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Flashing R9 280X for boot screens/PCI System Information
- Thread starter Mr. Zarniwoop
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If you flash the card with Mac EFI you can boot into 10.4 and up, no problem. And that’s the earliest OS X you can use since it was the first for Mac Pro 1,1.
I’ve tried it with my 2007 Mac Pro.
EFI from the card will give you all the info in About this Mac and screen output, but you won’t have any acceleration. You need corresponding drivers for that. With 3,1-5,1 Mac Pro you can use 10.7.5 with drivers from AMD, but for 1,1 and 2,1 you’ll have to run 10.8.5 as minimum OS X.
If you flash the card with Mac EFI you can boot into 10.4 and up, no problem. And that’s the earliest OS X you can use since it was the first for Mac Pro 1,1.
I’ve tried it with my 2007 Mac Pro.
EFI from the card will give you all the info in About this Mac and screen output, but you won’t have any acceleration. You need corresponding drivers for that. With 3,1-5,1 Mac Pro you can use 10.7.5 with drivers from AMD, but for 1,1 and 2,1 you’ll have to run 10.8.5 as minimum OS X.
Thank you , this is very informative.
I actually downloaded the Driver Sapphire for HD 7950 and installed "in advance" on my MacPro 1.1 running 32Bit EFI with 10.7.5 Lion and HD 6450 and GeForce 7300GT , but after reboot i got a crash, and after new booting the mouse would stutter ... every few seconds, so those drivers are really not meant for the early MacPro with 32.bit EFI i guess.
As i would actually continue use Snow Leopard alongside Mavericks , i think actually a HD 5770 would be probably best option in terms of performance + compatibility plus "noiselesseness".
Hope someone could confirm my opinion on the HD 5770.
I have used GT 120 (quite noisy) and tried HD 5870 (too noisy for me) and now the 6450 HD (not too bad).
Other option for Snow Leopard would probably be Cuadro 4000 , but this one seems to quite some issues (and only 2 monitor output). Another candidate possibily 6870 HD ,
but it seems HD 5770 is good for 10.6.8 - latest?
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Is "acceleration" needed for everyday life or is this just a feature that is needed by Professional Apps, much like this "CUDA" Feature delivered by Nvidia-Graphics-Cards and apparently much sought after by Video and Graphics Softwares?
You’re welcome, glad to be of help.
That’s the thing with those drivers, they are built for 64 bit system and 1,1 can’t boot into 64 bit Lion. Only 32 bit.
Good thing is that with Tiamo’s boot.efi you can run 10.8 and 10.9 ( or 10.10 and 10.11 with Pike R Alpha’s boot.efi) so you don’t need those drivers.
Yes, I would agree with you.
For both SL and Mavericks, AMD 5770/80 or 6850/70 should be the best gpus.
5770/80 have slight edge since they can be flashed to show boot screens on 1,1/2,1 AFAIK.
HD 6870 and 6850 have also EFI rom (netkas made them from iMac rom) but they are 64 bit so no bootscreen on first en Mac Pro.
Regarding acceleration (QE/CI) you could try booting into Mavericks with 7300GT and see for yourself how bad it is.
It will give you screen output (thanks to Mac EFI) but 10.9 doesn’t have drivers for it so it will be totally unaccelerated.
You could do many things without it but it can be quite frustrating experience.
Only you can be the judge of it.
Hello Owbp, thank you so much for your exhaustive help.
At the moment i am on Lion with 7300GT + 6450 HD (aka R5 230 passive) and on Mavericks (which needs the R5 230 to operate decently).
Last week i got lucky on Ebay and won a HD 5770 original plus prior a R9 280 (without X) so probably i will keep the 5770 if i am satisfied with overall performance and sell the R9 280 (no need to upgrade now) or keep the R9 280 for future use. the R9 280 is Windforce type model with 3 fans so it should be quiet, i hope.
(EDIT) I got the 5770 it is a wonderful card, lot more quiet than 5870 as i find, superhappy !
At the moment i am on Lion with 7300GT + 6450 HD (aka R5 230 passive) and on Mavericks (which needs the R5 230 to operate decently).
Last week i got lucky on Ebay and won a HD 5770 original plus prior a R9 280 (without X) so probably i will keep the 5770 if i am satisfied with overall performance and sell the R9 280 (no need to upgrade now) or keep the R9 280 for future use. the R9 280 is Windforce type model with 3 fans so it should be quiet, i hope.
(EDIT) I got the 5770 it is a wonderful card, lot more quiet than 5870 as i find, superhappy !
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Hi all. I am Sam. I have a display card which is Sapphire R9 280X. I finished to flash the rom and got pci-e 1.1 speed (2.5GT/S) showed in mac boot screen. I think I need to remove the r17 but I don't know how to do so. Please advise the method.
Thanks for you help.
Thanks for you help.
Attachments
Hello all, I used the EFI Bios that Mr.Zarniwoop kindly provided here: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...pci-system-information.1808938/#post-20207022
I have the exact same card, when I flashed the card I got the boot screen and it showed in MacOS fine with correct name as well. The issue I am running into is, when booted into Windows, anything that requires 3D simply does not work. It will either crash or nothing will display. (So if I start a 3D Benchmark tool or a game)
I have tried flashing again in case there was an issue the first time, but I have the same results. Can anyone help?
I have the exact same card, when I flashed the card I got the boot screen and it showed in MacOS fine with correct name as well. The issue I am running into is, when booted into Windows, anything that requires 3D simply does not work. It will either crash or nothing will display. (So if I start a 3D Benchmark tool or a game)
I have tried flashing again in case there was an issue the first time, but I have the same results. Can anyone help?
It’s not uncommon that the same model still has few different variations. e.g. different VRAM supplier. Therefore, still the same spec, but with different firmware.
For this kind of Mac EFI flash, you better create your own Mac EFI ROM.
I would like to confirm this.
My MSI R9 280X Gaming 3G was giving me "static noise" display with OP flash.
You should definitely make your own ROM!
On the other hand, Florian's GTX 680 4GB EFI ROM for Zotac GPU is not working with my Zotac GTX680 4GB card.
Just make sure that you flash always the same switch position, and keep the original rom untouched on the other.
That way you could always revert to original one, boot into Win and flash again (after flicking the switch to other position).
You could use EFI part of OP's ROM (the other half) if you want to save some time in searching for the HD7950 and replacing it with R9 280X later on (if you want your GPU to be properly recognised in macOS).
For dual ROM card, you are fail safe, nothing to worry about. It’s almost impossible to permanently brick the card by flashing the wrong ROM.
Well I am doing something wrong, basically I am opening the EFI rom I already have for the R9 in HXD edior, I then open a backup of the original GPU rom and copy and paste its bios section in place of the bios section of the EFI rom. When I try to flash I get "VBIOS Image not found"
Study this thread (ignore the over clocking part).
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/help-overclocking-12-core-mac-pro.1762165/#post-19497121
Ok guys I want to say a huge thanks for your assistance. I have now successfully created my own EFI Rom from my backed up Bios using a EFI supplied by owbp (so MacOS shows the correct name etc)
My issue has completely gone away. I have loaded up games, restarted, shut down and switched to MacOS and back and the issue is not happening at all. I am super happy with this outcome and can't thank you all enough.
My issue has completely gone away. I have loaded up games, restarted, shut down and switched to MacOS and back and the issue is not happening at all. I am super happy with this outcome and can't thank you all enough.
That's exactly why you should always use cards factory BIOS in these sorts of things.
Manufacturers (MSI, Gigabyte, ASUS etc) like to change small things very often so the same model few weeks apart doesn't mean that the BIOS (and many other hardware things) is the same.
Glad it worked out in the end.
P.S. EFI i've sent you, which i used few times with my ex Gigabyte and MSI R9's, is copied from OP's ROM. As i've said already, was too lazy to search and edit HD 7950 instances in original one.
I'm willing to contribute the EFI ROM for the HIS Ice Cooler HD7950 3Gb. Wonderful, very cool, silent card.
My ROM correctly shows the name of the card in Sys Info.
I got mine here in Den Den Town in Osaka ( Osaka's answer to Tokyo's Akihabara ) in 2017 for ¥9,000 ( U.S.$ 82 ) including sales tax.
Link to Den Den Town if anyone is interested https://www.osakastation.com/nipponbashis-denden-town/
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Done : Post #199 https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-and-nvidia-card.1547340/page-8#post-24856990
My ROM correctly shows the name of the card in Sys Info.
I got mine here in Den Den Town in Osaka ( Osaka's answer to Tokyo's Akihabara ) in 2017 for ¥9,000 ( U.S.$ 82 ) including sales tax.
Link to Den Den Town if anyone is interested https://www.osakastation.com/nipponbashis-denden-town/
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Done : Post #199 https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-and-nvidia-card.1547340/page-8#post-24856990
I was able to flash my MSI R9 280 3G with no problem using the firmware on page 4 of this thread. Thanks to all involved!
Mike
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
Hey and thanks a lot for this (hard to show you how much I appreciate it
This thread is old so I realise there is a chance you are not able to help since you might not have this hw any longer, or you forgot most
My question is, the rom you made is the: 015.041.000.000.003435
This one is the one listed as GAMING at techpowerup:
https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios...face=&memType=&memSize=3072&since=5+years+ago
My card came with: 015.042.000.003.000000 (but is now flashed with your version, and it seems to work fine).
I must admit I am not sure what version I have of the card itself (GAMING or TF GAMING), but I see there is a newer BIOS for the card: 015.044.000.007.000000
Would it be an idea to build a new ROM using this latest version? Or must one use the version that came with the card?
Thanks in advance, and again..... thanks a lot for that rom file.
The best recommendation is to use the manufacturer-provided firmware (which may have been updated) for your card and then splice Rominator's modified Mac EBC firmware on the end of the BIOS firmware. That's what I did. Cards that are close to the reference design might be able to use each other's firmware, or might not.
Hi Sam,
I just picked up a Sapphire R9 280X Dual-X. Can you please help me out with which ROM that you used to flash your card? Thank you for your time.
Either can do the job, as long as it's working flawless with your card, UEFI or legacy ROM doesn't really matter.
Hey buddy, thanks again for replying. I was going to use the ROM by Mr. Zarniwoop Post #3. I couldn't find any others specific to the Sapphire R9 280X. I'm going to spend another hour searching before flashing.
I suggest you make your own ROM
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/help-overclocking-12-core-mac-pro.1762165/#post-19497121