45 replies to this topic

[netkas]

i'm using such a scheme for a long time, ati 2600XT works in osx, and 4850 used in windows for games

So, in case somebody need to know how to make it work, I'll explain

For example you want to upgrade your gfx card to a one unsupported by osx still, and have old one which works fine in osx (e.g. 260gtx and 8600gt or 2600xt and 4850)

and u have motherboard with two pci-e x16 slots.

so, plug both cards into pci-e slots,

go to bios, set osx-friendly card to be inital graphics port (PEG, PEG2, PEG3, number means pci-e slot)

and once pc shows boot screen on osx-friendy card (e.g. 8600gt/2600xt) - it's almost done.

if osx-not-friendly card is nvidia and you use injector like a nvkush or natit, then u need to edit injector's plist and leave there only device-id of osx-friendly card.

in ati case, u dont need to do it.

now osx will work on your osx-friendly card.

configuring windows to use your new card as main display is easy task.

in case your LCD has two connectors (DVI and VGA(dsub)) u can connect one to osx-friendly card and another one to second card, so no need for cable repluging

[pino72]

That's what I hoped for...will try this soon with my fully osx supported ATI x1900 GT nad my new 4870.
Will put my x1900gt in the PCI-e 4x slot and the 4870 for Vista in the 16x slot.....should work then.

[OSXLion]

Hi netkas,

what about energy consumption? Is the second card (in your case 4850) consuming full power while you run osx? is the fan spinning fast? can you (or someone else) mesure energy consumption somehow, maybe with and without the "gaming" card pluged in?

thx and best
Lion

[kocoman]

Do you know how to fix 'black' screen with two video cards?

Also my nvidia card with retail 10.5.6 is not showing EDID/DDC data, how to show it.

Also I don't know why I can't post a new message in this forum.  only can reply?

thanks

[M0rpheus]

Hey there,



Sorry to bump this thread but I've got a 4870X2 and I've got vanilla OSX running on my machine on my P45 chipset. I was wondering if anyone else has had success with this method, as I want to get a 2600XT to put in my second PCI-E slot to use with OSX.



Can anyone confirm it's working with 10.5.6? And what about the above post on power consumption? I have my Quad Core PC overclocked and have a 750W PSU, I'm worried it won't be able to handle the extra juice of another graphics card being used at the same time. 



Thanks!

[rene mauricio]

morpheus_04, on Feb 6 2009, 02:31 AM, said:

I was wondering if anyone else has had success with this method

Not I. I am using a Jr P45-T2RS and was unable to get this to work. It could be because my BIOS has no option to boot up on anything but the first PCIE slot or a normal PCI card.

[M0rpheus]

rene mauricio, on Feb 6 2009, 10:23 PM, said:

Not I. I am using a Jr P45-T2RS and was unable to get this to work. It could be because my BIOS has no option to boot up on anything but the first PCIE slot or a normal PCI card.

That's what my motherboard says as well... The only other thing I can think to do is remove my 4870X2 when I want to use OSX and place the 2600XT in its place. My BIOS says PEG/PCI and I can switch it around, but it doesn't seem to want to let me choose which PCI-E graphics card to use as the primary and which one as the secondary. 




It's possible that whichever one is in the first top slot gets booted from, and the card in the second or third slot is the additional card. Either way I would rather find out/test it first rather than fork out the money for the card just to find it won't work. 

[rene mauricio]

Same here, which is why I purchased my card at a local Best Buy. Once it did not work I returned it. It 'could' be possible to stick the OSX card on the top slot, and the Windows card on the bottom. Once in Windows I would think it would see two video cards and you might be able to disable the OSX one (in the Device Manager) and continue to use the Windows one. In our case, simply not installing the ATI drivers might suffice.

I should have tried that :/

[MoneyMark]

Hey guys, I initially had the same issue, it appeared my bios did not have an option to set the peg. I found an option in my Rampage Formula that said something about Auto setting the ports. I turned that off and then it switched which card booted. After that all I had to do was put the cards in the correct slots. Help this helps someone.

[M0rpheus]

MoneyMark, on Feb 8 2009, 05:21 AM, said:

Hey guys, I initially had the same issue, it appeared my bios did not have an option to set the peg. I found an option in my Rampage Formula that said something about Auto setting the ports. I turned that off and then it switched which card booted. After that all I had to do was put the cards in the correct slots. Help this helps someone.

Do you know exactly which setting it was? 

[MoneyMark]

M0rpheus, on Feb 8 2009, 04:19 AM, said:

Do you know exactly which setting it was?

Yep It's under Advanced, North Bridge Chipset Configuration:
PEG Port Control: Auto/Disabled

When booting OSX, I set it to Disabled. My 1900xtx goes into pci-e 2 (I think it's 2, it's the port near the bottom of the case), hd4870 in pci-e 1. When I set it to Auto, the hd4870 posts.

[rene mauricio]

Ive no such option on mine.

[Stellair]

Do you know it works on GA-P35-DS4? I would use a nVidia 7800GT for OSX and a 4850 or 4870 (not decided) for WinXP

[oliwr]

YES! Confirmed working on Gigabyte P45-DS4!
Thanks for that info on how to change the primary graphic card!

Just installed & updated to 10.5.6 using Boot 1-3-2 and a Retail Mac DVD. It always failed with my new Sapphire 4870. I still got an ATI 1950XT and used it like you said in your guide. Driver works perfectly!!

Thanks alot!

[whisker star]

hi ,

i had the same problem, one 4870 and a nvidia 8500GT, i use the Gigabyte P45-DS3 and ok the switch runs well, but if i use the PEG2 as master the cooler of my 4870 runs on full power and its very loud the whole time. Thats not really funny to work under osx with this noise.
have anybody the same problem?

br whisker

oliwr, on Feb 22 2009, 12:48 PM, said:

YES! Confirmed working on Gigabyte P45-DS4!
Thanks for that info on how to change the primary graphic card!

Just installed & updated to 10.5.6 using Boot 1-3-2 and a Retail Mac DVD. It always failed with my new Sapphire 4870. I still got an ATI 1950XT and used it like you said in your guide. Driver works perfectly!!

Thanks alot!

[Yuber]

I got a problem: First of all I got it work both on osx and vista but, when i'm on vista using my ati 4850, sometimes my screen change color (it becomes a little blue, a little black etc). Any suggestion? How to solve this problem?

Edit: when I play some games the system crashes...

[netkas]

to the guys who cant select which PEG port is primary:

my guess: ur inital graphics port is PEG1, so, put osx card in it, and windows card into another peg port, it can hurt performance of windows card if it's p35 or less (when second slot is pcie x4)

[wuyanxu]

netkas, on Feb 27 2009, 02:36 PM, said:

to the guys who cant select which PEG port is primary:

my guess: ur inital graphics port is PEG1, so, put osx card in it, and windows card into another peg port, it can hurt performance of windows card if it's p35 or less (when second slot is pcie x4)

lol, yeah, will hurt a LOT for my GTX260.

is there no way around this?? is it possible to: set the code to the Mac card and let it automatically detect the location of the card??


EDIT: bite the bullet and bought a 6200 PCI. will report back how this worked out

EDIT2:
6200 PCI arrived, made mobo boot from PCI, and installed iPC 10.5.6 with NVinject. then put in correct EFI strings for 6200 and remove NVinject. now i have 10.5.6 with QE and CI, hardware accelerated.  

can watch 720p views using VLC smoothly, going to try 1080p blu-ray next.

PROBLEM: gtx260 fan stays on at full all the time when using OSX. but i can live with it, it's not as loud as 4870 stock fans.

[TeraHz]

Netkas,

I can't get my os to boot with 8600GT and 4890. If the 8600GT is primary, the system crashes with fan on 4890 at about-to-take-off speeds. If the 4890 is the primary, KP right when the mouse/gui is supposed to load.

If they are separate, the 8600GT gets dual QE/CI (both vga and dvi), the 4890 gets only one DVI with QE/CI

Any ideas how to keep them both in? ideally I'd like to use one DVI for one monitor on 4890, dvi for second monitor on 8600GT, and vga for my projector. Is that possible at all?

[Slyrfecso]

Hi Netkas!

I will use 2nd video card, but it doesn't work.
How can I see PciRoot key for 2nd?

Here is my file.
ioreg.txt ( 10.58K ) Number of downloads: 0

http://fecso.dyndns.org/1.jpg
http://fecso.dyndns.org/2.jpg

Nvidia Quadro 4 200/400NVS 64MB

 ioreg.txt   10.58K   15 downloads