Mac 4,1 on a student budget...

[bsbeamer]

Is the GT120 a PC card, or an official Mac card? Believe the official GT120 Mac version only has Mini DisplayPort and a Dual-Link DVI ports with a large vented case/cover incorporated with the fan assembly.

 

[adam9c1]

The Apple GT120 has a giant plastic gray housing with a fan in the middle.

 

[bsbeamer]

Is your HDMI adapter an active adapter? That might solve some of the issues.

 

[tompeij]

My card is official Apple, I attached a picture for reference. I am using a DVI(to Mac) to HDMI(to monitor) cable that I used to use for my old PC. It could be the cable I guess. I just discovered (while typing this) that when I plug the mDP and DVI at the same time the GT120 was extending my desktop (face palm) so I just adjusted it to mirrored and now I have both cables connected. I still don't know why the DVI isn't working on my 27" Asus 2K monitor. I think I should try a proper DVI to DVI cable first. I wouldn't really care so much except for getting into the EFI.

Does anyone use their mDP connected GT120 and still get the Apple logo at boot up?
Thanks!

 

[orph]

is this going to be a problem with DVI to high res displays or a HDMI cable that cant deliver 2K resolutions ?

DP out is better than DVI if it's an option. DVI has the single DVI/dual DVI + problems at high resolutions (i think still on 1080p )

 

[tompeij]

is this going to be a problem with DVI to high res displays or a HDMI cable that cant deliver 2K resolutions ?

DP out is better than DVI if it's an option. DVI has the single DVI/dual DVI + problems at high resolutions (i think still on 1080p )

I just need to get my hands on a 24 pin dvi to dvi cable. Then I can give a fair test. The DP is my preferred connection too but I just don’t know why it doesn’t output the Apple logo at boot up. Something to do with the 2K output? Maybe the basic drivers during boot up don’t support it? (After all the Mac 4,1 is from 2009)

 

[orph]

well you dont need to see the apple logo at boot, iv been using a PC GPU for 5 years+ now and not seen the apple logo since then with no problems.

why dose the apple logo need to be seen ?
if it was me id just use DP and be happy.

 

[tompeij]

well you dont need to see the apple logo at boot, iv been using a PC GPU for 5 years+ now and not seen the apple logo since then with no problems.

why dose the apple logo need to be seen ?
if it was me id just use DP and be happy.

You're right. It doesn't really matter except when I first got it I needed to do a bit of work in the recovery boot to turn off and on SIP to enable the 5,1 flash and I had troubles getting my SSD to work as the primary boot after cloning with CCC. So it was a total pita to have to keep swapping cables between DVI and DP as the DVI stopped working once I got to login.

However this has all changed now. (well almost - DVI still doesn't work after booting into OSX) BUT the DP started working yesterday. I did two different things that may have effected it. First I did an incremental (seemingly) non-related OS update. The other was I swapped out my RAM from the stuff in there when it was shipped (ECC 1066 corsair and another unbranded) to some 1333 G-Skill that I stole from my PC. I wanted to see if there was a noticeable difference before I bought any more. Today I did a reboot and bam the logo is now showing up. I haven't yet tried to swap back the ram to see if there is a difference mostly due to (as you said) it doesn't really matter all that much

 

[orph]

you dont need to swap cables just hold the hotkeys and you can boot in to recovery etc..
just hit power, hold hotkeys, wait recovery boot

and that works on any PC card that works with osx native drivers it's only the GTX9xx/GTX10xx cards that cant do recovery boot without problems.
my PC GTX770 (not mac bios) boots in to recovery no problems and i cant see the apple boot screen

ps with a SSD it's so fast you dont miss much any way

my ram is from ebay, pulled server ram from china/hongkong i think? 32GB was under £50 4x 8GB sticks

 

[tompeij]

Just in case anyone was curious. I did receive the Mac with 4,1. I was able to upgrade it after getting the EFI password from the seller.

And now I've got it working like a hot damn. (just need more ram)

So a big thank you to everyone who has helped me out! MUCH MUCH APPRECIATED! Great people here!

 

[orph]

cool thats the fastest CPU you can get (for most jobs) on that box just a shame we cant OC like on the PC side (there the last xeons to be unlocked think most hit 4GHz.

 

[tompeij]

you dont need to swap cables just hold the hotkeys and you can boot in to recovery etc..
just hit power, hold hotkeys, wait recovery boot

and that works on any PC card that works with osx native drivers it's only the GTX9xx/GTX10xx cards that cant do recovery boot without problems.
my PC GTX770 (not mac bios) boots in to recovery no problems and i cant see the apple boot screen

ps with a SSD it's so fast you dont miss much any way

my ram is from ebay, pulled server ram from china/hongkong i think? 32GB was under £50 4x 8GB sticks

"ps with a SSD it's so fast you dont miss much any way "

Haha exactly! Now that I have it working it's so fast. I love it.

Thanks for the tip on the PC video cards. I'll have to get one eventually as I need something with over 1GB memory to make Illustrator use "GPU performance" Adobe's magic number...
[doublepost=1520307916][/doublepost]

cool thats the fastest CPU you can get (for most jobs) on that box just a shame we cant OC like on the PC side (there the last xeons to be unlocked think most hit 4GHz.

And it only cost 30 bucks

 

[adam9c1]

Wasn't there some quad core CPU that was even faster than that but very very expensive?

There is also a 3.46 hex core.

 

[h9826790]

Wasn't there some quad core CPU that was even faster than that but very very expensive?

There is also a 3.46 hex core.

No, those faster CPU won’t work on cMP.

I believe he know that’s a quad core CPU, that’s why said “(for most jobs)”.

 

[adam9c1]

Maybe it's a i7 CPU that's faster. Some odd ball that was a quad core and only for one socket.

 

[orph]

no thats the king of single core speed on the MP.
iv used a GTX 660 & 770 they both worked well and use the native driver.
cheep cards
GTX660/670/760 are PC options or a GTX680 PC card can be flashed to a mac card with ease
i dont know ATI cards well
i think a RX460/560 are budget cards too (i think they work with out to much work)

 

[h9826790]

Maybe it's a i7 CPU that's faster. Some odd ball that was a quad core and only for one socket.

No, the i7-990X has the same clock speed as the W3690, but only support up to 1066MHz non ECC RAM, 36bit physical address extensions, 25.6GB/s memory bandwidth, and no demand based switching.

Even though non ECC RAM can run tiny bit faster than ECC RAM, but I don’t think the 990X can make the cMP run faster overall.