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Mac Pro - GeForce 7900GTX works in Boot Camp
- Thread starter JNaut
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This is the critical issue I think: Just how different are the Apple OEM video cards from standard PC cards? Is is simply a matter of having a bigger ROM on the Mac cards to support two sets of firmware? If that is the case all that needs to be done for the PC cards is to solder a bigger EEPROM on and flash with the Apple firmware (and possibly changing the hardware device ID to match Apple's). A bit of a hassle but not too tough. The other downside is that we will be limited to cards that will work with an X1900XT, 7300GT and Quadro firmware.
Even so, if the difference is just firmware I think a lot of very nice (overclocked or otherwise enhanced) PC cards could be flashed for less $$$ than buying the Apple cards
Even so, if the difference is just firmware I think a lot of very nice (overclocked or otherwise enhanced) PC cards could be flashed for less $$$ than buying the Apple cards
chiamon said:
Yes, with the 7300 GT Windows loads just fine and you see everything during the boot process.
And in fact, I mentiond (either in this thread or some other thread) I took the 7300 GT out and put it in my Pentium D 820 system and it booted up fine. Bios screen showed up, booted into windows just fine. I didn't attempt to install the video card drivers on that system but it did get into Windows just fine.
omfgninja said:Someone should get a ROM Dump off the cards on the new Mac Pros, and then on a stock version of that card, and then do a file compair and see how much is different
The sooner we get a ROM dump the better. I also suggest sending the ROM to the Strangedogs forum so they can
a) host the file for flashers
b) tinker with it and see how it works.
omfgninja said:EDIT: A thousand other people said what I basicly said.
But hey, IDEA.
Someone should get a ROM Dump off the cards on the new Mac Pros, and then on a stock version of that card, and then do a file compair and see how much is different
Woah, I just found this:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2283699&CatId=1560
That card looks VERY similar to the card that comes with the Mac Pro. Heat sink looks the same, but this card has SVideo. I'm going to go buy one tonight. I'm going to see if I can do two things.. A: SLI mode under "bootcamp" (native XP) and B: dump the rom off the 7300 GT that comes with the mac pro and see if I can flash this card.
I have no idea if the rom on the cards are the same size though. I'll figure that out tonight!
The reason I want to do this is two fold.
1. cheaper 7300 GT
2. SLI under XP with the 7300 GT's won't be as fast as one 7800 GTX, but at least I wouldn't need to switch video cables around.
In the recent past, all PC video cards have had 64k ROM chips whereas all (otherwise identical) Mac cards have had 128k chips.
My guess is that the PC card you are looking at buying will require a EEPROM swap...but if you do that and dump the Mac 7300's ROM and flash it to the modded PC card it may work. That is the usual method currently, but we are blazing a new trail here so patience is the key.
My guess is that the PC card you are looking at buying will require a EEPROM swap...but if you do that and dump the Mac 7300's ROM and flash it to the modded PC card it may work. That is the usual method currently, but we are blazing a new trail here so patience is the key.
Lord Blackadder said:In the recent past, all PC video cards have had 64k ROM chips whereas all (otherwise identical) Mac cards have had 128k chips.
My guess is that the PC card you are looking at buying will require a EEPROM swap...but if you do that and dump the Mac 7300's ROM and flash it to the modded PC card it may work. That is the usual method currently, but we are blazing a new trail here so patience is the key.
Right. I am familiar with previous hacks and rom sizes, I personally did a few geforce flashes for old ppc macs. I never did get into the rom swapping people did on the 9800's though. Still got a flashed Geforce2MX sitting in my G4 400 PowerPC
My hope, worst case, is the card will at least work in SLI mode in Windows XP native, even if OSX refuses to see the card. Best case, flash the card and it works exactly the same as the 7300GT that came with the system.
gekko513 said:
From what I've read, Apple's QC is excellent and their cards are clocked conservatively to increase their reliability. The downclock really only effects gamers (slightly), and we all know that Apple has never really been interested in gamers' needs. Apple's moneymaker is the pro user, and a small downclock affects those less than games.
tobyg said:
My flashing experience is limited - I've done a Radeon 7000, a GeForce 6800 GT for my G4 tower and one or two older cards. None of the ones I did needed an EEPROM swap, though I have done surface mount soldering before (I'm passable at it but it aint fun).
Without an EEPROM swap it probably won't even flash...I'm curious to see what the file size of your Mac ROM is, but I'll bet it's bigger than 64k. Still, after an EEPROM swap and straight flash it might work, which is still good news.
Lord Blackadder said:
There is currently no basis to believe the rom needs to be any bigger, at this time. PPC hardware and Intel hardware are completely different. The reason, as far as I can tell, for the bigger rom in the past was because of a completely different architecture, little endian vs big endian. Yes, I know the new stuff is EFI vs BIOS, but it doesn't mean the ROM needs to be any bigger. The 'code' to recognize and use the video card should be stored in EFI, at that point.
Anyway, i'll dump the rom from the Mac Pro 7300GT tonight and then we'll know.
There is some basis, though it isn't directly related. IIRC the ROM on the only dual-platform card previous to the Mac Pro's intro (The Radeon 9600 Pro PC + Mac Edition) had a ROM that was larger than that of any PC or Mac card.
But like you said, let's see what the ROM dump looks like.
But like you said, let's see what the ROM dump looks like.
sdshannon said:
I just did dump the rom on both the apple 7300 GT and the XFX 7300 GT I bought tonight... bad news. Looks like Lord Blackadder was right. Looks like Apple is still up to their old ways. They are still using 128k roms.
This was all done with nvflash version 5.36
XFX 7300 GT
nvflash --list
<0> GeForce 7300 GT (10DE,0393,1682,4006) H:N B:01,PCI,D:00,F:00
Image Size : 65024 bytes
Version : 05.73.22.25.81
~CRC32 : 548C3CFB
Subsystem Vendor ID : 1682
Subsystem ID : 4006
Hierarchy ID : Normal Board
EEPROM ID (9D,7B) : PMC Pm25LV512 2.7-3.6V 64Kx8S, page
Saved to XFX7300.rom
Apple 7300 GT
nvflash --list
<0> GeForce 7300 GT (10DE,0393,0000,0400) H:N B:01,PCI,D:00,F:00
Image Size : 102912 bytes
Version : 05.73.22.29.A0
~CRC32 : BBF10FE5
Subsystem Vendor ID : 0000
Subsystem ID : 0400
Hierarchy ID : Normal Board
nvflash --check
EEPROM ID (1F,60) : Atmel AT25F1024 2.7-3.6V 128Kx8S, page
Saved to APL7300.rom
AND:
As suspected, OSX won't work with it. No gray screen when booting.
When booting into windows, it did see it. I slapped on the little SLI connector, and got a message saying "Your motherboard is not qualified for SLI". Damnit!
Found nothing really good online regarding how to fix that. One suggestion was to try older drivers. I was running 91.31, downloaded 84.21 to try. 84.21 doesn't support the 7300 GT. Used the driver CD from the XFX CD, 84.26. This time it says I can enable SLI just as soon as I remove the incompatible video card in my system. Not sure what that would be, as there is no other video card in my system other than the two 7300 GT's.
I used slot 1 and 2, both set at 8X.
So, as of now, no luck with SLI... but I haven't given up on it yet.
Oh and the XFX video card looks similar but the PCB is quite different from the Apple 7300 GT. The heat sink looks to be identical, but that's about it.
aiongiant said:
Well in the past, the only way around it was to remove the 64k chip and solder on a new chip. Not easy to do.
SOMETIMES you could find a manufacturer that used a 128k rom chip on a PC card. Rarely that happened, but it did.
The 128k rom is probably not something anyone 'did' specifically just to screw everyone, but it's something that is required in order to fit the firmware on the card in order to work in an Apple system. 128k roms were used on ATI and Nvidia cards. New video cards for PC's (as you can see, my XFX 7300 GT is a pretty new card) do not necessarily need 128k roms either, so they still have 64k roms.
tobyg said:
The soldering wouldn't be too tough. The rom is usually pin based, and such all you would have to do is de-solder on the back side and resolder in the new one, problem being that rom chip would be blank and this wouldn't work. So you'd have to flash it before hand in a flasher.