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Mac Pro 3,1 With Radeon R9 390?

Lucky736

Lucky736

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 18, 2004
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Yes, I have searched.

No conclusive answers where I have looked so far but then saw the following:

http://www.macmall.com/p/Visiontek-Video-Cards/product~dpno~13572396~pdp.jcibjfg

Is this just a card listed on their site or does it legitimately work? Seen this card listed in a few places for $250 or so.

I've looked into power requirements and availability on the 3,1 etc and best I can make is that it's pretty close to about what it can safely draw without an external power supply, not an option I'd like to explore. I'm not a big gamer however I am inclined to run a copy of Street Fighter 5 on Windows 10 once it becomes available to bring me back to some older days. Other than that it'll be more of an everything machine from backups to storage to general use. Maybe use it to test some software from time to time.

Thoughts? Help?

Thanks in advance.
 
That's a 6+8pin card, technically over the Mac Pro's limit.

Yes, most likely it will stay within the 225W limit. However, there is no guarantee that it won't draw more than 75W from the 8pin cable. Even though I personally believe that's OK, but still not recommended.

And sorry, I don't know if this card can work. AFAIK, the R9 370 can work, but can't flash it to get the boot screen ATM.
 
Excellent info. I was curious about that part of it.

I noticed a lot of people mentioning that the nVidia cards I had found seem to be a bit more power hungry than they let on and it seemed as if maybe the AMD "stuck to it's range" a bit better.

Drivers would be a whole other issue, which is also what piqued my curiosity when I saw this on MacMall's page. :)
 
CPUs are a bottleneck with the 2008 Mac Pro. Even a GTX 660 doesn't perform at full speed. You'll need a new computer to take advantage of that card.
 
I figured that was going to be the case, obviously even the best of that time is still from that time.

I looked at a GTX 770 I had a chance to pick up, and passed on, and thought that since this was in the ballpark price wise I'd have a peek. Since many older cards seem to be in this range, I figured it wouldn't hurt to have a newer card that would support some additional technologies if it was physically doable.
 
The R9 390 is a Hawaii card (just rebadged R9 290(X)) which will work OOB. Driver support is crappy though, presumably because Apple doesn't sell any Mac with that chipset (yet?). Only one screen at a time will work, driver crashs immediately when plugging in 2 2nd display. Also DisplayPort stopped working with the 10.10.4 update.
Card can't be flashed either.

h9826790 said:
AFAIK, the R9 370 can work, but can't flash it to get the boot screen ATM.
Click to expand...
I don't see a reason why it couldn't be flashed, the 370 is just a old Pitcairn GPU (same as HD 7850/7870 or R9 270). Driver support should be good, don't have one myself though.
I'd rather get a used HD 7870 from ebay though (~$100), the performance hit compared to a 370 won't be big, so it's way better value for money.
 
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Fl0r!an said:
I don't see a reason why it couldn't be flashed, the 370 is just a old Pitcairn GPU (same as HD 7850/7870 or R9 270). Driver support should be good, don't have one myself though.
Click to expand...

They changed device ID to 6811 (7850 was 6819, 7870 was 6818) and this one isn't present in drivers. However it may work with kexts patching, like 7850 in 10.8.3 - 10.9.3.

Now it's called "Trinidad" and not R9 but R7 370 :D
It's hard to keep up with this whole AMD rebadging policy.

R9 390 is old 290 (DID didn't change in this case) so all 290 flaws will follow it.
Bad choice if you'd ask me.
 
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Hehe, good to know. Chances are good that the updated devid will be added I guess since almost all other supported cards are in there, too.
Maybe the changes from R9 270 were not as little as on the other cards, but I guess only AMD knows.
 
Excellent info again. Thank everyone so far as well for being decent in here. I'm sure I may have missed the 3 posts on the internet that had the info in this thread so far, but this info has been great.
 
would using a dual sata power to 6 pin and a 6-6 all into a 6+6->8 pin and a 6-6 work to power this?
 
Any ideas how to get my new XFX R9 390 to work under El Capitan? I've tried kext modding and using the Display Port but the Kernel Extension Info still says "No Kext Loaded." Here's what I've tried so far...

Computer (OS X and Windows):
Mac Pro 1,1 (2006), 10GB - Stable
EVGA 850W PSU for R9 card - Working (quietly)

Mac OS X 10.11.1 (15B42) with Piker Alpha boot.efi for El Capitan - Stable
GeForce 7300GT (PCI 4) - DVI to 1st display - Working (with known limitations)
XFX R9 390 8GB (PCI 1) - DVI port 1 & 2, or DisplayPort to DVI to 2nd display - Not Working

Windows 10 (Boot Camp) - Stable
GeForce 7300GT (PCI 4) - DVI to 1st display - Working
XFX R9 390 8GB (PCI 1) - DVI port 1 & 2 tested - Working
Witcher 2 - Working (great on high settings, jerky on ultra)

I successfully disabled rootless ("srutil disable" in Terminal from recovery partition) to mod the AMD8000Controller, AMD9000Controller, and AMDRadeonX4000 kexts with the proper Device ID (0x67b1 for this card). I verified the kexts updated properly after restart, but the R9 390 still isn't being properly recognized in El Capitan.

I hoped the new El Capitan 10.11.1 update (15B42 in this case) might enable the R9 390 since the new 27" iMacs include the R9 300 series cards. In the Apple Store I selected "About This Mac" on the new 27" Retna iMac with the R9 395 4GB. It lists the OS version as 10.11 (15A4310), which is newer than the official El Capitan 10.11.0 release. I may want to check the kexts on that demo machine next time I'm at the Apple Store.

Aside from Kext Wizard, I haven't tried any of the Hackintosh tools like Clover, etc. Again, any ideas--particularly verified working--before I return the R9 390? I've scoured the net for days. It would be so nice to have the 8GB that works so well in Windows... So far my alternatives are the GeForce 970 3.5GB or AMD 7970 3GB with less than half the GPU memory.
 
I would just get a 390X, it is in the drivers, although it doesn't work well. Or, if you are going to mod drivers, just mod the places where 390X device id is, change it to 390.
 
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[QUOTE="...if you are going to mod drivers, just mod the places where 390X device id is, change it to 390.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for responding. I guess I'm over my head here. Can you explain where these places are or share a link where I can learn more?
 
Same places you were already working, but just look for 390X id (I think it is 67b0 which would show up as b067 probably) and change the single byte that separates them.
 
MacVidCards said:
Same places you were already working, but just look for 390X id (I think it is 67b0 which would show up as b067 probably) and change the single byte that separates them.
Click to expand...

So far I am just editing kexts, are you referring to a binary file like the "unix executable" file within the kext folder?
 
Not sure why this is puzzling, if you were editing kexts already. You should be looking at a string of device ids and adding yours, I'm just saying instead of adding yours, just mod the one for 390X into yours, that way you are more likely to get it right.
 
[QUOTE="...if you were editing kexts already. You should be looking at a string of device ids and adding yours, I'm just saying instead of adding yours, just mod the one for 390X into yours, that way you are more likely to get it right.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the quick responses.

Ok, I am guessing the 390X is represented by "0x67B01002" and I should just replace it with "0x67B11002" instead of adding "0x67B11002" to the end of the string of Device ID's.

I'll give it a go. May take a while. I have to pull my Mac Pro's El Capitan boot SSD and attach it to my MacBook Air which has rootless disabled (I couldn't figure out how to disable rootless on my Mac Pro which doesn't have a 32bit EFI recovery partition to disable rootless from).
 
the recovery one is easiest to switch

look in the El Cap on 1,1 thread in this forum section started by us, gives easy instructions if done from Yose or earlier
 
Ok, I'm officially lost with this. My AMDController8000 and AMDRadeonX4000 kexts above appear to be correct but I'm still not getting the R9 390 to work.

Will the kext loading depend on which port I'm plugged into? I'm using the DisplayPort to DVI connection now. I've been at this all day. Thanks for your help so far. If you could throw me another bone I might get this to work.


Update: Switching from DVI 1, DVI 2, HDMI, and DisplayPort didn't change anything.
 
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Did you repair the file permissions after messing around with the kexts? I guess they might be unusable atm due to bad permissions. Also restore AMD9000 to default, no need for your dev id in there.

stiltskin said:
I hoped the new El Capitan 10.11.1 update (15B42 in this case) might enable the R9 390 since the new 27" iMacs include the R9 300 series cards. In the Apple Store I selected "About This Mac" on the new 27" Retna iMac with the R9 395 4GB. It lists the OS version as 10.11 (15A4310), which is newer than the official El Capitan 10.11.0 release. I may want to check the kexts on that demo machine next time I'm at the Apple Store.
Click to expand...


The new iMac contains Cape Verde, Pitcairn and Tonga chips (which have all been in Macs before), so no need for new drivers. I don't think any Mac will ever see Hawaii, TDP is way to high.
 
Fl0r!an, I'm not aware of a way to repair permissions in El Capitan yet. I'll have to research that one.

I need to review my patches. It is possible I missed something. Text Wrangler's search interface was getting in the way. I'm using TextEdit now which tells me exactly how many matches I have. Simple things can make a difference.

Uhhh...nothing missing so far. I guess I was seeing 8's as B's and thought I'd missed a few patches. A retina display would help, lol.
 
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The kexts have to be placed by a kext installer, otherwise won't load if you can't repair perms. Also, you can use System Profiler to look at the Extensions, it will say if they loaded or not and why. And, the second you change a single solitary byte in a kext you need to use Recovery partition to disable SIP.
 
Mr. MacVid: Yes, that System Profiler tip really helps!

I'll need to determine how to fix the issues that keep these kexts from loading. Neither kext loaded. For instance the AMD8000Controller.kext shows the following errors:

Version: 1.32.25
Last Modified: 10/23/15, 2:25 PM
Bundle ID: com.apple.kext.AMD8000Controller
Loaded: No
Get Info String: AMD8000Controller 1.32.25 15514
Obtained from: Unknown
Kind: Intel
Architectures: x86_64
64-Bit (Intel): Yes
Location: /System/Library/Extensions/AMD8000Controller.kext
Kext Version: 1.3.2
Loadable: No
Signature Validation Errors: Kext signature validation error code -67030
Dependencies: Incomplete
Dependency Errors:
Dependency Resolution Failures:
Kexts already loaded for these libraries are not compatible with the requested version: com.apple.kext.AMDSupport
Signed by: Unknown

I repaired permissions from my MacBook Air (where SIP is disabled) via a user-created terminal command I found yesterday called "RepairPermissions." A LOT of permissions were repaired.

I think my solution will start with getting SIP fixed on my Mac Pro 1,1. I have been unable to find the workaround MacVidCards is referring to for this yet. I searched the Mac Pro area for "El Cap 1,1." and read through quite a few posts and threads but--I just haven't found it yet.

If I can get SIP disabled I plan to try Kext Wizard or Easykext Utility to do a better job modding this time. At least now I have a way to gauge my progress. Thanks!
 
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