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

Amethyst said:
Success stories!

using pipomolo's method

with HIS Radeon 4870 Dual 512MB

performance Far exceed than 2600XT

thank everybody!!

ps. have one question , if i adjust core/mem speed down , can i reduce power consumption from 4870.
Click to expand...

Glad yours worked out.

By a funny coincidence, the post right above yours refers to making a 512 Meg ROM with Pipolomo's method.

Could you attach yours for our testing?

We are trying to figure out the Corssfire Issue on OEM and cards flashed with original OEM ROM.

You may be able to chop a few watts out by turning down clocks but it will be negligible.
 
The Rominator said:
Glad yours worked out.

By a funny coincidence, the post right above yours refers to making a 512 Meg ROM with Pipolomo's method.

Could you attach yours for our testing?

We are trying to figure out the Corssfire Issue on OEM and cards flashed with original OEM ROM.

You may be able to chop a few watts out by turning down clocks but it will be negligible.
Click to expand...
This is my HIS 4870 512MB DDR5 Roms

http://www.mediafire.com/?mzn54yyyzy4

this is picture of the card , now find PCI-E Cable

thank you for yours great theads Rominator !!

img0015vjf.jpg
 
4870 512 Crossfire Test Results Testrom1

So I tried the first ROM mathew made.

I tried it on both the Apple OEM 4870 and a 512 Meg version of Saphire 4870 512 Meg card.

The OEM Mac card booted to a muddy grey Apple screen. It finished booting into a lovely Aztec Rug looking pattern.

Oddly, the Saphire 512 Meg card seemed fine, booted up to normal desktop.

HOWEVER...............the new ROM killed the DUal DVI capability that it had running the OEM ROM.

I decided to try booting into Windows to test Crossfire. I used a 4850 as second ATI card. Try as it would, it could not boot into Windows with the Mac OEM 4870 running TestRom1. Even with the 4850 being the only one hooked to DVI, it would not make it to Windows Desktop.

I tried using Saphire and was able to Crossfire with the 4850 but trying to boot a 3D game crashed it. THis may just be my current driver/Window install. I think the fact that Crossfire showed up as an option is a good sign, we just need to get ROM to run on OEM card.

I will test the ROM Amethyst made. (testrom2) It may end up that we need to use the RAM timings from OEM ROM mixed with PC BIOS.

And I think more than likely if we find a PC ROM that works, the MDP port is going to be MIA. My guess.

To reiterate, the Testrom1 on OEM was no good. It worked reasonably well on the Saphire 512 card, but it lost Dual DVI.
 

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The Rominator said:
So I tried the first ROM mathew made.

I tried it on both the Apple OEM 4870 and a 512 Meg version of Saphire 4870 512 Meg card.

The OEM Mac card booted to a muddy grey Apple screen. It finished booting into a lovely Aztec Rug looking pattern.

Oddly, the Saphire 512 Meg card seemed fine, booted up to normal desktop.

HOWEVER...............the new ROM killed the DUal DVI capability that it had running the OEM ROM.

I decided to try booting into Windows to test Crossfire. I used a 4850 as second ATI card. Try as it would, it could not boot into Windows with the Mac OEM 4870 running TestRom1. Even with the 4850 being the only one hooked to DVI, it would not make it to Windows Desktop.

I tried using Saphire and was able to Crossfire with the 4850 but trying to boot a 3D game crashed it. THis may just be my current driver/Window install. I think the fact that Crossfire showed up as an option is a good sign, we just need to get ROM to run on OEM card.

I will test the ROM Amethyst made. (testrom2) It may end up that we need to use the RAM timings from OEM ROM mixed with PC BIOS.

And I think more than likely if we find a PC ROM that works, the MDP port is going to be MIA. My guess.

To reiterate, the Testrom1 on OEM was no good. It worked reasonably well on the Saphire 512 card, but it lost Dual DVI.
Click to expand...


That is in fact a very interesting result. Good to see the testrom2 got you crossfire. Im not to sure what rom to try next.. There are a whole bunch from techpowerup.com. I would love to find a current ATI reference card (made and sold by ati) and get the rom from that.

Pitty dual dvi doesn't work...may be some luck though..but I think your assumption is probably correct. Will look through what roms I can get my hands on and create some hybrids.
 
Roms Galore

I have made a bunch of hybrid roms using pipomolo's method.

Brand cards done:
Asus
ATI
Diamond
Gigabyte
HIS
Palit
Powercooler
Sapphire

I am not sure what model cards they are, but they are all 4870 512mb cards.
 

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Asus Eah4870 Dark Knight 1g

Hi,
I'm unable to flash an ASUS EAH4870 DARK KNIGHT 1G card.
The Apple ROM gives a gray screen at boot time, but that's it, corruption occurs shortly after and the screen stays black in BootCamp.
Other ROMs posted here don't work at all and produce a black screen.

I've tried to build a special ROM using pipolo's instructions and script, but it doesn't work, it produces the error
Code: 
dd: bs must be between 1 and 2147483647
although ROM sizes are 128k and filenames are correct.
I tried to type only
Code: 
printf %d "'\`dd if=pc4870.rom bs=1 skip=2 count=1 2>/dev/null\`"
and the output is 96, so i typed
Code: 
blocknum=96
but it didn't work either. (Sorry, my shell skills are limited).

Here is the original ROM, if someone can figure the problem out.
 

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Crossfire Test Update

matthew.russo said:
I have made a bunch of hybrid roms using pipomolo's method.

Brand cards done:
Asus
ATI
Diamond
Gigabyte
HIS
Palit
Powercooler
Sapphire

I am not sure what model cards they are, but they are all 4870 512mb cards.
Click to expand...

I think we are having some mild communication issues.

In any case, I was finally able to find that the ASUS 4870 ROM boots with a clean screen in OSX. I have no way to test MDP. However, there may be some bad news about Windows. WHenever the driver finished loading in Vista, the screen would go black on the OEM running the ASUS ROM.

When viewed from the 4850 I was Crossfiring with, the OEM running Asus ROM appeared fine. When I hooked a display to it the display was correctly id'd, but the display remained dark.

On the GOOD news side, the OEM running the Asus Rom was able to be the 2nd half of a Crossfire pair.

Is there someone who could help test some of the ROMs?

BTW, I tried the ATI ROM, and it gave messy boot screens and locked up on OEM.
 

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To save a little work,

I have gone throug each of these and some seem to be the same bios.

These three are the same
Diamond - 113-B50701-100
Gigabyte - 113-B50701-100
HIS - 113-B50701-100

Official Apple - 113-B77101-012
Asus-113-AB67800-162
ATI - 113-B50701-105
Palit - 113-AA48709575.24
Powercooler - 113-BA0701-X05
Sapphire - 113-AB68800-XXX

What is the best method to flash? Can it be done in windows with WinFlash or similar?
 
is it normal to have 2 ATI Radeon 4870 in PCI section of system profiler?

my system 8*2.8 2008 Mac Pro + only 1 flash HIS 4870 pipomolo methods

screencapturea.png
 
Thanks!

Just wanted to say thanks to the community for all of their hard work in making this happen!

I just successfully flashed a XFX 4870 after having purchased the power cables from v0n via ebay.

Thanks again guys!
 
I want to second Mustard Chops. I also flashed a XFX 4870 and all is well. Thanks everyone.

To matthew.russo: follow swissman's guide to flash your XFX 4870. It tells you where to get the firmware.
 
I received my XFX 4870 today (HD-487A-ZHFC) and I had actually ordered a HD-487A-ZDFC so I was nervous about flashing it, because it's imperative that both DVI worked, well I flashed it and both DVI work flawlessly! Thanks everyone, this thread saved me almost $300...


Andrew
 
Are any of the 1 GB XFX cards working with both DVI ports? Just curious if anybody's tried it. My sapphire 1GB is nice, but I'd like to get two ports out of it.
 
Zokim said:
Are they 2 dual dvi's? like two 23" ACDs.

And, could you post some cinebench benchmarks for your 1GB card. I have a 4870 from apple and want to see if it's worth the upgrade to 1 GB.
Click to expand...

it's not if you're only getting half the PCI bandwidth. I had both cards and the 1 GB got less in CB (it was something like 6200 vs 6610 that the 512 MB Apple card gets). Sold it though so I can't post hard numbers.

look further back in this thread. I wanted a 1 GB for my 3D work but gave up since Mudbox was noticeably slower with the 1 GB Sapphire's limited bandwidth.
 
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