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Race to dump the 4870 ROM, Who's first?

The Rominator said:
Well, if it's CLOAKED, I doubt we'll even see it.:D

Seriously, unless there is a night and day difference, it will likely not be a popular flash.

FI, the 9800GT is a die-shrunk version of 8800GT. So, with a little brain power and some research you can make a Mac 9800GT that is faster than a retail 8800GT......but nobody bothers as it is at best 10-15% faster.

Good thing about 4890 coming out is 4870 will no longer be "the top" and perhaps prices on them will drop as the PC Poser crowd drops them as last year's style.
Click to expand...

Us "PC Poser" folks are the ones keeping the market going for GPU companies to keep working on better/faster video cards. :p
 
I have made a decision

I'm pretty sure I'm going to get the 4870 X2. The only thing that I'm not sure how to do is power it. I realize that my current 4870 card is taking up both the power ports. What needs to be done to power another 4870 card?
 
GodWhomIsMike said:
Us "PC Poser" folks are the ones keeping the market going for GPU companies to keep working on better/faster video cards. :p
Click to expand...

Yes, and thank GOD for people like you !!!

We would buy the latest and greatest too, if we could.

Part of me wonders if Apple rushed 4870 to beat the arrival of 4890?

We will have the "latest & greatest" for about 3 weeks...then once again we will have "last years". Oh well.......

As far as powering the 4870 x2, look in the Dual 4870's in a 2009 thread.

There isn't a good answer....but if you have Applecare, you have fewer worries than the rest of us.

"Yes, Mr. Genius, I was just surfing the web on my Pro when ALL OF A SUDDEN several traces on the PCB BURST INTO FLAMES !!!"
 
FYI, the 4890 is on the RV790 core, not the RV770 core, so it is doubtful you can flash one card to the other. Also, the 4890 comes clocked stock at 850mhz, but benchmark leaks show it clocking to over 1000 MHz on stock already :eek:

I've come to the conclusion that the soundest evidence that ATI is about to unleash new cards is when Apple adopts their recent ones
 
chewietobbacca said:
FYI, the 4890 is on the RV790 core, not the RV770 core, so it is doubtful you can flash one card to the other.
I've come to the conclusion that the soundest evidence that ATI is about to unleash new cards is when Apple adopts their recent ones
Click to expand...

May still be possible. By changing device id and clock speeds you can cross-flash the R300, R350, and R360 cores. Different name does not always mean "new".

At least we had Video Card Parity for a couple weeks.
 
I think there is a chance to get the 4890 working in OS X. The Radeon 4890 does not seem to differ much from the 4870 besides the higher clocks. I think it should work with the same drivers as the 4870 and the ROM-modification procedure we used to get running the various versions of the 4870 could probably work as well for this card...
 
The Rominator said:
As far as powering the 4870 x2, look in the Dual 4870's in a 2009 thread.

There isn't a good answer....but if you have Applecare, you have fewer worries than the rest of us.
Click to expand...

The FSP booster X5 will do the job. 2 x 6 pin and 2 x 8 pin http://www.fspgroupusa.com/BOOSTERX.asp

I will be using the smaller version (x3) to do crossfire on to apple 4870s.

more info on the dual cards thread
 
matthew.russo said:
The FSP booster X5 will do the job. 2 x 6 pin and 2 x 8 pin http://www.fspgroupusa.com/BOOSTERX.asp

I will be using the smaller version (x3) to do crossfire on to apple 4870s.

more info on the dual cards thread
Click to expand...
Hmm... interesting. Would that be installed in one of the SuperDrive bays? The only problem with that is that I already have two SuperDrives installed in my Mac Pro. Oh well, guess one will have to take a back seat. Its good however to see that there is better solution then just splitting the booster ports on the Mac Pro. I wasn't so content with that idea. Now that there is talk of a 4890 card, I'm having doubts on going ahead with the 4870 X2. Will the 4890 have just one or two cores in it? I guess I'll have to do more research.
 
netkas said:
our irc has huge netsplit atm so dont go there :)

btw, I found out why my natit didnt work at all on macpro:
i forgot to remove this from plist

<key>IONameMatch</key>
<string>display</string>

here is fixed natit, for tests with dual dvi, and new motmot pkg:
Click to expand...

Sorry for newbie question: how do I apply the natit?

Thanks,
zoppa
P.S.: Found a PC to revive my 4870 Sapphire SKU 11133-03-20R! :))
P.P.S: @pipomolo42: is there any news about sapphire.rom from https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/7288415/ ?
My 10.5.6 MacPro (early 2008 +10.5.7beta driver) GUI (mouse movement) freezes every 2-4 seconds for some 1/10 s. On bootcamp Vista64 no probs like this.
Strange, I wonder if anyone is experiencing similar issue?
 
zoppa: http://******.com/?q=kexthelper

-----


i waited half year for rv770 support in osx, so i dont think we will see rv790 support anytime soon (4890),rv740 is more likely, it's supported in x2000.kext already ( accelerator, which provides ogl/qe/ci)
 
Thanks netkas!

What about the System Profilers view on PCI?
I got Link Speed 2.5 GT/s. On ATI 2600 it was 5 GT/s !?
 

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from the uk

i have flashed that same card working in 1,1 mac pro using pimpilo42s hybrid rom posted earlier
 
zoppa said:
Thanks netkas!

What about the System Profilers view on PCI?
I got Link Speed 2.5 GT/s. On ATI 2600 it was 5 GT/s !?
Click to expand...

The same here - 2.5 GT/s. Other question: what about the first line, No driver installed for ATY/MotmotParent. What does is mean ?
Is this also true for real Apple 4870 cards (or the cards which works here with both DVI-connectors same time). ?

Bye, jaberwocky
 
Bye Jove, I think you may be on to something !!!

I just checked that PCI line with both of the 4870's I have here.

My original Diamond running the OEM ROM and the newer Diamond running a custom patched ROM.

Sure enough, the one that can run both screens doesn't have that incidence of the "no driver loaded" but the one that crashes on second DVI connect DOES have it.

I know that in the device tree each card exists as a parent and then as an "A" and a "B" where they two "children" are the two display channels. So for some reason, only one is lining up with the driver and the second is NOT.

Would be great if one or both of our geniuses could come by and have a look. I am sure it has something to do with that MDP nonsense.

I have developer tools on this, so if anyone wants an output from IO tree, or whatever, just say the word.

I have a feeling we may be on to the Dual Port solution !

I am a little concerned about the 2.5Gts thing. I have noticed that the 4870 doesn't bench any faster in OSX than a 9800GT/8800GTS while it screams past them in WIndows. I assumed it was immature OSX drivers.

We have to also remember that we are running these cards in an OS not specifically designed for them.

I am still hopeful that 10.5.7 will bring some changes.

EDIT: Tallest Skil just pointed out in another thread that 2.5GTs is throughput spec of PCIE 1.1 and 5.0 is 2.0.

So we may have yet ANOTHER clue.

If a 2.0 capable machine is running this card at 1.1 then obviously there are still things that driver can improve.
 

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The Rominator said:
I am a little concerned about the 2.5Gts thing. I have noticed that the 4870 doesn't bench any faster in OSX than a 9800GT/8800GTS while it screams past them in WIndows. I assumed it was immature OSX drivers.
Click to expand...

I don't think the fault for the poor benchmark lies in our flashed card with custom roms, as the benchmarking sites are using official Apple cards and they are still seeing poor performance. I think we're still dealing with immature drivers...
 
v0n said:
Thanks to pipomolo42 fantastic instructions and help with original rom, here's my slightly modified ROM for Sapphire HD 4870 DDR5 GDDR5 2DVI TVO, the one with the RV770XT chipset, part number 188-1E85-001SA, SKU: 11133-00-20R .

Default clock speeds are returned to Sapphire 4870 Toxic values: Memory frequency is 1000Mhz. Core frequency in 3D mode is set to native 800Mhz, idle speed remains at 500Mhz. Unlocked Windows CCC Overdrive values allow soft overclocking up to 990/1200. Fan spin up bug fix has been applied, so it doesn't go loud in random intervals. Verified to be Winflash friendly under Vista and HDMI works in windows as well.

Download link

It should also work with Sapphire SKU 21133-04, 11133-04, 21133-00 and 11133-03, but we won't know until someone tries.
Click to expand...


Hey v0n - so I've ordered one of those 1GB cards from here and I just want to check: is this file the Mac Radeon's EFI ROM to combine with the BIOS file or both merged already?
 
I followed rhildinger's lead and purchased an XFX HD4870 1GB XXX Edition and used the ROM provided by him. Sleep works fine. Core Image is hardware accelerated and Quartz Extreme is supported. The full 1GB is being recognized. Link speed is at 2.5 GT/s (like everyone else's).

Thanks rhildinger, The Rominator, and netkas for your help! I look forward to OS X 10.5.7.
 
BEIGE said:
Hey v0n - so I've ordered one of those 1GB cards from here and I just want to check: is this file the Mac Radeon's EFI ROM to combine with the BIOS file or both merged already?
Click to expand...

It's merged and ready to go, but 512Mb versions only. It should actually work for the guy in quote below.

kvfb97 said:
Can anyone let me know if this looks ok?

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/512M...R5-GPU-750MHz-800-Cores-2x-DL-DVI-I-HDTV-HDCP

Haven't seen any UK posts about this in the thread.
Click to expand...
 
So, I can report another success flashing the Sapphire 1GB card I purchased http://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-Rade...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1238198314&sr=8-1 which is PN 288-xxxxx-xxxxx SKU 11133-04-20R.

A few notes,
Ended up rolling my own power cables by ordering the pins/plugs as mentioned here (https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=7332291#post7332291) and using the wire from two sets of 4-pin molex y-adapters. Total cost was $11 for end result of two working cables.
Winflash wouldn't load if the card was in slot 2 (had my 8800gt in slot one during the flashing process). Ended up using the freedoscd and atiflash method.
Used a spare sata notebook drive (just raw connected it to the mobo without a sled) for the fat32 drive when using freedos cd
elvisizer rom was used to flash the card (https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=7314503#post7314503)

I have installed the new drivers (posted a few pages back) and have a noticed an issue. Has anyone else noticed that their mouse cursor jumps a bit when dragging around? was this seen in the older driver? This didn't seem to be happening in WinXP just OS X. This is on a early 08' MP running 10.5.6

Other than the mouse jump thing (really annoying but hopefully it's just drivers) everything seems as expected. Granted I'm only using one DVI monitor so I can't report on dual display, vga etc.
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
11133-04-20R
Click to expand...

I thought that all 1GB versions started with 21133. Is that different than the one I ordered? **** - did I order the wrong card?

edit - this might just be a Canadian market version. It has a beaver gutting a mountie on the box.
 
pastrychef said:
In regards to the Link Speed showing 2.5 GT/s. What do the official Apple 4870s report?
Click to expand...

Link Speed: 5.0 GT/s

that's on my Nehalem with 512 MB Radeon 4870 (I want a 1GB card - that's why I'm here). So am I right in seeing that everyone here is running their flashed cards at half the speed of my official one?
 
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