GPU problems: interaction of HD5770 and 5970.

Hey all,

I've recently gotten Apple's HD5770 Graphics Upgrade Kit for my Mac Pro (2008 / 3,1) - I previously used a 8800GT which died. As I also use it for some gaming, I have a HD5970 in there to run DX11 games smoothly on my 30" Cinema Display.

However, since I installed the graphics update from software update to give drivers to my HD5770, the machine kernel panics when starting up with the HD5970 installed. This wasn't an issue previously: the two cards coexisted peacefully (the geforce and the HD5770 without drivers). My guess is that OS X tries to load drivers for the HD5970 and kernel panics on this phase. The HD5970 is installed in slot 1, the HD5770 is installed in slot 2.

Are there known issues like this? Any workarounds? Could I perhaps edit the device ID of the HD5970 into a kext to get it ignored by the system? Does the slot layout matter at all?

Thanks so much guys.

Slot 1 and slot 2 are 16x.

I've switched the layout: no luck. The panic log:



Fri Nov 5 20:24:06 2010
panic(cpu 1 caller 0x2a8ab2): Kernel trap at 0x009672a0, type 14=page fault, registers:
CR0: 0x8001003b, CR2: 0x00000000, CR3: 0x00100000, CR4: 0x00000660
EAX: 0x00a400e0, EBX: 0x6d357000, ECX: 0x00000000, EDX: 0x00000000
CR2: 0x00000000, EBP: 0x8541bd08, ESI: 0x6d357000, EDI: 0x00000000
EFL: 0x00010282, EIP: 0x009672a0, CS: 0x00000008, DS: 0x00000010
Error code: 0x00000000

Backtrace (CPU 1), Frame : Return Address (4 potential args on stack)
0x8541baf8 : 0x21b455 (0x5cf328 0x8541bb2c 0x2238b1 0x0)
0x8541bb48 : 0x2a8ab2 (0x591664 0x9672a0 0xe 0x59182e)
0x8541bc28 : 0x29e9a8 (0x8541bc40 0x0 0x8541bd08 0x9672a0)
0x8541bc38 : 0x9672a0 (0xe 0x859a0048 0x10 0x20010)
0x8541bd08 : 0x96b993 (0x6d357000 0x0 0x8541bd78 0x859a5000)
0x8541bd38 : 0x96cdbf (0x6d357000 0xd816500 0xe30af40 0x6d35709c)
0x8541be18 : 0x538e50 (0x6d357000 0xd816500 0x1 0x4fc1e6)
0x8541be78 : 0x537085 (0xd816500 0x6d357000 0xe3a6760 0x50f850)
0x8541bf28 : 0x537616 (0xd816500 0xe33e200 0x0 0x50be06)
0x8541bf78 : 0x5392c5 (0xd816500 0x8 0x8541bfac 0x1)
0x8541bfc8 : 0x29e6cc (0xe3b3b80 0x0 0x10 0xd7b8484)
Kernel Extensions in backtrace (with dependencies):
com.apple.ATIRadeonX3000(6.1.8)@0x947000->0xadffff
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.6)@0x907000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IONDRVSupport(2.1)@0x93a000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily(2.1)@0x918000

Can I force OS X to ignore the device in Slot N or somehow not make it load ATI display kext support past the 5770?

rtrt said:

whilst you wait for a reply from someone who knows what theyre talking about

i'll simply suggest that this looks like the sort of thing that would come up quite a lot in a hackintosh environment - so you might find some help there too.

Click to expand...

Yes, but they would typically disable / troubleshoot such a thing in BIOS. Thanks, though.

neckarb said:

I had the same problems, so what I did was bough a PSU for my optical drive bay and whenever i want to boot into OSX i power it off, meaning theres no power to the 5970 and probem solved, alas now my 5970's fan spins up to 100% but its better than nothing.

Click to expand...

Wow, really? That makes an ungodly amount of noise. I'd rather remove it, which I'm doing now. Such a bother, though.