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10.6.4 Patch for 4870 Cards

K

Keita 1

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 31, 2009
20
0
Hello everyone. I finished making a patch that will allow non standard 4870 cards to operate with 4870 with graphics accelaration and quartz for Mac Pros. I have no idea if it can work for hackintoshes or address the issue with 4890's so we will need a bold volunteer. Unfortunately, I have yet to be successful intergrating the 10.6.2 drivers into the patch so if you need dual screens this patch will not resolve that issue. Also, for my cards to get full graphics acceleration you will need to first put your computer to sleep and then wake it up. I am working on a patch for that as well but need more time to figure out how to restart hardware drivers without utilizing sleep. I have tested this patch on my Sapphire cards identified http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/product/?leg=&psn=000101&pid=266 and have succesfully restored 10.6.3 functionality. Please do not attempt to install ALL of the ATI 10.6.2 kext(primarily those in dualdvi.zip fix file) in your system with this patch as it may result in an OS installation that cannot be fully booted. Symptoms of the driver issue of the include oscillating light blue and dark blue screens, being stuck on the preeboot screen with the spinning wheel frozen , and being stuck on a grey screen with large square pixels on the screen. It depends on the combination. Some combinations, you can still fully boot but that is because the kext are not loaded. This is what happens when installing the some of the 10.6.3 and ATI kext right after the 10.6.4 update.

For anyone interested in exploring the issue the offending files are as follows.

ATISupport.kext <-- Critical: System will kernal panic on sleep using 10.6.4's
ATI4800Controller.kext <-- Mixed results not using these in 10.6.4
ATIFramebuffer.kext<____|
ATIRadeonX2000.kext <-- Critical: Graphics Acceleration cannot happen.
ATIRadeonX2000GA.plugin <---Although not apparently used by by system I had a had many failures when not installed.
ATIRadeonX2000VADriver.bundle ___ |
ATIRadeonX2000GLDriver.bundle ___|

I have also had success reinstalling all the 10.6.3 kext by installing the entire Extensions folder from the 10.6.3 update using pacifist. However, when I attempted to install the 10.6.2 extensions, system kernel panicked when attempting to boot. It may be do to the fact that I did not tell the system to update the kext cache or that other files are need for full compatibility.

Finally if you are still with me, or just skipped down to this part here is the patcher pkg. Just run and install. I do not assume any responsibility if it does not work on your system or for your card so if you are concerned, have a backup of your system ready. Good luck.

http://www.mediafire.com/?y0uyzzyiidy
 
GA.plugin - GA - Graphics Acceleration, its for QE/CI

VADriver - VideoAcceleration driver

GLDriver - speaks for itself
 
Thanks for your input netkas, it helped alot! I re focused my effort on using just the 10.6.3 components of the X2000 drivers and the 10.6.2 components of the ATISupport.kext,ATI4800Controller.kext, and the ATIFramebuffer.kext; now everything is back to running normal on my non standard cards(graphics acceleration and dual screens). This good news in terms of future updates, as it show that apple has not done anything to make older drivers completely incompatible to the system(i.e no kernal panic on boot). The one caveat is that in order for the installation to be compatible one must be running in the OS installation that the kernal extensions are being placed in else you wind up with an mangled graphics, or stuck booting screen. I took down the old patch and put up a new one at the link below. I am going to explore if the new drivers offer any significant improvements over the ones we are using. For apples sake they better, because it would be ridiculous if they were causing all this trouble for nothing.Thanks again netkas.

http://www.mediafire.com/?j0jzhz2innd

You may need to run the installer twice to get everything functioning but it works great.
 
Results from Open Gl Test

Hey Rominator. I did the test you had in the 4890 thread and here are the results. I had a XFX ZHFC as my standard card which seems to run fine after the update and the Sapphire card I mentioned in my first post as the non standard using the older drivers. I do not have a monitor as large as your so you may need to use a lower resolution. Also I had a second 17" monitor attached in both test. I did the test results without it for the XFX but results did not improve. Every test yielded the same results except for the ones that matters; the test.

XFX Results (Standard)
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Sapphire Results (Non-Standard)
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While it does not seem that the new drivers have significantly reduced performance they certainly have not improved things. It seems that one would be better off using the older ones at this time
 

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Hi again. I forgot to mention the difference in the extensions. The version number was different. 1.6.10 for the sapphire and 1.6.16 for the xfx. I also forgot that I had overclocked my sapphire cards so the results seemed to be skewed in the sapphires favor. So I did another test using the older drivers on the XFX. Here are the results

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It seems that there have been no real improvements in term of open gl regardless of what apple has been doing to the drivers. Perhaps the changes in the driver are directed at improving compatibility and not necessarily performance.
 

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4870 scoring slower then the X1900 XT I had!!?

So I have a Mac Pro 2,1 and just had my ATI x1900 XT die on me. I heard that you could run the Mac ATI 4870 in my system even though it wasn't fully supported. Put the card in and boots up and seems to run fine. However in Xbench I am getting 30 points slower across the board in all the video card tests...Quartz Graphics, OpenGL, and User Interface. This concerns me because I work in production and Pro apps every day. Is there something I can do to get the most out of this thing? Or does it "run" but not really utilize the card to it's fullest because it isn't fully supported? I'm considering sending it back and buying the HD3780 instead. Sucks that a 4870 would be slower in the benchmarks then a x1900 XT.
 
Don't bother with Xbench. Real life matters, not benchmarks. Especially very outdated. It was last updated in G5 times.
You'll see the difference in your everyday tasks, OFC if your "Pro apps" performance is GPU dependent.
 
666sheep said:
Don't bother with Xbench. Real life matters, not benchmarks. Especially very outdated. It was last updated in G5 times.
You'll see the difference in your everyday tasks, OFC if your "Pro apps" performance is GPU dependent.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the respone. I was wondering and thinking that as well about Xbench. Any recommendations for benchmarking that I can run to see if I'm actually getting the performance I should out of this? In my 3D apps, compositing, and FinalCut Pro...it's hard to tell if I'm seeing an improvement. I ran the OpenGl Extension viewer benchmark but I have no reference for where it should be and how that compares to my X1900 XT. Thanks
 
Does this work with?

The stock Apple ati radeon 4870 HD?


Keita 1 said:
Hello everyone. I finished making a patch that will allow non standard 4870 cards to operate with 4870 with graphics accelaration and quartz for Mac Pros. I have no idea if it can work for hackintoshes or address the issue with 4890's so we will need a bold volunteer. Unfortunately, I have yet to be successful intergrating the 10.6.2 drivers into the patch so if you need dual screens this patch will not resolve that issue. Also, for my cards to get full graphics acceleration you will need to first put your computer to sleep and then wake it up. I am working on a patch for that as well but need more time to figure out how to restart hardware drivers without utilizing sleep. I have tested this patch on my Sapphire cards identified http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/product/?leg=&psn=000101&pid=266 and have succesfully restored 10.6.3 functionality. Please do not attempt to install ALL of the ATI 10.6.2 kext(primarily those in dualdvi.zip fix file) in your system with this patch as it may result in an OS installation that cannot be fully booted. Symptoms of the driver issue of the include oscillating light blue and dark blue screens, being stuck on the preeboot screen with the spinning wheel frozen , and being stuck on a grey screen with large square pixels on the screen. It depends on the combination. Some combinations, you can still fully boot but that is because the kext are not loaded. This is what happens when installing the some of the 10.6.3 and ATI kext right after the 10.6.4 update.

For anyone interested in exploring the issue the offending files are as follows.

ATISupport.kext <-- Critical: System will kernal panic on sleep using 10.6.4's
ATI4800Controller.kext <-- Mixed results not using these in 10.6.4
ATIFramebuffer.kext<____|
ATIRadeonX2000.kext <-- Critical: Graphics Acceleration cannot happen.
ATIRadeonX2000GA.plugin <---Although not apparently used by by system I had a had many failures when not installed.
ATIRadeonX2000VADriver.bundle ___ |
ATIRadeonX2000GLDriver.bundle ___|

I have also had success reinstalling all the 10.6.3 kext by installing the entire Extensions folder from the 10.6.3 update using pacifist. However, when I attempted to install the 10.6.2 extensions, system kernel panicked when attempting to boot. It may be do to the fact that I did not tell the system to update the kext cache or that other files are need for full compatibility.

Finally if you are still with me, or just skipped down to this part here is the patcher pkg. Just run and install. I do not assume any responsibility if it does not work on your system or for your card so if you are concerned, have a backup of your system ready. Good luck.

http://www.mediafire.com/?y0uyzzyiidy
Click to expand...
 
If you have a stock ATI / Apple card you do not need any patch at all.

If quartz extreme has been disabled or your having any of the issues people have been posting about, then you probably do not have a 'stock' card and may have been sold a flashed card in pretense.

:)
 
MacRumorUser said:
If you have a stock ATI / Apple card you do not need any patch at all.

If quartz extreme has been disabled or your having any of the issues people have been posting about, then you probably do not have a 'stock' card and may have been sold a flashed card in pretense.

:)
Click to expand...

HIS HD4870 512 MB (that one with small blue cooler) works without any problems ;)
 
Keita 1 said:
Thanks for your input netkas, it helped alot! I re focused my effort on using just the 10.6.3 components of the X2000 drivers and the 10.6.2 components of the ATISupport.kext,ATI4800Controller.kext, and the ATIFramebuffer.kext; now everything is back to running normal on my non standard cards(graphics acceleration and dual screens). This good news in terms of future updates, as it show that apple has not done anything to make older drivers completely incompatible to the system(i.e no kernal panic on boot). The one caveat is that in order for the installation to be compatible one must be running in the OS installation that the kernal extensions are being placed in else you wind up with an mangled graphics, or stuck booting screen. I took down the old patch and put up a new one at the link below. I am going to explore if the new drivers offer any significant improvements over the ones we are using. For apples sake they better, because it would be ridiculous if they were causing all this trouble for nothing.Thanks again netkas.

http://www.mediafire.com/?j0jzhz2innd

You may need to run the installer twice to get everything functioning but it works great.
Click to expand...

Thanks very much for this patch! This got my XFX HD 4870 ZWFC working completely!

--
Evan
 
nice patch - thanks. Seems to have upped my framerates on HL2 and Torchlight as well, so that can't be bad! :D
 
Uh oh

emoseman said:
Thanks very much for this patch! This got my XFX HD 4870 ZWFC working completely!
Click to expand...

For the last couple of weeks I have been running this set of patches to get my XFX HD 4870 ZWFC 1GB Rev G.1 working (same as emoseman's above) under 10.6.4. They were working great.

Then all of a sudden this weekend I started getting KP's, sometimes in ATIFramebuffer and sometimes in ATIRadeonX2000, often during a QE operation. Other times no KP at all but the video output signal drops and the fan goes crazy; the system is still running (I can navigate blind to restart, for instance.) Usually happens after the system has been up and running a few minutes, (very) occasionally during boot.

Haven't done ANY system or app installs or upgrades since the driver patches were installed. I know it's not a hardware issue because I can run flawlessly (but more slowly) under a stock 10.6.1 install.

Any thoughts?

-Steve
 
The Rominator said:
xfx has lifetime warranty but ONLY if you registered it within 30 days.

Hope you registered it, sounds like it is dying young.
Click to expand...

Yes, it's under whatever warranty still applies since it was reflashed.

But behavior isn't consistent with a hardware problem. I've been running it all day under 10.6.1 with flawless performance in GLView. That ought to be giving the h/w plenty of exercise.

-Steve
 
Need 2nd card for stable operation?

audio_inside said:
Then all of a sudden this weekend I started getting KP's, sometimes in ATIFramebuffer and sometimes in ATIRadeonX2000, often during a QE operation.
Click to expand...

I see now that stable operation of my 4870 only occurs when I have my old GeForce 7300 installed (but not hooked up to a display) in a higher-numbered slot. After removing it, I retain stable operation of the 4870 for some hours or a day, but eventually it KPs again.

So something about initializing or driving the 7300 is also making things happy for the 4870; without the other card in the system my 4870 eventually gets lonely, sad and KPs on me.

Does this behavior ring a bell to anybody?

-Steve
 
4870 Framebuffer driver

And is it normal that System Profiler shows that the framebuffer device associated with the 4870 has no driver installed? -Steve
 

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