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Radeon HD 6990

Apple has never shipped dual GPU cards, and I don't think it will change anytime soon.
OS X will only detect one GPU, even if the card is flashed.
 
The HD6990 requires two 8pin aux cables, of which the MacPro has none available. >300W TDP for graphics is unlikely considering Apple's dispassion for highend graphics support.
Let's pray for one Cayman GPU before hoping for two.
Nice rhyme, eh?
 
schulmaster said:
The HD6990 requires two 8pin aux cables, of which the MacPro has none available. >300W TDP for graphics is unlikely considering Apple's dispassion for highend graphics support.
Let's pray for one Cayman GPU before hoping for two.
Nice rhyme, eh?
Click to expand...

You can already get Cayman (Radeon HD 6970) and Barts (Radeon HD 6870) running in Snow Leopard with a few tricks from the new developer preview of Lion, even without flashing ;)

Oh yeah, and the old Cypress (Radeon HD 5870) also works.

That is, you do not need EFI so far.
 
Pressure said:
You can already get Cayman (Radeon HD 6970) and Barts (Radeon HD 6870) running in Snow Leopard with a few tricks from the new developer preview of Lion, even without flashing ;)

Oh yeah, and the old Cypress (Radeon HD 5870) also works.

That is, you do not need EFI so far.
Click to expand...

Links to the procedure please!
 
I don't think you need developer access to download driver kexts from someone willing to share said kexts.
 
Pressure said:
You can already get Cayman (Radeon HD 6970) and Barts (Radeon HD 6870) running in Snow Leopard with a few tricks from the new developer preview of Lion, even without flashing ;)

Oh yeah, and the old Cypress (Radeon HD 5870) also works.

That is, you do not need EFI so far.
Click to expand...

Remember though, the HD6970 requires a 6pin and an 8pin power connector. Therefore a second PSU, or the bending of some rules on a hardware level are required in addition to the above mentioned developer shenanigans.
 
This card would be wasted in a Mac Pro since only one GPU would be used by OS X - provided you can get the drivers to work that is. Besides which, the card looks to be a bad idea for PCs in general too. It's more expensive than two 5970s in crossfire, is slightly slower and sounds like a hurricane - ~60 dB under load, about 10 times louder than a 5970 (~50 dB). They're also going to suffer in most computer cases (including the Mac Pro's) since unlike all previous graphics cards, only half of the hot exhaust air is blown out of the back of the case, the rest is pumped forwards. Since the Mac Pro has a clear cold-air-comes-in-the-front, hot-air-goes-out-the-back design, this would not work well with it.
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Actually I think the main reason we will not see this card in a mac, driver issues aside, is that not only is it the fastest it is also the LOUDEST and Apple wouldn't let that pass.
 
You can read about it here.

The files should be fairly easy to find if you know where to look.

Following cards should be "compatible" out of the box:
  • Radeon HD 5770
  • Radeon HD 5850
  • Radeon HD 5870
  • Radeon HD 6850
  • Radeon HD 6870
  • Radeon HD 6970

Even the EyeFinity versions with up to 6 Mini-DisplayPort connectors, although they only seem to work as single-link (up to 1920 x 1200).
 
Pressure said:
You can read about it here.

The files should be fairly easy to find if you know where to look.

Following cards should be "compatible" out of the box:
  • Radeon HD 5770
  • Radeon HD 5850
  • Radeon HD 5870
  • Radeon HD 6850
  • Radeon HD 6870
  • Radeon HD 6970

Even the EyeFinity versions with up to 6 Mini-DisplayPort connectors, although they only seem to work as single-link (up to 1920 x 1200).
Click to expand...

What does out of the box mean in this case?
With Lion I can put any PC version of these cards in the Pro and it will work just like an Apple one?
 
Transporteur said:
What does out of the box mean in this case?
With Lion I can put any PC version of these cards in the Pro and it will work just like an Apple one?
Click to expand...

Yes, that's the general gist of what I am saying.

It may only work for this current developer version of Lion, so proceed at own risk here.

But you can copy these kexts into Snow Leopard.
 
Last edited:
Wow that would be awesome.
Thanks for the info!
Makes me finally thinking of going the non-Apple cards route.

I've had lots of problems with the last generation of graphics cards (2009 ones) and Apple didn't even bother to offer any support whatsoever (really nice considering the cost of those cards).
That and the fact that the 6870 goes for about 160€, which is a third of the price Apple charges for their 5870. You get about the same performance plus an additional DVI port.
I can probably sell my original 4870 for the same price a 6870 costs and keep the GT120 because of the missing boot screen with flashed cards.
 
Transporteur said:
Wow that would be awesome.
Thanks for the info!
Makes me finally thinking of going the non-Apple cards route.

I've had lots of problems with the last generation of graphics cards (2009 ones) and Apple didn't even bother to offer any support whatsoever (really nice considering the cost of those cards).
That and the fact that the 6870 goes for about 160€, which is a third of the price Apple charges for their 5870. You get about the same performance plus an additional DVI port.
I can probably sell my original 4870 for the same price a 6870 costs and keep the GT120 because of the missing boot screen with flashed cards.
Click to expand...

You can be almost certain that this will not work in the final version of Mac OS X Lion, unless AMD have decided to let their graphic cards be OS agnostic.

So don't get your hopes up.
 
Well, if the drivers are available in Lion, the flashing or injection route would still be applicable, wouldn't it?

If that's the case, it would be fine, too. I just can't justify another 400 quid for an Apple card only to get 3 display outputs on one card and the 5770 isn't an option as lots of people have issues with this card in the 2009 machine.
 
Transporteur said:
Well, if the drivers are available in Lion, the flashing or injection route would still be applicable, wouldn't it?

If that's the case, it would be fine, too. I just can't justify another 400 quid for an Apple card only to get 3 display outputs on one card and the 5770 isn't an option as lots of people have issues with this card in the 2009 machine.
Click to expand...

Only if the EFI part is available from somewhere, otherwise the graphic card won't be initialized by the OS.
 
In Lion you no longer need an EFI ROM to initialize recent radeons.
But the 6990 isn't supported anyway.
 
Pressure said:
You can read about it here.

The files should be fairly easy to find if you know where to look.

Following cards should be "compatible" out of the box:
  • Radeon HD 5770
  • Radeon HD 5850
  • Radeon HD 5870
  • Radeon HD 6850
  • Radeon HD 6870
  • Radeon HD 6970

Even the EyeFinity versions with up to 6 Mini-DisplayPort connectors, although they only seem to work as single-link (up to 1920 x 1200).
Click to expand...

Thanks Pressure! You're the man!

I've had a hankering for a 6970 for some time now!
 
jeanlain said:
In Lion you no longer need an EFI ROM to initialize recent radeons.
But the 6990 isn't supported anyway.
Click to expand...

Good point, though I wonder if this will be the case with future iterations of Lion.

Would be nice, although without EFI we have no boot screen.
 
The early bird is for the cat.

I would hold off buying a new HD6970 to put in your Mac Pro until the final version of Lion is released.
Apple are notoriously prone to reworking stuff at the last minute and slamming folks fingers in the drawer. :mad:
When I see a retail version of Lion running an unflashed PC card I will consider changing, not before.
 
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