Vista problem with Macpro + ATI 1900xt

[Mrjynx]

picked up Vista today and I can't seem to get the ati 1900xt working on my mac pro. The driver installs, however it fails to load because of a resource conflict? I haven't seen a resouce conflict since win95! But the problem is I can't figure out how to determine what the conflict is, it won't tell me.

So, if anyone has had this issue and found a fix, please let me know, thanks. and yes I know it's not supported yet as well

 

[apple_iBoy]

I am having the same issue, except with the NVIDIA GeForce 7300 card. I've downloaded the Vista-approriate driver for the card, but I still get a message saying the hardware "doesn't have access to the resources it needs" or something like that in the Device Manager.

With the conflict, Vista runs in some VGA safe mode -- 640x480 and 4-bit (!) color I believe. Very difficult to diagnose the problem when I'm having trouble viewing buttons on the screen!

I have read about PCs having conflicts with the 7300 card, something related to a BIOS issue. Upgrading to a newer revision of BIOS seemed to fix the problem for PC users, but I just gave up at that point and put XP back. I'll wait until some of the smarties figure out what to do, or until Vista is officially supported.

 

[apfhex]

Did you both do an upgrade install from XP, or a clean install of Vista? I had no problems with the drivers for the X1900.

 

[Mrjynx]

I have the home premium and i tried to do an upgrade, however it renames your original xp dir to windows.old so it appears to be a clean install.

This one has kinda stumped me. And to add to this issue, it doesn't look like the apple drivers install properly because I can't seem to find the startup disk app so I can switch back to OS X. I knew this was a bad idea!


Update: I think I know what the issue is. I only have 1gb of ram (never got around to upgrading) and from what i've read, people with 7300gt cards are having the exact same problem i'm having. So, I guess it's time to upgrade next week.

 

[Rad]

Vista and Mac Pro

No problem running the ATI Catalyst software for Vista from the ati.com website on a Mac Pro and a ATI XT1900. Was an clean upgrade from a virgin install of XP.

 

[The3nd]

Rad, how much ram you running? What about you other guys?

 

[Rad]

Ram

6 GB, although 32-bit Vista Ultimate (and XP) only recognize 2 GB. Supposedly the 64-bit version will recognize more RAM. I did not want to install the 64-bit version of Vista since there reportedly are more problems with drivers, including fewer available and each driver must be signed by Microsoft to install.

 

[Mrjynx]

Vista 32bit can do 4gb combined with your video card. So with the 1900xt the sweet spot is stock 1gb + 2gb. 64bit can scale up to 16gb..

I ordered 2gb, hopefully this will remedy the issue. If it does I'll be quite surprised, I'm still having difficulty understanding why 1gb of ram is a limiting factor for getting the 1900xt to work.. very strange.. once I get the new RAM installed I will let everyone know how it went..

 

[Rad]

Ram

So how do you get the 32-bit Vista to recognize mroe than 2 GB RAM? And if someone answers, have they really done it themselves?

 

[Mrjynx]

So how do you get the 32-bit Vista to recognize mroe than 2 GB RAM? And if someone answers, have they really done it themselves?

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/aa366778.aspx

straight from MS. Also the mathematically 2^32 works out to be about 4,294,967,296 = 4GB approx.

 

[Rad]

In Theory

Microsoft KB docs are nice, but has anyone actually been able to get their Mac Pro to recognize more than 2 GB RAM in REAL life? The problem is likely related to the Mac pro itself rather than an underlying Windows limitation.

 

[TantalizedMind]

Windows.... problem?..... no way!

 

[WildPalms]

Microsoft KB docs are nice, but has anyone actually been able to get their Mac Pro to recognize more than 2 GB RAM in REAL life? The problem is likely related to the Mac pro itself rather than an underlying Windows limitation.

Really? Thats your best assumption is it? ALL my ram is recognized by Win2k3. ALL. Look at my signature to see how much ram I'm running with in my Mac Pro.

 

[WildPalms]

Try Vista 64bit and you will see it all. The problem is Windows, not the hardware.

 

[Rad]

Vista

. . . so in 32-bit version of Vista, no one really recognized more than 2 GB of their RAM. Not talking about the 64-bit version or Windows Server 2003, etc.

 

[Mrjynx]

So I recieved the 2gb of ram last night, put it into the Macpro and Vista worked perfectly so having more than 1gb of ram for vista is a requirement.

I also noticed the system is only picking up 2GB of ram! yes only 2gb, but after doing some research there is a reason for this.

Eventhough MS says it supports up to 4gb of ram, this statement is extremely misleading. At the hardware level, other devices such as your video card, pci controllers, memory controllers, etc all require addressable memory space. So while vista can use 4gb of ADDRESSABLE memory, some of those address's are reserved for system devices(up to half). So it will only pick up 2gb os physical memory on the mac pro. This number may be different on other systems, but for the mac pro it will most likly use 2gb only. At the application level there are switches you can do to force the app to use the remaining memory but that's more so for developement tools and frameworks (example .NET) .

So Rad you are basically correct.. looks like I'm going to upgrade to the 64-bit version.


MrJynx

 

[JRoffe]

Vista and ATI x1900 with 1 GB RAM = low res.

Thanks for the info, I installed Vista with 1 GB RAM, and a 512 MB ATI x1900 video card. I was stuck at 400x480... yes that is correct. 400x480 at 4 color depth. I installed the correct ATI driver and still no luck.

I went out and bought another 1 GB of RAM (wow thats expensive).. and now I have 1280x1024 resolution at 32 bit colors.

Thanks all for the info

 

[sdubois92]

I would wait until Bootcamp has official Vista support before using it on any mac. I'm not sure about parallels or vm ware.