Flashing R9 280X for boot screens/PCI System Information

[pierrox]

Could you attach here .roms that you created and original ones?

I don't know what you did but Gigabyte HD7950 already had factory UEFI rom, so copy/paste worked flawlessly.
Cant be sure without looking at the rom what the problem is.

Ok, I managed to get it to work today, night helped me see clearer.
So what I did with the first card, the Rev1 is this:
- I went back to the original ROM I had extracted
- I downloaded the ROM on the first page of this thread, not the one by MVC but the one from the first poster.
- I copied the second half of his ROM, from 65536 (and not 65535 as I was doing yesterday)
- I pasted it in a copy of the original ROM, from the same point, making sure it was overwriting
- I used fixrom.py in Terminal to bless it or whatever term is correct (I didn't do that yesterday, that might be the difference.
I was able to flash the card that way, and got a boot screen and proper name in About this Mac.

Second card was bricked - thank god for the dual-bios switch. So I had to get my old GT120 to boot. It's a Rev2.
- I did exactly as above, and nothing worked. The strange thing -see attached files- is that the ROM extracted from the card doesn't have something clean starting at 65536. This offset contains lots of stuff.
- Having bricked/unbricked several times, I went to Gigabyte to see what other bios were available. I downloaded F13 from their website - it's attached, weirdly it's shorter so I had to convert it to ROM with ATIWinFlash. I took the resulting ROM to the Mac, and I compared to the original Rev1 ROM and it was strictly identical. So in the end I decided to flash my modded ROMrev1 onto the Rev2 card and it rebooted with Apple logo and so on.

Looking back at it now, it seems that the EFI part in the Rev2 starts earlier in the file. Which would explain why copy/pasting in the middle of a busy part was a recipe for disaster.
The other thing I understood was that the other method, using MAC7970.ROM was not going to work because the scripts I downloaded are working from EFI, not full ROM, which explains why the resulting files were bigger than 128K.

 

[pierrox]

Looking back at it now, it seems that the EFI part in the Rev2 starts earlier in the file. Which would explain why copy/pasting in the middle of a busy part was a recipe for disaster.

Ok, followed my intuition later today, and I was able to make a new ROM, using the dump I had made, and manually adding the EFI part to it, where the UEFI started - earlier in the ROM. Saved, blessed it, crossed fingers and flashed. On reboot, I got the Apple logo, yeah!

So since it took a while, and that I didn't find much on the web, attached are the ROMS I created.
The cards are Gigabyte R9 280X OC - official name is GV-R928XOC-3GD.
Attached are two ROMs, one is for Rev 1.0 of the card, and the second one is Rev 2.0

 

[cwfrost]

I can't get this to work for me at all. I've been following guides all weekend whilst swapping the card between Mac and PC over and over and over and over to try to get this done, only to find that the card is no different whatsoever in the Mac from what it was when I began. I still have no EFI boot.

Half of these guides are missing information so I had to guess. Whilst it told you where to back up your old ROM, nothing told you how to install the new one, so I assumed you went back to Winflash on the PC to do it. Either way, I followed what I could to the letter and still, no change at all.

Please please can someone walk me through the entire process of flashing the R9 280X? I'd be incredibly grateful.

Many thanks

Chris

I have a 2006 Mac Pro running Yosemite (thanks Pike!) and now on to "fit and finish" nits to make it work.

I got an MSI R9 280X Gaming 3GB video card, and it worked great out-of-the-box, but I wanted to get boot screens and get it recognized in the PCI section of System Information. I chose this card because it's not too expensive, and clearly others have had good compatibility experiences in Mac Pros with Mavericks and Yosemite.

So, I read the AMD EFI firmware thread on netkas for a general understanding, grabbed Rominator's 7970 EBC firmware, and used them to make my own MSI EBC Mac ROM.

Works. Dive in. The water's fine. Boot screens and all.

Next step: figuring out how to change the "AMD Radeon HD 7970" text string in System Information.

 

[h9826790]

I can't get this to work for me at all. I've been following guides all weekend whilst swapping the card between Mac and PC over and over and over and over to try to get this done, only to find that the card is no different whatsoever in the Mac from what it was when I began. I still have no EFI boot.

Half of these guides are missing information so I had to guess. Whilst it told you where to back up your old ROM, nothing told you how to install the new one, so I assumed you went back to Winflash on the PC to do it. Either way, I followed what I could to the letter and still, no change at all.

Please please can someone walk me through the entire process of flashing the R9 280X? I'd be incredibly grateful.

Many thanks

Chris

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/help-overclocking-12-core-mac-pro.1762165/#post-19497121

 

[cwfrost]

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/help-overclocking-12-core-mac-pro.1762165/#post-19497121

Many thanks for that. I've followed the guides to the letter, but in programming the ROM to the card, Winflash reports SubsystemID mismatch.

 

[h9826790]

Many thanks for that. I've followed the guides to the letter, but in programming the ROM to the card, Winflash reports SubsystemID mismatch.

What is your device ID (step 2 in my guide)? And that did you type in the terminal command (step 7 in my guide)?

 

[cwfrost]

What is your device ID (step 2 in my guide)? And that did you type in the terminal command (step 7 in my guide)?

Hi

My device ID is 6798. I did type it in terminal but the rom it generated did nothing for the EFI Mac boot and it remained black until the desktop showed. I tried other people's toms for this card and all that did was generate a mismatch warning. I really had followed the guide in its entirety and just cannot get this to work.

Does it have anything to with the Legacy/UEFI switch on the card?

 

[h9826790]

Hi

My device ID is 6798. I did type it in terminal but the rom it generated did nothing for the EFI Mac boot and it remained black until the desktop showed. I tried other people's toms for this card and all that did was generate a mismatch warning. I really had followed the guide in its entirety and just cannot get this to work.

Does it have anything to with the Legacy/UEFI switch on the card?

Yes, I suspect you used a UEFI ROM to create the Mac EFI ROM. For that script to work, you must use a 128k legacy ROM image as the source.

If your ROM image is 128k, but not legacy. You can either

1) Use VBE7 (in Windows) to open the ROM and as it, this will automatically disable the UEFI part (there will be a warning to tell you that).

2) Manually copy the Mac EFI part to replace the UEFI part in a Hex editor.

3) Disable / remove the UEFI part in a Hex editor, and then use that self created legacy ROM as the source for the script.

 

[cwfrost]

How do I know what kind of ROM it is? Sorry if these questions seem stupid I just really don't know what I'm doing. I'm trying to leave my PC and move onto MacPro but keep Windows on boot camp, but I want to bring my R9 280X with me. However without an EFI boot I can't use any hotkeys for boot options nor recovery. This is why I'm trying to flash this ROM. The forum made it look simple but I'm feeling so confused now.

 

[h9826790]

How do I know what kind of ROM it is? Sorry if these questions seem stupid I just really don't know what I'm doing. I'm trying to leave my PC and move onto MacPro but keep Windows on boot camp, but I want to bring my R9 280X with me. However without an EFI boot I can't use any hotkeys for boot options nor recovery. This is why I'm trying to flash this ROM. The forum made it look simple but I'm feeling so confused now.

GPU-Z will tell if your card is booted from a UEFI ROM.

Or use VBE7 to open the image file that just dump from the card, you will also revive a warning about the EFI part will be disabled (legacy ROM do not shows this warning).

Anyway, you don't need boot screen to choose boot drive or access recovery partition.

System preference allow you to choose start up disk, Bootcamp apps in Windows also allow you to do the same thing.

Holding CMD + R will make you boot into recovery partition regardless if your card is flashed or not.

 

[eksu]

I just finally got my 280x going with the flash, the proper string, and the 5 GT/s (PCIE 2.0) mod.

Am I to understand properly that these video cards can't boot Windows anymore in UEFI because I replaced the UEFI section of the vbios with a EFI section? Are other people reverting to switching between bioses when they switch OS's or are you running Windows in CSM / Bootcamp?

 

[Botts85]

I just finally got my 280x going with the flash, the proper string, and the 5 GT/s (PCIE 2.0) mod.

Am I to understand properly that these video cards can't boot Windows anymore in UEFI because I replaced the UEFI section of the vbios with a EFI section? Are other people reverting to switching between bioses when they switch OS's or are you running Windows in CSM / Bootcamp?

It might depend on your card, mine is flashed and has the right string, but not 5.0GT modified and all works great.

I have bootscreens and acceleration with full support in both Windows and OS X.

 

[eksu]

It might depend on your card, mine is flashed and has the right string, but not 5.0GT modified and all works great.

I have bootscreens and acceleration with full support in both Windows and OS X.

But are you booting windows off of an EFI installation or are you in Legacy mode?

EDIT: Just wanted to add I got Windows running in Bootcamp / Legacy Mode and it's working great.

I installed the AHCI drivers from another Mac Rumors thread (patch mbr). I will note that Windows only wanted to update one of the two storage controllers to AHCI, so it can only see the drives in bays 1 & 2 (I had Windows installed to bay 2 when I did this. Not sure if that makes a difference).

No need to open my case anymore.

 

[realbuzz]

Hi Guys

I really need you help

So this is my card : Sapphire R9 270X Toxic (https://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/b2465/sapphire-toxic-r9-270x-oc)

I tried to flash it to have the EFi working in my MAC Pro

So I put the card in the mac pro booted Windows 10, I extracted the original BIOS and the Device ID using ATi Winflash (see deviceid.png)

I erased a usb key, downloaded the bundle from netkas forum (http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,5619.0.html)
extracted it to the usb key, copied the original SapphireR9270XToxic.rom I saved from ATi Winflash to the key.

Then I went to my mybook pro inserted the key and executed the script
./makerom.sh --efifile=7950mac.efi --romfile=efiromheader.rom --originalrom=SapphireR9270XToxic.rom --devid=6810
this generated the SapphireR9270XToxic.rom.efi.rom without any error

So i took the usb key back to my pc and flashed my card using ATI Winflash with the SapphireR9270XToxic.rom.efi.rom

I included the original rom and the generated rom in SapphireR9270XToxicroms.zip

Apparently EFI is working well , I can press the alt key and I have the boot menu on my mac pro

Problems:
If I boot Mac OS X (Sierra):
-I've got only 1 screen working out of 2 (both screens are on DVI port)
-The card is recognized as a ATI 7950 with 2Gb of RAM
-Mouse pointer is laggy
So it's partially working

If I boot windows 10
Windows start booting, I can see the windows logo and the cricle tunring and after fews seconds both screens are going to sleep mode
No way to use it in windows

Can I have some help please???

 

[Ernestolas]

Sorry, I really don't understand what you mean.

Do you mean the driver is not optimised yet in the early Sierra Beta? But when you posted that, Sierra already has official 10.12.1.

And if you mean the driver is no optimised for El Capitan (pre-Sierra), then what's exactly the problem?

Or you mean the software itself (not the driver) is not optimised for Sierra yet, so expected some bugs.

I am not try to say you are wrong, or start a war. I just want to know the truth.

I'm having some problems with my msi r9 280x when I'm using the mac efi, (or bios) on sierra 10.12.6 I don't know why the screen is all glitchy and the card just crash. This is so weird becouse the card works fine when I'm not using the mac efi. The card was working fine 2 days ago but now the mac efi just crash. Is it related to the sierra update ?

 

[h9826790]

I'm having some problems with my msi r9 280x when I'm using the mac efi, (or bios) on sierra 10.12.6 I don't know why the screen is all glitchy and the card just crash. This is so weird becouse the card works fine when I'm not using the mac efi. The card was working fine 2 days ago but now the mac efi just crash. Is it related to the sierra update ?

No. Did you create the Mac EFI ROM by yourself?

 

[Ernestolas]

No. Did you create the Mac EFI ROM by yourself?

No I didn't. I downloaded that from A YouTube video.

.

maybe i need to get another bio. This was working fine until yesterday. the funny thing is that i restore the original bios in one of the 2 available bios and the card work fine (No bootscreen) but stable.
What can i do ?

 

[h9826790]

What can i do ?

Create your own Mac EFI ROM

 

[Ernestolas]

No I didn't. I downloaded that from A YouTube video.

.

maybe i need to get another bio. This was working fine until yesterday. the funny thing is that i restore the original bios in one of the 2 available bios and the card work fine (No bootscreen) but stable.
What can i do ?

does anyone knows where can i get a better bios for the msi amd r9 280x ?
[doublepost=1505214287][/doublepost]

Create your own Mac EFI ROM

Is there any guide? I have never done this before

 

[owbp]

does anyone knows where can i get a better bios for the msi amd r9 280x ?
[doublepost=1505214287][/doublepost]

Is there any guide? I have never done this before

In the first post of this topic you have link to netkas' forum where everything is explained.
With MSI R9 you have UEFI BIOS on one switch position, so you could just grab EFI part from finished MSI Mac EFI ROM and paste it into your own. Again, you should read netkas' topic on this so you know exactly what to do but that way you don't have to manually edit your ROM for the card to be recognized as 7950 or 7970 but as R9 280X.

 

[h9826790]

does anyone knows where can i get a better bios for the msi amd r9 280x ?
[doublepost=1505214287][/doublepost]

Is there any guide?

Both answers are actually inside this tread.

 

[Sko]

Is there any guide? I have never done this before

The ROM in that video is for a Sapphire (see the GPU-Z screen at 1:00) so no wonder that doesn't work for long. The link to the thread at netkas is in the first post, and a working ROM, at least for me, is in post #3.

Hint: read at least the first page of a thread your are about to ask questions in.

 

[mrkapqa]

Hello , i have a MacPro 1.1 running Lion 10.7.5 and have won a Gigabyte R9 280 (withouth X) on Ebay. Can i run this card on this system or do i need to upgrade? It is my understanding that 7950 HD will run on Lion with special driver so i thought this one might be compatible as well. Please help out otherwise i would like to cancel transaction. Thanks!

 

[owbp]

Hello , i have a MacPro 1.1 running Lion 10.7.5 and have won a Gigabyte R9 280 (withouth X) on Ebay. Can i run this card on this system or do i need to upgrade? It is my understanding that 7950 HD will run on Lion with special driver so i thought this one might be compatible as well. Please help out otherwise i would like to cancel transaction. Thanks!

Hi, in short, you’ll need to upgrade.

Yes, drivers for that card are available for 10.7.5-10.8.3 but they are 64 bit ONLY drivers. So if you install them on your Mac you won’t be able to boot into OS X (1,1 and 2,1 cMP can’t boot into 64 bit Lion).

 

[mrkapqa]

Hello owbp, thank you very much for your answer.

i have seen someone running a Bootscreen with a 7950 HD on Snow Leopard . Is this card just booting into Snow Leopard but wont work properly or would i be able to run the HD 7950 in Snow Leopard quite properly ( i just need it for office and Youtube mostly). (with Bootscreen i meant he showed a Systeminfo on Mac 1.1 with 7950 HD in Snow Leopard.)