GFX Strings - DUAL CARDS - How To

[slamdunk]

do you have a string for dual palit 9800gt 1024mb my motherboard is ga-h55m-usb3
thanks

[electronshaper]

Quick question... I have another com.apple.Boot.plist inside my /Extra that what I assume is the one being used by Chameleon. Can I just drop the strings there or do I still need to put them one on /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration one? Do I need that one there at all? Will the strings work on either or?

Thanks for the help in advance!

[aquamac]

Leave the one in Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration vanilla and just change the one in your Extra folder. As you have rightly surmised that is the one loaded by Chameleon.

[rainmanjam]

I posted my fix for dual video cards and everything works but some of the screen capture software say that I don't have Quartz setup properly or something. Can anyone help?

[aquamac]

Can you post the graphics section of system profiler? If you launch dashboard, do you get the ripple effect. Can you play DVD's, if not then you don't have QE or CI.

[spekke]

Im trying a dual card setup. I get the both cards to work individually, but when both cards are inserted I get kernel panic or black screens when going into GUI mode.

Video cards:
Nvidia 8800GTS 512 MB
Nvidia G210 512 MB

Motherboard:
Asus p5k-e

OS
Snow Leopard 10.6.4

Attachments:

[aquamac]

Did you try setting your bios to boot from the second card and connecting your monitor to that.

[spekke]

The blank screen is solved when using (PCI/PEG), but the primary card doesn't work correctly. The fan on primary cards is spinning at maximum and no displays are detected in system profiler.

[garan]

Hi all,

I've got my 9600 GT's working thanks to this thread but I don't have a 'dashboard ripple' and when I run vlc (version 1.1.3) I only get black screen which has me wondering about QE.

Anyone able to help? Spec in sig and in.plist attached..

Cheers,

Garan.

Attachments:

[dustonio]

For anybody who is using the Lifehacker method from 2009, I found the instructions on page 1 of this thread to be helpful, but then did some modifications to the instruction to get a second video card working (EVGA GeForce 9400 GT):

Here are the specs of what I've got:

* GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard
* EVGA 512-P3-N871-AR GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB 256-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
* Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 Yorkfield 2.66GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor BX80580Q8400
* (this is the 2nd video card I purchased recently in Sept 2010) EVGA 512-P3-N944-LR GeForce 9400 GT 512MB 128-bit DDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

I followed the steps in detail, and then copied over the HEX string to the com.apple.boot.plist which was located in /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration
Each card would work independently, but they did not work together. So I read further and changed the BIOS from PEG to PEG2 -- but that did not work either.

After poking around some more, I found that I had TWO com.apple.boot.plist files. The second one was located in /Extra
I therefore pasted the same HEX string in the /Extra/com.apple.Boot.plist and then changed the BIOS back to PEG, and it worked!

Dragging the windows around in each of the monitors seems jerky-looking, but it works good enough for me now and I have got three monitors running together. Eventually I'll test a fourth monitor and see how that works.

[garan]

Sept 17, 2010 21:37:40 GMT garan said:

I've got my 9600 GT's working thanks to this thread but I don't have a 'dashboard ripple' and when I run vlc (version 1.1.3) I only get black screen which has me wondering about QE.

I tried compiling my dual 9600 GT plist on Leopard (10.5.8) but it didn't help.

With nothing to lose I used the "2x GeForce GTX 260 896Mb (0x10de 0x05e2)" com.apple.Boot.plist from the *NEW* Snow Leopard Retail on ASUS P6T Deluxe V1&V2 thread on insanelymac.com's forum which focuses on my motherboard. To my amazement it works.

Here's a link to the forum post www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=208724

Search for "GFX injection" which you'll find halfway down the fourth post.

I've got ripples when I add to the dashboard, vlc works and I have a full set of supported features via the Help, Supported Features in the Apple DVD Player.

Happy days!

Oh and it seems to have sorted out my hanging Safari issue but can't 100% state it's fixed or related.

Cheers,

Garan

[creecher]

For some reason this isn't working for me.

I've got a Gigabyte GA-EP45T-USB3P on which success has been reported on dual cards via EFI strings.

My cards are a 7600GT 256MB DVI/DVI and a 7300GT 256MB DVI/VGA.

I made my string based off the 8800GTX download, changing my PCI roots to (0x1,0x0) and (0x6,0x0) respectively and my memory values to 00000010.

This was all done on a fresh install of 10.6.0 installed via Kakewalk. I made sure to remove GraphicsEnabler from my boot.plist and have no injectors installed. I also made sure to change my BIOS to PEG2. I also made sure to make my out file on Leopard.

Yet I still have no dual-card goodness. I can boot just fine, but I only get output on the monitor connected to my second card, and sys profiler shows no info on the cards, just "Display."

A little help would be nice. I've been through several motherboards trying to get this working, and it's frustrating to finally spend the money for one that should work perfectly and having it not.

[creecher]

Solved it!

First I updated to 10.6.4. Not sure if that was part of the solution or not, but it's worth mentioning.

Then I got an EFI string from here: forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,55.0.html

I downloaded the 7xxx download, used gfxutil to convert the hex for the 7600GT to a .plist, opened said plist in plisteditpro, duplicated the entry, changed my PCI Roots to their proper values, saved the result, used gfxutil to convert back to hex, and viola! Triple displays are working great with QE/CI and res change.

Hiyo!

[aquamac]

Congrats, glad you sorted it!

[flyingroti]

I am trying to get two cards working on my system. I have a 9800 GTX (512 MB) that I bought to replace my 7300 GT after it stopped working in 10.6.3. I then bought a GT 220 (1GB) to allow for 3 monitors (2 LCD monitors and an LCD TV that I hook up with HDMI). I tried to follow this guide, but can't find the info for the GT 220. Further, when I look in system profiler, I see that the system is recognizing both cards, however I can only use one. When I set BIOS to PEG2 I get a kernel panic. Right now I have the 9800 in the PEG 2 slot and the GT 220 in the PEG slot. Any help would be VERY much appreciated. I don't have a leopard partition so am unsure exactly how I would create an output file...

Thanks!
Ben
MoBo: Gigabyte EP45-UD3P
Cpu: Intel Q6600 @ 2.40GHz
Gfx: ASUS Geforce 9800 GT 512MB (PEG 2)
PNY GeForce GT 220 1GB (PEG)
Mem: 8GB DDR-2 800Mhz
Hdd: 1TB Western Digital Caviar Green HD 32MB Cache
Dvd: LG 22X DVD±R DVD Burner SATA GH22NS30

OS: 10.6.4