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Ultimate Thread: 4890 in Mac Pro

Installing an additional HIS HD 4890 Crossfire GPU

I have used this flashing program for my HIS HD 4890 GPU and worked without a hitch in 2009 MacPro. I love the card so much I want to install another one. These cards get hard to come by and have only found one place that sales them. Can i use this program again to flash the second video card, followed by installing both of them, using the crossfire bridge. Then call it good???

The only real question I have is what card do I plug the monitor into?

SLOT 1
or
SLOT 2

Thanks Guys,
Steve
 
feedthefire: if quitting like that, my advice is that hackintosh is not for you.


stgoo: Im not sure how to power the card in a 09 mac.



also Crossfire only works in windows.
 
feedthefire said:
all i have to say is I just spent 12 hours trying to get a ****ing video card installed on my overly expensive MacPro and now I'm pissed. I am going to build a glorious hackint0sh because this is retarded and annoying. Good luck and god speed to you mac addicts, but this one just quit.... **** you apple, you just dropped about 10 notches in my opinion, period. :mad:
Click to expand...

Well good luck to you. I think you'll need it. Imagine yourself after 2 weeks of hackingtoshing..... :p
 
feedthefire: yeah, if a GPU is giving you that much trouble, a hackintosh will give you more.
 
sikzorro said:
I have only one minor bug: Every time i start SL I get the message that the power cord is not right connected to my graphic card :confused:

Br, Zvoni
Click to expand...

Good news, after my MP was completely switched of once, I have no more error message for missing power cord :D

I am so happy with my new graphic card !!
 
How to Flash It Properly Without the Tool

Cindori said:
note that the ZSFC 2.0 does not work with ATI FLashing tool
Click to expand...

I am receiving my cables today, and you mentioned that the rom does not work with the ATI Flashing Tool, How do I go about flashing it? If I have overlooked something, I apologize.

Thanks
 
I'd like to start out by thanking all the helpful people in this thread. Were it not for you guys I would have just accepted that the best graphics My Mac Pro 1,1 could ever get would be the 8800GT that i've got now, or spending $350 to get the Apple 4870 to "unofficially" work. Having spent around that much for the Apple branded 8800GT a year or two ago, I wasn't planning on shelling that much out again.

Today I went ahead and ordered the XFX HD-489X-ZSFC from Newegg for $200 bucks.

Hopefully the Card will be a v1.6 or 2.0 card, although I see that Cindori was kind enough to post a 3.1 firmware for jebha.

Regarding power, I've got the power cable that was originally in my Mac for my old X1900, as well as my current cable that came with my 8800GT. Is it safe to presume that the cables are pinned the same way? I would think so, but maybe somebody could answer and save me the trouble of tracing each of them out to compare them.

Since I don't have the card, I can't run through the steps to reflash it yet, but I have a question: Assuming the new firmware came from an Apple 4870, why does Netkas's QE_CI package have to be installed? Is it because there's an enumerated list of specific graphics cards somewhere within the guts of the OS, and QE will only be enabled for cards on that list? I presume that this package just adds additional cards (maybe in some generic way) to that list? Or am I completely off base?

There are a lot of smart people who've thought a lot of this out I'm sure, and while I don't have issues just following sets of instructions "because that's the way it works", I like to try to figure out the "why" when I can.

Thanks for the all the good info, and I'll post my results when my card comes in!

-Raeth
 
you're right on power and QECI.
every card has a device-id and 4890's does not exist in osx, hence the QECI patch.
 
Where to Buy a Sapphire Vapor-X Card that works?

I've been trying to find a Sapphire Vapor-X card, but can't find anyone selling them to save my life. I'm especially interested in the Vapor-X, because they received excellent reviews for cooling and low noise. Does anyone know where to get one of these?

SAPPHIRE VAPOR-X HD 4890 1GB GDDR5 PCI-E

-Ignoo
 
ignoo said:
I've been trying to find a Sapphire Vapor-X card, but can't find anyone selling them to save my life. I'm especially interested in the Vapor-X, because they received excellent reviews for cooling and low noise. Does anyone know where to get one of these?

SAPPHIRE VAPOR-X HD 4890 1GB GDDR5 PCI-E

-Ignoo
Click to expand...

I bought mine from Amazon Germany a week ago!
 
Still getting nowhere with XFX HD-489X-ZSFC v1.6 in my MacPro v2.1, with SL 10.6.2. I have tried every applicable ROM mentioned in this thread and I still get black lines and very poor stability, the system always freezes within 10-30 minutes with this card in place. After every ROM flash and reboot I make sure the QECI is installed, I have re-applied the 10.6.2 combo updater several times, then the QECI again, plenty of reboots, cold starts. It never gets better. Is it possible the Mac is weak on power with this card and 4 hard drives? I put my 1900 back in and the system is rock solid as it always has been.

I am going to let this card run for while in a PC with the original ROM to see if it is stable and verify that it's not just a sick card. I see a few Newegg reviews of people having bad cards. Otherwise I'm giving up on using it in a Mac.
 
http://groths.se/jebha.zip[/QUOTE]

Hi Cindori,

Many thanks for this, the card works flawlessly after flash from boot disk and is now driving my 30" Cinema Display. I don't even get the 'cable unplugged' error others have reported.

keywords for people searching this thread: card is XFX 4890 ZSFC 1Gb version 3.1

Thanks again!
 
Code: 
http://groths.se/jebha.zip

Using the bootrom flash method, my XFX 4890 ZSFC 1Gb version 3.1 works perfect as well. I don't get the power cable error either. Thanks a million Cindori and netkas and rominator. You guys are wonderful.

I just have one strange occurence so far... the fan simply gets loud and decreases over and over again every couple of minutes. Even as I'm typing now, it does this. What is this because of?
 
thefilmmaking said:
Code: 
http://groths.se/jebha.zip

Using the bootrom flash method, my XFX 4890 ZSFC 1Gb version 3.1 works perfect as well. I don't get the power cable error either. Thanks a million Cindori and netkas and rominator. You guys are wonderful.

I just have one strange occurence so far... the fan simply gets loud and decreases over and over again every couple of minutes. Even as I'm typing now, it does this. What is this because of?
Click to expand...

Are you running off of power from the PCIe connectors or Molex?

My XFX card should be here tomorrow, I just read all 80 pages of this thread to get an idea of the process. It sure is a lot easier now than it was at the beginning. I haven't even flashed yet but I wanted to say thanks in advance to everyone who has created the various patches, ROMs, updates and other pieces needed to make these cards work.
 
Rokusaburo said:
Quick question, when flashing via BootCD with 2 ATI cards, how do you specify which card you want to flash.
Click to expand...

to see cards:

atiflash -i

will show like this, example:

0: ATI card 1
1: ATI card 2


to flash card 1:

atiflash -f 0 name.rom -p
 
Hi all,

I'm back with a new Card "exchange under warranty" because previous one died very quickly, maybe due to a bad flashing :rolleyes: who knows...

Anyway I received the card yesterday but this time it's a "hynix".
Hopefully I see that this kind of ROM was available on the forum.

I flashed the card using DOS USB key on a PC with atiflash.

I plugged the card in my MacPro and Miracle it's working perfectly, except this message about cable ;)

I have a backup of the original ROM, if it's still necessary for some of you let me know and I will post it.

Thanks to all of you, with a special thanks to Peloche
 
Don't worry about the message of the cable.

Wind06 said:
Hi all,

I'm back with a new Card "exchange under warranty" because previous one died very quickly, maybe due to a bad flashing :rolleyes: who knows...

Anyway I received the card yesterday but this time it's a "hynix".
Hopefully I see that this kind of ROM was available on the forum.

I flashed the card using DOS USB key on a PC with atiflash.

I plugged the card in my MacPro and Miracle it's working perfectly, except this message about cable ;)

I have a backup of the original ROM, if it's still necessary for some of you let me know and I will post it.

Thanks to all of you, with a special thanks to Peloche
Click to expand...

If i understand, the mac os x 10.6 don't manage the 2 power output of the mainboard. I say again that vga card is totally functionnaly because if the message was true, the card never boot.
 
Fast Shadow said:
Are you running off of power from the PCIe connectors or Molex?

My XFX card should be here tomorrow, I just read all 80 pages of this thread to get an idea of the process. It sure is a lot easier now than it was at the beginning. I haven't even flashed yet but I wanted to say thanks in advance to everyone who has created the various patches, ROMs, updates and other pieces needed to make these cards work.
Click to expand...


I'm running off the PCIe connectors. One cable that was used by my stock x1900xts that I replaced, and one that I ordered off eBay (it's titled: PCIe PCI-e Power Cable for Mac G5 nVidia ATI Video Card):

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270464636969&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT




Cindori, do you have any idea why the card's fan revs up and down a few times and then goes silent every 4 or 5 minutes. It's a cycle that keeps happening, even though I check the temp to be a stable 33 degrees celcius throughout.
 
Rokusaburo said:
Do both cards need to be powered for this, or just plugged into pcie slots? Also, how do you know which card is which?
Click to expand...

Why don't you just keep one of them plugged in? It's a lot easier this way. Just set your startup disk as Windows, plug in the 4890, boot up into windows, install the windows drivers off the disk, make your Bootdisk with the ultimate bootdisk, and then flash it in DOS.
 
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