Hello I've bought
Sapphire HD7950 3G GDDR5 PCI-E DVI-I / DVI-D / HDMI / DP WITH BOOST Carte Graphique VGA ATI Radeon HD 7950 3 Go PCI express
Can you tell me how to flash and install this card on mac pro 1,1 upgrade 2,1 with el capitan 10.11.1?
Thanks by advance and sorry for my bad english...
Il pourrait rendre plus facile à copier et coller tout cela
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Hi Kinetos, a link to a 17 page thread that in turn links to 32 page thread is a LOT to read through especially when English is not your first language. I'll put it all in one place and
explain what you're doing in italics before I tell you to do it. If it gets too long or you don't care, skip the italics.
First note is that your card will work - unflashed - with El Capitan.
Make sure you have the correct extra cable(s) installed and your card will work, you just won't see the boot and loading screens, the desktop will appear after several seconds of black screen. If that's ok for you, you need not do anything. If you want boot screens, read on.
You are smart and/or lucky because your card has a switch on the side that allows you to choose between 2 different BIOS -
make sure the switch is in position 2 while you do the flashing. No matter what you do, you can always switch to position 1 and have the original factory rom and your card will work, you just won't have the boot screen.
Here's what I did and it worked for me with a MacPro 1,1 and the
Gigabyte version of the 7950. I have a boot screen and I can choose Lion, El Capitan, or Ubuntu Linux. I'm assuming that El Capitan is already installed on your MacPro. If you did that, I'll also assume you can use a terminal. You're gonna need
2 blank CD's. I will not assume you are familiar with DOS.
Preparation:
1. You need to get the original rom (also called BIOS, same thing) for your card.
There are many variations from different vendors, it's important to get the exact rom for your card because, among other possible problems, the code for the ports on your card will be different than the code for cards with different ports. Different ports = different card = some or all of your ports might not work.
- BEST: If you have Windows thru Boot Camp (VM will not work) on your box or access to a Windows box, put the card in the box and use GPU-Z available here to extract the rom from your card. I don't have Windows, so I can't help you with that software, but it's a GUI app and it shouldn't be hard, there are instructions on the site.
- NEXT BEST: If you don't have windows, the next best thing is to download the original rom from the manufacturer (I couldn't find it on the Sapphire site) or to get one from here.
- (It's possible to boot into FreeDOS and use ATIFlash to get the ROM from your card. The problem, for me anyway, was that FreeDOS didn't see the DOS formatted partition on my hard drive or on a USB drive, so there was no way to write the rom to any media. Gigabyte provides their factory roms, so that worked for me.)
2. Download
ATI flash from the TechPowerUps site.
This is a DOS command-line app that does the actuall flashing. It will run on your Mac when you boot it into FreeDOS.
3. Download the
Ultimate BootCD and
burn it to a CD. This will boot your MacPro and allow you to run FreeDOS.
4. Download
this bundle. The script depends on Java and Python.
It includes the Mac EFI part of the BIOS and a shell script that will patch your rom from step 1 and give you the new rom to flash the card in step X below.
5. Extract the bundle to your desktop or another convenient location. Rename a copy of your original rom (from step 1) "cardname.rom" and put it in the same folder. Read the README file and note that there is a typo: 697a should be 679a
6. In terminal, navigate to the bundle folder and enter: ./makerom.sh --efifile=7950mac.efi --romfile=efiromheader.rom --originalrom=cardname.rom --devid=679a
7. Copy the modified rom file and the ATIFlash.exe file and
burn them to a CD.
8. Carefully pull the CD/DVD drive housing out of your MacPro and set it on top of the case.
You need access to the eject button to switch the CDs.
9. Put the Ultimate BootCD in the drive, reboot holding the option key, and choose to boot from the UBCD.
10. Choose FreeDOS from the UBCD menu.
11. Eject the UBCD, replace it with the ATIflash & modified rom file CD.
That's why you needed to pull it out of the case. The Ultimate BootCD is actually running from a ramdisk.
12. Type "m" in the FreeDOS command line line to display a menu. Select "show all drives" and figure out which is the CD drive.
Probably R or Q.
13. In FreeDOS, type "Q:
(or R: or whatever DOS is calling the CD drive) atiflash -p 0 myrom.rom
(or whatever your modified rom file is called). You have to tell DOS where the .exe files is, that's Q: then the exe filename without the .exe, -p tells atiflash to write your modified rom to the card.
14. As long as there is no error reported you are good to go.
*
Be careful putting the CD housing back in the case. Make sure to line up the slots with the pegs and tuck the cables in carefully. Don't force it. I did and tweaked the housing. Be gentle.
