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

I finally got my Gainward HD 4870 1024MB Golden Sample working :)

I've made a custom ROM with the original "normal" BIOS of the card, and here the results :
- you MUST have HDMI-DVI+DVI-VGA adapters connected to HDMI port for DVI-D and VGA ports to work
- DVI-D fully working
- VGA fully working (i've got 1920x1080@60Hz)
- DVI-D+VGA KO (only DVI-D get signal)
- Display Port KO (no signal on my DELL 3008FPW)
- HDMI KO (the port MUST be connected, but no signal)
- 1024 Mo VRAM recognized
- no Natit used
- Bootcamp Vista64 OK

Now, i'm going to flash the "turbo" BIOS :)
 
aconu said:
I finally got my Gainward HD 4870 1024MB Golden Sample working :)

I've made a custom ROM with the original "normal" BIOS of the card, and here the results :
- you MUST have HDMI-DVI+DVI-VGA adapters connected to HDMI port for DVI-D and VGA ports to work
- DVI-D fully working
- VGA fully working (i've got 1920x1080@60Hz)
- DVI-D+VGA KO (only DVI-D get signal)
- Display Port KO (no signal on my DELL 3008FPW)
- HDMI KO (the port MUST be connected, but no signal)
- 1024 Mo VRAM recognized
- no Natit used
- Bootcamp Vista64 OK

Now, i'm going to flash the "turbo" BIOS :)
Click to expand...

WOW! you're a hero! Do you know you are the first to get a VGA signal out of a flashed 4870 in OS X? This is the only thing I was hoping for...
Now a couple of questions:
Did you create the custom ROM using the posted script or did you some other/further modifications?
Did I understand you correctly? You can either have one DVI-D signal OR one VGA signal (using DVI-VGA) from the DVI port and if I want VGA and DVI-D simultaneously I have to get the VGA signal out of the DVI port and DVI out of the HDMI port?

Thanks for posting these encouraging results!
 
Here is the step by step instructions for installing a SAPPHIRE 100243-1GTXSR Radeon HD 4870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102815)
PN: 288-20E85-T305A
SKU: 11133-14

I have confirmed that this will work for installing this card into all MacPros.

WARNING: Your secondary DVI port will not work and should NEVER be used if you use this card as it will cause a kernel panic. :confused:

NOTICE: I can not promise that this will work for you and/or that nothing will go horribly wrong. Do this at your own risk, but with the reassurance that a noob like me managed to do it and get it working.

These instructions assume you have basic computer skills and that your card is already properly installed inside of the machine you will either be running it on or at least flashing it on.

Things you will need:
1x USB Flash Drive
1X CD-R

1. Download FreeDOS (FreeDOS 153MB)

2. Download GPU-Z (GPU-Z ~428KB)

3. Download the ROM file for this card (mac-toxic-4870GB.rom ~128KB)

4. Download ATIFlash (ATIFlash ~444KB)

5. Download the 10.5.6 4870 drivers (MacOSX_10-1.5.6_radeon_hd_48x0_drivers ~3.5MB)

6. Install the 10.5.6 4870 drivers on your Mac by double clicking the .pkg that you downloaded. IMPORTANT: During the installation watch for the "Customize" button. It should be on the 3rd screen. Click it and uncheck the last check box, "Natit".

7. Burn the .iso file for FreeDOS to your CD-R

8. Copy the ROM file, GPU-Z and ATIFlash to your USB flash drive

9. Ensure that the only video card in the box you want to flash this video card is the 4870

10. (Optional but very highly recommended) Run the GPU-Z.exe and click the little green arrow and save the .bin file it gives you to your USB flash drive. Note that this is a windows application and as such you will need to be on a windows box, running parallels, or some other form of emulation.

I did this on a Windows Server 2008 box and it worked fine.

Once you have the .bin make sure it is larger then 64 KB. If it isn't then proceed to post for help.

11. Boot the box that you will be flashing the card in onto the FreeDOS cd. Use option #1 when prompted then #4 at the next screen.

12. I named my USB drive "C" but depending on what you named your this next step will very a little. Type C: or DRIVENAME: and hit enter once you get the DOS prompt.

Next type cd ati and hit tab twice followed by enter once it auto completes the rest of the line.

Now type atiflash.exe -p -fs -fp 0 DRIVENAME:\mac-toxic-4870GB.rom then hit tab twice and then press enter. Obviously DRIVENAME should be the name of your drive, in my case it was C:\mac-toxic-4870GB.rom

It should spew out a list of Old and New information. These may or may not be different. Mine were the same, I don't know why but when i found it to work I stopped asking questions and tanked my lucky stars.

13. Restart your computer and enjoy! It really is this simple, until something goes horribly wrong. But I hope that nothing does go wrong for you. If you have questions this community is very friendly and should be able to answer them. You can also PM me tho who knows if I will respond >_<
 
MORE VGA NEWS!!! - Should have listened to Netkas !

aconu said:
I finally got my Gainward HD 4870 1024MB Golden Sample working :)

I've made a custom ROM with the original "normal" BIOS of the card, and here the results :
- you MUST have HDMI-DVI+DVI-VGA adapters connected to HDMI port for DVI-D and VGA ports to work
- DVI-D fully working
- VGA fully working (i've got 1920x1080@60Hz)
- DVI-D+VGA KO (only DVI-D get signal)
-
Click to expand...

After reading this I realized there was one set of things I hadn't tried.

So I put the DVI-VGA adapter on each output of a 512 Dual DVI card while connecting Dell 2407 on other connector with VGA and.......................

When the adapter is in the LOWER port (Dual-Link one) and the VGA is in upper, THE VGA WORKS !!!

Well, sorta. It appears to not be getting an accurate EDID as it can't guess what display it is and just calls it a "VGA Display". Most of the res options for it don't work.

1920x1200 is there..but at 76Hz....not LCD frendly.

I had flashbacks to when we were first "breaking" the Nvidia cards. First was 5200 Ultra from which we got regular 5200 cards to work. If you flash the Mac 5200 Ultra ROM to a PC 5200 Ultra, it will work, BUT ONLY VGA COMES FROM DVI PORT.

A very clever man came along named Arti figured out what was happening with our DVI.

The display channels were mixed. ie, the EDID taken from port 0 determined the output to port 1. We never disclosed just how simple this was (once you deciphered the Forth) If you go in to Hexedit and search for "3f3e" and "3736" and SWAP them, suddenley the DVI works. (previously undisclosed secret). You can try this at home, works on all 5200 Ultras.

When we started work on 6800 cards, we had same thing, but more complicated. But if you flash an OEM Mac 6800 ROM onto a PC 6800, you will get VGA only.

WHilst we were hacking our way through this mess, Arti encoraged me to get a strange splitter. It plugs on to a DVI-I and splits it into a VGA AND a DVI-D. This helped diagnose the 5200/6800 channel switching.

I dug through the drawer and got the splitter out. Sure enough, there are TWO SEPARATE SIGNAL IN THAT DVI PORT.

By hooking both sides of this adapter to my 2407, I got two separate images / feeds from the two halves of the splitter.

The DVI one got EDID right, the VGA still got no EDID.

So, what we need is to find where the display connections get channeled in the ROM and switch them.

Most likely, the physical traces on the board are switched, now we need to switch them in the ROM, and we MAY get VGA.

If I had tried Netkas' patented DVI adapter trick earlier, we would have known this much sooner.

Anyone else with working Dual DVI who can try this should (without the wacky splitter anyway)

GOnna try with the Single DVI Diamond now.
 

Attachments

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johnjobs said:
Has someone testet a flashed 4870 with the latest SL Build? My 2600xt works fine(and fast :)) but with the 4870 I can´t boot into SL that I have installed with my 2600xt :( I cant´t also boot the SL-DVD with a installed 4870, only what I get is the grey Startup Screen.

Bye
Click to expand...

I tried booting from the 10a286 build of the Snow Leopard disc and got the same result. After it finished loading from the disc, the screen flashed to black and then to grey.

When I rebooted, it said the ATIRadeonX2000 driver crashed.
 
This card is now running on my '09 MacPro just fine. I actually didn't even need the 10.5.6 drivers. Don't ask me why tho.

I am still only getting a link speed of 2.5 GT/s X_X

Does anyone have any ideas on how I can fix that? My GT120 is connected at 5.0 GT/s


Update: After doing some crude tests I have determined that despite only getting a 2.5 GT/s link to the card it is about twice as fast as the GT120 with its 5.0 GT/s link. This was simply done by opening wow and watching the FPS change dramatically between my 2 screens on 2 separate cards. I know this is crude but it worked.
 
VGA updates

Well, the "Single Only" Diamond 4870 didn't care for the DVI adapter trick AT ALL.

It did it's "CRASH" trick.

I am attaching the IOReg report from the OLD Diamond 512 Meg 4870 that runs Dual.

This report was taken while it had the DVI to VGA adapter on the lower Dual-Link port and the DVI splitter on the upper port. Thus, both SEPARATE display channels were present in the single, upper DVI port.

The screen shot was taken at same time.

Note that only res close to native was 1920x1080 @ 60Hz. Everything looks a little funny.

It occurs to me that maybe we need to try sending the EDID of the Apple MDP to DVI adapter (single and/or dual link) to finish "turning on" that port.

Maybe a Natit trick?

Does a DVI to VGA adapter have an EDID? What is it triggering? The "Hot Plug" detection is supposed to be momentary, or so I thought.

Meanwhile, I still think we need a scan of 4870 Apple OEM board. Gonna try a fresh thread.
 

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Has there been any other instances of the mouse jumping artifact in the GUI in OS X on the 1gb sapphire (non-toxic) cards? Is it just mine?

If anyone else is seeing this error, have they been able to fix it?

I'm on a sapphire 1gb card using the elvisizer custom hybrid rom on a early 08' MP running 10.5.6 with the latest motmot drivers.
 
medsource said:
Has there been any other instances of the mouse jumping artifact in the GUI in OS X on the 1gb sapphire (non-toxic) cards? Is it just mine?

If anyone else is seeing this error, have they been able to fix it?

I'm on a sapphire 1gb card using the elvisizer custom hybrid rom on a early 08' MP running 10.5.6 with the latest motmot drivers.
Click to expand...

No, I have not seen this on mine.
 
macz1 said:
Did you create the custom ROM using the posted script or did you some other/further modifications?
Click to expand...

I use the posted script.

macz1 said:
Did I understand you correctly? You can either have one DVI-D signal OR one VGA signal (using DVI-VGA) from the DVI port and if I want VGA and DVI-D simultaneously I have to get the VGA signal out of the DVI port and DVI out of the HDMI port?
Click to expand...

This card is a bit special, she has :
- one dedicated VGA port (upper)
- one dedicated DVI-D port (bottom)
- one dedicated Display Port port (bottom)
- one dedicated HDMI port port (bottom)
And you can use HDMI to DVI adapter to get a secondary DVI-D.

To get a signal on dedicated DVI-D or dedicated VGA, you must use a HDMI "terminator" on HDMI port (HDMI to DVI+DVI to VGA adapters), or plug a connected HDMI cable.
I never get an image on dedicated display port.
I never get an image on dedicated HDMI (neither HDMI direct, or HDMI->DVI, or HMDI->DVI->VGA).
I has no image on dedicated VGA port if dedicated DVI-D is plugged.
Like Romintaor says, the possible resolutions on VGA port seems very strange (1920x1200@76Hz only, and you can have higher res than that)

So, no dual display at this point :-/
 
Hey guys. Has anyone downloaded the pc rom for their ATI 4870 from the http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/ site? I have a Visiontek HD 4870 and techpower up has a rom for my card along with roms for a large number of pc video cards. Is this a valid and safe site to use?

Thanks for any info.

Doug D
 
ddorbuck said:
Hey guys. Has anyone downloaded the pc rom for their ATI 4870 from the http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/ site? I have a Visiontek HD 4870 and techpower up has a rom for my card along with roms for a large number of pc video cards. Is this a valid and safe site to use?

Thanks for any info.

Doug D
Click to expand...

Techpowerup is a reliable source generally and downloading the rom from there should work, although dumping the ROM of a PC graphics card is one of the easiest steps of the whole procedure. Unles you do not have Windows installed on your Mac, (the most recent versions of) GPU-z should be able to dump the ROM of the card. Make sure you get a file bigger than 64K.
Of course you can always compare the dumped file to the downloaded one to check whether there are differences...
 
For those of you with the 1gig Sapphire cards, how are your bootcamp results? Thus far I have not been able to get my 1gig Sapphire 4870 to work in vista 64 under Vista. (Vista shuts the card down with "device errors") This is with the factory gt120 installed as well.
 
goin3d said:
For those of you with the 1gig Sapphire cards, how are your bootcamp results? Thus far I have not been able to get my 1gig Sapphire 4870 to work in vista 64 under Vista. (Vista shuts the card down with "device errors") This is with the factory gt120 installed as well.
Click to expand...

You can't use mixed manufacturer cards in Vista at all.
 
goin3d said:
That's what I thought too but aconu's post above threw me for a loop when he said:

"Bootcamp Vista64 OK"
Click to expand...

Yes, but with HD4870 alone.
If i mixed the 4870 with the old 7300GT, the drivers failed to initialize the ATI card.
 
The Rominator said:
A very clever man came along named Arti figured out what was happening with our DVI.

The display channels were mixed. ie, the EDID taken from port 0 determined the output to port 1. We never disclosed just how simple this was (once you deciphered the Forth) If you go in to Hexedit and search for "3f3e" and "3736" and SWAP them, suddenley the DVI works. (previously undisclosed secret). You can try this at home, works on all 5200 Ultras.
Click to expand...

Got a Powermac with FX 5500 flashed with the 5200 ultra rom from arti, VGA works just fine, but the DVI has never worked (either digitally or analog). Think the pines are mapped wrong in firmware. When connecting to it the machine sets up as if 2 monitors are in use, but the screen connected to the dvi remains black. Tried the swap trick with hexedit, did not solve it (this was already done in the rom..). Could you PM me if you have any tips here Rominator?
Sorry for this slight offtopic post, will post relevant stuff here as I have two Sapphire 1GB waiting for flashing..

Has, by the way, someone gotten to try the Sapphire 4870 2GB Vapor-X?? Very interested in hearing about this..
 
pastrychef said:
XFX HD4870 XXX Edition. Machine is in my signature. 10.5.6. Beta drivers provided by netkas. Hybrid ROM.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, seems to be a different card. I'm using the 288-xxx sku: 11133-04-20R sapphire card 1gb. Are you using the newer drivers posted a few pages ago, or the original ones from the #irc source? Currently I'm using the ones posted by netkas on page 22 https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=7333477#post7333477 . I haven't installed the natit.kext as I have a real mac pro. I'm assuming this is the correct procedure?

A side note, I tried rolling my own frankenrom and it did differ slightly from the one that elvisizer posted (the one I was previously using). I flashed using winflash (command line interface) and the card still works. However, I have no change in OS X with the mouse jump thing (really starting to get annoying).


@ elvisizer, you have this card 'working' are you seeing the mouse jump issue?

@ zoppa, you also reported this problem. Did you find a fix / workaround?

Any input would be helpful...
 
ok - I have to say that I HATE SYSTEM SPECS IN PEOPLE'S SIGS. this thread is the worst trying to find anything by searching "GB" since Ferrari's sig is spamming the page.

STOP THE E-PEEN MADNESS.
 
medsource said:
Hmmm, seems to be a different card. I'm using the 288-xxx sku: 11133-04-20R sapphire card 1gb. Are you using the newer drivers posted a few pages ago, or the original ones from the #irc source? Currently I'm using the ones posted by netkas on page 22 https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=7333477#post7333477 . I haven't installed the natit.kext as I have a real mac pro. I'm assuming this is the correct procedure?
Click to expand...

I am using the drivers from IRC. I also made them available here: https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/7363905/

I removed natit.kext after the installer finished doing it's thing.
 
medsource said:
A side note, I tried rolling my own frankenrom and it did differ slightly from the one that elvisizer posted (the one I was previously using). I flashed using winflash (command line interface) and the card still works. However, I have no change in OS X with the mouse jump thing (really starting to get annoying).


@ elvisizer, you have this card 'working' are you seeing the mouse jump issue?

@ zoppa, you also reported this problem. Did you find a fix / workaround?

Any input would be helpful...
Click to expand...

whats mouse jump thing, explain plz, is it smth like screen shaking ?

The Rominator: this vga things is familar to me, when it cant extract a edid, just use switchresX to add custom modes (16:10 modes e.g.)

All my hopes is on 4850 mobility osx drivers now.

for example, Hypoprion - a driver for imac's 2600 (which was mobility cards) worked for desktop cards, only one output and only vga lol, then we discovered the proper driver was lamna, but its another story.
 
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