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[SOLVED] Supported Low Profile Cards + Lion/SL


gygabyte666
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Hello everyone!

 

I'll make this short. I have a hackintosh Dell Optiplex 260 that runs Lion beautifully minus the lack of a supported GFX card. This machine is a low profile machine and as such, I'd need to purchase a low profile card for it. I've done a fair amount of research on it already but I'm at a stump for which card to get.

 

Mind you I'm not made of money nor does the machine have a very powerful PSU. I am simply looking for a reasonably cheap low profile card that will work with my current setup. I have a 512MB GeForce 6600 PCI that I was hoping could work with Lion but through using NVEnabler64 it always gives a black screen upon trying to boot into the login window. Then i get stuck at a grey screen loop and have to hard shut down. Otherwise though it acts like it's supported but I see no 6xxx drivers in S/L/E. So I assume it isn't supported. Am I wrong? Can I get it working in Lion with full QE/CI? Maybe through a driver rollback or something?

 

If not, can someone recommend a cheap, low profile GeForce for use with my setup? I'd like it to be among the officially supported chips for Lion but I had no luck finding such a list. I do afterall intend on using it for some modern gaming, wine & cider. The best chance of that working is through an officially supported OOB card. Please Help! I hope someone out there can help me and is better informed than myself. Thanks everyone.

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As before, thanks for the idea but sadly, I doubt i'll be able to get it. Amazon is way overpriced, Newegg doesn't seem to sell it anymore and TigerDirect only sells it in stores, which I am no where near to be able to buy.

 

I was looking into getting this one but i'm unsure of it's compatibility with Lion. I did a quick search of other owners and they claim it can work with a bit of tinkering but maybe isn't the best option for what I need it for I assume. Any other suggestions? I'm desperate. Possible links to purchase would be appreciated as well. Thanks again!!!

 

EDIT: Oops. Forgot the link. Here it is: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121473

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The 8400 GS should work just fine with GraphicsEnabler=y. Use the forum search to find more information, it's a very popular card for Hackintosh use. It's an absolute dog for everything but day to day desktop use though.

 

You might be able to get that 6600 working with lion though. Look here: http://www.projectosx.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=4

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Thanks Gringo! The link you provided may prove to be very helpful. I looked everywhere for a fix for my 6600 but had little luck. I never came across the link you provided so i'll be sure to try that out right away.

 

If I can get the 6600 working it'll be great! However, at some point i'll want to upgrade to a PCIe like the 8400 GS. Before I invest into it though I wish I could be more sure of it being able to suit my needs with Lion & moderate gaming. I did a ton of research on that 8400 before starting the thread but still wasn't really able to confirm if it would be able to handle what i'm looking into using it for.

 

I do a lot of PC to Mac game/application porting using wine/Cider and it's important for it to be compatible with that. I would also like to be more sure that it would be recognized and useable with current Mac native games (Limbo, etc.). I understand it's a lot to be picky about but I know how anal games and apps can be for the Mac using unofficial/unsupported cards. Oh, my only other Mac is a 1st Gen MacBook with crappy GMA950 inside. As long as I can use either the 6600/8400 to do a fair amount more than what the GMA could, i'll be happy. I can't imagine any Nvidia card performing any worse than an Intel GMA, even a low profile one.

 

Thanks for everything thus far! I'll post back when i figure something out with the 6600! :D

 

EDIT: My mistake. I don't have a 6600, I have a 6200. I never use it since it's PCI only so oops. I don't think that'll affect it being able to work using the method provided though. Just wanted to clear that up.

 

EDIT#2: I've been messing around with trying to get the 6200 to work. I'm trying to use the PCIRoot= flag to change which display adaptor the Mac "thinks" i'm using. The card supports 1 DVI port, 1 S-Video port & 1 VGA port. Due to the size of the card and the limitations on my system, i'm only able to use the VGA port which I believe is labeled "display 2" or something on the card itself. I think you were right, Gringo. I believe either the Mac or NVEnabler is detecting the video port i'm using wrong. That would explain why everything is great until NVEnabler or the Mac's GeForce drivers kick in and try to take over. Once it hits the login screen, it goes black with a mouse pointer that pops up every couple seconds followed by a looping verbose cursor (if booted in verbose, otherwise it just shows an infinite spinning image in normal boot). If I can force it to use the correct VGA port on the card, then I may have this problem licked.

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Ugh, this sucks. I can't get the 6200 to work and I'm too paranoid about compatibility to purchase the 8800. I'm not comfortable getting something on a whim without knowing the card will work. Can someone provide me with a link to a known, working NVEnabler64 for Lion? I'm gonna try my last ditch effort to get the 6200 working through DSDT NVCAP injection but I'm terrible at editing DSDTs. Pointers? Suggestions? I need this system to work. Without QE/CI the system is useless. Please someone share your knowledge/opinions. Please HELP!!!

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the 8400 device id 10c3 was not oob.. but newer chameleon fixed it in graphicsenabler.

the 9500 is best bet for less headaches.

 

the 8600 and 8800 should be old device id 3 (4xx) digit not 4 (10c3) wich means uses old chip that works with graphicsenabler with no problems

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8800gs should work with graphicsenabler better than the newer 8400gs (4 digit device-id 10xx)

 

whats price range ? have u loooked for used ? craigslist search 9500 in computer section

 

i found in google shopping 9500 gt at $56.46 free shipping @ NeutronUSA

56.99 @ NextWarehouse

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Oh ok. Thanks for clearing that up. So the 8800GS is a pretty good choice then?

 

My price range is horrible, especially for a GFX card. I was looking for the cheaper the better. I can really only part with less than $45. Sad I know but I have no choice. The 8800 GS I was looking at was really cheap and has good reviews. Plus it comes with low profile brackets which is a must because I don't have any myself.

 

Just to clarify you are talking about the GS I linked to on my 2nd post right? If so, then I suppose I'll pick it up since you claim it'll do the job. As I said I'd like a 9xxx but I'm too poor and if I can help it I try not to deal with eBay/Craigslist. You just never know what you're getting. I'd prefer something new just to be safe from tampering and defects. I really appreciate the help!

 

UPDATE: Found a 9500 GT on TigerDirect for really cheap, like $30 but it's sadly only available in their IL store, which I am no where near. Really pisses me off bc I would willingly get that one plus the extra $10 for the brackets. Near everywhere else is either out of stock or is selling it new & used for something outrageously high. Damn, I can't win here.

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Well, I think it's pretty much decided. I spent hours today searching around for a decent, dirt cheap 9500 GT without success. Even tried calling a couple places to see if they carried the one I needed. None of them included brackets either which would simply make the cost way more than I could afford right now. So yeah, as much as i'd like a 9xxx, it just isn't gonna happen right now. :(

 

I'm likely gonna order the 8800 GS pretty soon. It's cheap, has a rebate that makes it way cheaper, has really nice reviews so I don't need to worry about it exploding after a day or two, and included brackets. So that's looking like my winner. As long as it works without much hassle, through use of either GraphicsEnabler or NVEnabler in 64-bit mode with full support for QE/CI, I'll be happy. From what has been said thus far I feel that's how it should perform. Thanks for everyones help on here! It's been greatly appreciated. Please feel free to provide me with some last minute persuasive pointers before I spring to buy this thing. I never really was totally assured of it being able to work and I NEED to be 100% positive it can/will work before I order it. Please recheck the link I provided in my previous post and reassure to me ASAP that it'll be fine and that'll seal the deal.

 

Thanks! :D

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that says 8400 not 8800

 

hmm

http://www.geeks.com...D=ALL&Submit=Go

 

i wonder if this would work nvidia 315 .. i think it does .. looking into nvidia.c from chameleon seems included.

{ 0x10DE0A22, "GeForce 315" }, ... { 0x10DE0A67, "GeForce 315" }, ... { 0x10DE0CAC, "GeForce 315" }

http://www.geeks.com...PCIE-512-2-BULK

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Oh S***!!! Thanks for pointing that out. My God, i've been looking at these for so damn long now that I didn't even notice that. S***! Now i'm right back where I started again. OMFG, now I have to start the search all over again...Still, thanks for not letting me make a HUGE mistake.

 

EDIT: Ugh! I'm having no luck finding a low profile 8800 GS. This is horrible! Anyone got any links they could shoot me for what I'm looking for? I don't know enough about GFX cards to know what works and what doesn't. Please help.

 

EDIT#2: How about one of these? Are they supported? I am mostly checking for cards with between 512MB-1GB VRAM. Usually i've seen the 1GB cards being a better deal.

 

GeForce 210:

http://www.tigerdire...5109&CatId=3669

or

http://www.tigerdire...2267&CatId=3585

 

EDIT#3: How about this one?

 

GeForce GT 520 (Fermi):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121475

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8400 works but its a weakling and i noticed it ran hot likely cause of newer chipset.. not old 8400 with old sensors that worked oob back in 2009

the Nvidia 315 should work with chameleon 2.1 GraphicsEnabler

 

and so will the 8400 but for me it ran hot and would not let inspiron 530 sleep.

9500 did work fine. but the 9400 has more low profile options.

nvidia 210 i dont know. ive read mixed...look around.

 

check for gforce 315 also

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Ok, well you claim that the 9500 GT should work right? If that's the case i'm gonna go over budget to trust your judgement because i'm truly sick of looking for something else and guessing 5000 times starting over. I'll need to get brackets for it but for the moment i'll just snag the card and wait on getting those till later. I found a link at a Walmart, which would make it convenient for me. This way I can return it with ease if it doesn't perform right. Just remind me one last time, this will work right? It'll work in Lion, with either GraphicsEnabler/NVEnabler64 while booting in 64-bit mode correct? I honestly, don't care much about it supporting sleep mode or not. If it does that'll be great but if not I won't lose sleep over not having it. Just please, look the link over and let me know, will this do the trick? I hope I don't sound ungrateful or anything because i'm really happy you've been helping me but i'm just getting frustrated and want this over with, I honestly appreciate all you help up till now but I just want one last bit of reassurance. Thanks

 

GeForce 9500GT:

http://www.walmart.c...Product+Reviews

 

UPDATE: Just attempted a quick and dirty DSDT for the system and found that I fixed it so that I don't need NVEnabler anymore. At least not with the 6200 anyway. I still get the black screen before login but at least I don't have to keep fiddling with NVEnabler anymore! Hopefully, i'll be able to order the 9500GT sometime tomorrow! REALLY hope it works and doesn't give me the same blackscreen. I can't figure out a way around it. It even gives me a verbose message about the NVDAResman7xxx being loaded and all but still, just a blackscreen. :(

 

UPDATE#2: Just ordered the 9500GT linked above. Gonna take a few days to arrive and it likely won't include brackets from what i've read. I have a 9600 GSO from XFX too and that card is awesome so I feel good about getting this one. I only hope I can test it without needing the brackets. We'll see I guess. I'll update this once it arrives and i've tested it. Again, thanks for all your help Gringo! I'm feeling extra poor now because of your advise but i'll gladly accept it and be confident in your choice. :)

 

UPDATE#3: For s***s and giggles, and to kill time while I wait for the upgrade to arrive, I just tried to see if I could get QE/CI on the 6200 using SnowLeo on a USB HDD but even that didn't work. That means I would have to revert all the way back to Leo if I wanted to get full QE/CI on this stupid card. HAHA! So yeah, the 6200 could be run over with a lawnmower at this point and I wouldn't care at all. I've wasted way too much time on it as it is, so now I will sit back, try to learn more on DSDT editing and patiently wait around for the 9500 to arrive. I just had to be sure it wasn't just Lion purposely trying to {censored} me off. Good to know it wasn't...

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  • 2 weeks later...

The new 9500 GT arrived today!

 

Good news is that with SL+GraphicsEnabler it works great! Full res + QE/CI.

 

The bad news is Lion. I haven't been able to test it yet bc now while trying to boot it freezes at the [PCI Configuration Begin] mark and I haven't been able to get around it. I recently moved all my extra kexts into S/L/E so I can use the kernel cache ability and all was working fantastically. I had similar freezing issues when I updated the BIOS beyond a certain revision but luckily downgrading is easy. So I downgraded to an earlier rev of the BIOS and Lion is still a no go. MacDrive on Windows is also warning me that Lion disconnected improperly on the last boot and it might be damaged. Got a few ideas to try out and worst case scenario I reinstall Lion but I'd like to avoid it. Any ideas for fixing this???

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Thanks for the suggestion but sadly it didn't work. Still stuck at PCI config.

 

The install itself is fine. No corruptions. I removed the card and rebooted with the onboard without issue. I heard this was a bug in the OS. Is there another fix I could try? I'd like to keep this vanilla if possible.

 

UPDATE: hmm, that's odd. After rebooting fine without the new card installed I opened Disk Utility to repair any corruptions I might of had on the disk and I noticed that my configuration is weird. I have only two partitions on my disk originally. One for Lion at the top and below it is for Win7. Now I have 2 extra, unmountable partitions. One is above Lion and the second is below Win7. They are named disk0s1 and disk0s4 respectively. What the hell could have altered my partition structure so greatly? I use gptsync to fix Chameleon/Windows boot issues but I've done that for years without issue. It doesn't seem to be affecting anything but i'm not really all that happy to see my drive with random extra partitions. They could always cause problems later.

 

UPDATE#2: Moderate success! I am now able to boot into Lion using the new card with full resolution support + QE/CI however, the hang still exists. It's weird, it hangs at [PCI Configuration Begin] and shows no further messages afterward, like it froze but the hard drive indicator still is active and after about a minute or two the login screen will show. It only recently started working with the new card after I provided the EFI string for it, obtained by using the fully working SL install I have. Without this string it just hangs, but the hdd indicator remains active, although it never shows the login screen or anything for that matter, just stays stuck.

 

Oh and btw I updated the Lion install to 10.7.3 to see if it fixed the hang, clearly not. I'm happy to be able to login into Lion with full res and everything but I need to figure out how to fix that hang issue. I'd like to actually be able to read ALL the verbose text at boot should I need it in the future, which based on my luck is very likely.

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Sure I have a DSDT. I made another thread over in the DSDT section asking for help but have had no responders yet. I am new to DSDT and have no idea what i'm doing so if you're willing to take a look at mine and possibly try and fix my mistakes i'll greatly appreciate it and it will help me learn afterwards what I did wrong.

 

How do you want me to post the ioreg/dsdt? I ask because I have two. One that's merely a dump and is completely unaltered and another that i've been playing with, using it for learning/experimental purposes for this build. The modified one has the 9500 GT info added into it but I guess if you're gonna get ioreg then you really probably don't need my crappy, error-filled dsdt mod huh?

 

I could always re-dump a new dsdt for you while using the dirty trick to boot into Lion with full res+QE/CI. Otherwise it likely won't contain any information about the new card, at least it didn't for me anyway, nor did ioreg before the trick above was done. I also used Lizard (do you know this one?) to extract the 9500 ioreg data and provide me with a correct, working hex for device-properties. If useful i'll gladly shoot that your way too, I know it works because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to boot into Lion without it, lol.

 

 

For the time being, feel free to check out the thread I started here about my DSDT issues:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=275921

there are 2 DSDTs posted in there but they might be of little use to you although they are still from this system. one is unaltered & one is an early mod i did, which is likely trash but I don't know any other way of editing them so i've been trying to make it work for me. They likely won't contain anything nvidia related as they were made while I was testing the 6200 still, prior to getting the 9500. If they aren't helpful I apologize, please just let me know and i'll try to get everything you need ASAP. Thanks for the support! :)

 

Gonna run now and try to fix what I broke using a newly modded dsdt for trying to get around the PCI hang...didn't work obviously :(

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Sounds good. I'm gonna try to regenerate new dsdts for both SL & Lion, plus the ioreg stuff too. Whatever else I have i'll gladly add if I think it'll help.

 

I feel much better having someone with experience editing them looking at my dsdt. Thanks again! :D

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Just a quick update. After removing my broken, modified dsdt and all other seemingly useless patches I've come to find that I no longer get the PCI Config hang while using NVEnabler. So clearly my dsdt I was using was horribly screwed up and was the cause of the hangs. So I figure if I can't get dsdt working (due to my lack of knowledge on the matter) then I'll just rely on what I know, kexts etc. it's not vanilla like I'd like but it's all I know so it'll work, unless someone can help me edit my dsdt to fix all that is wrong with it.

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