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Problems with XFX R7950 Graphics in MacPro 4.1

GhostoftheMac

GhostoftheMac

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 9, 2015
11
1
Hey there,

I installed an XFX R7950 Double Dissipation graphics card in my MacPro 4.1 and it works perfectly with boot screen showing up.
BUT:
1. After booting the fans run very fast and loud and won't slow down until I e.g. play ModernCombat Domination. After a minute of gaming the fans slow down and the card is running silently so I can quit the game and do what i originally intended to do. But i do not always want to start a game after booting just to make my graphics card run silently.
Has anyone a solution?

2. I can't use the HDMI port on Macintosh (on Bootcamp Windows7 it works perfectly) and the second DVI-Port of the card. Is there a way to make these work?

Thanks a lot!
 

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Thank you for responding!

Sadly, I don't know how it was flashed. I bought it on eBay the way it is. It said it was modified to work with MacPro and Mac OS 10.8 or higher without any drivers. And it does, but the fan problem is simply annoying. The not working ports, too.

Do you know how I can unflash it? Or flash it with another rom?
 
We don't carry oddball Tahiti cards like that, XFX cheaped out on many of them, the place where the rom switch should be is still there and labelled "1-2" but they leave switch and 2nd EEPROM off, for a savings of upwards of a dollar. (We sold those cards briefly but decided to stick with cards that had functioning HDMI)

Contact the vendor and ask if they wrote the rom using original card rom or just grabbed a generic one.

Really all between you and the vendor. You paid for service, request it from them.
 
Last edited:
Thank you!

You're completely right, I just looked at the card and as you said they left out the switch.
Furthermore I just wrote a mail to the vendor and hope for a useful response.

I really should have been more carefully choosing the graphics card but I don't know much about this stuff and did not want to modify a card by myself.
 
Only the card's fan spin up? But not the PCIe fan?

And your screen capture is normal, the 2nd item that shows driver not installed is for the HDMIAudio. Nothing to do with the DVI port.
 
Hi h9826790!
Just made some tests and it's actually NOT the graphics card fans spinning up and making much noise but the power supply fan!
Though the graphics card seems to cause the problem because with the old nVidia 120GT the power supply fan ran silently. The XFX needs two power supply cables while the nVidia had none.
Perhaps the power consumption of the XFX card is a problem?
But this does not explain why the fan runs silently after gaming a minute or having two displays connected.
I'm pretty confused...

Screen capture is normal by the way.
 
The power supply fan and PCIe fan spin up like nutso on first boot with any non-Apple card. Just put it under a little stress, even for 5-10 seconds, and everything will spin down properly. That'll persist through a reboot, even, but if you power off the machine you'll need to use the GPU again after starting it back up.

I have an MSI Radeon 7950 that I flashed myself (dumped the BIOS and made the ROM using the scripts on Netkas's forum). It has the switch, but it only has one DVI (which works fine), and the HDMI port is fine as well.

I was afraid to flash my own, but I had a bad experience with an eBay vendor. I also bought an XFX 7950 Double Dissipation that had been flashed by an eBay seller, where it was advertised that the HDMI port and one of the DVI ports didn't work in OS X (but did in Windows), and after about 5 minutes in a game, it started artifacting badly and the artifacts never went away. The seller really ticked me off - he said something like "not all the 7950s I sell work well in games, but they're fine for everything else" and he offered to send me an HIS after I sent teh XFX back. He got bad feedback from me, because the garbage he told me in a message wasn't discussed up front. I have a feeling he just flashed all the cards with a "one size fits all" ROM instead of doing it right. I said no, you can just refund me and I'll do it myself. Fortunately the seller refunded me right away after he got my return and I bought the MSI that I'm using now for about $60 less.

Moral of the story is that not all eBay sellers are created equal and not all cards or manufacturers are, either. The flashing process, as it turns out, is pretty easy honestly.
 
DougTheImpaler said:
The power supply fan and PCIe fan spin up like nutso on first boot with any non-Apple card. Just put it under a little stress, even for 5-10 seconds, and everything will spin down properly. That'll persist through a reboot, even, but if you power off the machine you'll need to use the GPU again after starting it back up.
Click to expand...

Thanks!
I don't think that it's normal that the fans do not spin down because my brother has a nVidia Geforce GTX 680 in his MacPro and all fans run silently after booting.
What is your method of putting the GPU under stress by the way?
In Mountain Lion it was enough to activate the screen saver or to start a video and the fans spin down. Though in Yosemite this does not work anymore...

When I boot Windows the fans spin up as on Macintosh but start spinning down after some seconds automatically. Why not on Macintosh as well?

Except of the fan issue my XFX R7950 is running fine, especially in games. No image artifacts at all.
 
Okay, thank you! I've got Luxmark and I'll try it out on the weekend because currently my MacPro is dissasambled a bit. I removed the power supply to clean it from dust. ;)

Still, is there a way to activate the HDMI Port and HDMI Audio on Macintosh with this card?
 
GhostoftheMac said:
Still, is there a way to activate the HDMI Port and HDMI Audio on Macintosh with this card?
Click to expand...

Nope. There is very few cards with working HDMI after the flash and XcrapFX isn't one of them. You can use it unflashed to get HDMI working in OS X. Otherwise it will work only in Winblows.
 
Just want to give you a short update.

After realizing it's not the graphics card fans spinning up but the PSU and PCIe fans, I read a lot of threads discussing this issue.
It is definitely not an XFX specific problem as is occurs on Mac Pros 4,1 and 5,1 with GTX 680 (even Mac Edition!) and other un-supported cards as well.

So I made a list of potential solutions I want to try and hopefully find a solution that I can be happy with.
 
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