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

[iphong]

OMG! I found out my problem. Mine display is VGA and I used DVI-VGA adapter, that's why it didn't work. Luckily, my display has a HDMI port and I have a DVI-HDMI cable handy so I tried it on. It WORKED.

But only one problem, the same game I ran on PC and Mac OS X. The PC version seems to run a lot faster, and the Mac version has some texture error and much lower frame rate. Maybe because of the speed being 2.5 GT/s ??? But who cares, I'm not playing game in Mac OS X anyway so it doesn't matter much to me.

Thank all you guys for this great thread.

 

[Cindori]

I don't get why people are scared of the 2.5 speed.

I have a 8800GT from Apple in my 2006 mac pro and it is working awesome on gaming, both on OSX and Win

 

[frviana]

some sites reported about 4890 success and wrote this about pkg - " extensions include part of the EFI code required for the card to be recognized by the Mac and to have them active in Mac OS X."

those extensions doesnt include part of efi code at all, it sets the keys for display device in ioreg(which is inserted normaly by efi rom) and initializes (POSTs) the card.

Netkas, have you tried flashing the 4890? I don't like the idea of not been able to get image during the boot process. I would much rather flash the 4890 if I could.

If flashing a 4890 has been done already, can we get a post on the forum with a ROM that works and the card model used?

You guys are awesome

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

OMG! I found out my problem. Mine display is VGA and I used DVI-VGA adapter, that's why it didn't work. Luckily, my display has a HDMI port and I have a DVI-HDMI cable handy so I tried it on. It WORKED.

But only one problem, the same game I ran on PC and Mac OS X. The PC version seems to run a lot faster, and the Mac version has some texture error and much lower frame rate. Maybe because of the speed being 2.5 GT/s ??? But who cares, I'm not playing game in Mac OS X anyway so it doesn't matter much to me.

Thank all you guys for this great thread.

Which game? Most games (apart from WoW) run a fair bit slower in OS X than in Windows. Basically all games that use Transgaming Cider technology (pretty much all Intel only Mac games) will run slower than in Windows because they have to wrap all of the DirectX and Windows library calls into something that's useable in OS X. The first thing to try to do when trying to speed things up in OS X under such games is to reduce the game's settings for shader detail.

I don't get why people are scared of the 2.5 speed.

I have a 8800GT from Apple in my 2006 mac pro and it is working awesome on gaming, both on OSX and Win

Yeah it is being hyped a bit. I think people just want to get their cards to have exactly the same functionality as the official Apple card even if that functionality is basically useless.

2.5 GT/s speed is PCIe 1.x. 5.0 GT/s is PCIe 2.0. Basically PCIe 2.0 gives double the bandwidth per PCIe lane. So a 16x PCIe 2.0 slot has the equivalent bandwidth to a 32x PCIe 1.x slot.

However, 16x PCIe 1.x is more than enough for pretty much all current graphics cards on the market. Hell, even using 8x PCIe 1.x only usually gives a ~5-10% penalty over 16x PCIe 1.x. There should be no penalty for 5 GT/s vs 2.5 GT/s because at the end of the day, these 4870s cannot saturate a 16x PCie 1.x slot's bandwidth.

Also, the less a graphics card has to access the main system memory then the less of an impact the PCIe speed has. A 1GB 4870 card, for example, would likely be less handicapped by an old 8x PCIe 1.x slot than a 512MB 4870 card would be.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

Another success here. I just flashed two 4870 XFX 1GB cards using swissman's guide. All seems to be working well so far. I haven't run any games yet but hopefully it'll be ok. I just installed Crysis but I need to get some work done before I test it out.

This is on a 2006 2.66GHz Quad core Mac Pro. Two 4870 1GB cards with Crossfire mode enabled in Windows.

I can't test the second video port or VGA since I only have one display. The second ports on both cards can only drive 1080p as mentioned before but this doesn't bother me.

Also, these cards do seem to be ever so slightly quieter than the two 3870s I had in there before. Although, they do sound like a jet plane for a few seconds on boot unlike the 3870s.

 

[frviana]

Has anyone here flashed a 4890? I know about the no flashing method but I don't like the idea of not been able to see the screen until its fully booted on OS X. I rather flash the card.

I am buying today a XFX 1GB 4890 and would like to flash it.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

Has anyone here flashed a 4890? I know about the no flashing method but I don't like the idea of not been able to see the screen until its fully booted on OS X. I rather flash the card.

I am buying today a XFX 1GB 4890 and would like to flash it.

No one's tried it yet. You could maybe give the 4870 original method a try since the 4890 is nothing more than a 4870 with higher clocks. Don't expect many people to be trying this out though since the general consensus is that 4890s just aren't worth the money for the small gains in performance over a 4870.

 

[jeanlain]

Has anyone here flashed a 4890? I know about the no flashing method but I don't like the idea of not been able to see the screen until its fully booted on OS X. I rather flash the card.

I am buying today a XFX 1GB 4890 and would like to flash it.

If you have that card, I thought you might try making a custom ROM = PC BIOS of the 4890 + Mac EFI of the 4870. You'll probably still need the tweaked radeon kext. I am not sure if it is risky, but at worst, the card will only work under windows (I think) and you may be able to reflash it anyway.

 

[MacVidCards]

Tricky part is device id.

The 4870 is 9440 and the 4890 is 9460.

Don't think the needed digit can be changed by software (from ROM) so you will have to pick a device id and use in both EFI and BIOS.

I did this for Whiteyez but I don't think he ever flashed it right.

 

[frviana]

Got the card, plugged it into slot 1 and moved my 7300 to Slot 4. Booted with my monitor on my 7300, installed the Radeon HD 48x0 drivers shipping with Mac Pro 2009 and the ATI_Init.pkg and rebooted. Changed the monitor to the 4890 and everything works like a charm. No need to install accel.tar.bz2.

Booted into Vista 64 but noticed that Vista detects the card as Standard VGA Graphic Adapter. Now what to do to get it working into bootcamp Vista?

 

[nuvolino]

I don't get why people are scared of the 2.5 speed.

I have a 8800GT from Apple in my 2006 mac pro and it is working awesome on gaming, both on OSX and Win

the reason why they are worried is that it will mean it runs slower then it should

also just so you know the 8800GT runs at link speed of 5.0GT
that could be why it keeps up so well

i hope someone sorts out the 2.5 speed issue soon

 

[nuvolino]

By the way has anyone tested the link speed on the 4890 yet??

 

[frviana]

Yes. But the good thing is that the 7300 does not need a power connector. This means that when I boot into Vista for gaming I can automatically disable the 7300 and use the 4870 as the dedicated graphics card.

Hola... How do you disable the 7300 inside Vista? I am in the same situation with a 7300 and a 4890. When I boot into Vista it disables the 4890 for some reason.

 

[mflender]

Hola... How do you disable the 7300 inside Vista? I am in the same situation with a 7300 and a 4890. When I boot into Vista it disables the 4890 for some reason.

Vista doesn't support both Nvidia and ATI at once. XP did sort of. Install ATI drivers for Vista and shut down. Remove 7300 and boot. Should now use ATI. You could likely get a Mac native ATI 2600 from ebay if you really need to run two cards. Heck, I have one laying around if you can't find one.

 

[frviana]

Vista doesn't support both Nvidia and ATI at once. XP did sort of. Install ATI drivers for Vista and shut down. Remove 7300 and boot. Should now use ATI. You could likely get a Mac native ATI 2600 from ebay if you really need to run two cards. Heck, I have one laying around if you can't find one.

I am installing Windows 7 now. Many articles says that Windows 7 supports heterogeneous graphic cards. If that doesn't work I will be looking forward in trying flashing my 4890.

 

[frviana]

I am installing Windows 7 now. Many articles says that Windows 7 supports heterogeneous graphic cards. If that doesn't work I will be looking forward in trying flashing my 4890.

In order to work with heterogenous graphic cards in Windows 7 both cards drivers needs to be WWDM 1.1 and neither nVIDIA 7300GT and XFX 4890 are.

XP 64 here we go... I am up to try flashing it if someone got a good ROM.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

the reason why they are worried is that it will mean it runs slower then it should

also just so you know the 8800GT runs at link speed of 5.0GT
that could be why it keeps up so well

i hope someone sorts out the 2.5 speed issue soon

Read my post. 5.0 GT speed means nothing if no more is used than 2.5 GT. Think of it as if you were putting a one port gigabit ethernet card into a PCIe slot. Gigabit ethernet supports a maximum bandwidth of 1 GT or 125MB/s. A 1x PCIe slot with 2.5 GT bandwidth is more than enough to satisfy this. Plug the same card into a 2x PCIe slot with 5 GT bandwidth (I'm talking PCIe 1.x here btw) then while the card might recognise that it could use "up to 5 GT", the gigabit standard means that anything above 125MB/s throughput will not be needed.

 

[BugLamp]

Read my post. 5.0 GT speed means nothing if no more is used than 2.5 GT. Think of it as if you were putting a one port gigabit ethernet card into a PCIe slot. Gigabit ethernet supports a maximum bandwidth of 1 GT or 125MB/s. A 1x PCIe slot with 2.5 GT bandwidth is more than enough to satisfy this. Plug the same card into a 2x PCIe slot with 5 GT bandwidth (I'm talking PCIe 1.x here btw) then while the card might recognise that it could use "up to 5 GT", the gigabit standard means that anything above 125MB/s throughput will not be needed.

What?

High end graphics cards benefit from extra bandwidth. Especially when doing things like stream processing.

 

[pcb355]

Overclocking under OS X

I'm looking at jumping in and getting one of the XFX cards to flash and use in my second generation Mac Pro. My understanding is that under OS X, if the stock Apple EFI ROM portion is used, then even if the card is overclocked, OS X will not see this speed increase. I haven't seen much in this thread that addresses this. If this is so, how are these guys offering these cards on eBay that they claim are overclocked? Does anyone know what cards these guys are using, and if their claims of custom EFI ROM development are valid?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...fitem=270379884471&viewitem=&salenotsupported

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...fitem=270379884471&viewitem=&salenotsupported

 

[frviana]

4890 in bootcamp

I would like to hear from the people that is running the 4890 your experience with bootcamp.

What Windows version you are running?

Are you running a single card or multiple cards?


My current situation: 7300GT and XFX 4890. Everything works fine on OS X. VISTA and Windows 7 doesn't accept the 4890 because the 7300 is from different vendor. I will be installing XP 64 tonight.

 

[Whiteyez]

I would like to hear from the people that is running the 4890 your experience with bootcamp.

What Windows version you are running?

Are you running a single card or multiple cards?


My current situation: 7300GT and XFX 4890. Everything works fine on OS X. VISTA and Windows 7 doesn't accept the 4890 because the 7300 is from different vendor. I will be installing XP 64 tonight.

Im running 4890 in OSX and in bootcamp Windows XP SP3. I had also the GT120 with 4890 before i do 4890 run in osx everything worked fine.

 

[netkas]

I'm looking at jumping in and getting one of the XFX cards to flash and use in my second generation Mac Pro. My understanding is that under OS X, if the stock Apple EFI ROM portion is used, then even if the card is overclocked, OS X will not see this speed increase. I haven't seen much in this thread that addresses this. If this is so, how are these guys offering these cards on eBay that they claim are overclocked? Does anyone know what cards these guys are using, and if their claims of custom EFI ROM development are valid?

bull$h1t, as i already said, all tables/settings/etc located in atombios, which is part of pc bios part.

U can edit custom rom with EFI part in RBE just fine, to increase clocks, tune cooler/voltage.

 

[netkas]

What?

High end graphics cards benefit from extra bandwidth. Especially when doing things like stream processing.

not in this case, pcie x16 @ 1.1(aka 2.5 GT/s) is enough for this card.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

What?

High end graphics cards benefit from extra bandwidth. Especially when doing things like stream processing.

Most of the time you won't notice that extra bandwidth. Its used when the graphics card's memory is unable to fully store all of graphics data needed - it then has to use the PCIe link to access the stuff needed, which is where bandwidth comes into play. A 1GB graphics card is unlikely to need to do this that much right now thus for most people a 1GB 4870 running on 16x PCIe 1.x will be just as good or better than a 512MB 4870 running on 16x PCIe 2.0.

As far as stream processing goes, well any memory access outside a card's memory will want to be avoided as much as possible anyway. For stuff like that, as mentioned above, having more VRAM is usually better than having a slightly faster bus connection.

 

[sneffets]

Same Issue

OMG! I found out my problem. Mine display is VGA and I used DVI-VGA adapter, that's why it didn't work. Luckily, my display has a HDMI port and I have a DVI-HDMI cable handy so I tried it on. It WORKED.

But only one problem, the same game I ran on PC and Mac OS X. The PC version seems to run a lot faster, and the Mac version has some texture error and much lower frame rate. Maybe because of the speed being 2.5 GT/s ??? But who cares, I'm not playing game in Mac OS X anyway so it doesn't matter much to me.

Thank all you guys for this great thread.

Hello iphong, I am having the same issue as you were with your ATI 4870. Followed the same tutorial and when I boot, it boot all the way in but no picture. I am using MacPro 1,1 OSx 10.5.6, on a Dell 3008 via DVI...my card shows up but no picture. The odd thing is, when I flashed the card using the rom from that site...when it compared the two roms prior to flashing, it showed that they were the same roms? I just ordered that same card from tigerdirect...followed everything to the letter from his site...let me know if you have any thoughts.