Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

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

TheStrudel said:
I know this is off-topic, but Rominator, would you be interested in posting your experiences with RED at some point? I'm curious as to how the Mac Pros handle it, and I'd like to get a Scarlet (should they ever release it...) in the future.
Click to expand...


I am not an actual camera tech but a friend is doing his short on Red and it was time I put my Mac Pro to a better use than video card fiddling and playing Crysis....I installed Red ALert & Red Cine. The DP looked at some footage on the Mac Pro and was impressed with how smoothly it played the raw files. They are shooting onto removeable 320Gig drives and then we use my Mac Pro to copy the footage via FW800 onto 2 G-Raids.

Both of my principal clients shoot on Red now so I have noticed that they are VERY happy with it for the most part. There were some technical glitches, adjusting workflow, etc.

Also, even with latest firmware, the camera sometimes "crashes" and has to be rebooted. Rather irritating for the director when he is in the middle of an elegant dolly move and it DIES. But using the prime lenses from 35mm without running through the adapter tricks the HVX cams used is also nice.

I'll have more info after we wrap next week. My buddy shooting it got a new 17" MBP 2.93 just for this project...but the DP overruled him and said my 2 year old MP was better suited for the workflow.
 
I just bought a reflashed 4870 1GB version with both DVI ports working correctly on both the 32bit and 64bit. First thing I'll do is dump the .rom and post it up here for you intellectuals to dissect and compare. Cheers!:D
 
Sorry no, I'm not sure of the version - I'm waiting for it to be mailed to me. This person was using it on their system but is upgrading to one of the very expensive Apple cards. Hopefully it will be a very nice upgrade for me.
 
netkas said:
944A - mobility radeon 4850
Click to expand...

Well, when I get my MP back next week I'll try changing the dev id and ROM numbers on the 4850 to match.

I know that the various versions of Radeon 9800 all had same device id so the cards were id'd by Mac OS and ATI software based on ROM Revision field.

Has ANYONE found a card with 5.0 GTs speed?

I tried on Nehalem last night with card running OEM ROM and a 1 Gb card, both showed just 2.5.

I am curious if running with an OEM card in as well as flashed allows this.

Anyone?
 
wel I suppose I could try it but that would be like turning on half the lights in the house. It's hardly a longterm solution
 
some report about imac's 4850

3d clocks - 500/850 (compare to 650/1000 on desktop 4850 parts)

it uses ATY_Quail.kext as framebuffer driver.

I made Quail to work with my 4850, but I still had to use dvi2vga trick (this time i had to swap dvi ports connections), using binimage (bios image) from 4850_imac didnt make anything new, osx jsut freezed on launching gui.

From my point of view, there is some problems with default connectors table in drivers, so it doesnt work properly with any bioses(well, roms) except apple's.

Need to find out a way to get connections table from atombios and edit it :O

P.S. some fun - https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21116
 
Hey guys, I've been trying to keep up with this thread, but it's pretty massive, so sorry if this has come up before, but if I were to just order one of the cards that has been known to work, like this one, would I be able to just shove it in and boot into the Windows 7 beta before flashing it? I don't have much use of the thing in OS X, so I'm okay with not using it as a primary card, at least until I'm sure I can re-flash it and get all both the DVI ports working perfectly.

Running a 1.1 Mac Pro, btw. Thanks in advance!
 
Actually, is there a list of known working card floating around somewhere?
 
jjhny said:
From there I loaded the 10.5.6 4870 beta drivers (on this thread somewhere)

Then I loaded the motmot and natit kext (read this whole thread) and all worked well. IMPORTANT: when installing into the system folder BE CAREFUL! I had to custom change the permissions of natit by using the utility “batmod” -you can find this app on MacUpdate.
Click to expand...

Hey jjhny (or anyone else that can help), this is probably a REALLY STUPID question and I apologize in advance for asking it, but I think I might be getting the drivers and the kext stuff warped in my head - can you possibly point me to the exact post where you got the beta drivers from and the post that has the motmot / natit kext directions?
 
Ugh, I think I must have missed this - has ANYONE been able to flash the card USING their Mac Pro via Bootcamp or any other method? My Mac won't even post unless the old 7300gt is in there as well. Help?
 
rew said:
Ugh, I think I must have missed this - has ANYONE been able to flash the card USING their Mac Pro via Bootcamp or any other method? My Mac won't even post unless the old 7300gt is in there as well. Help?
Click to expand...

insert both cards into your mac pro. and do the procedure.
 
gzfelix said:
insert both cards into your mac pro. and do the procedure.
Click to expand...

Here's what I've done, step by step, all inclusive.

I've got both cards installed in my Mac Pro (4870 in first slot, 7300 gt in second). Both power cables are installed.

I loaded Windows XP from Bootcamp. Device Manager reports that it sees the card, but if I try to switch the DVI plug from the 7300 GT's output to either of the 4870's outputs, I don't get any signal whatsoever. I have yet to see any type of video output from the video card.

When I attempt to open Winflash it outright refuses to load. I can see "ATIWinflash.exe" in my task manager, just don't get any UI.

I HAVE been able to use GPU-Z to back up the current ROM, but that's as far as I can get. If I can't load WinFlash, I'm not sure how I can get the ROM onto the card unless I'm missing something (which I surely am ;) ).
 
rew said:
Here's what I've done, step by step, all inclusive.

I've got both cards installed in my Mac Pro (4870 in first slot, 7300 gt in second). Both power cables are installed.

I loaded Windows XP from Bootcamp. Device Manager reports that it sees the card, but if I try to switch the DVI plug from the 7300 GT's output to either of the 4870's outputs, I don't get any signal whatsoever. I have yet to see any type of video output from the video card.

When I attempt to open Winflash it outright refuses to load. I can see "ATIWinflash.exe" in my task manager, just don't get any UI.

I HAVE been able to use GPU-Z to back up the current ROM, but that's as far as I can get. If I can't load WinFlash, I'm not sure how I can get the ROM onto the card unless I'm missing something (which I surely am ;) ).
Click to expand...

You have to use DOS to flash your card. Somehow in my windows too the Winflash is refusing to start, but is exist on the taskmanager. :confused:
 
Whiteyez said:
You have to use DOS to flash your card. Somehow in my windows too the Winflash is refusing to start, but is exist on the taskmanager. :confused:
Click to expand...

OK - so now it looks like I have to go down the FreeDos route, right? Has noone been able to flash their card in a Windows XP environment running on Bootcamp? Thanks for all of your help, guys.
 
rew said:
OK - so now it looks like I have to go down the FreeDos route, right? Has noone been able to flash their card in a Windows XP environment running on Bootcamp? Thanks for all of your help, guys.
Click to expand...

i did mine with the ubcd (ultimate boot cd, because it has sata cdrom driver). i used magiciso (in vmware windows) to open the ubcd iso, put atiflash and my roms to it. then just boot the system up with the cd, choose freedos to start, and cd into the cdrom drive to run atiflash.
 
gzfelix said:
i did mine with the ubcd (ultimate boot cd, because it has sata cdrom driver). i used magiciso (in vmware windows) to open the ubcd iso, put atiflash and my roms to it. then just boot the system up with the cd, choose freedos to start, and cd into the cdrom drive to run atiflash.
Click to expand...

Beautiful, THANKS gz!

I'm downloading ubcd now.

Two more questions:
- how do I boot off the cd? I have Bootcamp installed (I now, I'm a noob)
- does it matter if I have both the old card and the new one, and should they be in some specific order?

Thanks again!!!
 
I finally got it!

The key was to use the aforementioned UBCD. I'll write up a complete how-to with all of the details tomorrow for any other fellow idiots.

Thanks for ALL of your help! Very cool thing to replace my 7300gt with this powerhouse... wow.
 
G5 x1900 power cables are required for 4870 in Mac Pro?

So I bought this card - ‘SAPPHIRE 100259-1GL Radeon HD 4870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5′ from Newegg.com, which people are having success with (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102801)

It comes with two power cables, but I’ve been reading I need to buy two “ATI x1900 for PowerMac G5 power cables” in order to use it. I ordered just one power cable, as I only noticed the x1900 part, and I already have an x1900 in my Mac Pro. Does anyone know if I really need the two G5 power cables? Can I mix the two x1900 cables I have? Is anyone using the power cables that came with it?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back