MP 1,1-5,1 MacPro5,1: BootROM thread | 144.0.0.0.0

[ibarnett]

Besides, I have an I have a Sapphire Pulse RX 580 on the way.

I’m gonna miss Boot Picker but I’ve already figured out how to cope with it using Apple’s own solutions. Perhaps it’s there intention on how we will work around this.

Unless I’m mistaken, all you have to do is boot into recovery mode and change startup disk. It’s graphical, it’s easy, it works

Yes, you are correct.
Just tried with my Sapphire RX 580 Nitro, bit slow to come up, but yes works a treat.
For some reason my Pulse wouldn't boot, I suspect not seated correctly, can be tricky.
I'm still on 10.13.6, with boot rom
138.0.0.0.0
Only problem I've struck is my USB Mojave beta won't show up in Startup disk, system preferences, or "C" when starting up.

 

[crjackson2134]

Thanks for testing. I suspected it would work since recovery launches with macOS drivers loaded.

Good news for tight spot booting, no need to swap cards now

USB booting from USB 2.0 ports work for me, but I haven’t tried that with Mojave.

 

[MisterAndrew]

Opened the installer with the Vega installed. I get this error message. I tried putting the firmware files into the older Mojave installer. It doesn't work either.

 

[tsialex]

Opened the installer with the Vega installed. I get this error message. I tried putting the firmware files into the older Mojave installer. It doesn't work either.

View attachment 776216

Do you have another Metal GPU to do the firmware flash?

 

[ibarnett]

USB booting from USB 2.0 ports work for me, but I haven’t tried that with Mojave.

No, won't work here, don't know why??
Just tried also from Recovery startup, not showing there neither.
Maybe I can use a spare small SSD instead of USB, that should work, save card swapping.

 

[crjackson2134]

...

 

[handheldgames]

No, the card is much longer than the 7101A and the fan was mostly exposed to free space. The card also ran on reduced voltage and never ran hot that I’m aware of.

It just gave up the ghost on a reboot surge I think.

I am a little concerned about the new card next to the 7101A however. It will definitely block the rear fan space.

How can I test for heat issue with that card once installed.

If you are running windows as a second os, Open Hardware Monitor can deliver gpu core temps. I'm not sure what app on macos delivers gpu temps.

I'm running a reference rx480 and had the ssd7101-a in slot #2 for sometime. Part of the rx 480's cooling fan is covered by the ssd7101-a. Only in the last 2 weeks, after having enabling a 3d desktop background and the added 3d load I can see by trhe gpu voltage increase, have I been trying the rx480 in slot #2 and the ssd7101-a in slot 1.

 

[crjackson2134]

No, won't work here, don't know why??
Just tried also from Recovery startup, not showing there neither.
Maybe I can use a spare small SSD instead of USB, that should work, save card swapping.

That’s what I did too, bot I will say that Mojave does have booting quirks and is probably the cause. I would try USB booting High Sierra to narrow it down. If that doesn’t work, try High Sierra HFS+ install. It may be related to APFS or Mojave.
[doublepost=1534381587][/doublepost]

If you are running windows as a second os, Open Hardware Monitor can deliver gpu core temps. I'm not sure what app on macos delivers gpu temps.

I'm running a reference rx480 and had the ssd7101-a in slot #2 for sometime. Part of the rx 480's cooling fan is covered by the ssd7101-a. Only in the last 2 weeks, after having enabling a 3d desktop background and the added 3d load I can see by trhe gpu voltage increase, have I been trying the rx480 in slot #2 and the ssd7101-a in slot 1.

I haven’t done any thing at all that would place prolonged load on GPU. Since it died, I’m having trouble with using Windows. It won’t load 5870 drivers so screen is wonky and thing in general aren’t working. I’ll check it out when the RX 580 gets here.

 

[tsialex]

It won’t load 5870 drivers so screen is wonky and thing in general aren’t working. I’ll check it out when the RX 580 gets here.

Did you tried running the bootcamp driver install again?

 

[crjackson2134]

Did you tried running the bootcamp driver install again?

No, not yet. Got busy and didn’t try that just yet.

 

[tsialex]

@h9826790

10.13.6

HD 7870 Metal: Supported
GTX 680 Metal: Supported, feature set macOS GPUFamily1 v3

10.14 DP7

HD 7870 Metal: Supported
GTX 680 Metal: Supported, feature set macOS GPUFamily1 v4

 

[MisterAndrew]

Do you have another Metal GPU to do the firmware flash?

Yeah, I have a GTX 680. I’ll try that one.

 

[h9826790]

No, the card is much longer than the 7101A and the fan was mostly exposed to free space. The card also ran on reduced voltage and never ran hot that I’m aware of.

It just gave up the ghost on a reboot surge I think.

I am a little concerned about the new card next to the 7101A however. It will definitely block the rear fan space.

How can I test for heat issue with that card once installed.

The easiest way of course still testing the card in Windows.

The PULSE also come with a way too high voltage. My card default to run at 1.15V and can be downvolt to 1.00V but still fully stable.

However, downvolt the PULSE ROM is not as easy as downvolt the 7970’s ROM. It will be really hard to fix a voltage, but much easier to mod the pointer to get a lower voltage, and then find the highest possible clock speed to for that voltage.

I have no time to make detail test yet, but I can easily find a pointer which make the card run at ~0.96V (but unstable at default 1366MHz). And I quickly test if the card can run stably at 1300MHz, it can. Then I mod the VBIOS to run with that voltage pointer and 1300MHz now.

I am sure I can push up the clock a bit more, 1300MHz is just randomly picked, but I have no interest to spend another 1-2 hours just to let the card run another 2-3% faster. In fact, quick test shows the card deliver similar performance as default setting in 10.13.6 (but about 1% slower in 10.14 beta).

After downvolt, the card draw about 20% less power, and run cooler with lower fan noise. Before undervolt, the card can go above 80C with 60% fan speed in a Unigine Valley test loop (the fan speed is defaulted to lock at 60% until really high temperature by the VBIOS for noise reduction). But after undervolt, the card can just touch 75C (default target temperature) at ~40% fan speed. Quite a big difference.

I can post the “how to” if you interested in that. There is another way just posted by another member about how to perform the soft mod via kext edit, but I am not 100% sure how to do that yet, I only know the “hard” way by modding the VBIOS.

Anyway, you can use terminal command to monitor the RX580 in MacOS. I’ve compared those number with the figure in Windows, they are reliable.

 

[MisterAndrew]

I get the same error with GTX 680. Has Apple made it so only their recommended cards can be used?

 

[tsialex]

I get the same error with GTX 680. Has Apple made it so only their recommended cards can be used?

Your GTX 680 has EFI? People are having trouble with some cards.

I flashed one of my Mac Pros with eVGA GTX680 Mac Edition.

 

[MisterAndrew]

I got the firmware to update on the previous build (18A353d). Good thing I still had a partition with it installed. It installed with the RX Vega. But it still shows 8.0 GT/s for the link speed.
[doublepost=1534399940][/doublepost]

Your GTX 680 has EFI? People are having trouble with some cards.

I flashed one of my Mac Pros with eVGA GTX680 Mac Edition.

Yep, it has Mac Edition rom.
[doublepost=1534401178][/doublepost]I tested the link speed with CL!ing. Vega is PCIe 2.0 now!




Before:


[doublepost=1534401800][/doublepost]Not really sure what all the benefits are though. Compute performance scores are lower now and Luxmark score is about 100 less. Maybe due to the new microcode?

 

[UCDHIUS]

Just flashed, the new firmware with the newest Mojave installer.

ASUS 1080 Ti.

Full 5.0 GT/s

 

[XNorth]

I got the firmware to update on the previous build (18A353d). Good thing I still had a partition with it installed. It installed with the RX Vega. But it still shows 8.0 GT/s for the link speed.

I was able to update the firmware with the current Mojave build, 18A365a, with Vega FE.

 

[jaysee_au]

Just the eventual little black rectangle on Finder file lists, you get used to it, all ports working.

Ah, odd. Have not seen that. Is that Mojave only?

I've flashed a few GTX680 cards. The EVGA PC 2GB card is identical to the Mac version - just needs a quick flash in Windows and off you go. Even only needs 2x 6pin power vs some of the PC ones that need a special 6-8pin power. Never seen that black square issue on my 4+ cards I've flashed...

 

[Squuiid]

I've flashed a few GTX680 cards. The EVGA PC 2GB card is identical to the Mac version - just needs a quick flash in Windows and off you go. Even only needs 2x 6pin power vs some of the PC ones that need a special 6-8pin power. Never seen that black square issue on my 4+ cards I've flashed...

Likewise. I've flashed 3x eVGA 2GB (the reference cooler model) cards and never seen this either. These do end up being identical to the Mac Edition. Perhaps that's it.

 

[crjackson2134]

The easiest way of course still testing the card in Windows.

The PULSE also come with a way too high voltage. My card default to run at 1.15V and can be downvolt to 1.00V but still fully stable.

However, downvolt the PULSE ROM is not as easy as downvolt the 7970’s ROM. It will be really hard to fix a voltage, but much easier to mod the pointer to get a lower voltage, and then find the highest possible clock speed to for that voltage.

I have no time to make detail test yet, but I can easily find a pointer which make the card run at ~0.96V (but unstable at default 1366MHz). And I quickly test if the card can run stably at 1300MHz, it can. Then I mod the VBIOS to run with that voltage pointer and 1300MHz now.

I am sure I can push up the clock a bit more, 1300MHz is just randomly picked, but I have no interest to spend another 1-2 hours just to let the card run another 2-3% faster. In fact, quick test shows the card deliver similar performance as default setting in 10.13.6 (but about 1% slower in 10.14 beta).

After downvolt, the card draw about 20% less power, and run cooler with lower fan noise. Before undervolt, the card can go above 80C with 60% fan speed in a Unigine Valley test loop (the fan speed is defaulted to lock at 60% until really high temperature by the VBIOS for noise reduction). But after undervolt, the card can just touch 75C (default target temperature) at ~40% fan speed. Quite a big difference.

I can post the “how to” if you interested in that. There is another way just posted by another member about how to perform the soft mod via kext edit, but I am not 100% sure how to do that yet, I only know the “hard” way by modding the VBIOS.

Anyway, you can use terminal command to monitor the RX580 in MacOS. I’ve compared those number with the figure in Windows, they are reliable.

Yes, I’d like to know how to do this. I get back to yo about this once the card arrives.

I’d rather do the hardware bios mod than a kext mod. I won’t have to mess with it booting new a OS everytime

 

[LightBulbFun]

for those wondering SL 10.6.8 still boots fine on the new BootROM (although I noticed the last 2 0.0s in the BootROM version get cut off LOL)

I also relised that during one of the more recent OS X Updates apple removed the "processor interconnect speed" string from system profiler...

(BTW I dont know if this has anything to do with the new bootROM but I recently been having a bug where in 10.13.6, it fails to detect when I mouse over something, like for example I could mouse over a text field and it wont recognise it so the curser dosent change to an "I" or if I mouse over my dock where I have dock magnification turned on it dosent magnify I wonder if anyone else has encountered this bug? logging out and back in will normally solve it for that boot session)

 

[MisterAndrew]

I was able to update the firmware with the current Mojave build, 18A365a, with Vega FE.

That's interesting. Does it still have the fan speed issue?

 

[bookemdano]

for those wondering SL 10.6.8 still boots fine on the new BootROM (although I noticed the last 2 0.0s in the BootROM version get cut off LOL)

I also relised that during one of the more recent OS X Updates apple removed the "processor interconnect speed" string from system profiler...


View attachment 776314

(BTW I dont know if this has anything to do with the new bootROM but I recently been having a bug where in 10.13.6, it fails to detect when I mouse over something, like for example I could mouse over a text field and it wont recognise it so the curser dosent change to an "I" or if I mouse over my dock where I have dock magnification turned on it dosent magnify I wonder if anyone else has encountered this bug? logging out and back in will normally solve it for that boot session)

It's pretty cool, really. I believe the MP4,1/5,1 hold the record in terms of sheer number of OS X/macOS versions they're compatible with. The 4,1 can even install Leopard, but I'm not sure if it's blocked from installing on the 5,1 (and 4,1s flashed to 5,1). But even if so, Snow Leopard to Mojave is a whopping nine versions. And call me an optimist but I think based on past history that chances are high next year's release will have the same compatibility list as Mojave. That would be ten versions!

 

[MisterAndrew]

Is Snow Leopard compatible with the new firmware?
[doublepost=1534437687][/doublepost]I bet the next firmware update will have boot screens for the recommended Polaris cards.