Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Sapphire Radeon HD 7950
- Thread starter El Tigre
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
It is a Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 3GB OC. I am yet to receive it but am getting ready so I can install and get running asap
My Mac Pro is a Mid 2010 I purchased used. It is running High Sierra and I would like to upgrade to mohave.
[doublepost=1540197237][/doublepost]Can I flash the card myself I'm not very tech savvy
My Mac Pro is a Mid 2010 I purchased used. It is running High Sierra and I would like to upgrade to mohave.
[doublepost=1540197237][/doublepost]Can I flash the card myself I'm not very tech savvy
MIKX
macrumors 68000
Yes but I strongly advise that you become a member at the Netkas site http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,5619.0.html.
I also advise you to read EVERY page in the above thread ( maybe twice . . 😛 )
I flashed all of my AMD cards after scouring the Netkas site.
Make a " signature" after you become a NetKas member and list your car's model & brand eg : "Gigabyte HD 7950 ".
The main thing is that you should not use other people's ROMS. . the 1st. page allows you to download the flashing script.
But you will also need to have Win 7 ( easiest ) installed or run bootcamp to download the existing rom on your 7950.
Also, the reference 7950's have a BIOS switch marked 1 & 2 - I set mine to "2" ( shut down your Mac Pro first ! ).
Download the script at Netkas first .. .then start reading and making notes.
It's not hard process.. . just highly detailed .
Good Luck.
EDIT : Don't use other people's ROMS. . they are model/brand dependent in some cases.
The idea is to use the Netkas script to ADD the EFI part to YOUR card
I also advise you to read EVERY page in the above thread ( maybe twice . . 😛 )
I flashed all of my AMD cards after scouring the Netkas site.
Make a " signature" after you become a NetKas member and list your car's model & brand eg : "Gigabyte HD 7950 ".
The main thing is that you should not use other people's ROMS. . the 1st. page allows you to download the flashing script.
But you will also need to have Win 7 ( easiest ) installed or run bootcamp to download the existing rom on your 7950.
Also, the reference 7950's have a BIOS switch marked 1 & 2 - I set mine to "2" ( shut down your Mac Pro first ! ).
Download the script at Netkas first .. .then start reading and making notes.
It's not hard process.. . just highly detailed .
Good Luck.
EDIT : Don't use other people's ROMS. . they are model/brand dependent in some cases.
The idea is to use the Netkas script to ADD the EFI part to YOUR card
Where do I type the script?
[doublepost=1540365225][/doublepost]Hi Mixt I know I pretty silly but netkas has a script I just don't know where to type it ie notepad, Dos prompt or where. Also netkas has a 7950.rom ist ok to use it
Thanks
[doublepost=1540366266][/doublepost]sorry MIKx
[doublepost=1540365225][/doublepost]Hi Mixt I know I pretty silly but netkas has a script I just don't know where to type it ie notepad, Dos prompt or where. Also netkas has a 7950.rom ist ok to use it
Thanks
[doublepost=1540366266][/doublepost]sorry MIKx
MIKX
macrumors 68000
You have to RUN the script using Terminal ( which is in Applications/ Utilities ).
First you have to EDIT the script to suit your card.
=============================
IMPORTANT : If you haven't used Terminal before . .you'll have to bone up on it.
Start here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_(macOS)
Terminal allows you to talk directly to your cMP .. . it's a TYPING data IN app. You don't use a mouse.
Be patient, go slowly, learn the basic terminal command eg : How to specify your target hard drive etc.
======================================
Have you read all the pages in the Netkas thread ? I did .. twice !
Take notes from the thread that are relevant to your Sapphire.
You will find example scripts in the thread posts.
Spend some time reading through the thread ( like we all had to do when we were at the same level as you are now . . . if we can do it . . so can you. Especially don't be impatient, you'll eventually get the hang of it and you''l be wiser & more Mac-self-sufficient for the experience.
========================================
PS : Bundanoon looks like a nice place to live. . I was born in Sydney. I've lived in Japan for 24 years now.
First you have to EDIT the script to suit your card.
=============================
IMPORTANT : If you haven't used Terminal before . .you'll have to bone up on it.
Start here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_(macOS)
Terminal allows you to talk directly to your cMP .. . it's a TYPING data IN app. You don't use a mouse.
Be patient, go slowly, learn the basic terminal command eg : How to specify your target hard drive etc.
======================================
Have you read all the pages in the Netkas thread ? I did .. twice !
Take notes from the thread that are relevant to your Sapphire.
You will find example scripts in the thread posts.
Spend some time reading through the thread ( like we all had to do when we were at the same level as you are now . . . if we can do it . . so can you. Especially don't be impatient, you'll eventually get the hang of it and you''l be wiser & more Mac-self-sufficient for the experience.
========================================
PS : Bundanoon looks like a nice place to live. . I was born in Sydney. I've lived in Japan for 24 years now.
I can confirm I have just succesfully flashed my Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 Vapor X using the procedure explained in this video - do not miss the text attached below the video, with all the details -:
Thank you to the author Robert Bullock for his great job.
The video doesn't deserve an Oscar award but explanation below ( you need to open it inside Youtube app for reading it ) is very accurate and simple.
The procedure is so simple that, even me ( a simple user ) could do it with no problems.
Of course after that I could install Mojave in my Mac Pro 4,1 upgrading it to 5,1 using the unvaluable thead by "tsialex" ( Mac Genius, I think) and all the people there
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mp5-1-what-you-have-to-do-to-upgrade-to-mojave.2142418/
I really appreciate the help.
Thank you to the author Robert Bullock for his great job.
The video doesn't deserve an Oscar award but explanation below ( you need to open it inside Youtube app for reading it ) is very accurate and simple.
The procedure is so simple that, even me ( a simple user ) could do it with no problems.
Of course after that I could install Mojave in my Mac Pro 4,1 upgrading it to 5,1 using the unvaluable thead by "tsialex" ( Mac Genius, I think) and all the people there
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mp5-1-what-you-have-to-do-to-upgrade-to-mojave.2142418/
I really appreciate the help.
Last edited:
h9826790
macrumors P6
I don't know what you mean by the EFI screen but it boots up with the apple logo, Then comes up with the Mohave screen, enter password and I'm off and running. Has a resolution of 6720 x 3780, However UI 3360 x1890 connected via display port. The DVI port appears to to be the No 1 port. But I'm happy
Good Morning
As I have said earlier my 7950 card is working all be it seems a little slow. I get all the normal things like the start up screen etc, I now have Mohave 14.1. the little circle with the rainbow colours seems to be popping up a lot in photoshop. Is it just the algorithms working or is my computer just slow
As I have said earlier my 7950 card is working all be it seems a little slow. I get all the normal things like the start up screen etc, I now have Mohave 14.1. the little circle with the rainbow colours seems to be popping up a lot in photoshop. Is it just the algorithms working or is my computer just slow
Hi
Am I missing something. Do I have to flash the 7950, even though it works with the apple logo etc. It seemed to be plug and play
[doublepost=1543470534][/doublepost]Hi again
The 7950 I have is a PC card, but seems to work ok. but I'm not sure if it working as Pcie 1 or 2, can someone pls help
Am I missing something. Do I have to flash the 7950, even though it works with the apple logo etc. It seemed to be plug and play
[doublepost=1543470534][/doublepost]Hi again
The 7950 I have is a PC card, but seems to work ok. but I'm not sure if it working as Pcie 1 or 2, can someone pls help
Riot Nrrrd
macrumors 6502a
How much memory do you have in your Mac Pro? What CPU(s) does it have in it?
I have a Mid-2010 Mac Pro 3.33 GHz with 24 GB of RAM in it and a white Sapphire Radeon 7950 Mac Edition card. I don't use Photoshop very often but 24 GB is more than adequate for my tasks. If you have 32 GB (or more) it would be even better.
alphaod
macrumors Core
What kind of storage are you running? A lot of applications very super bloated these days, so unless you have an SSD you might see the rainbow spinner.
EFI screen is before computer boots into the OS. Basically when you press and hold 'Option' on your keyboard you can choose a startup disk for example and it shows on the screen.
h9826790
macrumors P6
You don't have to, it won't help anything once the OS driver is loaded.
However, the Apple logo you saw is NOT from the boot screen. I guess you only see that when the loading bar is already at the middle, but not really start from the beginning. That means, you can't see anything before OS driver is loaded.
Since the 7950 has dual ROM design, it's recommended to flash one of them to prove you boot screen in case you need it. However, the boot screen has its own limitation, e.g. cannot boot with DP1.2 connection. So, even you flashed the card, it you use that with a 4k screen (4K 60Hz via display port connection), my suggestion is still boot from the original ROM anyway. Which should make no difference on daily use.
Thanks for the reply,Alpha and H98 I have 40 gigs of Ram. So the boot screen is immediately when the computer is turned on, I hear the little ting and then have a black screen for a few seconds and the apple logo comes up and then shows the computer is loading and ready to go takes about half a minute from the time I turn on my mac pro
Fernand
macrumors newbie
I've got two DP1.2 4K 60Hz displays connected to my 7950 full time. I'm on 10.13.6 and it boots fine, w/ no EFI screens. The trick is to leave it in PC ROM position on the switch. In the Mac position it cannot boot, locks up. High Sierra updated the boot ROM, so I don't expect much trouble upgrading to Mojave. Am I being over-optimistic?
I used this video and the text below it in YouTube app to flash my 7950. Really easy procedure. After that I have EFI boot and I can choose between Mojave and windows 10
INSTRUCTIONS FOR FLASIHNG FROM THE VIDEO:
The forum thread is here that started it all: http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/top...
In that thread, post #1 is the link to the script you need to run on OS X to take the ROM file you dump from your card and put it together with the EFI portion so you get the boot screen on a Mac Pro.
The one you see when you hold down the Option key to select a boot drive.
Video uses an MSI Twin Frozr III 3GD05/OC and the UPC label of that card is shown in the video.
(My card is AMD Radeon HD7950 Vapor X,, exactly same procedure)
Steps to take before watching this video: I assume you have your card installed properly. I had two six pin power cables already in my Mac Pro from my Radeon 4870 and the MSI card I used came with a 6 to 8 pin adapter. The box says two six pin adapters are ok and based on my research that's fine for the max power draw of this card. 275 watts if I remember correctly. Make sure the tiny BIOS switch at the top of your card is in the '1' position. Consult the manual.
🙂 Here's the text version.
The video explains in a little more detail and shows the script running, some stuff on WINFLASH, etc.
1. Get a blank USB thumb drive. It can be small, 1 gig is plenty.
2. Format the thumb drive using Disk Utility and rename the drive to '7950' without quotes. No spaces in the name!! The script that creates your ROM won't work with spaces in the volume name. Really. Unpack the files from the forum link above to this USB drive.
3. Get a copy of Windows installed you can boot on your Mac Pro.
4. Boot into that and download ATIWINFLASH from here: https://www.techpowerup.com/downloads...
5. Run WINFLASH.EXE and save a copy of your ROM. Save another copy somewhere like Dropbox. Put a third copy on the USB drive and rename it cardname.rom
6. Boot into OS X. Open a terminal, and change to the USB Drive.
Run the script. (This is shown in the video.) for MY part number, the command is:
./makerom.sh --efifile=7950mac.efi --romfile=efiromheader.rom --originalrom=cardname.rom --devid=679a
Breakdown: .sh is the script itself, the first argument is the mac efi part from the mac version of a 7950 card, the header file, the name of your ROM you saved using WINFLASH to the USB (we called it cardname.rom) and the the device ID that WINFLASH told you for YOUR CARD. ** So the only modification you might need to that command is your device ID.**
7. Boot back into Windows run WINFLASH.EXE, and open the created EFI rom called cardname.rom.efi.rom. Program it to your card.
8. Reboot after the shutdown and enjoy seeing the Apple Logo and your screen before boot, so you can do things like select your boot volume, such as recovery. Very important to have this capability.
Advantage: this card runs at about 20% faster clock speeds than the Mac version. It has dual cooling fans. You could overclock the PC rom and then tack on the EFI portion. That's why you save the original ROM so then you can hack on copies of that all you want.
Disadvantage: All the outputs work, but so far only two at a time. Which is enough for me. Will post if I get a solution.
UPGRADING TO MOJAVE:
After that I followed instructions from here in order to upgrade to Mojave, firmware included:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mp5-1-what-you-have-to-do-to-upgrade-to-mojave.2142418/
Very satisfied and grateful to all authors
MacPro (early 2009). 4,1>> 5,1 - 2 x 3,33 Ghz 6-core Intel Xeon - 32 Gb 1333 DDR - AMD Radeon HD7950 VaporX 3072 MB - NVMe Samsung EVO 970 1Tb- AHCI SSD 250 GB - MacOs Mojave 10.14.2 - Windows 10
Last edited:
MIKX
macrumors 68000
I would ONLY use the Netkas script http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,5619.0.html
( read all of the pages in that thread .. . as we did . .. and therefore learned something very useful and . .succeeded )
First you need to dump your brand 7950 / 7970 model's ROM using GPU-Z in Win 7 ( for example )
HINT : You can directly install win 7 to a dedicated HDD on your cMP and boot from it )
( I never use Bootcamp )
SAVE that ROM in a safe place.
Then Shut down and because your 7950 ( or 7970 ) has a BIOS switch . . set it to position "2"
In OS X modify the Netkas script to suit your particular SAVED ROM.
After modifying the ROM go back to Win 7 and use ATI_Win Flash. to flash the modified rom to your card.
The important point is that for guaranteed success you should only flash the ROM you dumped from your card- don't use anyone else's ROM.
( read all of the pages in that thread .. . as we did . .. and therefore learned something very useful and . .succeeded )
First you need to dump your brand 7950 / 7970 model's ROM using GPU-Z in Win 7 ( for example )
HINT : You can directly install win 7 to a dedicated HDD on your cMP and boot from it )
( I never use Bootcamp )
SAVE that ROM in a safe place.
Then Shut down and because your 7950 ( or 7970 ) has a BIOS switch . . set it to position "2"
In OS X modify the Netkas script to suit your particular SAVED ROM.
After modifying the ROM go back to Win 7 and use ATI_Win Flash. to flash the modified rom to your card.
The important point is that for guaranteed success you should only flash the ROM you dumped from your card- don't use anyone else's ROM.
crjackson2134
macrumors 601
Good advice, but just a quick note. Not all of them have a BIOS switch. Most prolly do, but not all.
h9826790
macrumors P6
Yeah, if I know Sapphire will release a PULSE RX580 V2 that has dual ROM design, I will definitely wait.
And now I have the single ROM one, no point to buy the 2nd one (especially I already finish the ROM running, and applied the liquid metal mod).