The BIG eGPU nMP secret nobody noticed (aka, don't follow false prophets)

[Rominator]

So, time for a "freebie" to get some movement in the eGPU scene.

Would you like to know about an eGPU card that you can already connect to a nMP 6,1 and get boot screens, Recovery Partition access, etc? You've had it right there all along, nobody connected the dots. (Think Dorothy and Ruby slippers)

So here it is, take an cMP EFI flashed 7950 or 7970 or R9 280 or R9 280X and slap it in an eGPU enclosure. Connect to one of lower TB ports with only monitor connected to the Tahiti card. Push the power button on the 6,1 and BANG ! Boot screens from an eGPU ! And as an even better surprise, you'll find that your older Tahiti card has magically transformed itself ! It is now a FirePro D700 !!!

The EFI on the card interacts with the EFI in the nMP to convince OSX that you have a high and mighty Fire Pro D700 ! I predicted (years ago now) that Apple developed the D700 by using 7970s in older Mac Pro, here is last bit of proof. Even the 7950 shows up as D700, no reason for that except the obvious one. Apple was lazy, same reason the 7970 showed up as a D700 on cMP in early days. All of the Kool Aid guzzlers believing they got $2K GPUs will have some thinking to do.

So you ask, why were the eGPU "gurus" at TechInfernal so completely unaware of this? I have been dropping hints for months, but when you look for "discoveries" by pm'ing people in the shadows and using the "copy & paste" research method, you don't discover much. Nope, you have to actually try things out to find things like this. (watch, old goalie is gonna have another "eureka" moment in next 48 hrs, if past is anything to go by)

This won't work in any other TB Mac, it is because Apple included EFI & BIOS rom of all possible nMP GPUs in the nMP boot rom. 6 different GPUs all in boot rom, so no matter what GPU you have in your 6,1, this little trick will work.

Ready for another piece of good news? The AGDC hack that goalie copy & pasted isn't needed for this, in fact it makes it work WORSE. When he put together his famous "script" it was basically all known hacks that everyone was well aware of, with the CRUCIAL addition of the AGDC hack that he had copy & pasted from Netkas' package. He had no idea what it was or how it worked, but he knew how to copy & paste.

And low and behold, an EFI 7970 (or other models) actually runs WORSE if you use it. So I'll go ahead and predict that also in the next 48 hours there will be some changes to a certain github repository. (this is what happens when you copy & paste with no basic understanding of what you are "borrowing").

So, to reiterate, you still need the tunneling kext fixes, but do NOT do the AGDC mod that enabled so many Nvidia cards. Will boot right into OSX once the standard hacks are done. Windows also works on 6,1. I will tell you how...soon. (hopefully soon, up to someone else)

There it is, a freebie, enjoy !

(Did I mention 10 bit color support? BONUS !)

[Fl0r!an]

Oh that's really interesting stuff. 

I'm curious why the Radeon card has to be flashed with a cMP EFI, which won't be used anyway. I guess it might already be enough to throw out the standard PC UEFI and leave the last ROM indicator removed to indicate that another ROM will follow up?

Did you ever try to flash the D700 VBIOS + EFI on a 7970? This should enable boot screens on all other TB Macs, shouldn't it?

[Rominator]

Oh that's really interesting stuff. 

I'm curious why the Radeon card has to be flashed with a cMP EFI, which won't be used anyway. I guess it might already be enough to throw out the standard PC UEFI and leave the last ROM indicator removed to indicate that another ROM will follow up?

Did you ever try to flash the D700 VBIOS + EFI on a 7970? This should enable boot screens on all other TB Macs, shouldn't it?

The answers are in screenshots.

Which EFI got used?

But it is nice that you realized this is important. The copy & paste clowns at TI might need pretty color pictures to understand.

It may be possible to use last rom indicator to get other EFI to load, but it already works really well, and I have little interest in making 7970s and 7850 works as eGPU. Not really an AMD guy.

To me the amazing thing is a fleet of self styled experts claiming to write scripts, create databases, etc, and not a one of them ever connected these dots. One even wrote an AMD "how to" guide for 7970s. Bunch of buffoons.

[Spacedust]

Does it work on 8x 5.0 GT/s or 8x 8.0 GT/s ?

[netkas]

it works at speeds of x4 5.0 gt/s

[Spacedust]

it works at speeds of x4 5.0 gt/s

That x8 confused me Thunderbolt 2 isn't fast enough.