7xxx rom creating test.

[mysticalos]

but the "best for display" resolution is set to 2560x1600

i noticed on official card that for some reason as well, it set my screen to that even though native resolution is 1680x1050. so now i'm running "scaled" down to 1680x1050. it actually causes issues with starcraft 2, as blizz tries to force what OS X tells is your native resolution, then offers it's own scale options that fuzzy up the game if you play at anything other than native. translation, with 7950 i have to play at 2560x1600 or a scale resolution with fussy text and not as sharp of an image, even though i played at a crisp 1680x1050 before. It seems unique to sc2 though so i'm sure blizzard will have to address this particular issue.

Still, it is a bit annoying that the firmware on card is giving odd best for display data.

I just flashed my reference AMD 7950 and noticed the same thing. I also get corruption on the boot screen towards the end.
I used ROMINATOR's MAC7950 ROM. Did you add EFI to your original ROM or flash the ROM that ROMINATOR posted?

oh mine is a factory mac edition sapphire unmodded, which is why i commented the resolution behavior is obviously something in the original rom that likely carried over to the modded roms. Not something that is the result of the modding. It's only SC2 and D3 that really dislike the rom though with the way they do resolution code, well that and OS X THINKING best resolution is a non native one for my cinema display. any other games don't have issues with fuzzyness though. not like D3 and SC2 do. I'm hoping by poking blizzard, they will put some weight on ati to address this. Apparently ati is backing the official saphire mac editions after all. Word is, ati has actually been contacting some companies like blizzard already about any issues their games have with 7950. So that is encouraging and leaves hope that we'll be seeing improved 7000 kexts in the following OS X increments.

[J-MI]

Hi Mysticalos,
Is it possible for you to confirm what resistors are in place.
On the attached file, left resistor appears to be missing  and right resistor appears to be in a vertical Orientation. Is it correct ?

[GP-SE]

Surprise !!!

Don't say we never did anything for you guys.

BTW, here's the 7950 rom

It works on MOST 7950 and 7970 cards, but make 100% certain that you have backed up your original before flashing.

When flashed to a 7970 you lose some speed.

quick question, the ROM you posted, is that an un-edited ROM right from the Sapphire MAC 7950, or did you have to edit to make it work with PC 7950's?

[vidkidd]

Hi Mysticalos,
Is it possible for you to confirm what resistors are in place.
On the attached file, left resistor appears to be missing  and right resistor appears to be in a vertical Orientation. Is it correct ?

A link to my post at MacRumors may give more info.  The forum DNS was down last  
 http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=17076731&postcount=31

There are two different PCB layouts:

PCB Layout A) 7950 - 7950 Mac Edition & Others - chips below crossfire connectors with horizontal / vertical orientation. No resistors .

PCB Layout B) 7950 - Most cards on Newegg - chips below crossfire connectors with 45 degree angle layout. Two resistors


1) SAPPHIRE FleX 100352FLEX-2 Radeon HD 7950 - Layout A - 2 resistors at this location.  Hmmmm

2) HIS H795QMC3G2M Radeon HD 7950 3GB - Layout A - No resistors at this location

3) SAPPHIRE 100352-2L Radeon HD 7950 3GB - Layout B - 2 Resistors in place.

4) GIGABYTE GV-R795WF3-3GD Radeon HD 7950 3GB - Layout B - 2 Resistors in place.   

5) Cards with the resistors in place list their specs showing: Effective Memory Clock: 1250MHz (5.0Gbps)

  If anyone is flashing their card with the modded EFI Bios, would be good to hear what card you have and if you are running at 5.0GT/S

[vidkidd]

A macrumors user has modified 2 positions on the PowerColor rev2 PCB looking for the magic combination.   Luckily, there are more combinations to try.  We're getting closer to solving this puzzle?    Hey Romoinator - any thoughts?    

Left = towards power connectors
Right = towards video connectors

Left - vertical | right - none
Left - vertical | right - horizontal
Left - vertical | right vertical No effect

Left - Horizontal | right - none
Left - Horizontal | right - horizontal
Left - Horizontal | right vertical

Left - NONE | right - none - No effect
Left - NONE | right - horizontal
Left - NONE | right vertical

[Rominator]

As I posted there, ask Foul Man / MacGraphicsFan. He claims to have discovered these things, not sure why anyone asks me. He's the genius who discovers all this stuff and hands out the free help.

[dnbblah]

Surprise !!!

Don't say we never did anything for you guys.

BTW, here's the 7950 rom

It works on MOST 7950 and 7970 cards, but make 100% certain that you have backed up your original before flashing.

When flashed to a 7970 you lose some speed.

quick question, the ROM you posted, is that an un-edited ROM right from the Sapphire MAC 7950, or did you have to edit to make it work with PC 7950's?

curious abt this too..

@GP-SE which card did you finally tried? can you post more details?

[GP-SE]

Surprise !!!

Don't say we never did anything for you guys.

BTW, here's the 7950 rom

It works on MOST 7950 and 7970 cards, but make 100% certain that you have backed up your original before flashing.

When flashed to a 7970 you lose some speed.

quick question, the ROM you posted, is that an un-edited ROM right from the Sapphire MAC 7950, or did you have to edit to make it work with PC 7950's?

curious abt this too..

@GP-SE which card did you finally tried? can you post more details?

I have a reference AMD HD 7950 direct from AMD. It's weird because it has a 8pin +6pin power connector (almost all are 6pin + 6pin). However it's working just fine with boot screens, and shows up in system info perfect (HD7950).
I used the one ROMINATOR posted (MAC7950.ROM), but yesterday I flashed one made from my original ROM.
Both work just fine, I can't tell a difference between either ROM.

Two Issues:
1) My PCI-E fan and Power Supply fan are spinning up (1600RPM and 1000RPM) but it did that with a flashed 6870 also, I'm hoping 10.8.4 fixes it.

2) It thinks my native res. is 2560x1600, so I have it set to Scaled 1920x1080, however even the Official Sapphire 7950 MAC Edition does this. I'm hoping Sapphire releases a Bios Update, or maybe it's a driver issue that gets fixed.

[vidkidd]

Im running an unflashed 7950.   Loosing performance is not worth a grey apple logo at boot.   When we can figure out the slowdown issue, I'll consider the logo screen.    Flashing the firmware with the new vanity rom is equivalent to enabling a PC to boot a manufacturer logo screen, but slowing the RAM from 1600Mhz to 800Mhz  - or - Better yet, bolting on 1000Lbs of vanity add-ons to a street racer.   All vanity with no substance.   

Happily at at full speed with a Gigabyte Silent 7950 I picked up for $299 at the NewEgg.
• 2560x1600 (DVI-DL),
• 1920x1080 - active mdp -> dvi adapter,
• DVI@ 1680x1050 - passive mdp -> dvi adapter

Note: HDMI initialized only when plugged in after displays are initialized.

[GP-SE]

Im running an unflashed 7950.   Loosing performance is not worth a grey apple logo at boot.   When we can figure out the slowdown issue, I'll consider the logo screen.    Flashing the firmware with the new vanity rom is equivalent to enabling a PC to boot a manufacturer logo screen, but slowing the RAM from 1600Mhz to 800Mhz  - or - Better yet, bolting on 1000Lbs of vanity add-ons to a street racer.   All vanity with no substance.   

Happily at at full speed with a Gigabyte Silent 7950 I picked up for $299 at the NewEgg.
• 2560x1600 (DVI-DL),
• 1920x1080 - active mdp -> dvi adapter,
• DVI@ 1680x1050 - passive mdp -> dvi adapter

Note: HDMI initialized only when plugged in after displays are initialized.

what slow down issue are you talking about? I've been running both the Bios ROMINATOR posted, and a EFI edited Bios from my card, and haven't had any speed issues at all.

[Rominator]

Im running an unflashed 7950.   Loosing performance is not worth a grey apple logo at boot.   When we can figure out the slowdown issue, I'll consider the logo screen.    Flashing the firmware with the new vanity rom is equivalent to enabling a PC to boot a manufacturer logo screen, but slowing the RAM from 1600Mhz to 800Mhz  - or - Better yet, bolting on 1000Lbs of vanity add-ons to a street racer.   All vanity with no substance.   

Great analogies, unfortunately you are using all of this flowery language to illustrate a nonsense point.

If you use your PC BIOS with the Mac EFI you get BOTH. Boot screens, correct name in profiler AND faster speeds.

Living in ignorance with a card with no boot screens just because you don't understand how EFI works is like living with a 100 kg mole on your butt because you think the Dr. who could remove it for FREE has bad breath.

[dnbblah]

Living in ignorance with a card with no boot screens just because you don't understand how EFI works is like living with a 100 kg mole on your butt because you think the Dr. who could remove it for FREE has bad breath.

 

[vidkidd]

My oh my!!!  

Silly boy!  I thought you knew the macpro had efi?  And that if you flash a PC version with your half modded bios, that you get a boot screen and running at 2.5GT/S?  Next time RTFP before flaming.  No wonder you were **BANNED** from MacRumors.  Perhaps Arn should do the same for MacVidCards??   

Im running an unflashed 7950.   Loosing performance is not worth a grey apple logo at boot.   When we can figure out the slowdown issue, I'll consider the logo screen.    Flashing the firmware with the new vanity rom is equivalent to enabling a PC to boot a manufacturer logo screen, but slowing the RAM from 1600Mhz to 800Mhz  - or - Better yet, bolting on 1000Lbs of vanity add-ons to a street racer.   All vanity with no substance.  

Great analogies, unfortunately you are using all of this flowery language to illustrate a nonsense point.

If you use your PC BIOS with the Mac EFI you get BOTH. Boot screens, correct name in profiler AND faster speeds.

Living in ignorance with a card with no boot screens just because you don't understand how EFI works is like living with a 100 kg mole on your butt because you think the Dr. who could remove it for FREE has bad breath.

[vidkidd]

What's your link speed and effective memory clock?   

Im running an unflashed 7950.   Loosing performance is not worth a grey apple logo at boot.   When we can figure out the slowdown issue, I'll consider the logo screen.    Flashing the firmware with the new vanity rom is equivalent to enabling a PC to boot a manufacturer logo screen, but slowing the RAM from 1600Mhz to 800Mhz  - or - Better yet, bolting on 1000Lbs of vanity add-ons to a street racer.   All vanity with no substance.   

Happily at at full speed with a Gigabyte Silent 7950 I picked up for $299 at the NewEgg.
• 2560x1600 (DVI-DL),
• 1920x1080 - active mdp -> dvi adapter,
• DVI@ 1680x1050 - passive mdp -> dvi adapter

Note: HDMI initialized only when plugged in after displays are initialized.

what slow down issue are you talking about? I've been running both the Bios ROMINATOR posted, and a EFI edited Bios from my card, and haven't had any speed issues at all.

[GP-SE]

PCI 1.0, which isn't a huge deal, and memory when in Windows is normal 800mhz core 1250mhz memory.
it scores 1583 in LuxMark so everything is running fast here!