once - Graphic card, Ram upgrade, CPU upgrade and PCIe SSD tempo pro which mad eit difficult to track what was causing the crashing (2nd ssd on the SSD Tempo)

I haven't tried more than two monitors though as I don't have room on my desk
Click to expand...

Are you running Windows Bootcamp on it?

Is the original ROM 128kb or 256kb? What's the version number on it?
 
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