Mac Pro 3,1 and an HD7870 / 7950 issues...

[Vertigo RT]

Purchased an HD7870 to flash with EFI (via Netkas) and was told it should boot up on my 3,1 High Sierra with no issues even before flashing.
For some reason, all I get is a white screen after the "bong" and then it just sits. Tried resetting the NVRAM etc... and still nothing.
Thought maybe the card was bad, but it boots just fine in my PC.
What am I doing wrong here?

Update: Flashed it with 7950 EFI bios, and same result... only now I get the Apple logo w/ the spinning wheel and about half a progress bar. Eventually it finally locks up completely

 

[h9826790]

Purchased an HD7870 to flash with EFI (via Netkas) and was told it should boot up on my 3,1 High Sierra with no issues even before flashing.
For some reason, all I get is a white screen after the "bong" and then it just sits. Tried resetting the NVRAM etc... and still nothing.
Thought maybe the card was bad, but it boots just fine in my PC.
What am I doing wrong here?

You connect it to a 4K monitor (or any modern monitor that set to DP 1.2)?

 

[Vertigo RT]

Im using one miniDP and one DVI. Tried them both seperately and the best I get is the apple logo, a halfway progress bar, and an endlessly spinning wheel thing that eventually becomes solid and just sits
I flashed the bios to be a 7950, and it changed nothing beyond now showing the apple boot screen.
[doublepost=1530083862][/doublepost]Both monitors are Apple Cinema Display 23s... tried it also with the HDMI port and a TV

 

[h9826790]

Im using one miniDP and one DVI. Tried them both seperately and the best I get is the apple logo, a halfway progress bar, and an endlessly spinning wheel thing that eventually becomes solid and just sits
I flashed the bios to be a 7950, and it changed nothing beyond now showing the apple boot screen.
[doublepost=1530083862][/doublepost]Both monitors are Apple Cinema Display 23s... tried it also with the HDMI port and a TV

You should not flash a 7870 with the 7950 ROM. So the card still work on a PC?

 

[tsialex]

Purchased an HD7870 to flash with EFI (via Netkas) and was told it should boot up on my 3,1 High Sierra with no issues even before flashing.
For some reason, all I get is a white screen after the "bong" and then it just sits. Tried resetting the NVRAM etc... and still nothing.
Thought maybe the card was bad, but it boots just fine in my PC.
What am I doing wrong here?

Update: Flashed it with 7950 EFI bios, and same result... only now I get the Apple logo w/ the spinning wheel and about half a progress bar. Eventually it finally locks up completely

Hey, it's a Mac Pro 3,1/2008 right? I rememeber reading here somewhere that High Sierra changed the AMD drivers and made them incompatible with Penryn processors used on the MP3,1. I'll try my HD7870 on my 3,1 and check this.

 

[The Spirit]

i got a 7870 for my mac pro 5.1
on netkas i am unable to register.
maybe you can help me.
how can i flahs the 7870?
i read the thread on netkas but i am not sure how to do it.
how can i dump the bios and write it back?
is there a little tutorial or youtube video?
Thanks for help

 

[tsialex]

how can i dump the bios and write it back?

You can use ATIFLASH on Windows.

I've added the EFI blob to my HD7870 original firmware using the instructions on netkas forum, some years ago…

 

[Pressure]

Im using one miniDP and one DVI. Tried them both seperately and the best I get is the apple logo, a halfway progress bar, and an endlessly spinning wheel thing that eventually becomes solid and just sits
I flashed the bios to be a 7950, and it changed nothing beyond now showing the apple boot screen.
[doublepost=1530083862][/doublepost]Both monitors are Apple Cinema Display 23s... tried it also with the HDMI port and a TV

Boot in Verbose mode and tell us what it says (command + V).

 

[tsialex]

Purchased an HD7870 to flash with EFI (via Netkas) and was told it should boot up on my 3,1 High Sierra with no issues even before flashing.
For some reason, all I get is a white screen after the "bong" and then it just sits. Tried resetting the NVRAM etc... and still nothing.
Thought maybe the card was bad, but it boots just fine in my PC.
What am I doing wrong here?

Update: Flashed it with 7950 EFI bios, and same result... only now I get the Apple logo w/ the spinning wheel and about half a progress bar. Eventually it finally locks up completely

Installing the miniPCIe power cables without removing the CPU cooler module on 2008 Mac Pros is a double exercise on patience.

Tested my MSI HD7870 on my MP3,1 with my 10.13 clean install (working beautifully with GT120 and -no_compat_check set on nvram): white screen forever at the end of the startup progress bar, monitors go black after sometime but return to white screen if keyboard/mouse event. Tested with two monitors connected on DVI and mDP1 to eliminate weird problems with portmappings, even tried with screen sharing.

So, really seems to confirm that AMD cards on MP3,1 with HighSierra it’s a no go.
[doublepost=1530138591][/doublepost]

Boot in Verbose mode and tell us what it says (command + V).

Verbose mode (-v on nvram boot args) show no errors, just completes.

 

[Vertigo RT]

With a little work, I got the 7870 flashed to 7950 bios.
Reinstalled dosDudes High Sierra (patched) with the preset for the 6xxx, 7xxx and 8xxx cards and got it up and running perfectly... save for a smallllll glitch screen between the boot logo and the start logo.
However, now it doesnt want to function using Apples Metal API. Thus, I cannot play fortnite, lol.
Trying to figure out how to work around that.

Current setup:
Mac Pro 3,1 2x 2.8 QC
Radeon 7950 2048 gddr5
High Sierra 10.13.5
[doublepost=1530140771][/doublepost]

i got a 7870 for my mac pro 5.1
on netkas i am unable to register.
maybe you can help me.
how can i flahs the 7870?
i read the thread on netkas but i am not sure how to do it.
how can i dump the bios and write it back?
is there a little tutorial or youtube video?
Thanks for help

If youve got a Device ID of 6818, I have firmware that should work to make yours a "7950" with Mac EFI

 

[Michael Judge]

With a little work, I got the 7870 flashed to 7950 bios.
Reinstalled dosDudes High Sierra (patched) with the preset for the 6xxx, 7xxx and 8xxx cards and got it up and running perfectly... save for a smallllll glitch screen between the boot logo and the start logo.
However, now it doesnt want to function using Apples Metal API. Thus, I cannot play fortnite, lol.
Trying to figure out how to work around that.

Current setup:
Mac Pro 3,1 2x 2.8 QC
Radeon 7950 2048 gddr5
High Sierra 10.13.5
[doublepost=1530140771][/doublepost]
If youve got a Device ID of 6818, I have firmware that should work to make yours a "7950" with Mac EFI

I have a Device ID of 6818, can I please have a copy of your firmware?

 

[Lxixboss]

I am running a 2009 Mac Pro 4.1 that has been flashed to 5.1... currently running Catalina 10.15.7... all is good.
Video card is a PCS HD 7870 and I cannot seem to generate the efi rom correctly using the Netkas bundle. Here is what I am doing and perhaps someone can point out what I am doing wrong.

1- Latest JDK is installed
2- Downloaded netkas bundle, and placed all files from that bundle into the root level of the Mac's user account.
3- Ran GPUz from windows and got device id (679E)
4- Used ATI Winflash to save original ROM as cardname.rom in the same directory
5- Ran the script replacing the device ID with the 679E retrieved with GPUz.
6- Here is the script I ran and the output I got in Terminal:
./makerom.sh --efifile=7950mac.efi --romfile=efiromheader.rom --originalrom=cardname.rom --devid=679E
running on 7950mac.efi, efiromheader.rom with devid 679E
Patching files 7950mac.efi, efiromheader.rom for device-id 0x679E
Successfully patched efi file
Successfully patched efi rom file
./makerom.sh: line 42: /Users/user/EfiCompress.macosx: Bad CPU type in executable
dd: 7950mac.efi.comp: No such file or directory
EFI part is ready at 679E.efipart.rom
orig size - 65536
65536+0 records in
65536+0 records out
65536 bytes transferred in 0.359645 secs (182224 bytes/sec)
rm: 7950mac.efi.comp: No such file or directory
Before:
OpRom (size=65536, indicator_offset=0x235, indicator=0x0, checksum=0x80)
OpRom (size=48128, indicator_offset=0x31, indicator=0x80, checksum=0x0)
RawData (size=17408)

After:
OpRom (size=65536, indicator_offset=0x235, indicator=0x0, checksum=0x80)
OpRom (size=48128, indicator_offset=0x31, indicator=0x80, checksum=0x83)
RawData (size=17408)
the rom is ready at cardname.rom.efi.rom

So, the script seems to report three errors. The first one is:
./makerom.sh: line 42: /Users/user/EfiCompress.macosx: Bad CPU type in executable

The second one (in the very next line) is:
dd: 7950mac.efi.comp: No such file or directory

The third error, a few lines later, seems to be an echo of the second:
rm: 7950mac.efi.comp: No such file or directory

I also note that the sizes of both ROMs seem to be the same.

When I reflash the card in Windows with ATI Winflash, it still works but there is no boot screen.

While I am by no means adept in coding, I do have eyes. When I open both the original ROM and the post-script ROM side by side in a text editor, it seems that both ROMs are the same except for the very end where what seems to have been a bunch of placeholders in the original ROM has been replaced by a header of some sort containing copyright information and not much else. (If someone wants me too, I can post the different section of the ROM).

I am, however, expecting one of the gurus on this site to quite easily spot a dumb mistake that I have made and quite simply point me in the right direction. Conversely, if someone had an EFI ROM for this card, that would solve my problem too. Keeping my fingers crossed up here in Canada.

 

[tsialex]

I am running a 2009 Mac Pro 4.1 that has been flashed to 5.1... currently running Catalina 10.15.7... all is good.
Video card is a PCS HD 7870 and I cannot seem to generate the efi rom correctly using the Netkas bundle. Here is what I am doing and perhaps someone can point out what I am doing wrong.

1- Latest JDK is installed
2- Downloaded netkas bundle, and placed all files from that bundle into the root level of the Mac's user account.
3- Ran GPUz from windows and got device id (679E)
4- Used ATI Winflash to save original ROM as cardname.rom in the same directory
5- Ran the script replacing the device ID with the 679E retrieved with GPUz.
6- Here is the script I ran and the output I got in Terminal:
./makerom.sh --efifile=7950mac.efi --romfile=efiromheader.rom --originalrom=cardname.rom --devid=679E
running on 7950mac.efi, efiromheader.rom with devid 679E
Patching files 7950mac.efi, efiromheader.rom for device-id 0x679E
Successfully patched efi file
Successfully patched efi rom file
./makerom.sh: line 42: /Users/user/EfiCompress.macosx: Bad CPU type in executable
dd: 7950mac.efi.comp: No such file or directory
EFI part is ready at 679E.efipart.rom
orig size - 65536
65536+0 records in
65536+0 records out
65536 bytes transferred in 0.359645 secs (182224 bytes/sec)
rm: 7950mac.efi.comp: No such file or directory
Before:
OpRom (size=65536, indicator_offset=0x235, indicator=0x0, checksum=0x80)
OpRom (size=48128, indicator_offset=0x31, indicator=0x80, checksum=0x0)
RawData (size=17408)

After:
OpRom (size=65536, indicator_offset=0x235, indicator=0x0, checksum=0x80)
OpRom (size=48128, indicator_offset=0x31, indicator=0x80, checksum=0x83)
RawData (size=17408)
the rom is ready at cardname.rom.efi.rom

So, the script seems to report three errors. The first one is:
./makerom.sh: line 42: /Users/user/EfiCompress.macosx: Bad CPU type in executable

The second one (in the very next line) is:
dd: 7950mac.efi.comp: No such file or directory

The third error, a few lines later, seems to be an echo of the second:
rm: 7950mac.efi.comp: No such file or directory

I also note that the sizes of both ROMs seem to be the same.

When I reflash the card in Windows with ATI Winflash, it still works but there is no boot screen.

While I am by no means adept in coding, I do have eyes. When I open both the original ROM and the post-script ROM side by side in a text editor, it seems that both ROMs are the same except for the very end where what seems to have been a bunch of placeholders in the original ROM has been replaced by a header of some sort containing copyright information and not much else. (If someone wants me too, I can post the different section of the ROM).

I am, however, expecting one of the gurus on this site to quite easily spot a dumb mistake that I have made and quite simply point me in the right direction. Conversely, if someone had an EFI ROM for this card, that would solve my problem too. Keeping my fingers crossed up here in Canada.

Apple removed support for Pitcairn family of AMD GPUs with Mojave. You can flash it, but will only work up to High Sierra and HDMI output will not work since the HDMI output has a a very different configuration from HD 7950.

 

[Lxixboss]

Apple removed support for Pitcairn family of AMD GPUs with Mojave. You can flash it, but will only work up to High Sierra and HDMI output will not work since the HDMI output has a a very different configuration from HD 7950

Actually, I am running Catalina withit right now and it works fine. I think GPU-Z lists it as a Tahiti GPU (see attached photo) As I said in my post, what I would need to know is what I am doing wrong when I try to generate the EFI ROM.

 

[tsialex]

Actually, I am running Catalina withit right now and it works fine. I think GPU-Z lists it as a Tahiti GPU (see attached photo) As I said in my post, what I would need to know is what I am doing wrong when I try to generate the EFI ROM.

This one will work fine, it's a binned HD 7970 with less CUs, 2/3 of RAM and 256Bit bus.

Try again with 10.9 to 10.11, the tools are from that point in time, you won't run successfully with current macOS releases/current JDK without updating the code.

This is the problem:

./makerom.sh: line 42: /Users/user/EfiCompress.macosx: Bad CPU type in executable

 

[Lxixboss]

This one will work fine, it's a binned HD 7970 with less CUs, 2/3 of RAM and 256Bit bus.

Try again with 10.9 to 10.11, the tools are from that point in time, you won't run successfully with current macOS releases/current JDK without updating the code.

This is the problem:

./makerom.sh: line 42: /Users/user/EfiCompress.macosx: Bad CPU type in executable

Thanks for the tip. I did not know that. I don’t have a drive set up with that vintage of OS on it. I don’t suppose you could point me toward an “already EFI’d” suitable bios?

 

[tsialex]

Thanks for the tip. I did not know that. I don’t have a drive set up with that vintage of OS on it. I don’t suppose you could point me toward an “already EFI’d” suitable bios?

You have to use your own card firmware, not one made for a different card.

Btw, why flash it? Add GOP to your card (see the WinRAID thread on it to learn how to do it) and then use OpenCore to have pre-boot configuration support. Flashing GPUs with Mac EFI is a thing of the past.

 

[Lxixboss]

You have to use your own card firmware, not one made for a different card.

Btw, why flash it? Add GOP to your card (see the WinRAID thread on it to learn how to do it) and then use OpenCore to have pre-boot configuration support. Flashing GPUs with Mac EFI is a thing of the past.

Hmmmm. I’ve had a look at Open Core installation and it just seems very complicated. I will look at it more closely and see if I can work up the courage. Thanks for your advice. I appreciate it.

 

[Lxixboss]

Hmmmm. I’ve had a look at Open Core installation and it just seems very complicated. I will look at it more closely and see if I can work up the courage. Thanks for your advice. I appreciate it.

Update: Then I remembered that I had a 2007 Imac 7.1 running El Capitan squirreled away in the basement. Dug it out, sparked it up, installed jdk and, boom, Bob’s your uncle! Enjoying beautiful boot screens with my PCS HD7870! Thanks a lot, Tsialex, I owe you my life... well, not really but I am very grateful.

 

[tsialex]

Update: Then I remembered that I had a 2007 Imac 7.1 running El Capitan squirreled away in the basement. Dug it out, sparked it up, installed jdk and, boom, Bob’s your uncle! Enjoying beautiful boot screens with my PCS HD7870! Thanks a lot, Tsialex, I owe you my life... well, not really but I am very grateful.

Nice that you got it working with my tip of using up to ElCapitan.

Now learn to use OpenCore, it's the way to give some more useful life to a MP5,1 (or a MP4,1>5,1 like yours).

 

[greyhamism]

Update: Then I remembered that I had a 2007 Imac 7.1 running El Capitan squirreled away in the basement. Dug it out, sparked it up, installed jdk and, boom, Bob’s your uncle! Enjoying beautiful boot screens with my PCS HD7870! Thanks a lot, Tsialex, I owe you my life... well, not really but I am very grateful.

Apologies for the necro, but I've found my self in a similar situation.
PCS HD7870, trying the netkas bios mod and failing in the same spot, but i dont have access to a machine running ElCapitan. My card reports as a 679e, so afaik, the modded bios you where able to create should work on my card? you wouldnt have the file handy would you?

 

[Dayo]

trying the netkas bios mod and failing in the same spot

You will be better off with OpenCore as mentioned above.
You can try the process linked in my signature.

NB: You can use this script to create a USB Installer for El Capitan or Yosemite (I need to update the notes) on newer Mac OS where the installer creation process would otherwise typically fail to work:

Creates Bootable USB for Mac OS Lion to Monterey (Excluding Mavericks)

Creates Bootable USB for Mac OS Lion to Monterey (Excluding Mavericks) - Install_USB_Maker.sh

gist.github.com

OpenCore is better though!

 

[greyhamism]

I do plan on going the opencore route (have spent the last day or so going through the "11.3 broke" thread), but would also like an additional efi compatible card for native system recovery/boot picker etc incase the original 5770 karks it.

I will have a look at the USBMaker route as well tho, thank you

 

[Dayo]

would also like an additional efi compatible card for native system recovery/boot picker

That's what OpenCore gives you (as good as native).
Just avoid BS altogether for now (IMO) if not on a cMP 3,1 and go with Mojave or Catalina.