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Gigabyte's Nvidia 9400 powered M-ATX MOBO

stellarola

By stellarola,
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raffitaffy
raffitaffy
Posted
Posted

Stell,

 

I know 10.5.6 will be out soon, but I am reminded of this:

 

Moe: There it is! I bought it used from the Navy. This thing can flash-fry a buffalo in forty seconds. Homer: (whining) Forty seconds? But I want it now!

 

 

Raffi, you'll need 10.5.6 or Macbook/Pro 10.5.5 Restore disc. These will have the drivers for this chipset.

 

-Stell

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Cave Man
Cave Man
Posted
Posted
Hey all. So I have some good news....

 

-Nvidia 9400 works 100% QE/CI. Only tested via DVI so far.

-Ethernet works oob and has proper bonjour/afp sharing support

-firewire works oob

-ahci working oob, but with device id added to ahci kext info you get info in sys profiler (picture below)

-Vanilla kernel works (from macbook restore disc)

-Sleep works and even wakes using usb keyboard on S3.

 

By chance did you test if the optical audio port can deliver Dolby Digital or DTS to a receiver? If this works, then this is a wonderful HTPC board.

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Weez
Weez
Posted
Posted

Im a complete newbie when it comes to hackintosh but this is exactky what i have been waiting for. I have the board, I have the macbook dvd's now i just nee dto read up a little more on kexts and stuff like that. I really need HDMI over audi then ill be golden.

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maccompaq
maccompaq
Posted
Posted

I have been reading reviews on these new boards, and they are pretty nice. But the general consensus is that they are not quite fully tuned. See below for in-depth info about it. This is the new Hackintosh I have been waiting for. While I am waiting for this board to develop for the Hackintosh community, I will continue to enjoy my current edition.

 

http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/15690/1

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sam7
sam7
Posted
Posted

Hi guys, I'm a newbie in the hackintosh scene (this forum included)...

 

I've just bought, here in Italy, an Asus P5K pro mobo, and I was wondering how I could install my EN9400GT silent (http://www.digital.it/prodotti/S5801098/asus-en9400gt-silenthtp.html) in order to use Leopard under a "graphically decent" point of view.

I've downloaded such distros as iDeneb, Kaliway and Leo4all... which one do you suggest me to install?

I've read that both Kaliway and Leo4all are good for my mobo. But what about the graphic card?

 

Thanks,

 

Sam

 

Hoo.. I almost forgot that:

what if I install everything apart from the graphics card, and then letting the Nvidia official site finding the proper drivers (http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us) clicking on "Option 2: Automatically find drivers for my NVIDIA products."?

 

Might this work?

 

Thanks again,

 

Sam again.

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Synaesthesia
Synaesthesia
Posted
Posted

Read the thread:

Raffi, you'll need 10.5.6 or Macbook/Pro 10.5.5 Restore disc. These will have the drivers for this chipset.

 

-Stell

Those distributions will not work. It's not just the nVidia graphics, it's the motherboard chipset which is very different. Use boot-132 or similar.

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raffitaffy
raffitaffy
Posted
Posted

Synaesthesia,

 

The 10.5.6 or Macbook/Pro 10.5.5 Restore disc won't work?

 

I can boot in Safe Mode, I thought when 10.5.6 comes out (Maybe today, how's your Portugues? The Apple Seed Note for Build 9G52 has no known issues) I could run an update and cross my fingers.

Boot -132 enables one to adjust kext's from, say, a USB drive. The makes it flexable to load OS X. JMicron does find the IDE drive and DVD.

I wish I knew more.......

 

Those distributions will not work. It's not just the nVidia graphics, it's the motherboard chipset which is very different. Use boot-132 or similar.
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Tensuke
Tensuke
Posted
Posted
I have been reading reviews on these new boards, and they are pretty nice. But the general consensus is that they are not quite fully tuned. See below for in-depth info about it. This is the new Hackintosh I have been waiting for. While I am waiting for this board to develop for the Hackintosh community, I will continue to enjoy my current edition.

 

http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/15690/1

 

maccompaq, that article you linked to is about the 9300 chipset, not 9400, and this board wasn't even mentioned. If you're commenting on the graphics capabilities of the IGP, of course it's not as good as a discrete card, but it should be fine enough for basic use and some gaming(assuming enough drivers work, which they seem too).

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Signal64
Signal64
Posted
Posted

Just a quick comparison between the 9300/9400:

 

E7AUM-DS2H

e7aumds2hiv4.png

 

P5N7A-VM

p5n7avmmw9.png

 

Both systems are running an E7300 with 2Gigs of ram (2x1Gig) at 667.

Nothing oclocked or fancy there.

 

The score dropped to 12,000'ish on the P5N7A-VM when a single stick of ram (single channel mode) was used. Dual channel is a necessity for both boards if you expect some performance out of the gpu.

 

I've been working to get a couple of minor issues resolved on both boards.

 

The only issue I have found on the Gigabyte is the onboard nForce Ethernet (using the new apple nvidia kexts) is not resuming from sleep correctly. It ends up with a self assigned IP address after resume and hardcoding the ip doesn't help. This is not an issue on the P5N7A-VM but it has couple of other issues of it's own to sort out.

 

I used a ALU MacBook 13" disk image and DiaboliK used the ALU MacBook restore disc method.

As the new updates to OS X on the ALU MackBooks is pretty extensive (goes beyond just a few kexts and into the application area as well) it was the way to go for these boards.

 

The issues aren't anything that will prevent you from using these boards, but I'm after a "vanilla" as possible and Perfect (without an "except for" :( ) working install.

 

I'm doing a write up on this install and if you have items you'd like me to test, let me know.

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okeribok
okeribok
Posted
Posted

True, the gigabyte 9400 is probably interesting, but don't forget that the 9300 boards (Asus P5n7A-VM, MSI P7NGM and ECS GeForce 9300T) should be eqaully interesting. The only difference afaik is the clock on the gpu (580Mhz on the 9400, 450 on the 9300) _and_ the price. The asus is €115,- and the Gigabyte €149,- in the Netherlands.

 

The main general benefit of the board appears to be lower CPU utilisation with multimedia applications. For us, the main benefit is that it is Apple's latest chipset. I'm curious to see where Apple is taking the MacBook Pro, with the dual GPU, in 10.6. It may be a reason to combine the nvidia 9x00 boards with a 9x00 (or later?) nvidia card. I assume that any hybrid SLI-ing that may tentatively take place, would require all-nvidia GPUs. Too bad, because as it stands now, I would prefer an ATI 3870; still plenty fast for gaming, quieter, faster in quartz, dirt cheap (if you don't take the Mac & PC version). I'd like to see X2 support, but that's another story.

 

FSB is on par with current Apple offerings, but RAM is only DDR2 on the 9x00 boards, while Apple offers DDR3 on the MB and MBP. The 9x00 boards could support a 1600Mhz FSB and DDR3 ram, but apparently, we'll have to wait a while for that.

 

All in all, I'd say that it's too early to say anything except just "interesting" :P

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pvutop
pvutop
Posted
Posted

Well the most interesting stuff will happen if somebody gets this board working :-) so far it's seems most owners are the ones (at least me) who just can manage to get a distro download and try it, just tried the latest Iatkos 5i but with no success :-( Hope some MAC sawy person will manage to get their hands on a board and maybe make a step by step guide.. my only hope I think..

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stellarola
stellarola
Posted
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Well the most interesting stuff will happen if somebody gets this board working :-) so far it's seems most owners are the ones (at least me) who just can manage to get a distro download and try it, just tried the latest Iatkos 5i but with no success :-( Hope some MAC sawy person will manage to get their hands on a board and maybe make a step by step guide.. my only hope I think..

 

It works retail.

 

-Stell

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pvutop
pvutop
Posted
Posted

So a step by step for someone like me at this point in time would be:

1. get a retail DVD no later than 10.5.6 or maybe 10.5.5 for macbook or macbook pro ?

2. install

3. start testing and evaluate it

 

Sounds to good to be true, isn't there any special boot steps to consider?

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Goz
Goz
Posted
Posted
So a step by step for someone like me at this point in time would be:

1. get a retail DVD no later than 10.5.6 or maybe 10.5.5 for macbook or macbook pro ?

2. install

3. start testing and evaluate it

 

Sounds to good to be true, isn't there any special boot steps to consider?

 

Pvutop,

 

You'll need something before your step 1 such as a BOOT-132 CD

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