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Windows 8.1 Native EFI Not Detecting GTX 980? (cMP 4,1)

Up and running on GTX970, testing next with Titan X !

Yep, works fine.

Biggest issue is that it won't keep the Boot Disk choice. While I have my other Windows 8 disk in it will boot that. If I remove it I get the "No bootable disc, hit a key"

But if I hold "option" I get one of the choices being "EFI Boot" and that leads to EFI Windows. Oddly, if I try to choose in Bootcamp that disk is referred to as "Basic Data Partition Windows" but as mentioned it doesn't go there.

I may try moving it to first drive bay, that usually makes it easier to choose a Win startup.

Installed latest Nvidia drivers no trouble at all.

I'll do screenshots with a Titan-X later today.

But yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

Sorry, meant yes our EFI Maxwell cards work for EFI boot in Windows on cMP.
 
MacVidCards said:
Yep, works fine.

Biggest issue is that it won't keep the Boot Disk choice. While I have my other Windows 8 disk in it will boot that. If I remove it I get the "No bootable disc, hit a key"

But if I hold "option" I get one of the choices being "EFI Boot" and that leads to EFI Windows. Oddly, if I try to choose in Bootcamp that disk is referred to as "Basic Data Partition Windows" but as mentioned it doesn't go there.

I may try moving it to first drive bay, that usually makes it easier to choose a Win startup.

Installed latest Nvidia drivers no trouble at all.

I'll do screenshots with a Titan-X later today.

But yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

Sorry, meant yes our EFI Maxwell cards work for EFI boot in Windows on cMP.
Click to expand...

That is fantastic news and the MVC website seems to have changed its policy of not providing flashing services to international customers, so I will almost certainly be having my 980 flashed. :3
 
mikeboss said:
nice! does it stay like this even if you restart the system? no nvidia/driver crashes visible in the system logs?
Click to expand...

I've been using it regularly now through several reboots. I have not bothered to check the system logs. With my former clock and boot selection problems now solved, everything is working perfectly.

Is there something specific you want me to check for in the logs that would help you out?
 
ActionableMango said:
Is there something specific you want me to check for in the logs that would help you out?
Click to expand...

it's good to know that there are NVIDIA based cards working in this specific environment. nothing special to look for, just a bunch of entries stating that the graphics driver has crashed... thnx!
 
Having sent my GTX 980 to MacVidCards at the beginning of the month and received it yesterday, I thought I would report back.

In short, everything now works perfectly. The GTX 980 is recognised by both Windows 10 (native EFI) and Yosemite and runs at PCI-E 2.0 speeds.

Thank you so much, MacVidCards! :3

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Windows 10 x64 (Insider Preview Build 10162) MacPro4,1 (flashed to 5,1) with NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 -> still crashing!

EDIT
just as with Windows 8.1 it works just fine if booted/installed in BIOS emulation mode.
 
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So native EFI works on a 5,1? Any trick to getting it to work or special considerations?
Also can VMWare Fusion work with an EFI Windows installation?
 
Demigod Mac said:
So native EFI works on a 5,1? Any trick to getting it to work or special considerations?
Also can VMWare Fusion work with an EFI Windows installation?
Click to expand...

yes, native EFI works with Windows 10 (just like it did with Windows 8.1). but only AMD based graphics cards and newer GeForce cards seem to work though. nothing special to consider during installation. just pick the EFI boot option when installing (after invoking the EFI boot menu by pressing option after powering on).

never tried it in Fusion but I guess this should work.
 
I would also like to chime in on my experience with EFI win81. My mac pro originally had the 5770, I installed EFI win81 and it worked fine. Later, I got a nvidia GTX 770 pc card. It worked in OSX, with no boot screen, and in bootcamp win81, but EFI win81 could not detect it at all. I later got a evga GTX 680 mac edition, and since it has a proper EFI firmware, EFI win81 detected it fine and it works perfectly.

So, you need a genuine EFI mac card, OR you can get a MVC card with modified EFI.

One other thing I did try, was I had the 680 mac edition AND the GTX 770 pc card in, and as long as the 680 was in, windows did detect the 770. But, not if the 770 was alone.
 
MacVidCards said:
I seem to recall trying to use the EFI install option when I put 8.1 on this Mac Pro and it just locked up the installer.

I know there needs to be a 200MB EFI partition in Fat32 that has Apple and Microsoft folders on it.

I don't partition disks for Windows, i just use the whole disk, nice thing about having 6 Disk slots and extra PCIE slots. Options and variety, the very things lacking on nMP.

I have read of people converting these disks using diskpart utility in Windows. I would rather just create a GPT disk and move the files onto it, I have 2 EFI installs on my nMP and 2014 Mini so could mimic the partitions and contents from there.
Click to expand...

Remember when doing a fresh EFI install of win81 on mac pro 5,1 to remove all your other disks! Give win81 its own drive, and make sure thats the only drive installed. If there are other drives, like an OSX drive, windows might put its hidden boot partition on the apple disk without telling you. This already happened to me and caused me days of grief until I realized what had happened. Just put the win81 dvd in the disk, boot with OPTION, and choose the EFI option. Install will go normally with no special anything. Let it finish, install bootcamp drivers. Go to control panel and uninstall the audio driver, and video driver. Download current versions of them for pc and use that. The audio to use is 'realtek high definition audio driver R2.75'. Also remember that if you have a dual cpu mac pro, windows 8.1 pro is required to use both processors.
 
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I'll give it a shot when Windows 10 is out.

I tried it before but it would always freeze immediately after choosing EFI Boot (this was years ago though, and on a 5870)

It does the same thing on my Macbook Pro 5,1 but that's the late 2008 machine, probably too old?
 
Surrat said:
I later got a evga GTX 680 mac edition, and since it has a proper EFI firmware, EFI win81 detected it fine and it works perfectly.
Click to expand...

that is strange! I never got it to work properly with the GTX 680 (or the GT 120 or GTX 760). all cards equipped with an EFI ROM.
 
Surrat said:
Was your 680 a flashed card? The one I'm talking about is a genuine evga mac edition, its not a flashed pc card.
Click to expand...

the so called genuine EVGA GTX 680 is nothing else than a flashed PC card, there's absolutely nothing different between them.
but yes, it is a flashed card.

and the GT 120 is an original Apple OEM card.
 
Surrat said:
Remember when doing a fresh EFI install of win81 on mac pro 5,1 to remove all your other disks!
Click to expand...

Yes, this is an incredibly important step.

It is not logical to me, but Windows installation disc will mess with drives that aren't the target installation drive. Someone should be shot for that.
 
That's really odd. I guess it "assumes" it's in a PC and tries to "optimize" all the other drives.
 
I recently purchased an AMD 7750 and installed it in PCI-E slot 4 in order to have access to Mountain Lion (with 4K support) but for some reason, it always kernel panics on startup and then reboots if the flashed GTX 980 is present in slot 1.

The only conclusion I can reach is that Mountain Lion is attempting to use the flashed GTX 980 by default rather than the 7750 and then kernel panicking because it lacks driver support. Could anybody recommend a workaround for this if one exists? I would rather not have to remove my GTX 980 every time I need access to Mountain Lion. :c
 
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