EEPROM replacement and flashing X850 XT ROM on FireGL X3

[LightBulbFun]

Bit of an update - done the transfer. No good, I think I have a defective card.

No change and still no ago card detected under osx profile.

Will order another card but will test it on a pc to ensure it’s running.

If the next card has the same Infineon ram do I need to lower the mhz speed on the ‘x800 reduced by time’ Rom?

Don’t want to attempt the eeprom
Switch again lol.

hmmm I do wonder if the extra ROP/TMU's that that the X800XT/X850XT ROM enable, are actually defective on your card hence its refusal to work when flashed

if you stick the PC ROM back on it, does it come alive in the PC/show up in MacOS's system profiler at least?

it might also be the card cant handle the clock speeds, so you could try down clocking a ROM somewhat before flashing it


if the next card has Infineon RAM then i'd recommend trying the X850 XT ROM before resorting to down clocking

 

[cpc6128]

hmmm I do wonder if the extra ROP/TMU's that that the X800XT/X850XT ROM enable, are actually defective on your card hence its refusal to work when flashed

if you stick the PC ROM back on it, does it come alive in the PC/show up in MacOS's system profiler at least?

it might also be the card cant handle the clock speeds, so you could try down clocking a ROM somewhat before flashing it


if the next card has Infineon RAM then i'd recommend trying the X850 XT ROM before resorting to down clocking

Thanks for that.

If my next card is exactly the same, I will be testing it on the PC before moving on to the flash.

So without changing the EEPROM should the ‘x800 reduced by tome ’ should work as is or do I need to reduce the speeds due to the ram type? Just like to be better prepared next time.

 

[LightBulbFun]

i'd recommend swapping the EEPROM and trying the X850 XT ROM really, the X800 XT ROM does not normally work well with Infineon cards normally and ya often have to drastically down clock the memory, which will hurt performance

 

[cpc6128]

updated info - see below

 

[cpc6128]

Double up

 

[cpc6128]

OMG! this morning I had to check the card again and I kid you not.. I had the EEPROM the wrong way around! Redone the work and then hoped for the best…

Started up and I got a screen!!!!!!!!!

Thank you so much for your help! And I’ve already ordered another before fixing this lol

Whoa the score!!!

Now last question.. is the cooling fan good enough as is? I will be gaming on this - the old unreal & quake..

 

[cpc6128]

Are you getting graphic glitches playing Halo, doom3 and quake 3? (Even at the lowest settings)

All other games appear perfectly fine, Unreal 2004, Star Trek elite forces, alien.

Should I be reducing the speed of the card?

 

[LightBulbFun]

Awesome glad you got it working! I dont recall any graphical glitches in Doom 3 when i tried that game on mine, so perhaps it might be worth tweaking the speeds? although what OS etc is this in? I think I played Doom 3 in Leopard, not sure I have tried in tiger for example

if you think it is the clock speeds I recommend using ATIccelerator II to do each speed on its own and then once ya find a figure that works

I'd then edit the X850 XT ROM with graphiccelerator and flash the ROM to the card to make the clock edits permanent and OS/System agnostic


its good to see another Infineon card working with the X850 XT ROM, this is a bit more further proof that I think the X850 XT ROM due to its higher speeds has loser timings that work with the Infineon ROM


the single slot cooler should be adequate, the X850 XT that apple shipped in G5's had the same identical cooler

 

[cpc6128]

Thanks for that! I've ran ATIccelerator and first try made a difference straight away - only 2% drop on both cpu and ram and no artifacts in Halo.

Would it be safe to make it a permanent reduction 4% on both to keep it safe?

Wonder if the Samsung ram can handle the higher settings set on the x850 rom?

 

[LightBulbFun]

Thanks for that! I've ran ATIccelerator and first try made a difference straight away - only 2% drop on both cpu and ram and no artifacts in Halo.

Would it be safe to make it a permanent reduction 4% on both to keep it safe?

Wonder if the Samsung ram can handle the higher settings set on the x850 rom?

I would only adjust 1 at a time to figure out if it is the GPU or RAM that is causing the artifacting

otherwise yeah you can adjust it down how you like, theres generally no danger in under clocking



BTW I noticed your Openmark result says "X800 XT" OpenGL engine, rather then the "X800 Pro OpenGL Engine" a FireGL X3 normally reports, do you have a system profiler screen shot of your card?

which X850 XT ROM did you use, the one modified to match the FireGL X3's device ID, or just the stock X850 XT ROM?

 

[cpc6128]

I’ve reflashed the card with reduced ram as the issue was the ram. Also reduced a little % on the cpu (to reduce the stress a little for piece of mind)

No artifacts at all and all games looks great. Open mark score is now 15769 which is still great!

Yes, I used the stock x850 XT rom. Was I not meant to use it? It’s working great so far..

Profile screenshot attached - anything out of the ordinary?

 

[LightBulbFun]

interesting! Im kinda surprised that worked, but it looks like its overrode the hardware device ID straps, and enforced the Mac X850 XT Device ID which is pretty nifty

generally you need to use a ROM with the same device ID as the card or ya get a brick

sometimes the ROM can override a hardware strap, I have seen it on NVIDIA cards, but this is the first time I have seen it on an ATI card

although thinking about it, the X1900 flash works in a similar manner...

neat to see it works like this on an FireGL X3

 

[NCC74656]

im just digging into this, is there a guide or breakdown of the ROM itself for clock speeds? id like to hex edit the rom to bump my X800 clock speeds to X850 speeds. i got the PC vivo edition so it should be able to handle that. i also want to verify that all the pipelines are unlocked and working.

whats your thoughts on this?

 

[LightBulbFun]

theres no need to hex edit the ROM to change clock speeds, the usual set of flashing tools provide an tool for adjusting the ROM clock speeds

 

[NCC74656]

theres no need to hex edit the ROM to change clock speeds, the usual set of flashing tools provide an tool for adjusting the ROM clock speeds

i had to lookup flashing tools, ive never used them. i found atiflasher and graphics something or other. the graphics one seems to change clock speeds but im not sure its acutally working. need to do some benchmarking to tell i suppose

 

[NCC74656]

i have the card running at 585/615 now, runs doom3 at 47fps on high

 

[MrArthegor]

Sorry for revive this post, but I have some strange issue in a FireGL x3 (Infineon ram) with eeprom swapped and X850 XT rom

I have check in this order : original eeprom and X800 XT rom with 279MHz RAM, swapped eeprom with x850 XT at 350MHz, and untouched frequency rom, but i always end up with this strange random red pattern across the screen randomly.

I also have some issue with OpenMark, with this distorded ball (picture linked)
And finally, when I have check my card ID the original was 4A4D, but when I fash a 4A4D rom the card is not recognised by the Mac, I have to flash with 4A48 even if it's not the original ID, maybe the issue is here ?

Has anyone encountered this issue ? I also checked with another screen and cable without any success

 

[MrArthegor]

I have managed to make some progress, the issue doesn’t appear in safe mode, only on the normal mode. The deference between the two seem to be the fan is always full in safe mode instead of be more silent in normal mode, the OpenGL acceleration and the driver extension is disabled in safe mode.

The possibly thermal problem seem strange because I run the card with a 400/250mhz combo, way below some other example seen here.

Other option is possibly a driver or extension issue, but I have installed the latest driver (4.5.7) and the ROM from MacElite (with modifications only in frequency and ID, who don’t match the original ID of the card like explained above)

 

[LightBulbFun]

Sorry for revive this post, but I have some strange issue in a FireGL x3 (Infineon ram) with eeprom swapped and X850 XT rom

I have check in this order : original eeprom and X800 XT rom with 279MHz RAM, swapped eeprom with x850 XT at 350MHz, and untouched frequency rom, but i always end up with this strange random red pattern across the screen randomly.

I also have some issue with OpenMark, with this distorded ball (picture linked)
And finally, when I have check my card ID the original was 4A4D, but when I fash a 4A4D rom the card is not recognised by the Mac, I have to flash with 4A48 even if it's not the original ID, maybe the issue is here ?

Has anyone encountered this issue ? I also checked with another screen and cable without any success

based on the 3D rendering issues of the ball especially, I do wonder if its defective ROPs/TMU's/pixel shaders the, the FireGL X3 uses a slightly cut down version of the R420 core, FireGL X3 is a 12/12/12 card like Radeon X800 Pro (which is why it uses that OpenGL engine with its original 4A4D device ID), but the Mac Firmware is for an X800 XT/X850 XT, and from what I have seen we get lucky in that it force enables all the units FireGL X3 card, *but* if some of those units where disabled because they where actually defective, then you can get permanent artifacting, that you cant do anything about (unless someone figures out how the Mac ATI fCode ROM enables ROPs/TMU's etc and can adjust that accordingly)

 

[MrArthegor]

based on the 3D rendering issues of the ball especially, I do wonder if its defective ROPs/TMU's/pixel shaders the, the FireGL X3 uses a slightly cut down version of the R420 core, FireGL X3 is a 12/12/12 card like Radeon X800 Pro (which is why it uses that OpenGL engine with its original 4A4D device ID), but the Mac Firmware is for an X800 XT/X850 XT, and from what I have seen we get lucky in that it force enables all the units FireGL X3 card, *but* if some of those units where disabled because they where actually defective, then you can get permanent artifacting, that you cant do anything about (unless someone figures out how the Mac ATI fCode ROM enables ROPs/TMU's etc and can adjust that accordingly)

Thank you for your response


It's an option, but I wonder if I'm not miss something with Device ID. My original firmware report the card with the 4A4D device ID on all line, but when I try to flash the card with your ROM in #36 post, the card change this ID to 4A48, and not 4A4D like others captures in previous post or the original firmware txt (also the system report a strange 4A6D instead of 4A4D before flash, but the original txt is 4A4D).

For the issue with ROP/TMU, the wierd thing is the issue dosen't occur at all in safe mode, only in normal mode, I tend to think if hardware have issue, the issue will also be in safe mode, but maybe it's a misunderstanding in my part.
Here included some screenshot with before and after, and the txt of original firmware and dump firmware after the flash process

EDIT : more precisely, when I flash a 4A4D X850 XT rom, the card is unrecognized with a shift to 4A48 in the id, but no mention of 4A48 on the ROM

I have de-soldered the eeprom for programming with an eeprom flasher in case of ATI multi flasher issue, and I going to try to deport the eeprom with wire and socket for faster reflash operation. If I find something I’m posting the find here

 

[LightBulbFun]

For the issue with ROP/TMU, the wierd thing is the issue dosen't occur at all in safe mode, only in normal mode, I tend to think if hardware have issue, the issue will also be in safe mode, but maybe it's a misunderstanding in my part.

the defects I talk about are to do with the 3D rendering parts of the card, when you boot in safe mode all the 3D acceleration/drivers go away, and so do all the artifacts as a result

(for example if while your in safe mode, you go to system profiler you will Quartz Extreme and Core Image are reported as not supported)

 

[ervus]

I would be interested if you can figure it out. My solution was to buy another card, which worked fine.

If you can rent a DOS computer to try it, I guess that could tell you whether the original hardware is at fault. But then what? I think we need a better way to configure the software...