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EVGA GTX 285 Mac Edition

I was a bit hasty with my moaning this morning and have started to figure it out. The card is fine but has an automatic low power mode that it uses when not being hammered by a 3D app. I explain it better here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/718152/

I have seen the card switch between 0.6GHz operation and 1.48 GHz operation, and suspect it might also shut down some of its cores in the low power state. When kicked into life by a 3D app it then does other stuff very quick, but then will go back to green mode very quickly when you stop doing harder graphics. It sounds like it is a very nice power and heat management system - we just need to be able to control it better.

Under Bootcamp the card seems to stay at 1.48GHz and behave the same as my PC 285. There is some power mgmt under Windows (the card drops oomph compared to a PC 285 when left to no nothing) but not by so much. So my guess is that it is a minor software issue where the current state of the Apple drivers favours green over fast. Many people will favour this - but for CUDA work it is not what you want.

Having got control of the card's behaviour a bit I am now very pleased indeed, but the only advantage over an injected PC version is the presence of the boot screen - in all other respects my PC card plus netkas injector is doing fine under 10.5.7, and it is not going green every 5 mins.

It is just possible that some of the greenie stuff may be in the ROM - I will not be rushing to flash anything.....
 
peskaa said:
You don't even need a ROM dump to get a PC card working on a Mac Pro, netkas' injector does the job.
Click to expand...

But then you can't do anything with the systems EFI, like selecting a drive or whatever to boot from.
 
ROM clues for those who understand it

So here is a bit of ROM info. I have no clue what I am doing with Nvflash under bootcamp so will just say what I have found - others will have to make sense of it.

The Mac 285 has a rom file of 152064 bytes. It is, apparently, on an MX25L2005 chip with a 2048Kx1 structure (???).

By contrast my Palit PC 285 has got a PMC 25LV512 EEPROM with 64Kx8 structure. The Rom file saves to 64512 bytes.

The upshot of that is that I am not going near the Palit card with the Mac ROM especially as it works so well with netkas' injector, and I boot off the Mac one so do not care about EFI.

Those who do have a clue about these things and want to go as far as loading EFI support into a PC card might like to see which PC cards have that MX chip - maybe the EVGA ones? I seem to recall they had a good record of flashable 8800s so perhaps same again.
 
Anyone in The Netherlands know a supplier yet?
Or even in Europe against a normal price (iirc the UK supplier was very expensive).
 
The 256K ROM Era

10THzMac said:
So here is a bit of ROM info. I have no clue what I am doing with Nvflash under bootcamp so will just say what I have found - others will have to make sense of it.

The Mac 285 has a rom file of 152064 bytes. It is, apparently, on an MX25L2005 chip with a 2048Kx1 structure (???).

By contrast my Palit PC 285 has got a PMC 25LV512 EEPROM with 64Kx8 structure. The Rom file saves to 64512 bytes.
Click to expand...

The same holds true of the GT120....once again making the cards "unflashable" to those who can't do surface mount soldering.
 
How much do you do, before the window server starts?

I've got all sorts of great FB_DEV 256k cards I could slap in a USB to ISA bus and write a quick EFI rom for.:D
 
Cuda said:
How much do you do, before the window server starts?

I've got all sorts of great FB_DEV 256k cards I could slap in a USB to ISA bus and write a quick EFI rom for.:D
Click to expand...

Boot drive selection, verbose mode for diagnostics, and sometimes jumping into single-user mode…
 
Question about aux power cables?

Hello, I have a MacPro 2008 with four HDD two SuperDrives and currently two Radeon 2600's, I would like to replace these older cards with two 285's over the next few months but am concerned that I may not have any open power connection to provide power to the two cards I will be getting. I would like to know if there is a spot on the motherboard for the 6 pin connectors so I can run two of these at a time while having all avaiable HDD bays and optical drive bays occupied?:confused:

Thanks, Tyson
 
tysontabs said:
Hello, I have a MacPro 2008 with four HDD two SuperDrives and currently two Radeon 2600's, I would like to replace these older cards with two 285's over the next few months but am concerned that I may not have any open power connection to provide power to the two cards I will be getting. I would like to know if there is a spot on the motherboard for the 6 pin connectors so I can run two of these at a time while having all avaiable HDD bays and optical drive bays occupied?:confused:

Thanks, Tyson
Click to expand...

Running 2*GTX285 would be a problem with existing power. Each card uses 2 of the 6 pin PCIe power connectors, so a total of 4 to feed. But the '08 (or any '06 - '09) only has 2 ports on the logic board. :(

There is such a thing as a 5.25" bay PSU (example), and would be rather handy. It would fit in the empty optical bay, assuming you don't have both filled. But you do need to fit a cord out the back of the computer for AC power.

You could also use a separate external PSU, and bridge the green and black wires on the board connector (shorts it out so it will run). It's not pretty, but it will work. Search the forum, and you'll see others have already done this with other cards. ;)

Good Luck. :)
 
If one bought the mac EVGA version, is the Netkas kext injector the only way of getting it to work in a 2006 mac pro ? and if so, would it just be easier / cheaper to buy a pc card instead ?
 
and if so, would it just be easier / cheaper to buy a pc card instead ?
Click to expand...

true

But then you can't do anything with the systems EFI, like selecting a drive or whatever to boot from.
Click to expand...

keep the 7300gt/gt120 inside of macprp for such cases.
 
MacRumorUser said:
If one bought the mac EVGA version, is the Netkas kext injector the only way of getting it to work in a 2006 mac pro ? and if so, would it just be easier / cheaper to buy a pc card instead ?
Click to expand...

I think I may just go for the PC Card and use Netkas kext injector. Is this because the Nvidia doesn't do the 32 bit EFI on there cards just like the 8800 GT ordeal?
 
PM me if you can help me with the narcoleptic ROM

I was thinking about the ROM file and it seems to me it would be irresponsible of me to just post it. Quite apart from its proprietary nature there is something not right with the Mac version and it runs the risk of turning a fast-running PC 285 into the slightly narcoleptic Mac version I have right now. I made some posts elsewhere on this - like a PC card it has 3 speed states: 1.48 (extra), 0.8 (3D) and 0.6 GHz (2D), but unlike a PC card it defaults to 0.6GHz far too readily, and will only run at 1.48 when thrashed. The decrease in memory clock speed is even bigger, and I have one Cuda app that runs at 1/10 speed unless you first thrash the card to wake it up. This is compared to a Palit 2G 285 run under 10.5.7 with netkas' injector!!

So there is something wrong with the power management, and I will be trying to figure it out. It might just be a driver thing, but if anyone wants to help with this, please PM me with an e-mail I can send the ROM file to. I think it would be best at this stage if those few who have some competence in the EFI and BIOS stuff in there just have a fiddle. If anyone has a fix do please mail it back for testing! I will fiddle with the BIOS myself and keep an eye on the EVGA and CUDA forums - it has come up there as well. Feel free to curse me for being so anal about it. This is a fab card when running at full tilt - its "green" mode is a bit like riding a bike instead of driving a TVR.
 
10THzMac said:
I was thinking about the ROM file and it seems to me it would be irresponsible of me to just post it. Quite apart from its proprietary nature there is something not right with the Mac version and it runs the risk of turning a fast-running PC 285 into the slightly narcoleptic Mac version I have right now. I made some posts elsewhere on this - like a PC card it has 3 speed states: 1.48 (extra), 0.8 (3D) and 0.6 GHz (2D), but unlike a PC card it defaults to 0.6GHz far too readily, and will only run at 1.48 when thrashed. The decrease in memory clock speed is even bigger, and I have one Cuda app that runs at 1/10 speed unless you first thrash the card to wake it up. This is compared to a Palit 2G 285 run under 10.5.7 with netkas' injector!!

So there is something wrong with the power management, and I will be trying to figure it out. It might just be a driver thing, but if anyone wants to help with this, please PM me with an e-mail I can send the ROM file to. I think it would be best at this stage if those few who have some competence in the EFI and BIOS stuff in there just have a fiddle. If anyone has a fix do please mail it back for testing! I will fiddle with the BIOS myself and keep an eye on the EVGA and CUDA forums - it has come up there as well. Feel free to curse me for being so anal about it. This is a fab card when running at full tilt - its "green" mode is a bit like riding a bike instead of driving a TVR.
Click to expand...

I'm sure EVGA will come up with a fix for the PM issues, as they really know better than anyone.

Have you tied running with Only the Mac card, maybe the PC card is somehow blocking proper PM of the card by OS X's drivers?

If we knew more about how Apple uses the two kext's for PM, I listed in the other thread, it may help you with a work a round, but as EVGA sold the card, support is their ball game.

I'm happy to toss out idea's, as I just like to understand how these things work, I'm sure most people would much rather use GFX cards to get things done.
 
Cuda said:
Have you tied running with Only the Mac card, maybe the PC card is somehow blocking proper PM of the card by OS X's drivers?
Click to expand...
Did this already, because I had wondered if the limitation of air flow from having two cards was heating up the Mac 285 more than the PC (the PC has two fans and some heat removal tubes) and causing that the lower default clock. Makes no difference whether the Mac 285 is alone or not.

Cindori: there are now questions about this on both the Evga and Cuda forums, including Qn as to whether the BIOS edit will change the Mac side.

I can't mess with my Mac now till next weekend. If nothing has come up here /EVGA/Cuda forum I will edit the rom with NiBiTor as per netkas suggestion and see if it changes the operation.
 
so i've seen two sets of benchmarks now (xlr8yourmac & barefeats) and it seems where the GTX 285 shines (and outshines the 4870) is in 3D games and is closer or lags in performance for other types of applications like motion or maybe aperture and final cut express. so if you're not utilizing it for gaming, is the 4870 a better purchase?

also, what's up with the GTX 285 only having a 2 year warranty while all the other 200 series cards from EVGA having a lifetime warranty?

http://www.evga.com/support/warranty/

The part number for the mac edition card is 01G-P3-1080-TR.
 
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