Howto reflash please help

[banski]

HELLO

I am a complete newbi and have no idea how to reflash my graphics card.

i have a second hand pro 3.1 dual quad the card that it came with was faulty it displayed some times then didnt and when it did it did not show the installation screen from the snow leopard disk or win 7 etc, i re-flowed it with infa red but the machine now blue screens on both the osx and win7 , so i picked up a 512 nvida 8800 gt which is currently only set up for a windows machine.

I how about zeus but not where to get it nor do i know which rom i need plus i need to re flash the card using a pc then i will put it in the mac . If you guys can give me a step by step idiot proof guide i would be really grateful.

 

[Mr. Zarniwoop]

Some cards are easier than others, but I'm not aware of any step-by-step idiot-proof guides because of the number of variables involved.

A few good places to start:

• MacRumors: The Golden Guide to Flashing Graphic Cards (out of date, but still has a lot of information)
• netkas.org forum (many of the flashing techniques begin there in discussions, it assumes very high levels both of self-sufficiency and technical competence)

My recommendation: if this is your hobby, and you are technical enough to have a clue about how firmware works on PCs and Macs, and you enjoy tinkering with the technology and willing to hack your own hardware, take the plunge, set aside a weekend and and figure out how to flash your card.

If this is something that you just need done and don't want to worry, send your Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT card to MacVidCards and have him flash it for you via MVC's flashing service, or better yet, just buy a slightly better flashed card like the Nvidia GeForce GT 120.

 

[nigelbb]

Alternatively don't bother with a boot screen & just buy a used GTX570 which is the best bang for buck CUDA & OpenCL card. If you do want a boot screen then buy a used Mac GT120 which will be cheaper than an MVC flashed GT120 (which is also used).

 

[MacVidCards]

8800gt is interesting in that most have wrong EEPROM chip and can't be flashed without soldering larger chip on. This is true of many NVIDIA cards.

EVGA brand always has right chip, at least on the single slot cards with blue and white decal on fan.

Other brands occasionally have 128K chip but most are 64K and can't be flashed. Easy way to tell without removing fan is to go into nvflash and type "nvflash -v". If the EEPROM part number has a "512" in it you are done. If the part number has "010" or "1024" you can flash it as those denote 128K part.

There is a long thread on this very board trying to figure out how to do this. But if you don't have 128K chip time to find different card or live without boot screen.

I don't think Cindori ever got Zeus quite right, I don't believe it can flash PC Cards. I don't believe he understood the advice I gave him, and he had already sold his cMP by then, IIRC. The fact is that the version of nvflash inside it is completely capable of flashing a card in an OS up to 10.7.5. You have to be in 32bit mode and use terminal but I used to flash pre-fermi cards in OSX this way.