Radeon 3850/3870 thread

[nadnerb]

Anyone tried Netkas' idea of modifying the bios to make it run slower/cooler?

[bluesy]

Like the rest of you im considering a 3870X2 card, but i have a small question for you.

 

At the moment i have a 1900XT card and wanted to upgrade, do you replace the card and just reboot and install drivers, or install drivers first? or do i simply have to reinstall OSX?

 

Dennis

[datech50]

Has anyone else had a blue artifact problem?

 

I went through three different HD3870's two Saphhires and one HIS and all worked fine full QE/CI, resolution change...game performance terrific

but with with one pretty bad flaw...I end up with blue sparkles on my display whenever there is blue, black and white nearby.

 

The way I duplicated the problem was by selecting the blue planet as wall paper and dragging a finder window around the right side of the globe.

 

I had the same cards on OSX with same drivers (new natit and leo graphics update) on two other machines an Asus P5K and my AMD machine and the others didn't have this problem.

 

The problem could be duplicated on any monitor CRT or LCD...even tried reinstalling the OS twice...I can't understand why it only happens on my Asus P5B....

 

I wonder if it's just an oddity of my motherboard?

[Bananabomb]

I tried to replicate your problem on my machine, but it doesn't happen (P5W DH Deluxe, GeCube HD3870 OC Edt.).

 

Hopefully there'll be an update of some sort to reduce the power consumption soon though, as the fan blows much louder than in windows with not much happening on screen at all.

[Joshuaxx]

I just wanted to thank you for the Radeon 3850 driver. I just downloaded it and on reboot my system was working at full 1920x1200. iMovie refuses to run, though (unexpectedly quit error). iPhoto, iDVD, iWeb, etc., seem to work fine. Any ideas? Where can I check to see if QE/CI are working properly?

 

My Kalyway 10.5.1 install went well, but I'm still having trouble getting FireWire and LAN working. I wish I could find a pkg that worked as easily as this Radeon driver for those on my system. One step at a time, though.

 

 

My system:

 

Asus P5B Plus Motherboard

Intel E4300 Core2Duo OCed to 3 GHZ

2 GB Corsair XMS DDR2 RAM

ATI Radeon 3850 256 MB

250 GB SATA Maxtor Hard Drive for Mac OS

[Joshuaxx]

I just wanted to thank you for the Radeon 3850 driver. I just downloaded it and on reboot my system was working at full 1920x1200. iMovie refuses to run, though (unexpectedly quit error). iPhoto, iDVD, iWeb, etc., seem to work fine. Any ideas? Where can I check to see if QE/CI are working properly?

 

My Kalyway 10.5.1 install went well, but I'm still having trouble getting FireWire and LAN working. I wish I could find a pkg that worked as easily as this Radeon driver for those on my system. One step at a time, though.

 

 

My system:

 

Asus P5B Plus Motherboard

Intel E4300 Core2Duo OCed to 3 GHZ

2 GB Corsair XMS DDR2 RAM

ATI Radeon 3850 256 MB

250 GB SATA Maxtor Hard Drive for Mac OS

 

Update: QE/CI working. FireWire working. Now I tackle LAN and sound.

[Tilman]

Hi everyone, just want to add my experience:

 

I own a Gigabyte 3870 with DDR3 memory, just like zarac. it's more like an overclocked 3850.

the natit installers don't seem to work for this card, with or without the Apple graphics update..

Either i got a kernel panic at boot, or the screen was full of garbage but the machine did respond.

the device id is 0x9501. vendor id 0x1002 (of course)

 

the only way to get it to work was to use the triakis pkg. First I installed kalyway 10.5.1, then 10.5.2 kalyway combo update + kernel patches. after that i installed the triakis pkg (hard to find on the forum, but its there!). Then I got full resolution support, but no QE or hardware accel. I read the readme that came with triakis and added 0x95011002 to the "IOPCIMatch" section in the Info.plist in the ATIRadeonX2000.kext. After cleaning up permissons, deleting kext caches (see wiki) and rebooting, the system would hang when entering the GUI.

Luckily, save mode (-x on bootup) worked, so I installed the apple graphics update and guess what? after a reboot, I had full hardware support on my 3870.

 

I heared that triakis really heats up the card, but the fan on this cheap card always runs at 100% speed, so I don't think that heat will be an issue.

 

EDIT: To clarify! The Fan on this card is NOT regulated by the BIOS, it only uses two wires and you can not read out its speed. it's loud and annoying..

 

Is there any chance that future releases of natit will support this card?

Proz: Q6600 mainboard: Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3

[Morpheus Phreak]

Hi everyone, just want to add my experience:

 

I own a Gigabyte 3870 with DDR3 memory, just like zarac. it's more like an overclocked 3850.

the natit installers don't seem to work for this card, with or without the Apple graphics update..

Either i got a kernel panic at boot, or the screen was full of garbage but the machine did respond.

the device id is 0x9501. vendor id 0x1002 (of course)

 

the only way to get it to work was to use the triakis pkg. First I installed kalyway 10.5.1, then 10.5.2 kalyway combo update + kernel patches. after that i installed the triakis pkg (hard to find on the forum, but its there!). Then I got full resolution support, but no QE or hardware accel. I read the readme that came with triakis and added 0x95011002 to the "IOPCIMatch" section in the Info.plist in the ATIRadeonX2000.kext. After cleaning up permissons, deleting kext caches (see wiki) and rebooting, the system would hang when entering the GUI.

Luckily, save mode (-x on bootup) worked, so I installed the apple graphics update and guess what? after a reboot, I had full hardware support on my 3870.

 

I heared that triakis really heats up the card, but the fan on this cheap card always runs at 100% speed, so I don't think that heat will be an issue. Is there any chance that future releases of natit will support this card?

Proz: Q6600 mainboard: Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3

 

Interesting that the card you have runs at 100 on the fan. Most people have issues with those fans running at lowered speeds and never spinning up to full and overheating.

 

 

Also one issue I've run into is that there is a BIOS update out there for both the 3850 and 3870 cards.

 

After installing the BIOS update I can't get drivers working anymore. The instant I install drivers the whole system hangs on boot. I've gone into verbose mode and it appears that the card initializes properly but when it tries to load up the GUI the system just sits there and does nothing.

[lastExile]

Interesting that the card you have runs at 100 on the fan. Most people have issues with those fans running at lowered speeds and never spinning up to full and overheating.

Also one issue I've run into is that there is a BIOS update out there for both the 3850 and 3870 cards.

 

After installing the BIOS update I can't get drivers working anymore. The instant I install drivers the whole system hangs on boot. I've gone into verbose mode and it appears that the card initializes properly but when it tries to load up the GUI the system just sits there and does nothing.

 

Bios update from apple update ?

[firstcolle]

as i say before the speed fun is controlled by the bios of the video card. So, if the GPU increase the temperature the fun increase the speed.

 

in bios 073 the fun is slower but the temperature culd arrive at 85°C

in bios 071 the fun is faster and the temperature culd arrive at 60°C but have more noise

[Morpheus Phreak]

Bios update from apple update ?

Nope, it was an update from ATi for the 3850 & 3870 cards.It was basically to fix the fan issues so that the fan would spin up at a lower temperature and at a faster rate at higher temps to keep the cards from going into the 95*C range.The device ID and everything is the same, but for some reason it doesn't like the packages I've seen here on the site.I was using a package posted by eddie11c to go along with his Leo4All distribution and it worked right up until that BIOS update.Now the OS won't boot. I tried a re-install and sure enough the OS works right until I load up the drivers and then it stops booting again.

as i say before the speed fun is controlled by the bios of the video card. So, if the GPU increase the temperature the fun increase the speed. in bios 073 the fun is slower but the temperature culd arrive at 85°Cin bios 071 the fun is faster and the temperature culd arrive at 60°C but have more noise

What BIOS and what maker are you referring to?The ATi BIOS that I know of are v103 for the 3850 and v104 for the 3870.Those are the "fixed" BIOS that actually operate the fan correctly.The problem that was happening was that the fan typically wouldn't go much over 25% and it was causing cards to really screw up.

[Bananabomb]

My 3870 idles at 49° Celsius in XP and is totally quiet. In OSX however the fan spins up and down quite fast and I don't know if it's due to heat or the fan control of the driver. Does anyone know why this is happening and if we can expect it to behave normally with the next update?

I haven't booted OSX for a week, because I'm afraid that it burns too much power and the annoying noise from the fan.

[Art Storms]

hi all. nobody knows if there are solution for 3850 agp??? can found only for 3850 pcie. thanx

[downlord]

Applied 10.5.3 update (kalyway package on a leo4all v3. install) with 9.3 vanilla kernel and my (former perfect working) hd3850 pcie has the white menus problem again.

 

So… be careful. I'll go back to 10.5.2. :mellow:

 

EDIT one hour later...: Working with lastExile package on http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...107526&st=0 and installed with Pacifist.

Now perfect 10.5.3 update

[Scorpion1983]

Applied 10.5.3 update (kalyway package on a leo4all v3. install) with 9.3 vanilla kernel and my (former perfect working) hd3850 pcie has the white menus problem again.

 

So… be careful. I'll go back to 10.5.2.

 

EDIT one hour later...: Working with lastExile package on http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...107526&st=0 and installed with Pacifist.

Now perfect 10.5.3 update

 

I have the same white menus problem. How did you solved it and which of the 2 packages is the right one ?

[plympton]

I have the same white menus problem. How did you solved it and which of the 2 packages is the right one ?

 

I haven't tried it yet, but I'm guessing it's the 2nd, and that installing with Pacifist is the key - I wager that the installer won't write over the "newer" broken files, but Pacifist can be made to force install it.

 

I'll try tonight myself...

 

-Dan

[Scorpion1983]

I haven't tried it yet, but I'm guessing it's the 2nd, and that installing with Pacifist is the key - I wager that the installer won't write over the "newer" broken files, but Pacifist can be made to force install it.

 

I'll try tonight myself...

 

-Dan

 

Ok, i will try it too.

 

I hope it will work. :-)

 

 

Edit: I tried it with Pacifist. And it works :-) YEEES

[capeli]

It worked flawlessly using Pacifist!!!! on my Diamond HD3850 on Kalyway 10.5.2 ( upgraded to 10.5.3 using netkas guide ).

Running Smooth....

 

Thanks lastExile, and Netkas!!!!!

[zuz_242]

unfortunatly, im still out of luck with my new 3870.

its an sapphire ultimate with passive cooling, normal id (0x95011002)

 

i tried various solutions so far:

 

i installed latest zep and leo4all release (being amd user), with and

without ati drivers choosen. the average results are a garbled screen

or a black screen with reboot. booting with -x got me (sometimes) into

osx with vesa graphics and a alert saying natit.kext was not installed

properly.

 

from here on i installed various driver, eddies and last exiles, or just a new

natit from netkas site. nothing worked, mostly blackscreen with reboot.

(i only used pacifist)

 

so i wonder what to do? device id is inside ati..2000.kext but not in natit.

should i add it there as well?

 

while having a garbled screen it seems that osx is running (intro video playing),

just video output screwed. im using dualscreen dvi, shouldnt be a problem, right?

 

as i am at my wits end i need desperate help!!

 

thanks

 

(my 8600gt ran like a charm..)

[lastExile]

what kinda screen is it like a disco screen black background with coloroful dots ?

[zuz_242]

what kinda screen is it like a disco screen black background with coloroful dots ?

 

not really colourful, rather grey and black. (only some colour dots)

and rather square segments thant dots.

 

like seen here:

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...090&st=113#

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...4090&st=69#

 

 

btw: my passive card should be cool enough because of fans in case ..

im running a amd on a nforce 4/5 mobo, dual dvi

 

[EDIT]

this garbled screen occours on install, e.g. from zephs 10.5.2r2. it seems that it is some kind of

display of the runnig system, as one can see the mouse move/ menues pop up in this little fragments.

So: wtf is this? memory not accessed properly on the card? wrong frequency?

with -x i get to boot, though, without any gfx support.

 

after instaling lastexiles 3870hd package, i get a blackscreen with reboot after the gray loading

screen. this time not even -x helps.

 

[EDIT]

 

Solved!!

Changing MoBo from nforce to AMD 790x helped with everything!

[Leader86]

Here the same problem of zuz_242

but with Natit, Leopard crash before finish boot.

With my 7300GT 512 working perfect.

 

Please help!!!

[Leader86]

With Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 (Device ID= 0x9501) it seems that with Natit.kext from Netkas "ATI Radeon HD 3870" the system crash at the line:

 

usr/sbin/ocspd[76]: starting

 

 

without Natit.kext installed the boot process seems complete but the screen become black with blue spots and moving mouse cause "something in the mess of the spots"

In this way I can boot only in safe mode with -x

 

The system boot properly (but without video kext loaded) only without GFX update on a fresh install of 10.5.2 with any distro.

 

Could someone try to understand the link between Natit and ocspd?

[zuz_242]

i´m still trying.

 

any idea what stops some (us) from using this card while others have no problems?

 

- i got a sapphire hd3870 (id:9501) ultimate with passive cooling (enough case fans tough)

- i am using two monitors via dvi, but tried also only one with dvi2vga

- im using a nforce 560-sli chipset, maybe nforce and ati dont go along well

- my proc is an amd x2 6000

- i tried both osx amd releases, zeph and leo4all, both 10.5.2 (graphics update included i think)

 

so, where is the problem? same rig runs fine with a gforce 8600gt ..

 

can anybody (lastExile ? ) explain where these errors (garbled screen and reboot) originate from?

framebuffer?

 

thanks

 

zuz

[zuz_242]

gfx is still acting up, i might have to give the card back ..

 

one strange thing i realized:

 

after installing anew, zeph release with triakis drivers, one screen had this

garbled output with dots while the other one had vertical stripes...

 

even stranger: after pressing the power button, the display became partly

normal, still with fragments and errors but mostly looking like it should ?!??