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Race to dump the 4870 ROM, Who's first?
- Thread starter MacVidCards
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Hey guys! Been lurking here for a while. A couple of questions if you don't mind.
Can anyone confirm that this card (the 1 gig) works with the flashing method posted here?
I need to order two of the ATI mac power cables, right?
Thanks in advance!!!
For me, it's a few things.
Cost is not really the huge factor. For me, it's knowing I can go and find alternate cards to work in the Mac Pro, so I'm not entirely locked into Apple. Yeah, it would be hard to find a non-apple power supply to fix the Mac Pro if it broke, but for things like ram, video cards, processors, etc, its nice to know I have other alternatives if I need them/want. If I wanted an upgraded card in 3 years, but Apple stopped selling cards that worked in the Mac Pro, at least I may have alternatives available to me.
The other factor is the fact that I may not want to be 'locked in'. If I bought an Apple 4870, I may not be able to ever use it in anything other than the Mac Pro. Here, I have a 4870 in my Mac Pro that works great for me now. But if I do want to build a dedicated gaming computer at a later date, I can reflash and put it in a PC. That may not be an option with the Apple 4870, you'd have to find a PC rom that is compatible with the Apple 4870 hardware.
Yeah, there are some drawbacks. For instance, the issue with this is Dual Link DVI doesn't work on both ports and no analog signals. Well, that's not entirely a big deal. If I don't need analog (which I don't) or a mini DisplayPort connection, this proves actually to be better for me.
With the Apple 4870, if you want to drive 2 Dual Link monitors (2 30" monitors) you would need to also buy the mini DisplayPort to Dual Link adapter for $99. That makes the card all that more expensive. Heck, even to drive 2 DVI monitors, you need to spend another $29 on an adapter to get you from mini DisplayPort to DVI. I'd probably rather take that $99 and invest a little more and buy another video card, such as the 2600XT or NV120 (if it is proven to work in the older Mac Pro's)
Then there is what macz1 said. It's about enjoying playing around with electronics and seeing what you can do. Granted, I haven't taken it as far as others with this card such as hacking roms and bulding my own roms (although I am willing to learn how to do that, and have done that with other things). There's also this small little guilty pleasure you get when you are able to make something work the way it wasn't intended to work. This is why (some) people build Hackintoshes. I've done it. But just to play around. I wouldn't do it for anything other than for fun. I own a Mac Pro, Macbook Pro, and iMac. I built a Hackintosh before Intel macs were available. I bought a Mac Pro as my first Intel Mac as soon as they were available.
And then it's also availability. Much like when the 8800 GT was announced/launched, the 4870 isn't readily available. I can't just walk in an Apple store today and get a 4870. So, we find alternatives. To tell you the truth, if Apple had the 4870 in the store in a reasonable amount of time, I would have just paid the premium and got it from Apple. But they still aren't available in the store, or even online outside of ordering them in a new Mac Pro. This is the reason I now have a flashed 4870 and a flashed 8800 GT. Well, along with all of the other reasons above.
Well, it should be around 70 Watt Idle, 135 Watt normal 3D and 200 Watt with full load (Peak) for a standard 4870 card.
PCI-express could deliver around 75 Watt on each PCIe-socket (also Apple claims max. 300 Watt for 4 PCIe sockets), so there is a real need for the two additional PCIe power connections, at least under full load of the card!
Bye
1 GB successes yet?
so, after reading pipomolo's post about creating custom roms, i'm about ready to just buy a 1 GB card and get to hacking, but i thought I'd check again to see if anyone has tried a 1 gb card yet. I know there were posts saying people were going to try it, but has anyone reported back yet with results?
thanks
so, after reading pipomolo's post about creating custom roms, i'm about ready to just buy a 1 GB card and get to hacking, but i thought I'd check again to see if anyone has tried a 1 gb card yet. I know there were posts saying people were going to try it, but has anyone reported back yet with results?
thanks
awesome deal on a sapphire card
in store pick up only, but if you're near one of their locations this is a great price. $175 for a 1 gb 4870.
i'll be creating a custom rom from that card tonight, i'll report back tomorrow
in store pick up only, but if you're near one of their locations this is a great price. $175 for a 1 gb 4870.
i'll be creating a custom rom from that card tonight, i'll report back tomorrow
Awesome! There's one of those 3 miles from work...if you can get your build work I'll go pick one up...tyvm!
Thank you for trying this ! I was starting to get bored with people asking the same question over and over again ...
I think that the 1GB HD4870 works on hackintoshes, so there is good hope that it will work on a Mac Pro with its original BIOS + EFI.
Before flashing, check the ROM size with Atiflash. If it is less than 128KBytes (1Mbit), don't flash your card.
If it is 128KB, you should make your own BIOS follow pipomolo's instructions, on page 14 I think.
Just received that same model from Newegg today. Unfortunately, I won't have any time to do anything with it until likely tomorrow evening. Going to try and at least get a copy of the ROM off of it tonight if possible so I can tinker with it at work tomorrow.
no no, if he follow this, he will end up with pc only card, because efi part has device-id matching, he needs to use bios i posted earlier, but i doubt he will need it, because most likely the card has 64k rom
Radeon 4870 1GB Success
Hello,
I just bought the Sapphire HD 4870 1GB this afternoon, and, using the method outlined by pipomolo42 above, I've successfully converted it to a EFI card ! The whole GB of RAM is recognized, fan control works, QE/CI works, etc.
Given the success of pipomolo42's process, I wouldn't be surprised if someone was able to convert both the cards in a 4870x2, for instance. Very good news indeed...
Next up : buying a second 4870 for Crossfire... I'm pretty sure the auxiliary PCIe power plugs will handle the load, as I've been running a 8800GT+9800GX2 on them for more than six months now.
AG
PS : I've attached the ROM I used to reflash the card.
Hello,
I just bought the Sapphire HD 4870 1GB this afternoon, and, using the method outlined by pipomolo42 above, I've successfully converted it to a EFI card ! The whole GB of RAM is recognized, fan control works, QE/CI works, etc.
Given the success of pipomolo42's process, I wouldn't be surprised if someone was able to convert both the cards in a 4870x2, for instance. Very good news indeed...
Next up : buying a second 4870 for Crossfire... I'm pretty sure the auxiliary PCIe power plugs will handle the load, as I've been running a 8800GT+9800GX2 on them for more than six months now.
AG
PS : I've attached the ROM I used to reflash the card.
hey AG, which model is that? I bought a sapphire at lunch today, but i'm having trouble with the shell variable in pipomolo's commands, so it'd be nice if i could just use that rom.
the model i have is PN 288-20e85-130sa
SKU# 11133-04-20r
thanks!!
the model i have is PN 288-20e85-130sa
SKU# 11133-04-20r
thanks!!
I'm actually thinking of grabbing a 4850 to do Crossfire. Cheaper, only need it in Windows anyway so I don't care about flashing, and only needs one power adapter which I'm hoping to string down from the optical bay.
Granted, 4870+4850 in Crossfire run more like 2 4850's in crossfire, that's still quicker than a single 4870 so that should work nice. 2 4870's are much faster, but create even more heat/need even more power.
TYVM for this!!! My power cables will be here tomorrow so i'll finally be able to use the card
Just out of curiosity...did you flash this via a DOS boot method or from bootcamp with winatiflash?
But has anyone a clue how to get the card to output an analog signal in OS X? Is there hope that this issue cuold be fixed in 10.5.7 when the newest and official drivers will be included in the OS?
Unfortunately I need this %&ç(/%** analog output. This is the only problem which prevents me from getting a 1GB Radeon...
Unfortunately I need this %&ç(/%** analog output. This is the only problem which prevents me from getting a 1GB Radeon...
Further remarks :
The P/N on my card is 113-B7710C-176. The primary port can output dual-DVI;
when I connected a second monitor to the other port, it actually stopped recognizing the one connected to the first port (weird). So it seems only one screen can be driven at this point... I haven't been able to check for analog output, for lack of CRT.
I flashed the card by installing FreeDOS on a FAT32 BootCamp partition to which I had added atiflash.exe. To me, this remains the safest solution...
I really think you should rather incorporate the EFI BIOS in your card's ROM. Are you sure your shell is set to bash ?
AG
The P/N on my card is 113-B7710C-176. The primary port can output dual-DVI;
when I connected a second monitor to the other port, it actually stopped recognizing the one connected to the first port (weird). So it seems only one screen can be driven at this point... I haven't been able to check for analog output, for lack of CRT.
I flashed the card by installing FreeDOS on a FAT32 BootCamp partition to which I had added atiflash.exe. To me, this remains the safest solution...
elvisizer said:
I really think you should rather incorporate the EFI BIOS in your card's ROM. Are you sure your shell is set to bash ?
AG
But has anyone a clue how to get the card to output an analog signal in OS X? Is there hope that this issue cuold be fixed in 10.5.7 when the newest and official drivers will be included in the OS?
Unfortunately I need this %&ç(/%** analog output. This is the only problem which prevents me from getting a 1GB Radeon...
Well, it seems that Apple's mini displayport to vga adapter had a firmware update recently ...
Would it be realistic to say that maybe it contains a microcontroller that handle the Digital to Analog conversion, and that the video card is unable to do it because it has purposely broken drivers ?