Sapphire 7950 Mac Problems

[patiarnold]

Hey there,

I have some problems with my new 7950 Sapphire Mac Edition and just wanted to check if anyone has a solution before returning the card.
My Mac Pro is a 4.1 with the 2 x 2.26 processors running 10.9 Mavericks. Whenever I use the card in PC-mode it works fine but without bootscreen of course. When I put the card to Mac-mode it does show the bootscreen but whenever Mavericks is up the display turns black again. For me this seems to be an issue with the drivers eventhough I don’t quite understand why the card works in PC-mode then.

Did anyone have similar problems with the 7950?

 

[DanielCoffey]

You should be able to use it in Mac Mode exclusively.

Which output from the card are you using? It is likely that only certain outputs are enabled in Mac Mode.

 

[patiarnold]

I have a 23" Cinema Display that I connect via DVI. Just tried it on one of the DP with an adapter and there it works perfectly. Thank you very much!
So why do they say the card had an DVI-Port when it actually doesn't work?

 

[GP-SE]

leave it set on "Mac Mode" all the time, the only reason for the PC or MAC switch is for when it's in an actual PC with BIOS. On a Mac leave it in MAC mode, regardless if you're in windows or OSX.

I agree the issue could be the output you're using on the card, are you using DVI or DisplayPort? those should work fine with Mavericks. If it still doesn't work then perhaps re-install Mavericks. Just be sure the card's hardware switch is set to "MAC" when used in your Macintosh, as this enables EFI firmware which the mac needs to correctly identify the card.

 

[666sheep]

In genuine Sapphire Mac Edition all ports should work in OSX, regardless BIOS switch position. "Mac" BIOS loads different framebuffer than "PC" one, but Mac Edition has all port matched with both of them. Didn't you install Sapphire drivers? If so, this is most likely the culprit. Drivers are mean for 10.7 only and could cause troubles in 10.9.

 

[patiarnold]

Well there are actually no drivers for 10.9 - if I try to install the ones that came with the card it tells me that no drivers are required for my system.
So does this mean the card is broken and I should return it?

Edit: Just tried out something else. If I start up with the Display connected to DVI it doesn't get recognised and the screen turns black. If I start up connected to MDP and then change to DVI while the system is running the Display works but gets recognised with the wrong resolution. So the DVI-port seems to work actually but shows some strange behavior. Does anyone have an explanation for this?

 

[cal6n]

Have you tried resetting PRAM and SMC? If corrupted, they can sometimes cause issues at boot time.

 

[patiarnold]

I tried both and it didn't make any difference unfortunately.

Well, ok. So maybe it's actually the Cinema Display that causes that error? It turns black after booting. But if I unplug and reconnect it with DVI it works fine. This only happens with the DVI-port. It seems as if it turns into sleepmode after booting for some reason.

 

[Cubemmal]

The card works fine for me. I did nothing when I got it about four months ago, just checked that the switch was set for Mac mode and installed it. I didn't install any drivers either. It works just as well in Mavericks.

 

[MattDSLR]

I'm hunting for a good card too
THX