Is MVC Still Running?

[666sheep]

Guys, you all are capable of develop Maxwell EFI yourself. It's a matter of time you want to spend on it (days, months, years - you choose). If you want to get them right now (no learning, no waiting, just immediately), why it's that hard to understand that you need to pay someone who did it first and asks the fee for it?
MVC didn't invent the wheel, they rather built the axle from existing parts. No one else did it before them, so the axle itself is their piece of work and it deserves respect, like it or not.

You are free to replicate this yourself. It's doable, but it requires knowledge (which is available, you need to collect and understand it, then connect the dots) and huge amount of time, SMD soldering skills sometimes and giant trial and error job. And if you'll do this from the scratch (not the reverse-engineer MVC ROMs) you'll be proud of yourself and would get the opportunity to give it all away for free to the rest of the world.

OP, Saturday wasn't that long ago Perhaps they aren't online for some reasons.

 

[flowrider]

MVC is still very much around. I am a past customer, twice now, and can attest that they do a great job modifying non-mac GPUs to show a boot screen. As has been said, when someone spends their time developing a modification that makes something do something it didn't do before, they should be so compensated.

MVC made valuable contributions here before being banned by this site's board. I for one, miss him.

I still see his posts at netkis, but as has been said, that site appears to be down at the moment.

Lou

 

[The Buggman]

Guys, you all are capable of develop Maxwell EFI yourself. It's a matter of time you want to spend on it (days, months, years - you choose). If you want to get them right now (no learning, no waiting, just immediately), why it's that hard to understand that you need to pay someone who did it first and asks the fee for it?
MVC didn't invent the wheel, they rather built the axle from existing parts. No one else did it before them, so the axle itself is their piece of work and it deserves respect, like it or not.

You are free to replicate this yourself. It's doable, but it requires knowledge (which is available, you need to collect and understand it, then connect the dots) and huge amount of time, SMD soldering skills sometimes and giant trial and error job. And if you'll do this from the scratch (not the reverse-engineer MVC ROMs) you'll be proud of yourself and would get the opportunity to give it all away for free to the rest of the world.

OP, Saturday wasn't that long ago Perhaps they aren't online for some reasons.

I appreciate the sentiment, but this grandiose reply seems to reflect only a passive comprehension of anything expressed here.

And more so than having waited since Saturday, I was more concerned about the lack of MVC's blog, Twitter, or MR posts which have not been updated in over a month at the most recent.

As has been said, when someone spends their time developing a modification that makes something do something it didn't do before, they should be so compensated.

No one's arguing against that. The statements here were about how high the price is more than that there is a price at all.

MVC is still very much around. I am a past customer, twice now

How recently did you last make a purchase from them? Given that they have gone from updating their blog and Twitter fairly regularly to taking the last month off entirely makes it seem like they're no longer interested in running it. I can't even confirm these Netkas sightings since that site has been down the whole day.

I'm just left with the first reply to this thread echoing in my mind – Why risk it?

 

[ActionableMango]

Flashing a GTX 970 would only grant the convenience of a boot screen after all, right? And waiting for any driver updates on the 10xx's is looking like wasted time based on a lot of comments here.

So, is it maybe more worth just buying a BIOS 970 and foregoing the boot screen?

Boot screen is the primary reason, but there are about a dozen smaller reasons that may or may not be important to you. The list is diminished if you run Sierra.

From the time Maxwell cards were released to the first Maxwell driver for OS X was about 6 months. Pascal was released in May, so assuming the time frame would be the same (there is no promise of that), then it shouldn't even be expected until this month anyway. If anyone is saying it's been too long or that the hope is dead, keep in mind that it is their impatience talking. By Maxwell standards, the Pascal drivers are not "late".

That being said, if you need a card now, the 10xx series is an outright gamble because there is no promise there will ever be Pascal drivers, or how good or bad they will be.

You could buy the 970 now and get it flashed later if you see signs of activity. This ends up being cheaper than buying a flashed in-stock 970 anyway.

If you run a Maxwell card unflashed, you should be aware of the hoops you have to jump through. They are in the Nvidia FAQ.

There is some talk of Clover providing boot screens. This is fairly new information but you could look into it as an alternative.

 

[poematik13]

MVC made valuable contributions here before being banned by this site's board. I for one, miss him.

Most of his contributions were either derailing threads with asinine comments or making threads purely to bash Apple/the mac pro 6,1. The amount of actual valuable information/insight he gave was far, far outnumbered by the frequency of his **** posts, which then encouraged others to do the same and this place was toxic for a while. It still is toxic, but it's not as bad now that the usual suspects are banned.

Good riddance.

 

[Rustus Maximus]

MVC is still very much around. I am a past customer, twice now, and can attest that they do a great job modifying non-mac GPUs to show a boot screen...

MVC made valuable contributions here before being banned by this site's board. I for one, miss him...

I agree with flowrider here. I also miss him on the board. Could he go over the top sometimes? Who of us here, who is an avid supporter of Apple especially if you've been with them since the very beginning, isn't sometimes a little passionate in their discussions regarding this great company. We've got a 980 we purchased from him for a cMP editing rig a year or so back and it is still going strong, he does good work. Don't think it's worth the money? Hey, it's a free country, explore other options, they are out there.

Most of his contributions were either derailing threads with asinine comments or making threads purely to bash Apple/the mac pro 6,1. The amount of actual valuable information/insight he gave was far, far outnumbered by the frequency of his **** posts, which then encouraged others to do the same and this place was toxic for a while. It still is toxic, but it's not as bad now that the usual suspects are banned.

Good riddance.

Yes, we can't have people who also love Apple, but for perhaps different reasons than us, gettin' all uppity, now can we? Like him or not, agree with him or not, at least it encouraged discussion about topics that are still very near to some Apple fans' hearts. And frankly after nearly 1110 days with nary so much as a whisper regarding the future of the 'new Mac Pro' and the joke of the "hello again" event we saw last week, maybe he wasn't so far off the mark after all.

How recently did you last make a purchase from them? Given that they have gone from updating their blog and Twitter fairly regularly to taking the last month off entirely makes it seem like they're no longer interested in running it. I can't even confirm these Netkas sightings since that site has been down the whole day.

I'm just left with the first reply to this thread echoing in my mind – Why risk it?

Buggman, if you'll look a bit further down in MVCs blog you'll see there was some concern over family issues around July. Perhaps that is still an issue and let's all hope this clears up for MVC soon if that is the case.

 

[poematik13]

Yes, we can't have people who also love Apple, but for perhaps different reasons than us, gettin' all uppity, now can we? Like him or not, agree with him or not, at least it encouraged discussion about topics that are still very near to some Apple fans' hearts. And frankly after nearly 1110 days with nary so much as a whisper regarding the future of the 'new Mac Pro' and the joke of the "hello again" event we saw last week, maybe he wasn't so far off the mark after all.

The tone of his threads were anything but "love" for Apple. Also, the rest of your reply is a strawman.

I mean you're free to keep on in his spirit, but just know that you'll probably get banned too. This forum is for constructive and positive discussions of mac hardware and NOT the same old "apple is doomed" or "its been 1100 days since the mac pro" narrative

 

[The Buggman]

Boot screen is the primary reason, but there are about a dozen smaller reasons that may or may not be important to you. The list is diminished if you run Sierra.

An excellent reply. Very informative. Thank you very much for this!

I read the Nvidia FAQ and I believe I was previously aware of all the non-boot-screen-related hoops to which you were referring (i.e. Maintaining awareness of OS updates vs web driver updates, right?).

But, your mention of Sierra performance is new to me. Could you elaborate on a few of those other issues that might be fixed by upgrading to Sierra?

 

[sirfaliq]

uh oh.. I just bought a card from macvidcards about 18 hours ago. . should I be worried?

 

[Flint Ironstag]

uh oh.. I just bought a card from macvidcards about 18 hours ago. . should I be worried?

I wouldn't be. The man has a day job as well. Drop him an email, I'm sure he'll respond within a reasonable timeframe.

 

[The Buggman]

uh oh.. I just bought a card from macvidcards about 18 hours ago. . should I be worried?

I'm sure he'll respond within a reasonable timeframe.

I wouldn't count on that.

Everyone seems convinced that MVC is just one person, but according to the site info, there are two partners – Dave and Chris.

Prior to my latest attempt to contact MVC (on Saturday), I emailed them just over one year ago and received a reply within the same day. And whoever replied, signed the email "dp." Most likely Dave, right?

I'm not saying it should be less than a 24 hour response every time, but if MVC is as active on the Netkas forums as others have claimed, I'd imagine they'd feel just as obligated, if not more so, to reply to emails sent to their business.

Logically, a better suggestion would be to wait until Netkas is back up and running and then try to contact MVC through there before trying to make a purchase. Don't know if you can cancel. Not even sure if it's necessary to do so. I just don't personally feel comfortable buying from a shop whose vendors seem to have abandoned it.

 

[flowrider]

And whoever replied, signed the email "dp." Most likely Dave, right?

Yes, his last name starts with a "P".

Lou

 

[flat five]

Everyone seems convinced that MVC is just one person,

MVC is exactly one person.. at least, on this forum he is.. people saying 'they' in reference to macVidCards definitely aren't regulars here -or- or i don't know why they're calling him 'they'

 

[The Buggman]

MVC is exactly one person.. at least, on this forum he is.. people saying 'they' in reference to macVidCards definitely aren't regulars here -or- or i don't know why they're calling him 'they'

Well, no, I'm not a regular here and whether it was both people posting on the account or just one is certainly something I wasn't sure about, but for illumination's sake, I use "they" mostly in reference to business sort of entity of MacVidCards.

Now, though, I'm not so sure there's even a "they" in the business anymore. What is Chris's job in MVC? Does he/she even still have one there? If not, where did he/she go? Did Dave eat him/her? Definitely raising more questions than we're providing answers here.

Would love to get them answered. Jeez, why can't Netkas get back up and running so I can find MVC and move on with my life...

 

[netkas]

So. My site has own issues, trying to figure why host went down.

As for MVC, he is up, just not as fast as before, let him figure out his issues and get back to speed.

as a side not, I now has nmp for greater experiments, maybe we can manage to get egpu on nmp/win to a great condition.

 

[sirfaliq]

I wouldn't be. The man has a day job as well. Drop him an email, I'm sure he'll respond within a reasonable timeframe.

I'll wait another 24 hours before contacting him.
I did receive a confirmation email regarding the purchase from macvidcards.com though:
"Thank you for your purchase!
You will receive a shipping confirmation once your item has shipped.For flashing service orders our shipping address can be found at the bottom of this email.For local pickups please wait for instructions to be emailed to you."

I purchased the 750ti btw..

I wouldn't count on that.

Logically, a better suggestion would be to wait until Netkas is back up and running and then try to contact MVC through there before trying to make a purchase. Don't know if you can cancel. Not even sure if it's necessary to do so. I just don't personally feel comfortable buying from a shop whose vendors seem to have abandoned it.

I'm just gonna wait a bit and hope for the best right now...

 

[fhenry]

So. My site has own issues, trying to figure why host went down.

As for MVC, he is up, just not as fast as before, let him figure out his issues and get back to speed.

as a side not, I now has nmp for greater experiments, maybe we can manage to get egpu on nmp/win to a great condition.

Good to see that, is the tb3 in the new MacBook Pro will ease the work?

 

[ActionableMango]

An excellent reply. Very informative. Thank you very much for this!

I read the Nvidia FAQ and I believe I was previously aware of all the non-boot-screen-related hoops to which you were referring (i.e. Maintaining awareness of OS updates vs web driver updates, right?).

But, your mention of Sierra performance is new to me. Could you elaborate on a few of those other issues that might be fixed by upgrading to Sierra?

Those are the hoops, yes.

I'm not using Sierra myself, but I believe a couple of people found out that Sierra's recovery partition now inits the GPU. So prior to Sierra if you had an unflashed card, you couldn't use the recovery partition and its features--now you can. (I have a couple of serious questions about that, since I cannot test myself.)

You probably didn't know when you started this thread with a few reasonable questions that you'd ignite a holy war about MVC.

or i don't know why they're calling him 'they'

I assume those people are referring to MVC the .com business which is at least two people, and not MVC the forum username here at MR.

 

[Zorn]

Most of his contributions were either derailing threads with asinine comments or making threads purely to bash Apple/the mac pro 6,1. The amount of actual valuable information/insight he gave was far, far outnumbered by the frequency of his **** posts, which then encouraged others to do the same and this place was toxic for a while. It still is toxic, but it's not as bad now that the usual suspects are banned.

Good riddance.

What you call '**** posts', I call accurately pointing out the numerous, obvious flaws of the nMP and the idea of a Pro level machine where making an upgrade involves picking it up, placing it in the trash, and ordering a new computer.

 

[F1Mac]

MVC is exactly one person.. at least, on this forum he is.. people saying 'they' in reference to macVidCards definitely aren't regulars here -or- or i don't know why they're calling him 'they'

As I'm one of those who called him "they", this calls for some clarification: I was referring to MVC as "the guys who run the MVC shop" - technically it would be possible for two persons to use a single account on MR wouldn't it? And yes I'm a regular, sort of anyway...

 

[Fl0r!an]

So, traditionally, the Mac Pro use EFI to provide boot screen (Apple logo, boot manager, loading bar, recovery partition) until GPU driver loaded. AFAIK, this is true until 10.12.

In 10.12, EFI provide Apple logo, boot manager, and then GPU driver is loaded to provide the loading bar. This also makes any non EFI (but supported by macOS) GPU can access recovery partition.

I don't think Sierra has changed a lot beside the moment where the OS driver kicks in, it's just a little earlier now. I'm quite sure that Recovery Partition has always worked with PC GPUs as long as the OS had a driver.

For Clover, may I know how it work? It will preload some driver before OS, or even before the boot manager?

Is it actually possible to provide any display without any OSX driver and Nvidia web driver?

The Mac EFI in a GPU ROM contains (besides other things) an EFI display driver, which provides basic graphics functionality to the EFI. Clover has it's own generic driver, which will bring PC cards to life.

When OS X starts up, it'll load device drivers depending on the device ID of installed PCIE cards. If the installed GPU has an OS X driver, it'll load up and the display output gets handed over from EFI to OS (the opposite happens when shutting down, the spinning wheel is EFI again).
If there's no OS driver, OS X will continue to use the EFI driver for display output. No 3D acceleration and sluggish as hell, but enough to install a driver.

 

[The Buggman]

You probably didn't know when you started this thread with a few reasonable questions that you'd ignite a holy war about MVC.

Absolutely not. But the regulars here are this passionate, I don't feel it's my place to stop them from getting these things off their chests.

Thankfully, Netkas.org is back up today so, perhaps, I can finally settle my original concerns and make a fully informed decision.

This whole thing has become so much more ...educational... than I thought it would.

 

[sirfaliq]

mvc just updated his blog.. yay

http://www.macvidcards.com/blog/macvidcards-still-going-strong

 

[JronMasteR]

MVC is still very much around. I am a past customer, twice now, and can attest that they do a great job modifying non-mac GPUs to show a boot screen. As has been said, when someone spends their time developing a modification that makes something do something it didn't do before, they should be so compensated.

MVC made valuable contributions here before being banned by this site's board. I for one, miss him.

I still see his posts at netkis, but as has been said, that site appears to be down at the moment.

Lou

I completely agree with this. They offer a service nobody else does. They invest a huge amount of time for these cards, and they definitely deserve to be compensated. If it would be that easy, everyone would do it.
I bought 2 cards from them already and I'm super happy with them.
In the end, without MVC we would not be running fully compatible Titan X's and 980ti's in our cMP's.

 

[flat five]

As I'm one of those who called him "they", this calls for some clarification: I was referring to MVC as "the guys who run the MVC shop"

idk, my only interaction with MVC is here.. you know, that dude mvc.. like that guy morpheo or flat five or mango.. a he and not a they.

wasn't meaning to say anything negative. if he was here, we'd probably trade a few jabs but he's not here so no fair.

- technically it would be possible for two persons to use a single account on MR wouldn't it? And yes I'm a regular, sort of anyway...

2 * MVC ?!
yikes
; )