Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Mac 7950 on the ground, EFI works in 1,1 Mac Pro but drivers don't

Could somebody please upload the drivers to mega.co.nz or mediafire? Rapidshare ran outta bandwidth.
 
Hi guys,

I have a Sapphire HD 7950 with 3Gb someone has bios Sapphire MAC Edition? I will try to flash it
 
nexx892 said:
Could somebody please upload the drivers to mega.co.nz or mediafire? Rapidshare ran outta bandwidth.
Click to expand...

I've hosted the file but I'll let MacVidCards (Rominator) control the posting of the link. I'm not sure how he wants to proceed.
 
Tell me please,
it is true that even the official sapphire 7950 mac edition is running at PCI 1.0?
 
fhenry said:
So is it working or not on a 1,1 mp?
Click to expand...

Well, here is the result of my own personal research.

The card's firmware works GREAT in a 1,1, it is EBC firmware and shows lovely boot screens on every port.

THAT BEING SAID....for some reason or another, the 10.7.5 drivers included with it are defective in that they appear to not work with 32 bit kernel.

I have posted the drivers and the rom for the card and have been hoping for SOMEONE in the community to confirm or deny my results.

With a 3,1 or later Mac Pro running the 10.7.5 drivers with a 7xxx card, just hold the "3" and "2" to get into 32 bit. If my observations are correct, the card will crash every boot until you allow it to use 64 bit.

There are 3 potential reasons for this:

1. AMD/Sapphie doesn't actually give one flat damn for 1,1 and 2,1 owners, knew they were sending out bad drivers and did it anyway.

2. AMD/Sapphire are incompetent and forgot to test them.

3. Apple gave AMD/Sapphire a call and pointed out that selling new Mac Pros gets harder when 7 year old ones can run latest equipment. They "customized" the drivers with an intentional flaw to keep the cards for 3,1 and later to match their "Mountain Lion can't run on those old machines" line alive.

Note, there are 32bit components for the kexts, they just don't work.

Or maybe I'm an idiot and tested wrong.

In any case, since nobody else has apparently tried we are left with my word. SO the answer is....if you are one of those souls running ML on your 1,1 with Chameleon, the card will work PERFECTLY. If you are running 10.7.5 you will need to use 64bit kernel. How you do that is up to you, but it won't be painless.

Why write a firmware to make card work in all Mac Pros then take away the function with flawed drivers? No idea, but likely one of the 3 reasons above.
 
@macvidcars

Pls can u share the two bios rom "dumped" from the 7950 mac version?
 
MacVidCards said:
Why write a firmware to make card work in all Mac Pros then take away the function with flawed drivers? No idea, but likely one of the 3 reasons above.
Click to expand...

There must be a way to make it work. I'll get 7870 XT tomorrow and will investigate it deeper. EBC firmware + 32bit kexts – this certainly isn't coincidence.
BTW, I'll try to make 6870 EBC efi based on 7950 one (no success with 5870 efi). 7950 ROM structure is closer to 6870 than 5770/5870 one.
Any hits welcome (netkas and MVC).
 
MacVidCards said:
Well, here is the result of my own personal research.

The card's firmware works GREAT in a 1,1, it is EBC firmware and shows lovely boot screens on every port.

THAT BEING SAID....for some reason or another, the 10.7.5 drivers included with it are defective in that they appear to not work with 32 bit kernel.

I have posted the drivers and the rom for the card and have been hoping for SOMEONE in the community to confirm or deny my results.

With a 3,1 or later Mac Pro running the 10.7.5 drivers with a 7xxx card, just hold the "3" and "2" to get into 32 bit. If my observations are correct, the card will crash every boot until you allow it to use 64 bit.

There are 3 potential reasons for this:

1. AMD/Sapphie doesn't actually give one flat damn for 1,1 and 2,1 owners, knew they were sending out bad drivers and did it anyway.

2. AMD/Sapphire are incompetent and forgot to test them.

3. Apple gave AMD/Sapphire a call and pointed out that selling new Mac Pros gets harder when 7 year old ones can run latest equipment. They "customized" the drivers with an intentional flaw to keep the cards for 3,1 and later to match their "Mountain Lion can't run on those old machines" line alive.

Note, there are 32bit components for the kexts, they just don't work.

Or maybe I'm an idiot and tested wrong.

In any case, since nobody else has apparently tried we are left with my word. SO the answer is....if you are one of those souls running ML on your 1,1 with Chameleon, the card will work PERFECTLY. If you are running 10.7.5 you will need to use 64bit kernel. How you do that is up to you, but it won't be painless.

Why write a firmware to make card work in all Mac Pros then take away the function with flawed drivers? No idea, but likely one of the 3 reasons above.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your advices!
 
MacVidCards said:
I have posted the drivers and the rom for the card and have been hoping for SOMEONE in the community to confirm or deny my results.
Click to expand...

I've tried 7870XT in 1,1 with 10.7.5 drivers in every possible combination. Unflashed and flashed card. With 7300 as helper and 7870 alone.

First of all, it has DID 679e. It's present only in ATIX4000.kext, but not in ATI7000.kext (I had to add it manually).
Unflashed card didn't even want to work without 7300 as helper card (grey screen, sometimes corrupted + KP on reboot – driver crash, below)

Code: 
Kernel Extensions in backtrace:
         com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily(2.3.4)[EE3F8FBE-3457-4F0E-A3A3-B9B1A44DCF6B]@0xb07000->0xb3afff
            dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.7)[8087C029-833E-4B62-A8C3-2B074B4C55F7]@0xade000
         com.apple.ATIRadeonX4000(7.3.2)[B6AB6D81-51FD-467B-BDB0-BB3FE400A5EE]@0x2b59000->0x2f46fff
            dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.7)[8087C029-833E-4B62-A8C3-2B074B4C55F7]@0xade000
            dependency: com.apple.iokit.IONDRVSupport(2.3.4)[393829BA-614C-4ED7-B4AD-CE577A41C683]@0xb3b000
            dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily(2.3.4)[EE3F8FBE-3457-4F0E-A3A3-B9B1A44DCF6B]@0xb07000

I was installing drivers manually, to test out every possible kexts setup. When installed them automatically using installer, it didn't install ATIX4000.kext and plugin.

I've noticed one thing: card does not have acceleration until ATIX4000.kext is installed. Until then it boots to desktop normally (if flashed), alone or with helper card.
After adding ATIX4000.kext and plugin "white screen of death" appears. I've tried verbose mode, but it couldn't get it to work. Tried "put to sleep" trick but it didn't work too (KP on wake).
With all drivers installed card "works" only with 7300 as helper and display connected to it works in extremely weird resolution (17", 1280x1024 native):

34dpoua.png


EFI itself works OK with 7870 (bootscreen etc), but I couldn't get video on HDMI. My card is based on Tahiti LE, so it's almost 7950. Reference design and port layout.

Card when flashed or unflashed is seen by GLview and Luxmark (only when ATIX4000 is installed) but benchmarks do not work. When ATIX4000.kext isn't installed, both programs do not see any ATI devices.

s4w4l1.png


So far no 7xxx for 1,1 and 2,1 :(

Edit: Tried Chutoro personality too, it loads OK but no video on DVI.
 
Last edited:
Hi MacVidCards,

I have just installed your driver on my 1,1 mac pro, but to no avail.
Result is the same, i.e. grey screen, mouse pointer visible and moveable but no desktop, no Finder etc…
I am using the Sapphire 7950 Mac Edition.

Is there any solution for 1,1 yet (except switching to a newer generation)?
 
From what I've read, a Hackintosh needs two things to get the 78xx work consistently: latest Chameleon boot loader and a login item to force a desktop refresh to get past an otherwise grey/white screen that never gets to the desktop.

Latest Chameleon: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/231075-chameleon-22svn-official-pkg-installer-binaries/
ATI HD 7xxx fix white screen: http://www.osx86.net/downloads.php?do=file&id=3766

Anyone with a MacPro1,1 ready to try this? I suspect it will work if you are using a 64-bit kernel and running OS X 10.8.3.
 
Mr. Zarniwoop said:
From what I've read, a Hackintosh needs two things to get the 78xx work consistently: latest Chameleon boot loader and a login item to force a desktop refresh to get past an otherwise grey/white screen that never gets to the desktop.

Latest Chameleon: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/231075-chameleon-22svn-official-pkg-installer-binaries/
ATI HD 7xxx fix white screen: http://www.osx86.net/downloads.php?do=file&id=3766

Anyone with a MacPro1,1 ready to try this? I suspect it will work if you are using a 64-bit kernel and running OS X 10.8.3.
Click to expand...

I tried it in all Combinations with not much luck at the moment.

I'm running 10.8.3 with the latest Chameleon 2190 Bootloader on a 1,1 with flashed 7950.
Rotation Trick doesn't do it for me.

Had 2 times the luck to come into desktop after applying the sleep-trick. In Desktop I tried running Heaven-Benchmark and both times got a kernel panic.

I ordered a nVidia GT 520 as Helper Card and keep trying. But it seems not that easy like in a Hackintosh :-/

I'll keep you up to date.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back