help, aquamac! 3xgtx 280. I only need one working.

[andek661]

Hi Aquamac!

I want to begin by saying that your guides, especially the ones on EFI-GFX-strings are awesome! They are detailed and you explain rather complicated things in an easy way.

I have a setup with three XFX GTX 280 cards. In windows 7, I am running two-way SLI aánd use one of the cards for physX.

I removed two of the cards and followed your guide for single-card GFX-strings using drivers from netkas (drivers for GTX 285 from eVGA). It worked excellently.

So I saved the GFX-strings, placed back the two cards and repeated the procedure. Using the same GFX-string and drivers caused the system to freeze at boot. If I only use the GFX string the third of the three cards showing up in the system profiler is correctly identified by the string, but no drivers, so no QE/CI.

I am fully aware of that neither SLI or three-way sli works on a hackintosh, however I want to use only one card in OS X while using 3 cards in windows without removing any cards.

My question to you is if this is possible?
What do I need to do in order to get just one of the three cards working?

Is there a way, perhaps by modifying my DSDT, to hide two of the three from system-profiler, because I do think that the system hangs because of a failed attempt to combine the drivers with one of the two unidentfied videocards.

[aquamac]

Can you tell me which motherboard you are using? It may be possible to get this going. Also is there anywhere in the bios to boot from a specific graphics card? Are you on X58?

[andek661]

I am using an Asus p6t6 WS revolution motherboard with an corei7 processor, so I am on X58. There is no option in bios to boot from a specific graphic card, but if no graphic card is present in the first PCI slot, it automatically boots from the second one. Thank you for your quick answer. I hope you can help me.

[aquamac]

Actually, yes could you do me a favour, can you post your 3 Pci addresses for the first 3 blue slots. I am helping another guy with the same board and I would like to check. I actually have the P6T7 supercomputer board but I do know that the pci addresses are different. You need to put your cards in each slot 1 at a time.

[andek661]

I am glad to help. The three PCI-adresses are PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x7,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0) (Primary slot) PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x3,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0) (Secondary slot) PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x3,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)/Pci(0x2,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0) (third blue slot)

[aquamac]

Can you make an output file for this to test:

rapidshare.com/files/324235337/P6T6_3_x_GTX_280.zip

It will only work with cards in slot 1 & 5 at the moment hopefully. Leave 1 card out from the second blue slot at this stage otherwise you will get a kernel panic (Middle).

Make your output file in Leopard and let me know how it goes.

[andek661]

I have downloaded the file and will try to do this during the day.

[andek661]

I couldn't boot into OS X after removing the middle card, so I had to reinstall and reapply all updates. During installl I recieved a new error this time: "Coreraidserver not responding" and "couldn't read boot block" and the installer coudn't see my hard-drives. I will try to finish so you know if it works by tommorrow morning, hopefully. I apologize that I couldn't do it faster.

[andek661]

I have finally managed to reinstall now and I have tested your input file with just two cards in place. At first, the system hanged during boot and I had to remove NVDANV50Hal.kext, NVDAResman.kext and GeForce.kext. Afterwards, I installed the gtx-285-drivers from NVIDIAS site and now, it worked. With three cards in place (had to reinstall once more), a kernel panic resulted. However, after removing the three kexts mentioned above, the system booted and to my surprise, the three cards showed up correctly (model, amount of RAM etc.) in the system profiler, but without support QE/CI.

Is there anyway to hide the middle card from OS X without removing it physically?

Is there something wrong with my install since I have to reinstall everytime I change graphic cards?

I also noticed now that the the card driving my display is at slot-5 according to system profiler . Could that cause problems?

[aquamac]

Hi,

Yes I can hide the middle card, but to start with, what I need to get working before I do that is to know if with cards in slot 1 and 5 if you can boot with QE & CI. Although I can hide the middle card as it will not initialise the fan will rum at full speed.. Anyway, can you boot correctly with cards in SLOT 1 & SLOT 5? Incidentally the slot numbers are purely cosmetic.

I am still really busy at work, but I might dig out my P6T6 board and throw in a couple of cards over christmas to work this out. Will be boxing day or the day after.

When I had this board up and running, I had a 9800 GX2 running in it as you can see here:

[andek661]

Yes, I got QE/CI with only two cards inserted into slot 1 & 5 after installing the official drivers from NVIDIA for the GTX 285 (from netkas.org), but when the third card was plugged in, it did not work.

I really appreciate your help, aquamac! You are the best! If you could help me hide the middle card, it would be great.

[aquamac]

Hi, are the two working cards definitely showing up in slots 1 & 5?

[andek661]

Yes, they did. I removed the card in the middle and used the genereated efi string under device-properties in com.apple.Boot.plist. Then I installed the drivers and rebooted. I got QE/CI and a resolution of 1680x1050. I have been visiting my father and will be back home tomorrow so that's why I couldn't answer until now.

[andek661]

Hi Aquamac! I just wonder how are things going? Have you found any time to do some tests?

[aquamac]

Hi,
I am currently with relatives on the slowest internet connection in the world, but will try to take a look when I get home tonight!