Mac Pro (Early 2009) Firmware Update 1.4

[smacman]

Anyone installed this yet? Any improvements? Did they fix the CPU / Audio issue?

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL989

[rjheys]

I can't get it to install. I press shut down, hold the power button till the light flashes several times but then it just boots up normally and tells me I still need to install the update. It never gets as far as "A grey screen then appears and a status bar indicates the progress of the update" like it says it should.

[BillB50]

Just applied - it took two attempts but finally installed....will check the audio now...

No dice - seeing the same temps as those over the weekend - running on-board audio. Temps tonight climbed to 46 C after 15 minutes of audio playback.

[Pika]

Hold down the power button guys!!! Till you ear a biiiiiipp.

[Strobe]

Worked on the first attempt for me. I don't see anything different with temps when using onboard audio, but they don't list that as a fix anyway.

[Cynicalone]

I would say it did nothing but it seems worse. This is after being away from home for 3 hours, and only 15 minutes of music. :-/

[jetjaguar]

cpu A for me hits like 52 .. cpu B stays in the high 30s

[smacman]

So yet another missed opportunity to fix the issue.. I guess until they are willing to open their eyes and agree that this is abnormal, there is no chance.

On a different note, what was the likely purpose of this update? I find it hard to believe that they would update the firmware just for Windows XP performance...

[Strobe]

I am hoping it affects boot camp storage performance in general and not just XP. I have Windows 7 Pro installed on boot camp and my file transfers take forever sometimes and other times go really fast. They seem to randomly freeze and stutter a lot even when going from internal to internal drives. I know Windows 7 isn't supported or whatever, but everything else works great except those pesky file transfers. Fortunately, I don't know when I plan on using the boot camp partition again other than updating my Garmin or playing a Windows only game.

[VirtualRain]

According to Apple:
This update addresses the following issues for Mac Pro (Early 2009) computers:

Improves compatibility with virtualization products utilizing VT-d
Improves storage performance under Windows XP for Boot Camp users
Improves system reliability during the boot process

Sad that it doesn't help with the audio temps, but there's still hope for that fix in a future OS update as it may be just a driver issue.

Perhaps it will also address the issue with Intel G2 drives in RAID on 10.6.2?

I suspect they also stealthily opted to include a microcode update to enable our 2009 Mac Pro's to run Gulftown?! :p

[playalistic]

According to Apple:


Sad that it doesn't help with the audio temps, but there's still hope for that fix in a future OS update as it may be just a driver issue.

Perhaps it will also address the issue with Intel G2 drives in RAID on 10.6.2?

I suspect they also stealthily opted to include a microcode update to enable our 2009 Mac Pro's to run Gulftown?! :p

Eek. What issues are there with raid G2s? As thats what I have just done :/

[AZREOSpecialist]

Perhaps I'm hoping for too much, but is it possible this firmware update carries with it microcode updates as well for use with Intel's forthcoming 6-core processors? Is there any way the firmware package can be inspected for CPU-related strings, etc?

[nanofrog]

Perhaps I'm hoping for too much, but is it possible this firmware update carries with it microcode updates as well for use with Intel's forthcoming 6-core processors?
Very doubtful.

Is there any way the firmware package can be inspected for CPU-related strings, etc?
It's a binary data file, so No. You'd have to be able to de-compile it (returns it back to a language, such as Assembly).

[gugucom]

I have just applied the upgrade successfully. I'm now cloning the HDD on a Gen2 RAID0 array. We will probably know in the next week if it cured the issue.

[antmo]

Perhaps I'm hoping for too much, but is it possible this firmware update carries with it microcode updates as well for use with Intel's forthcoming 6-core processors? Is there any way the firmware package can be inspected for CPU-related strings, etc?

there's a command-line utility called "strings" which will print all the ascii strings found in a binary file. even though it is binary, string literals (things like hardware id's, etc) are typically preserved as ascii "string" data and will print...