Flashing 8800GT for Mac

[ryan42]

Hello everyone. I have acquired an 8800GT OC2 by BFG Tech that I flashed according to a MacRumors thread that was quite a bit old. I am able to use it in OS X but now in Windows 7 on Bootcamp it is constantly corrupting visually and causing BSODs. The driver will 'recover' a few times then the computer crashes.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

[The Rominator]

try a 3d app in OSX....you will likely have issues there

might be time for a GPU bakeoff

[ryan42]

Nope. That's not it. The card has a massive Thermaltake cooler from its previous owner.

I can play WoW at 2560x1600 for hours on Ultra, Starcraft II at 2560x1600 for hours on midrange settings, Portal, etc.

In Windows, if it stays alive to get Aero turned off, I can open Team Fortress 2 and play it on there. I haven't messed with quality settings on that side though.

All problems lie with the driver resetting in Windows specifically.

It's worth noting that I have my old ROM backed up. I can flash it back and use the card on the Windows side just fine. Perhaps the issue is with PCI substrings? I really don't know.

I found that if I download and run Rivatuner it crashes less. I don't know what's up with that really though.

Regards.

[Cindori]

you are having windows driver problems>solution>reinstall windows & download latest drivers

[ryan42]

Reinstalled Windows 7. Windows 7 boots, installs NVidia drivers that it has built in, and then crashes.

I installed the bootcamp NVidia driver. Crash.

Installed the stable NVidia driver. Crash.

Installed the beta NVidia driver. Crash.

Could it have something to do with the Device ID substring?

[666sheep]

Hmm, you can try this 8800GTS way: http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=6641499&postcount=490 but read whole post carefully and decide yourself. OFC, if you got EFI64 Mac (you didn't mention which model it is).

[ryan42]

It's an Early 2008. I'll take a look at that link. Thanks.

[ryan42]

Wow 666sheep. It looks so far like I owe ya one.

I flashed with one of the images on that page. I actually don't know which because I put both on a FreeDOS boot CD not realizing that they would have the same name in 8.3 format :rolleyes:

So, I booted into Windows at 1280x800 with no Aero. It had to restart Windows and now I'm back at 2560x1600 with Aero and this is certianly the longest I've run without a reset or a crash.

Thanks a ton :)

[ryan42]

Wow! Thanks so much! I just got done playing Team Fortress 2 for about half an hour with no problems whatsoever. I went back and reflashed the card with the "GTS clocked" version which still ran very stably and as a bonus is very close to the stock clocking of my OC2 card.

I can't think you enough. I was beating my head into a wall over this problem.
:apple:

[666sheep]

I'm glad that it worked for you. But, to be honest, all thanks and credits should go to logicdisaster. First for the method, second for posting his ROMs. I only linked it to you ;)
Whatever, it's good to see that his trick is working with newer 8800GTs, not only with GTS.