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Nvidia Titan/Kepler EFI ROM for Mac Pro

Z

zebity

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 1, 2008
71
17
Australia
Hi Mac Pro / Nvidia Enthusiasts,

I have not posted for some time after an aborted attempt to change ROM chips on EVGA card, which resulted in much wasted time.

Since my last post I have traded my prior Mac Pro 3,1 for a Mac Pro 5,1 with 12 cores. In doing the upgrade I swapped out my Quadro FX 4800 for Mac graphics card from the 3,1 Mac Pro and installed it into the Mac Pro 5,1 .

This card is now a few generations behind but getting newer gen board was not a priority, however things have changed.

I recently got an LG 88LM9600 4K TV which has HDMI 1.4a input for 4K content. Non of the current cope of Mac Pro compatible graphics card seem to have 4K, so I have installed an Nvidia GeForce Titan which provides 2 x DVI, 1 x 1.4a HDMI and 1 x 1.2 DisplayPort.

I have installed the Titan in my Mac Pro 5,1 using mini PCI to 8 PIN power cable (I have read prior post warning about burning out the system board due to Titan exceeding Wattage spec of Mac Pro, but based on reading other posts decided that this was a low risk).

Using the Nvidia Web Drivers with OS X 10.8.4 the Mac Pro boots up ok (without EFI screen) and reports graphics board with 6GB RAM:

macpro-titan-01.jpg


I will test with 4K output on the weekend.

Having not played around with ROM flashing recently can anyone (MacVidCards, Rominator, Netkas ??) advise if someone has managed to get EFI64 ROM going with Titan Graphics Card.

I kind of like to have access to my boot screen for diagnostics and other reasons.

And I am not able to get PCI Card info from "About This Mac" results at present, I suspect, due to having a PCI board installed without EFI.

I am happy to do a bit of experimentation/testing if needed.

Cheers,

Zebity
(Mac Pro 5,1 12 Core with Nvidia Titan, numerous mini Mac, MacBook Pro 15" Retina Display)
 
Titan with EFI

Please make sure that the EEPROM chip on titan is 4096K.
I assume that there is only 2048K EEPROM on Titan card.
The titan rom with EFI part is more than 2048K.
So before flashing titan rom with EFI part, it needs to solder 4096K EEPROM chip.
 
Hi Zebity,
I hope you could help me with a question I have about the Titan performance under OSX. I posted the following question in this thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1605781/
And it would be a big help to me if you could post a screenshot of the CUDA-Z performance of your Titan in OSX. The only thing you would have to do is download the standalone CUDA-Z program from here: http://cuda-z.softpedia.com and post a screenshot from the performance tab. Should look like screenshot 3 from here http://mac.softpedia.com/progScreenshots/CUDA-Z-Screenshot-37442.html

This would really help me to decide if a GTX Titan is the right card for me. I am sorry I can not help you with your EFI ROM question :-(

Michiel.
 
CUDA-Z Screen Shots

Hi Michiel,

no problems if you cannot help with EFI.

Here are screen snaps from CUDA-Z:

cuda-z-titan-1.jpg


cuda-z-titan-2.jpg


I will check ROM details over the weekend (ie what does Titan currently have and what is the ROM chip size.

Cheers,

Zebity.
 
zebity said:
I will check ROM details over the weekend (ie what does Titan currently have and what is the ROM chip size.
Click to expand...
Although fouel is correct by pointing out that you need to solder a bigger EEPROM to accommodate the additional EFI code, the numbers are wrong. The original Titan ROM is about 229KB on a 256KB chip, the additional EFI from the GTX 680 Mac Edition is about 34KB. So you need a 512KB EEPROM for the BIOS + Mac EFI, assuming the EFI hack already exists. MacVidCards not long ago mentioned that he was still working on the Titan EFI, so no idea when it would be available.
 
xcodeSyn said:
Although fouel is correct by pointing out that you need to solder a bigger EEPROM to accommodate the additional EFI code, the numbers are wrong. The original Titan ROM is about 229KB on a 256KB chip, the additional EFI from the GTX 680 Mac Edition is about 34KB. So you need a 512KB EEPROM for the BIOS + Mac EFI, assuming the EFI hack already exists. MacVidCards not long ago mentioned that he was still working on the Titan EFI, so no idea when it would be available.
Click to expand...

Hi, I mean that it needs 4M size EEPROM chip like those :
Atmel AT25DF041 4096Kx1S 2.3-3.6V, 256B page, 4k blk, ID=(1F,4401)
SST SST25LF040 4096Kx1S 3.0-3.6V, 256B page, 4k blk, ID=(BF,0044)
use nvflash -h to get the Supported EEPROM's.


After put EFI part into Titan bios, the new rom size is 279KB so could not be written into 256K(2048K) EEPROM as used on the current Titan card.
So you need to replace larger EEPROM like 512K(4096K or 4MB).

P.S.
Do you guys think someone will post the titan mac rom on the thread ?
I doubt it.
 

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zebity said:
Hi Michiel,

no problems if you cannot help with EFI.

Here are screen snaps from CUDA-Z:

Image

Image

I will check ROM details over the weekend (ie what does Titan currently have and what is the ROM chip size.

Cheers,

Zebity.
Click to expand...

Hi Zebity,
thanks for the screenshots! so it seems that like under Windows by default not all FP64 cores are enabled reducing the double precision float performance to ~200GFlops instead of the the ~1500 which the card is capable of.

So the next question will be is how to enable all the FP64 cores under OSX. On Windows it is in the driver control panel, under Linux as I understand it one can enable them through the nvidia-settings tool available on the NVIDIA ftp server (wonder if you can compile this on the mac.....).

Cheers,
Michiel.
 
fouel said:
Hi, I mean that it needs 4M size EEPROM chip like those :
Atmel AT25DF041 4096Kx1S 2.3-3.6V, 256B page, 4k blk, ID=(1F,4401)
SST SST25LF040 4096Kx1S 3.0-3.6V, 256B page, 4k blk, ID=(BF,0044)
use nvflash -h to get the Supported EEPROM's.
Click to expand...
Sorry, I misunderstood that you meant 4096Kbit, which is 512KByte.
 
The Titan ROM Size & Contents

ROM Hackers,

after much stuffing around, I managed to create a 2.88MB Boot Floppy image, onto which i put NVFLASH version 5.128 and then cut this onto bootable CD-ROM so I could have a look at ROM.

Yes the TITAN has 256KB ROM, but this has both x86 (BIOS) and an EFI section in it:

The EFI section is Microsoft universal EFI and takes up over half the space. To create a Mac EFI64 ROM you should only need to the x86 part and then replace the Microsoft uEFI part. So could you create a EFI64 ROM without need for soldering a new chip on?

Here are details from NVFLASH:

Code: 
# nvflash --pciblocks

NVIDIA Firmware Update Utility (Version 5.128)
Adaptor: GK1xx  (10DE, 1005, 1043, 8451) H:--:NRM B:05,PCI,D:00,F00
The display may go *BLANK* on and off for up to 10 seconds during the access to the
EEPROM depending on your display adaptor and output device.
Identifying EEPROM...
EEPROM ID (C8,4012) : GD GD25Q20 2.7-3.6V 2048Kx1S, page
Reading adaptor firmware image...
Location             Size Type
000000:00F3FF  62464 x86
00F400:01F9FF  67072 EFI

I will check but I am pretty sure that all previous NVIDIA ROMS I looked at never had the Microsoft EFI part in them (It reports UEFI Signer as Microsoft Corporation.
Reported Total ROM size is: 232448 bytes.

Thoughts...

Cheers,

Zebity.
(Mac Pro (5,1) 12 Core with Titan)
 
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zebity said:
ROM Hackers,

after much stuffing around, I managed to create a 2.88MB Boot Floppy image, onto which i put NVFLASH version 5.128 and then cut this onto bootable CD-ROM so I could have a look at ROM.

Yes the TITAN has 256KB ROM, but this has both x86 (BIOS) and an EFI section in it:

The EFI section is Microsoft universal EFI and takes up over half the space. To create a Mac EFI64 ROM you should only need to the x86 part and then replace the Microsoft uEFI part. So could you create a EFI64 ROM without need for soldering a new chip on?

Here are details from NVFLASH:

Code: 
# nvflash --pciblocks

NVIDIA Firmware Update Utility (Version 5.128)
Adaptor: GK1xx  (10DE, 1005, 1043, 8451) H:--:NRM B:05,PCI,D:00,F00
The display may go *BLANK* on and off for up to 10 seconds during the access to the
EEPROM depending on your display adaptor and output device.
Identifying EEPROM...
EEPROM ID (C8,4012) : GD GD25Q20 2.7-3.6V 2048Kx1S, page
Reading adaptor firmware image...
Location             Size Type
000000:00F3FF  62464 x86
00F400:01F9FF  67072 EFI

I will check but I am pretty sure that all previous NVIDIA ROMS I looked at never had the Microsoft EFI part in them (It reports UEFI Signer as Microsoft Corporation.
Reported Total ROM size is: 232448 bytes.

Thoughts...

Cheers,

Zebity.
(Mac Pro (5,1) 12 Core with Titan)
Click to expand...

Need to replace larger EEPROM chip.
In titan mac rom,
000000:00F3FF 62464 x86
00F400:02C3FF 118784 EFI ---> EFI part , not UEFI.

Above size is over 256K(2048K) so need larger EEPROM.
 
Why is EFI now so large?

Fouel,

why is EFI64 so large?

Here are historical records:

I have done done historical analysis on Mac EFI ROM size here are results:

Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT (Mac Version): ROM Size: 1024K BITS, Image: 58880 x86 / 67584 EFI
Nvidia Quadro FX 5600 (Mac Version): ROM Size: 1024K BITS, Image: 53248 x86 / 67584 EFI
Nvidia Quadro FX 5600 (PC Version, Flashable): ROM Size: 1024K BITS, Image: 57856 x86
Nvidia/EVGA GeForce GTX 285 (Mac Version): ROM Size: 2048K BITS, Image: 64512 x86 / 87552 EFI
Nvidia/EVGA GeForce GTX 285 FTW Edition (PC Version, Solder): 512K BITS, Image: 64512 x86
Nvida GeForce Titan (PC Version. Flashable ??): ROM Size: 2048K BITS, Image: 62464 x86 / 67072 EFI

So speculating a Mac EFI ROM for Titan would be approximately: 62464 (x86) + 87552 (EFI64) = 150016 (Bytes) = 1172K BITS .

So if you replace the Microsoft UEFI with Mac EFI64 could you create a Titan EFI ROM without need to solder?

Cheers,

Zebity.
 
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zebity said:
Fouel,

why is EFI64 so large?

Here are historical records:

I have done done historical analysis on Mac EFI ROM size here are results:

Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT (Mac Version): ROM Size: 1024K BITS, Image: 58880 x86 / 67584 EFI
Nvidia Quadro FX 5600 (Mac Version): ROM Size: 1024K BITS, Image: 53248 x86 / 67584 EFI
Nvidia Quadro FX 5600 (PC Version, Flashable): ROM Size: 1024K BITS, Image: 57856 x86
Nvidia/EVGA GeForce GTX 285 (Mac Version): ROM Size: 2048K BITS, Image: 64512 x86 / 87552 EFI
Nvidia/EVGA GeForce GTX 285 FTW Edition (PC Version, Solder): 512K BITS, Image: 64512 x86
Nvida GeForce Titan (PC Version. Flashable ??): ROM Size: 2048K BITS, Image: 62464 x86 / 67072 EFI

So speculating a Mac EFI ROM for Titan would be approximately: 62464 (x86) + 87552 (EFI64) = 150016 (Bytes) = 1172K BITS .

So if you replace the Microsoft UEFI with Mac EFI64 could you create a Titan EFI ROM without need to solder?

Cheers,

Zebity.
Click to expand...
You have done to analyze those Mac EFI ROMs.
Those EFI ROMs can't use on the Titan.
Why don't analyze GTX 680 Mac EFI data ?
If do that, you will find the answer.
 
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Happy to test, but unfortunately I do not have a GTX 680

Fouel,

My point is that if you removed the UEFI part of the code then you could do Mac Titan EFI without need for soldering.

The UEFI code is useless for Mac and most PCs.

The required code is the x86 and EFI64 portions.

I do not have either an official Mac GTX 680 ROM or a hacked Titan example to test with.

Cheers,


Zebity
 
Titan's BIOS UEFI part is 67072 bytes, GTX 680 EFI part is almost twice as that.
You need 512K chip.
 
What you aren't seeing or have explained to you is that there are now 5 parts to a Kepler ROM.

The part being referred to as 386 part at approx 64K is just the BIOS piece, 1 of 5 parts.

There is an opener section before this at either 1024K or 1536K, then the PC BIOS, then the EFI/UEFI, then another part like open but around 35K, then a "Certificate" at the end.

All told, these add up to 235K in a Titan.

Even removing UEFI doesn't make enough space.

Solder or find a way to remove some fat, only options.

And the tricky part is that many mods will make ROM and card INVISIBLE.

The 5 pieces are interlocked in a variety of ways, removing/replacing one part causes breaks in the chain.

Sometimes this means OSX boot locks, sometimes it means Windows breaks.

Good luck.
 
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Hopes dashed

Hi MacVidCards (romulator?),

You have dashed my hopes for a software only solution :(

I have no desire to go down soldering route again. You have number of modded adapters on ebay, but no titans.

Are you doing modded titans?

I am going to test my titan with 4K TV and based on results of that will decide if I want to continue to look for efi64 solution or simply put titan in Linux box and use that as 4k player.

Cheers,

Zebity.
 
zebity said:
Hi MacVidCards (romulator?),

You have dashed my hopes for a software only solution :(

I have no desire to go down soldering route again. You have number of modded adapters on ebay, but no titans.

Are you doing modded titans?

I am going to test my titan with 4K TV and based on results of that will decide if I want to continue to look for efi64 solution or simply put titan in Linux box and use that as 4k player.

Cheers,

Zebity.
Click to expand...

It works in 10.8.4 or 10.9, just no boot screen.

May have news on EFI soon, always hopeful.

Have a design gig for next week or so, won't try again til done.
 
No 4K :-(

Hi MacVidCards,

yes I have it working with no boot screen with Mac OS 10.8.4 and the Nvidia Web Drivers.

I have just tested with Titan -> LG 84LM9600 to see if I can get 4K resolution via HDMI 1.4a, but no luck.

The display preferences only allows maximum of 1080p resolution, when it should be going the way up to 4K.

Has anyone out there had experience with Window or Linux with Titan and 4K display?

Is the reason I do not get 4K display choice because of limit in Mac OS X, due to not having option via Nvidia Drivers or some HDMI hardware handshake issue?

I would be interested to hear if anyone has managed to get 4K from Mac Pro with any graphics card and HDMI 1.4a.

I may have to go and spend some money on check PC to see if I can get 4K with Titan from that.

Cheers,

Zebity
(Mac Pro 5,1 with Nvidia Titan, n x mini Mac, MacBook Pro Retina Display)
 
fouel said:
Hi, I mean that it needs 4M size EEPROM chip like those :
Atmel AT25DF041 4096Kx1S 2.3-3.6V, 256B page, 4k blk, ID=(1F,4401)
SST SST25LF040 4096Kx1S 3.0-3.6V, 256B page, 4k blk, ID=(BF,0044)
use nvflash -h to get the Supported EEPROM's.
Click to expand...

Any idea where I can find one of these EEPROM on the net?
 
10.9.3 update adds 4k support

Zebity, 4k display support was added in latest Mavericks update.

Good luck,
Seb


zebity said:
Hi MacVidCards,

yes I have it working with no boot screen with Mac OS 10.8.4 and the Nvidia Web Drivers.

I have just tested with Titan -> LG 84LM9600 to see if I can get 4K resolution via HDMI 1.4a, but no luck.

The display preferences only allows maximum of 1080p resolution, when it should be going the way up to 4K.

Has anyone out there had experience with Window or Linux with Titan and 4K display?

Is the reason I do not get 4K display choice because of limit in Mac OS X, due to not having option via Nvidia Drivers or some HDMI hardware handshake issue?

I would be interested to hear if anyone has managed to get 4K from Mac Pro with any graphics card and HDMI 1.4a.

I may have to go and spend some money on check PC to see if I can get 4K with Titan from that.

Cheers,

Zebity
(Mac Pro 5,1 with Nvidia Titan, n x mini Mac, MacBook Pro Retina Display)
Click to expand...
 
compatible ROM-CHIP for GTX285

Hello

I have a GTX285.I would like to replace the ROM-CHIP.Which Model of Chips can i use it.My GTX285 has the Chip MX25L1005 1024K X 1S

Can i use this Chip:

MX25L8005 (8Mbit)
 
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