Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Prince134

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 17, 2010
338
153
Hi,

Here are BIOS ROM for any one who want to try the down clock and down volts HD 7970s. Even if you only want to put one HD 7970 in your Mac Pro, the noise level is reduced as stated in the other thread.

As long as you have reference design HD 7970, one fan. Here are your bios.

Features:
-MAC OS boot screen.
-0.956V at load
-GPU clock 925Mhz
-Memory Clock 1300 Mhz
-less than 200 Watt consumption (~185W)

Please update to the forum your BruceX performance in sec, as well as Sala LUXMARK, GPU score, and GPU+CPU score.

Mine is 2x3.46G cpu, 128GB RAM, dual HD 7970 (2xD700s).

Final cut Pro 10.1.1 BruceX performace: 23-24 sec.
LUXMARK, GPU only 4,120.
LUXMARK, CPU +GPU 5,146.

Just for a comparison, my single GTX 680 BruceX is very poor at around 1:45.
LUXMARK GPU score give me under 700. So OpenCL wise, AMD is several times outperforming and is also strongly supported by APPLE in its video editing products. Plus, now Adobe supports OPENCL in Premier Pro too.

So please update yours.

Note: g095vmac.rom was for my Gigabyte HD7970, X095vmac.rom was for my XFX HD7970, both are reference design. I think you can use either one if you are sure it's reference design cards. Be sure using DOS drive in PC and perform atiflash. ATIWinflash got me some unpredictable error, so I would avoid using it.
 

Attachments

  • g095vmac.rom.zip
    88.2 KB · Views: 214
  • x095vmac.rom.zip
    88.2 KB · Views: 203

Prince134

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 17, 2010
338
153
No, one fan at the end. Mine is xfx black edition. Google HD7970 reference design, it means PCB design as early as they debut in the market. Don't have to be XFX.
 

MacVidCards

Suspended
Nov 17, 2008
6,096
1,056
Hollywood, CA
People with Visiontek brand reference 7970s should skip this.

They use reference fan but not reference pieces.

Possibly anyone with blue PCB as well.
 

Prince134

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 17, 2010
338
153
Important reminder

Hey guys,

I want to make one point here. The reason I mentioned "reference design" is because that you would use my bios provided here. So a purely reference designed HD 7970 can use either of my bios. And you will get boot screen. It makes no difference g or x.

However if you already own your HD7970 or 280X no matter what PCB design for example, you can still use VBE7 to modify your clock and voltage on your specific bios. Then if you would like to have Mac OS boot screen, you can flash with mac efi with scripts that can be found in netkas forum. Going this way, you are not using my bios, but still can achieve the idea of obtaining both card with internal power and boot screen.

Hope this clarify, and do update your progress and score...
 

Flint Ironstag

macrumors 65816
Dec 1, 2013
1,334
744
Houston, TX USA
Prince134, thanks for posting this. That's what I love about this forum.

Unfortunately, I picked up a bunch of Power Color dual fan, which are not reference. Still I may try this (the undervolting then flashing with custom EFI).

Great stuff.
 

Prince134

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 17, 2010
338
153
Prince134, thanks for posting this. That's what I love about this forum.

Unfortunately, I picked up a bunch of Power Color dual fan, which are not reference. Still I may try this (the undervolting then flashing with custom EFI).

Great stuff.

You are welcome.
Yes, you can do it that way.
Please do update your progress and results.
 

ditz

macrumors newbie
Jan 2, 2022
2
0
Greetz from 2022, Prince134!

You know, the attached g095vmac is the only rom that is fitted (I have tried tens of 7970 roms) for my Radeon Sapphire HD 7970 and forces it to show bootscreen and Opencore bootpicker and (attention!) to load Windows UEFI (!!!!!), Mojave, HSierra and Mavericks ... though experts say it is impossible. I have tried but can not recreate this example of yours with similar-like gigabyte rom... All my attempts freeze up Windows UEFI loading (due to Mac flashing) but g095vmac works smoothly! Besides power management and Mac flashing the rom is UEFI also!... But Mac fleshing cannot be UEFI, as far as I know... Will you please dicscover the trick and recollect the way of creating this rom? Exact gigabyte rom version and so on...?
 
Last edited:
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.