Well after much hullabaloo, I finally got my 6870 working on my new mac pro.
I kept asking the same questions on here and Netkas and for the most part they were going unanswered so I just bit the bullet and installed the thing.
First off, I have this XFX 1GB 6870 card, the stock Apple 5870, and a brand new 3.33ghz hex-core (still has the new comp smell... oh yeah.) I'm also using OS X 10.7.3 at the moment.
So here are my own issues, questions and answers
Crossfire? / Why do this?
Okay not my question but I think others might be thinking that's why I posted this thread: NO, crossfire wont work between the 5870 and 6870. This thread is just about adding a 6870 JUST for ****s and giggles. Or, in my case, more monitors and preservation of Audio over HDMI--long story short, you can't have 2 monitors + HDMI w/Audio out of the 5870 because there are no Active MDP to HDMI adapters according to my Google-Fu.
Do I need to flash the 6870?
Yes. As Rominator (?) predicted in one of his posts on the Netkas forum, having a flashed ATI and an unflashed ATI seems to have issues. Mine kernel panicked not far into my first test run using just VLC. Since flashing, few problems have occurred (see below).
Any weird bugs?
I just did a test run with VLC, Silverlight, and DVD player all playing on the 6870 monitor at the same time and it did great, EXCEPT: Silverlight (Netflix) only works in Safari now. I tried doing a complete reinstall of silverlight using this method and I still get this error in chrome and firefox.
UPDATE: Well I rebooted and Netflix works in Chrome and Firefox now... just not in Safari... I wonder if there's a reason for this. UPDATE2: RE-Reboot now we're back to Safari again LOL.
Another bug: I have my background to change every 5 minutes, on some reboots, when it fades to another background it has some weird tearing. It's usually associated with Silverlight *working* in Chrome. On instantiations like the one I'm in at the moment, Silverlight works in Safari and there's no tearing.
Audio over HDMI with the 6870?
I've asked this question a thousand times and nobody has answered. I PM'd Rominator on Netkas and he hasn't answered
Unfortunately, it looks like the 6870 does NOT do audio over HDMI, even when the video is working fine. Several users have reported that Audio over MDP doesn't work either but I haven't tried it. There's a way to do it through ATY_Init but I'm not interested in trying it at this time.
How To Flash 6870?
I flashed on my old Mac Pro 2006 just because it was easier to access. Different brands have different ways of flashing. The one I ended up settling is the most foolproof but least user-friendly.
With my XFX I tried several methods which failed before finding the most annoying one possible (no Mac GUIs). First off, Zeus didn't work. At all.
1. I used ATI Winflash to get the PC ROM (though I'm sure the dos-based ATI flash would've worked too). The OS X GUI produced a faulty ROM which ATI Winflash hated.
2. Zeus wouldn't add the EFI to my ROM. I had to modify and run the script/instructions on the netkas website using this method--my "blocknum" was 128, apparently.
3. Zeus failed to flash my card, I used ATI Winflash for this.
UPDATE: Supposedly the latest version of Zeus (2.8)--the one I used--doesn't work with the 6000 series, instead cindori recommends Zeus 2.3. I know other people have flashed their 6870's with Zeus, all I'm saying is 2.8 didn't work for me for either modifying the ROM to EFI or flashing the card. I never said Zeus "doesn't work", I've read numerous reports saying it does, I just had bad luck on my attempt and I can only attest to that. Different cards have different requirements for flashing. The one with the most consistent results is the one I chose, but it has many steps.
UPDATE: unplugged all but the lower DVI port in both my video cards and the bootscreen on the 6870 came up fine. Someday later I might consider doing 6870 Crossfire (I have a 6870 Sapphire in my 2006 MP) and I'll report on it then.
How do you power it?
I have a second, 350watt PSU with a relay hooked up. I'll post pics and schematics when I have the time. Here's the gist:
I kept asking the same questions on here and Netkas and for the most part they were going unanswered so I just bit the bullet and installed the thing.
First off, I have this XFX 1GB 6870 card, the stock Apple 5870, and a brand new 3.33ghz hex-core (still has the new comp smell... oh yeah.) I'm also using OS X 10.7.3 at the moment.
So here are my own issues, questions and answers
Crossfire? / Why do this?
Okay not my question but I think others might be thinking that's why I posted this thread: NO, crossfire wont work between the 5870 and 6870. This thread is just about adding a 6870 JUST for ****s and giggles. Or, in my case, more monitors and preservation of Audio over HDMI--long story short, you can't have 2 monitors + HDMI w/Audio out of the 5870 because there are no Active MDP to HDMI adapters according to my Google-Fu.
Do I need to flash the 6870?
Yes. As Rominator (?) predicted in one of his posts on the Netkas forum, having a flashed ATI and an unflashed ATI seems to have issues. Mine kernel panicked not far into my first test run using just VLC. Since flashing, few problems have occurred (see below).
Any weird bugs?
I just did a test run with VLC, Silverlight, and DVD player all playing on the 6870 monitor at the same time and it did great, EXCEPT: Silverlight (Netflix) only works in Safari now. I tried doing a complete reinstall of silverlight using this method and I still get this error in chrome and firefox.
UPDATE: Well I rebooted and Netflix works in Chrome and Firefox now... just not in Safari... I wonder if there's a reason for this. UPDATE2: RE-Reboot now we're back to Safari again LOL.
Another bug: I have my background to change every 5 minutes, on some reboots, when it fades to another background it has some weird tearing. It's usually associated with Silverlight *working* in Chrome. On instantiations like the one I'm in at the moment, Silverlight works in Safari and there's no tearing.
Audio over HDMI with the 6870?
I've asked this question a thousand times and nobody has answered. I PM'd Rominator on Netkas and he hasn't answered
Unfortunately, it looks like the 6870 does NOT do audio over HDMI, even when the video is working fine. Several users have reported that Audio over MDP doesn't work either but I haven't tried it. There's a way to do it through ATY_Init but I'm not interested in trying it at this time.
How To Flash 6870?
I flashed on my old Mac Pro 2006 just because it was easier to access. Different brands have different ways of flashing. The one I ended up settling is the most foolproof but least user-friendly.
With my XFX I tried several methods which failed before finding the most annoying one possible (no Mac GUIs
). First off, Zeus didn't work. At all.1. I used ATI Winflash to get the PC ROM (though I'm sure the dos-based ATI flash would've worked too). The OS X GUI produced a faulty ROM which ATI Winflash hated.
2. Zeus wouldn't add the EFI to my ROM. I had to modify and run the script/instructions on the netkas website using this method--my "blocknum" was 128, apparently.
3. Zeus failed to flash my card, I used ATI Winflash for this.
UPDATE: Supposedly the latest version of Zeus (2.8)--the one I used--doesn't work with the 6000 series, instead cindori recommends Zeus 2.3. I know other people have flashed their 6870's with Zeus, all I'm saying is 2.8 didn't work for me for either modifying the ROM to EFI or flashing the card. I never said Zeus "doesn't work", I've read numerous reports saying it does, I just had bad luck on my attempt and I can only attest to that. Different cards have different requirements for flashing. The one with the most consistent results is the one I chose, but it has many steps.
UPDATE: unplugged all but the lower DVI port in both my video cards and the bootscreen on the 6870 came up fine. Someday later I might consider doing 6870 Crossfire (I have a 6870 Sapphire in my 2006 MP) and I'll report on it then.
How do you power it?
I have a second, 350watt PSU with a relay hooked up. I'll post pics and schematics when I have the time. Here's the gist:
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