Ultimate Thread: 4890 in Mac Pro

[Cindori]

oh well, I guess you should avoid the "New Edition" sapphire then.

what pkg did you use btw?

 

[MacVidCards]

Cinbdori has done everyone a huge favor by creating these flashing apps.

However, he has also created a potentialy dangerous thing as well.

When Thomas Perrier offered up his flashing and reclocking apps he had strongly worded language about the great potential to "brick" a card. "ATIccelerator II comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. If you destroy your costly X800 XT or your now worthless Rage 128 because of a bug in this program or your careless utilisation of it, you're on your own!
"

In a best case scenario, anyone trying to flash a card would have access to a PC of some sort that could flash it back to what it was originally. This PC would have ability to ignore the PCIE slot and use onboard card to boot and allow reflash.

Anyone flashing a card, especially an unknown card must be ready for the card to become deaf & mute to world. Rescuing it at that point may be impossible without access to at least 1 PC, perhaps even more than 1. It is an inexact science where we all hopefully learn from success and failures of others. Posting part number and photos helps very much to reduce the carnage with future flashes.

The reason ther GTX285 ROM isn't posted anywhere is that there is basically a 100% chance that any current card flashed with it will become a paperweight due to it being a 253K file and ALL of the card having 64 or 128K chips. The 4870/4890 has been unique in that they all have a 128K chip, just what is needed for Mac ROM. This however just means you can fit an entire ROM in on 100% of cards. It DOES NOT mean it will always work

 

[Peloche]

oh well, I guess you should avoid the "New Edition" sapphire then.

what pkg did you use btw?

I did ordered a normal Sapphire but received the New Edition.

I've used the normal package.

 

[Cindori]

yeap, what's guaranteed* to work is the card on the picture in the main post.
anything but that and you're on your own!
and ofc if you don't follow instructions

*guaranteed meaning no failures reported yet, still your own risk 😉


if I could I would implement error messages for the app, but i'm not that skilled in applescript yet.

 

[bdizzle]

yeap, what's guaranteed* to work is the card on the picture in the main post.
anything but that and you're on your own!
and ofc if you don't follow instructions

*guaranteed meaning no failures reported yet, still your own risk 😉


if I could I would implement error messages for the app, but i'm not that skilled in applescript yet.

Cindori,
The card I'm looking to purchase is the sapphire 4890 Part Number: 100269SR
Is this the one that you used?

 

[Peloche]

yeap, what's guaranteed* to work is the card on the picture in the main post.
anything but that and you're on your own!
and ofc if you don't follow instructions

*guaranteed meaning no failures reported yet, still your own risk 😉


if I could I would implement error messages for the app, but i'm not that skilled in applescript yet.

I'm not accusing anybody, I did it under my responsibility, if I don't want to take any risk I don't do it.

So at first I don't blame Cindori or any other one, second point I followed instructions and it's not the problem.

Now if you can try to help me (Cindori, The Rominator or anybody) I will accept and try to take back to life 4890 even with a PC.

No worries it's life, when you play with fire you can be burnt, done ...😀

 

[Peloche]

Here is the one:

 

[zepharus]

Here is the one:

Again... people using non reference cards.

Here is a HOT TIP. if it uses a STANDARD, REFERENCE COOLER, you have a much greater chance of the card being a pure reference type.

a special cooler means the company has "tinkered: with the design in varying ways.

REFERENCE

 

[Cindori]

No worries it's life, when you play with fire you can be burnt, done ...😀

Oh I hear that. when installing my Accellero fan, on image on page 1, I connected some cables bad and fried my motherboard. 500$ 😉
so for all this 4890 story, i've probably the one having to pay the biggest price 😀



@ Bdizzle, no idea of part number. If it looks like mine, it probably is mine.

 

[Peloche]

More news:

The red led that is lit on the motherboard when 4890 is plugged in is "CPU B Fail", when 4890 is out there isn't any fault.

Any idea ?

 

[llatker]

Ultimate Thread: 4890 in Mac Pro - WORKS!

I had a HD 4870 Mac & PC die after about a year and started searching for a replacement a few months ago and came upon the Ultimate Thread: 4890 in Mac Pro.

I too then bought the Sapphire HD 4890, installed the injector and other bits, and all was well with the world - with the exception of not being able to select a boot drive or run AppleJack. Until Snow Leopard 10.6.1 came out!

For some reason my PCIe SATA card ran under 10.6, but when I updated to 10.6.1 I got kernel panics, which killed the Mac and it appeared, caused the HD 4890 to die as well.

I got the white screen of death for two days after trying to re-install Boot Camp, until I found that the Windows drive has to be re-formated after a bad install. Even after that I couldn't get back into Mac OS until I removed all USB and Firewire cables. I pulled both the cards and put them in the junk box until today.

I popped the 4890 into the #2 slot along with the MacPro1,1's stock graphics card and tried to flash it with Cindori's flash app. Got the popup error: "/ATIROMFlasher.kext failed to load - (libkern/kext) not found; check the system/kernel logs for errors or try kextutil(8)."

I tried the "try 1" & "try 2" apps but still got errors. I then downloaded the overclock ROM file and used just its' 4890Flash.app. Worked like a charm!

Deleted the files, pulled the stock graphics card, installed a new, "works with Mac OS out of the box 4 port SATA card" and rebooted. Got the white screen/Apple logo and everything worked. Booted into Windows Vista and set that up as well.

Thanks Cindori! Great work.

Added a slot cooler, which has really dropped the temp, so maybe this card will survive past its first birthday.

Love it when a plan comes together.

 

[llatker]

Hd 4890

FYI,

I just ran the latest OpenGL Extensions Viewer test. Attached is the result. Smoking!😀

 

[Cindori]

you are using wrong settings
http://krull.se/macpro


btw what pkg was not working?
did you make sure to copy the files to boot drive?

 

[Peloche]

More news
I installed HD4890 New Version on a PC.

and got this result with atiflash -i :

Asic for dID 9460 should be RV790 and not 770, does Sapphire sell HD4890 New Version with 770 to sell off this asic or there is something wrong ?

IMHO Bios p/n is right for HD4890, what's your Bios p/n after using 4890Flash.app ?

One more information i've used atiflash360 to get these informations, atiflash375 was exiting due to signal SIGILL and invalid Opcode at eip=0002a617

 

[Syonidism]

noob question: if a software update comes up do we need to wait for a pkg like the injector method( netkas ) or can we update right away w/out any care in the world?

 

[Macinposh]

FYI,

I just ran the latest OpenGL Extensions Viewer test. Attached is the result. Smoking!😀

Hmm,is something awry there?

Here is my apple 4870 (10.5.8) results.

 

[Peloche]

Using Netkas rom

http://netkas.org/?paged=3

Netkas flashing instruction

http://netkas.org/?p=90

I've got "Flash already programmed"

trying to force flash with instructions at: nothing has changed ...

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/152

I get the following (showing RV790...):

Next step should be install into MacPro, any advice before ?

 

[Peloche]

atiflash -ai 0

 

[Cindori]

Hmm,is something awry there?

Here is my apple 4870 (10.5.8) results.

you are also using wrong settings. with it like that, its not that GPU based.

 

[Macinposh]

you are also using wrong settings. with it like that, its not that GPU based.

I am using the same settings as llatker.

Right or wrong.


And yes,I do know the "correct" settings.

 

[Cindori]

you are not listening, when having the settings like that, your results do not depend very much on your graphic card. so it's pointless

anyway that app can differ 10-15% in score with right settings even on computers with same spec, so I don't trust it anyway. the 4890 is faster then the 4870, it has faster hardware...

 

[Macinposh]

ok - here is the 4890 score I got

Anyway.
10-15% difference and not reliable etc..

Still,you do have to deal with the "hassle" flashing the 4890 and risk bricking the card and maybe have extra excitement if the next update is going to mess things up.
And around theese parts,the final price for 4890 (with the 2 powercables from apple) run in total of 235€ at the cheapest,compare to the apples 305€ for 4870.
For many of us it is just not worth it.


Ps.I am not trying to take a jab at you or anything, but just pointing out to some peeps with limited abilities it just might not be worth it.

 

[Cindori]

Anyway.
10-15% difference and not reliable etc..

http://krull.se/macpro
There is a Apple 4870 getting alot lower score then you. Why? Cause the benchmarking app is not reliable 😉

Still,you do have to deal with the "hassle" flashing the 4890 and risk bricking the card and maybe have extra excitement if the next update is going to mess things up.

that "hassle" has now been reduced to copying 2 files and double clicking an app 😉

afaik, everyone that has bricked their 4890 yet either used some exotic, not-recommended card, or did not follow instructions.

about updates and QE_CI, the only thing you need to change is to add some device-id's into a .plist. It's dead easy. I'm going to make my own QE_CI pkg for next update just to prove that I'm not dependent on netkas for my graphics to work.

And around theese parts,the final price for 4890 (with the 2 powercables from apple) run in total of 235€ at the cheapest,compare to the apples 305€ for 4870.
For many of us it is just not worth it.

Not following you there. You're swedish aren't you? In the Apple Store the 4870 is listed at 3.780,00 kr = 353 euro. The cheapest 4890 you'll find of the original Sapphire model goes for 1997kr, plus two cables 120kr each, = total of 209 euro. That's a whopping 144 euro difference, or in SEK, 1538:-. And you get a better card!

Ps.I am not trying to take a jab at you or anything, but just pointing out to some peeps with limited abilities it just might not be worth it.

No, it is certainly not for everyone. If you depend on your computer to work, go with the Apple alternative. You'll get warranty too.

but it sure is fun to tinker.

 

[Peloche]

It's better now, GC HD4890 works on my PC and is recognized by SL, but within the video Card description in SL no Ram is mentionned and it's black screen, any idea ?

Which ATI extensions have you installed ?

 

[folp02]

looking for a 4890?

hey all -

if you're looking for cindori's card, amazon has one: http://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-Rade...2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1255378342&sr=8-2

i've been looking for days trying to find some place that actually has them in stock, it seems they're getting pretty scarce...

cheers,

mike