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Post by aquamac on Mar 18, 2007 21:25:13 GMT
Today I have managed to get my Nvidia 7800GTX 512 working on my Hackintosh!   When I originally booted this 512 card, I got the usual multilingual kernel panic at startup of the blue screen. Using Arti's (of strangedogs fame) softstrap editor on the PC rom it was only showing 256 mb of ram. I changed this to show the correct amount of 512 mb of ram and saved the rom. The card booted straight up with full 512 mb of ram recognised and CI and QE working. If I am right PC card roms are not necessarily showing the correct amount of ram in the softstraps and reads this info from other parts of the rom (Thanks Gotoh). But mac reads from the softstraps, so needs this info to be correct in the rom. You can see the changes I made with the rom below:  Above is the original PC softstraps that came with the card and they are incorrect!  Above are the changes I made in the rom on lines 50 & 60. 80 10 40 01 changed to 80 00 C0 01 & 22 00 A5 32 changed to 22 00 A5 C2. So this would mean that it may be the roms that need correcting and not nvidia EFI. The problem we are faced with is that starting with the 7900 the rom structure changed completely and we have to find where the softstraps are in the rom. Still, this feels like a step forward!  |
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Post by ritalin on Mar 18, 2007 21:58:24 GMT
Congratulations! If this is repeatable with other cards, then I think a lot of people will be very happy.
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Post by aquamac on Mar 18, 2007 22:05:37 GMT
Thanks Ritalin,
I guess untill we suss out the softstraps on the 7900 upwards there is still a problem on those cards, however I would think this is repeatable on 7800 GT 512's & Quadro FX 4500.
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Post by brainman on Mar 19, 2007 17:58:30 GMT
Excellent work! You finally cracked it!
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Post by aquamac on Mar 19, 2007 21:23:04 GMT
Here it is, the final hack, 7900GTX 512 Working in my Hackintosh!!!!! Look again. Using the same methods as on the 7800, the 7900 is a goer.  I am pretty exited about this as it opens up all possibilities for faster cards like 8800 (when Apple sorts out some drivers) The future is definitely bright!! ;D |
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Post by aquamac on Mar 29, 2007 20:46:23 GMT
Gotoh worked out how to change a 7900GS to work as a Quadro FX 3500, using the same priciples I have got my 7900GTX to work as a Quadro FX 5500. Believe it or not, changing the open GL engine made a significant difference to it's performance characteristics. I have made the download of the rom available on this page to any one that might have this card, here: Click Here  7900GTX  Quadro FX 5500 ;D |
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Post by ritalin on Mar 30, 2007 9:31:07 GMT
This is good news!
I'm holding out on buying a new graphics card until the budget/mid-range 8-series cards a released by Nvidia. I hope to grab a 7-series bargain at that point. The hack you and Gotoh have found really opens up my choice of cards.
Thx ;D
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Post by aquamac on Mar 31, 2007 0:13:08 GMT
The price of 7 series cards has been steadily dropping recently, some good offers on ebay around and for the first time for us the opportunity to use 512 cards. The days of really limited options of cards are really a thing of the past, all we need to to do now is hope that Leopard wiil work and that Apple write drivers for 8 series at some point, not that I would rush out and get a card, I just hate it when our hardware is behind windows.
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Post by crunchie on May 27, 2007 11:12:41 GMT
I have a 7800 gtx 512mb card based on the nvidia reference design i believe. Could you please guide me to which modded bios i need to use?
I guess the FX5500 mod is the best?
here is the info on my card
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff Northbridge information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0400000000 Description : unknown
$0400000001 Vendor ID : 10de (NVIDIA)
$0400000002 Device ID : 02f0
$0400000003 AGP bus : not supported
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff Display adapter information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0000000000 Description : NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX
$0000000001 Vendor ID : 10de (NVIDIA)
$0000000002 Device ID : 0290
$0000000003 Location : bus 3, device 0, function 0
$0000000004 Bus type : PCIE
$000000000f PCIE link width : 16x supported, 16x selected
$0000000009 Base address 0 : f7000000 (memory range)
$000000000a Base address 1 : d0000000 (memory range)
$000000000b Base address 2 : none
$000000000c Base address 3 : f6000000 (memory range)
$000000000d Base address 4 : none
$000000000e Base address 5 : 0000dc00 (I/O range)
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff NVIDIA specific display adapter information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0100000000 Graphics core : NV49/G71 revision A2 (24pp,8vp)
$0100000001 Hardwired ID : 0290 (ROM strapped to 0290)
$0100000002 Memory bus : 256-bit
$0100000003 Memory type : DDR3 (RAM configuration 03)
$0100000004 Memory amount : 524288KB
$0100000100 Core clock domain 0 : 702.000MHz
$0100000101 Core clock domain 1 : 648.000MHz
$0100000102 Core clock domain 2 : 648.000MHz
$0100000006 Memory clock : 796.500MHz (1593.000MHz effective)
$0100000007 Reference clock : 27.000MHz
$010000000d Thermal diode inaccuracy : -5.000°C (0111b)
many thanks
crunchie
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Post by reddrag0n on May 27, 2007 11:25:13 GMT
Ok, can that same method be used for flashing AGP cards for the PPC G4 and IBM G5 systems? Or is this strictly Intel hardware based only?
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Post by aquamac on May 27, 2007 21:37:43 GMT
Crunchie,
Email me the bios from your card. You cannot use 5500 as this is for a 7900 GTX (G71). Yours would have to use Quadro FX 4500 which is for a G70 chip.
Reddragon,
No this is PCIe only and for Intel only I am afraid.
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Post by nano2nd on Sept 20, 2007 15:58:35 GMT
Sorry for re-animating a long dead thread but I have a question about the 7800GTX.
I'm bidding on one of the Dell 256MB versions for my Hackintosh (to replace a 7300GT). Am I right to infer from the above that I could flash it to a Quadro FX4500 and use a different Open GL engine to gain a performance boost above what I'd get sticking to the stock bios and Open GL engine?
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Post by aquamac on Sept 20, 2007 18:45:19 GMT
You can get it to show as a Quadro FX 4500 and it will use that rendering engine, however the performance gain may be minimal, but it certainly will not be any worse.
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Post by nano2nd on Sept 21, 2007 14:11:35 GMT
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Post by aquamac on Sept 21, 2007 15:55:30 GMT
That card should work fine in a Hackintosh. When you get a card, send me the rom and I will change it into a Quadro!
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