FLASH ATI Radeon 9800XT for Macintosh

Equipment:

Mac:Apple G5 Dual 1.8Ghz (June 2004)
Monitor: Formac 2010 ADC
Graphics Card:ATI Radeon 9800 XT 256MB AGP (Powercolor model XR98T-D3) PC Retail version
ROM Chip in Graphics Card:25P05AV 9318C
Rom used to flash the card:9800 MAC PRO 256 MB 134 ROM (full 128k rom)

Additional Equipment:
Apple DVI to ADC adapter

I recently got an ATI Radeon 9800 XT second hand for a good price only to learn that i had to flash the card to work with the mac and also to buy an expensive DVI to ADC adapter.

I flashed the card with the 9800 PRO MAC ROM using Graphiccelerator since i read that flashing it with the XT Rom would make the DVI port unusable. To flash i asked someone with Apple Remote Desktop to do it from another computer.

After rebooting i sadly realized that my screen is so corrupted that i can't use it. I have tried several times ro re-flash the card but since i can't see anything that i'm doing it's very hard.

The strange thing is when MAC OS X is booting, the screen will sometimes show up correctly (blank blue) but only for a fraction of a second, then it becomes all corrupted again.

I believe i flashed the card with the right rom (128K). The number on the card's ROM CHIP is 25P05AV 9318C. Although i have read that this number refers to a 64K chip, when i first dumped the ROM it gave me a 128K PC file.

For a while i hoped that perhaps the ROM that i used to flash the card set it to the wrong core/memoory frequencies but since i can't see the screen there seems to be no way to change these values either in Graphiccelerator or ATIcelerator II.

I have now quit trying to get this card to work on my mac since i have been unable to find any answers on what i did wrong.

I will try it although i am not having much success using ATI multi flasher. I am using Universal Access to have the computer read the screen to me but pressing "Return" doesn't choose the "Yes" or "OK" buttons.

I was able to download the rom you mention but not the ATI displays http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/21573

Thanks.

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

I re-flashed with the rom link you gave me and it's now working! I guess although the initial rom dump of the rom that was in the card showed rom size as being 128k it is actually 64k.

Are those ATI tools really necessary?

Thanks again!!!

I followed the links you posted and they both work. I didn't install ATI Displays since i really don't have any problems with the card now.

I DID install the "ATI Mac ROM Update Aug 2005" which updated the card's ROM file. I assume this confirms that the card has a 128K chip.

Something did change though: On Apple System Profiler it now shows the information that the card has 128MB VRAM. Before this update, with the 130 ROM you originally informed me of, Apple System Profiler used to say 256MB VRAM, which is what the seller of the card told me it had.

Does this mean even if the card has 256MB VRAM it is now using only 128MB?

Apple System Profiler Info:

"ATI Radeon 9800 Pro:

Chipset Model: ATY,R350
Type: Display
Bus: AGP
Slot: SLOT-1
VRAM (Total): 128 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x4e48
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-A07525-130"

Thank you so much for the help you have been giving me. I got so frustrated trying to get this card to work that i had given up hope.

Thanks. Again.

I installed this latest 128k 256MB ROM you pointed to and it's working fine. Now i'll begin two more quests: fan replacement and overclocking.

Fan Replacement

The fan on the Ati Radeon 9800 XT was indeed very noisy so i replaced it with a Zalman VF900-cu vga cooler. I had to replace the plug that connects the cooler to the card and sandblast a plastic part of a screw that didn't fit the cooler as it was supposed to but other than that it was a fairly easy job. Now the fan makes no noise at all. If anyone has one of the ATI cards and wants to replace the fan i definitely recommend the zalman.

PLus with the new fan working so well i finally ventured into overclocking the card.

Thanks. I'm already using it. I bumped the processor up to 438,75MHz (a 25% increase) and the memory to 389,25MHZ (a 20% increase). Seems to be working with no artifacts.

I don't know how much is safe to overclock. I had so much work getting this card to work i don't want to "fry it"

Once in a while i turn on my computer and the screen is sort of scrambled (see picture attached).

Does anyone know why this happens? It only started happening with the ATI card and it only happens a couple of times a week. I usually have to restart or, if that doesn't work, physically remove the card and put it back. It does this WITH and WITHOUT overclocking through ATIccelerator.

Thanks.

Hmmm... you think? It doesn't happen when it's been working for a long time...both times it happened right after i turned it on.

I already installed the zalman fan with heat sinks on the memory chips (on one side because the other has a metal panel covering them).

I used most of the thermal paste that came with the zalman fan. Either i get a bigger amount of it or i install another fan close to the graphics card.

Maybe i used too much thermal paste... i found this on wikipedia:

"It is always important not to apply too much metal thermal paste to the CPU/GPU as excessive amount of applied thermal grease can act as a thermal isolator, and thereby lowering the capacities of cooling power."

Artifacts started showing up so I decided to re-apply the thermal paste since I read in the Zalman website that about half of the tube they supply with the fan is enough. When I first installed the fan I hadn't read this and had used about 80% of the supplied thermal paste. I suspected this is why artifcats were showing up on screen so I took the fan apart from the card, cleaned the thermal paste and re-applied what little thermal paste I still had left.

I also installed 4 heat sinks i had left over on the bottom side of the card. I hadn't installed these the first time because there is a copper plate covering the bottom side of the memory chips on my card so i assumed it wasn't necessary. This time I applied them anyway, glued onto the copper plate.

Hopefully the thiner layer of thermal paste and a total of 8 heat sinks (my card only has 4 memory chips so I know have these on both sides) would make the cooling easier.

No artifacts have been showing up since this so I assume the card was acting funny because it had too much thermal paste and perhaps too few heatsinks.

I was able to re-flash the card using "voiceover" which makes the computer read aloud what is showing up on screen, so i wasn't tottaly "blind" while doing it. It has been working since then but sometimes i get many artifacts on screen and have to re-boot or physically remove the card and re-install it. Other than this problem it works fine.

I didn't tape any pins on the card but i have a G5. I did read in several places online that to have the card work properly on a G4 you do need to tape some pins.