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phantasm10

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 31, 2006
48
0
I thought this was interesting:

I have dumped the ROM from my Mac Pro's X1900XT using ATI Winflash on a PC. The ROM weighs in at 47 KB, which is smaller than your average PC ROM.

As a result, I've been able to flash it on an Asus EAX1900XT : the card can then be used in the Mac Pro, and behaves like the stock X1900XT in Mac OS X.

I don't think I can attach files on this board, but I'm ready to e-mail it to the board admins.

PS.: while OS X is perfectly able to use both cards in accelerated mode (using the 8-8-1-8 PCIe configuration), this seems to confuse XP (and Vista) in Boot Camp to no end. XP can't display a thing, and Vista puts out 640x480 in 16 colors.

http://strangedogs.proboards40.com/index.cgi?board=experiments&action=display&thread=1158739989
 

arythmic

macrumors newbie
Sep 18, 2006
20
0
hey phantasm10
I am getting a Mac Pro with the 1900 card and plan on installing XP64bit ...
Can you explain to me why you have flashed the card (I have not heard of any issues) and what this does exactly ... thanks
 

Spanky Deluxe

macrumors demi-god
Mar 17, 2005
5,282
1,745
London, UK
arythmic said:
hey phantasm10
I am getting a Mac Pro with the 1900 card and plan on installing XP64bit ...
Can you explain to me why you have flashed the card (I have not heard of any issues) and what this does exactly ... thanks


He's taken a PC X1900 XT card and has managed to flash it so that it works in OS X. 3rd party PCIe cards do not work in OS X without a bit of hacking. There's nothing wrong with the 1900 cards that come with the Mac Pro or the ones ordered directly from Apple. :)
 

BadRambo

macrumors member
Aug 20, 2006
64
0
There is always the alternative of just putting the stock Apple card in the top slot, in the Pro, and a full-fledged PC vid card, 7800GTX, as I do, in the bottom slot. The Apple card boots up for OSX and the 7800GTX runs nicely and fast under XP (bootcamp installation). Of course, you have to bring down the +12 volts from up above for the bigger vid cards, but that is easy to do as well.

Of course you have to deal with two video outputs but if you have a twin input monitor, no problem.

It works --- and well --- Bob --- :D
 

phantasm10

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 31, 2006
48
0
I didn't do it personally, I just reposted info from the Strangedogs site (see link in 1st post). I have seen PC X1900XT's as low as $250 and would prefer to save money by going that route rather than through Apple.
 

slughead

macrumors 68040
Apr 28, 2004
3,107
237
phantasm10 said:
I didn't do it personally, I just reposted info from the Strangedogs site (see link in 1st post). I have seen PC X1900XT's as low as $250 and would prefer to save money by going that route rather than through Apple.


Indeed. I need the card to work with XP though, using 16 lanes.
 
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