finster14 Posted January 17, 2010 Share Posted January 17, 2010 Hi all, I've successfully installed OS X on my Dell m1530 laptop and now I am planning to build a cheap desktop. Here is what I have so far: - Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L iG31 2GB DDR2 RAM Intel Dual Core E1500 CPU Netgear GA311 PCI Network Adapter So next on my list is a video card. From what I can see, nVidia cards seem to be better supported than ATI, but I'm having problems finding one that looks like it will work with minimum hassle. So far my short-list looks like this: - Asus 8400GS Silent 512MB Gainward 8400GS 512MB Inno3D 9400GT 512MB Zotac 9500GT 512MB Inno3D 9500GT 512MB Any comments or experience with these cards that may be useful (or any other suggestions)? Also - I have an old IDE DVD drive knocking around - would this be OK or am I better ordering a SATA DVD drive? Many thanks. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/207646-advice-needed-on-a-couple-of-parts/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scottapotamas Posted January 17, 2010 Share Posted January 17, 2010 SATA drives are needed, because snow has lots of problems with ide, its not worth the bother of getting it to work... Anything in the list will work with some simple steps. Im not sure about the 8*** series other than the 8600GT which i used to have. My 9800 works great as do the 9*** series. The CPU... Maybe go for something a little more? and E5300 perhaps, still under $80, and much more powerful and overclockable.... I could overclock to about 4ghz on the stock fan with it, which is a 50% gain in performance... of course i don't run it that high... Any other questions? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/207646-advice-needed-on-a-couple-of-parts/#findComment-1387202 Share on other sites More sharing options...
LogicalUser Posted January 17, 2010 Share Posted January 17, 2010 well... its definitely cheap, and everything looks compatible, albeit limited. I agree with what scottapotamas said about the video card & drives, but... what will this machine be used for? a 2.2ghz celeron with 512kb of L2 cache seems like it'll be very underpowered for anything but the lightest duty uses, and that build leaves you very little room for upgrading in the future. In addition, somehow, it seems prices on Intel's low end LGA775 CPUs has increased over the past few months, I paid $45 CDN for E5200s in oct. that are on sale for $65+ US now... Personally, I think you'd be better off throwing the extra $75-100 or so needed to jump up to much more modern & capable parts. I'm really liking the look and price point on the new Clarksdale i3530 & G9650 with either P55 or H55 boards. At under $100 for a +2.8ghz CPU, $80ish for a feature rich mATX board with expansion room, and DDR3 prices (4GB @$75)that'll continue to drop it seems like the ideal buy at the moment. Now that we've got confirmation that Clarksdale CPUs work with Snow Leopard & Qoopz kernel on P55, the only iffy thing is the H55 based boards OSX compatibility, but I'm sure someone will buy one and come wandering in here seeking help soon enough. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/207646-advice-needed-on-a-couple-of-parts/#findComment-1387292 Share on other sites More sharing options...
finster14 Posted January 17, 2010 Author Share Posted January 17, 2010 Thanks for the replies - much appreciated. I should have been clearer - the top list is parts that I've already bought and assembled (currently running Linux on just to check everything works). I don't really need anything too powerful - it will only be for light use - web browsing, listening to music, watching the occasional movie and maybe a tiny bit of Xcoding. It's also not going to be used that often - my laptop is my main machine. So cheap is good! So it looks like I definately need a SATA DVD drive - presumably these are pretty generic so pretty much anything should work. Now I'm only really stuck on the graphics card. A 9800GT is more than I'd like to pay (after all, I'm not doing anything graphically intensive). So I think that its between a 8400GS, 9400GT and 9500GT. I know it's hard to say, but in your experience, is one of these chipsets more compatible than the other? The problem is that I can find examples of success & problems with all of them... Cheers. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/207646-advice-needed-on-a-couple-of-parts/#findComment-1387346 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scottapotamas Posted January 17, 2010 Share Posted January 17, 2010 i know the 9400 and 9500 run for a fact, as i have installed osx on friends machines running these... Others have got the 8400... The dvd drives are as you said, supported no matter how generic... lightscribe dosen't work in osx i don;t think... You haven;t mentioned hard drive... Again, same issue with the dvd drive, it can be made to work, but its not worth the hassle... That lil bit of xcode can actually be quite intensive, especially at compile time... Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/207646-advice-needed-on-a-couple-of-parts/#findComment-1387365 Share on other sites More sharing options...
finster14 Posted January 17, 2010 Author Share Posted January 17, 2010 Thanks everybody. i know the 9400 and 9500 run for a fact, as i have installed osx on friends machines running these... Others have got the 8400... I think I will go for a 9500GT card then - I can find examples of people getting this working so hopefully it should be fairly straightforward. These are what I am looking at: - Zotac 9500GT 512MB Inno3D 9500GT 512MB Does it matter which one, or are all 9500GT's gonna be the same? You haven;t mentioned hard drive... Again, same issue with the dvd drive, it can be made to work, but its not worth the hassle... I've got an old 80Gb SATA Seagate Barracuda so hopefully this will be OK initially. My docs/music/videos are stored on a separate server anyway so size isn't a major issue. That lil bit of xcode can actually be quite intensive, especially at compile time... True, but I am not going to do much of this - mostly browsing and music. Hopefully it'll be fine to compile a few test apps etc. Thanks again everybody. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/207646-advice-needed-on-a-couple-of-parts/#findComment-1387520 Share on other sites More sharing options...
LogicalUser Posted January 17, 2010 Share Posted January 17, 2010 Thanks everybody. I think I will go for a 9500GT card then - I can find examples of people getting this working so hopefully it should be fairly straightforward. These are what I am looking at: - Zotac 9500GT 512MB Inno3D 9500GT 512MB Does it matter which one, or are all 9500GT's gonna be the same? For the most part, from an OSX compatibility standpoint all Nvidia 9000 series cards should work with the same drivers, the only variables being if graphicsenabler=yes works, or if you need to use EFI string in boot.plist, or if you need to rollback 10.6.2's nvidia kexts (G92 based cards) With that said, either of those 9500GTs should do fine Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/207646-advice-needed-on-a-couple-of-parts/#findComment-1387846 Share on other sites More sharing options...
finster14 Posted January 17, 2010 Author Share Posted January 17, 2010 For the most part, from an OSX compatibility standpoint all Nvidia 9000 series cards should work with the same drivers, the only variables being if graphicsenabler=yes works, or if you need to use EFI string in boot.plist, or if you need to rollback 10.6.2's nvidia kexts (G92 based cards) With that said, either of those 9500GTs should do fine Thanks - think I will go with the Zotac then - I can find lots of people using this card - some with problems admittedly, but others have it working. With the Inno3d one, I can't find anybody using it so I guess I'd be on my own... Cheers everybody... Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/207646-advice-needed-on-a-couple-of-parts/#findComment-1387988 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scottapotamas Posted January 18, 2010 Share Posted January 18, 2010 i have had several inno3d cards and they have all been fine... The manufacturer really makes no difference to compatibility... Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/207646-advice-needed-on-a-couple-of-parts/#findComment-1388176 Share on other sites More sharing options...
EricM Posted January 18, 2010 Share Posted January 18, 2010 i have had several inno3d cards and they have all been fine... The manufacturer really makes no difference to compatibility... Correct, it has everything to do with reliability of the card. Buy parts that are known for reliability and company reputation... don't risk buying second-rate manufacturers due to $10 off. That said, go with the Zotac for sure Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/207646-advice-needed-on-a-couple-of-parts/#findComment-1388198 Share on other sites More sharing options...
finster14 Posted January 26, 2010 Author Share Posted January 26, 2010 Thanks all, the Zotac was out of stock so I ended up with a "Inno3d 9400GT 512MB" card - it has 1xVGA and 1xDVI socket. I'm struggling to get it to work now though and wondered if somebody could point me in the right direction... I have Chameleon installed on my EFI partition and I'm running on 10.5.8. I have tried adding the following to my /Volumes/EFI/Extras/com.apple.Boot.plist file but it doesn't work (no effect at all, still 1024x768) : - <key>GraphicsEnabler</key> <string>Yes</string> So I moved on and tried to create an EFI string. I couldn't get EFI Studio 1.1 working - it has my card in its database but wouldn't copy the hex string to clipboard, or save to file. I used OSx86Tools instead, and tried to create a custom Geforce string - I entered "512MB" for the VRAM and "VGA/DVI-I" for the output. I pasted the resulting hex string into my /Volumes/EFI/Extras/com.apple.Boot.plist file in the following format: - <key>device-properties</key> <string>###hex-string###</string> My system boots into 1680x1050 (the native resolution of my monitor) but is unresponsive (although mouse pointer moves) and there are some strange horizontal lines. Strangely, if I do a "-x" and boot into safe mode, I get 1680x1050 and everything works. Any ideas? Have I missed out something really obvious? I'm assuming I don't need to use kexts or injectors/enablers if I'm doing the above? Thanks in advance.... Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/207646-advice-needed-on-a-couple-of-parts/#findComment-1396803 Share on other sites More sharing options...
finster14 Posted January 28, 2010 Author Share Posted January 28, 2010 Hello everybody, I'm still having problems, here's what I've done so far: - Using nvflash I've extracted my video ROM and then run it through NVCap Maker to give me a NVcap string: 04000000000003000c0000000000000700000000 I've used this in OSx86 Tools when prompted for the ports. I added the string generated to my com.apple.Boot.plist (on the EFI partition) - no luck - black screen. Pretty much given up on putting an EFI string in my com.apple.Boot.plist file at this point. So I've tried using nvinject instead. I opened System Profiler and noted down the vendor ID (0x10de) and Device ID (0x0641) of my video card. I've then added the string 0x064110de to the IOPCIMatch sections in the "Contents/Info.plist" files within the following folders: /S/L/E/GeForce.kext, /S/L/E/NVDANV40Hal.kex, /S/L/E/NVDAResman.kex. I then installed NVinject.kext v0.2.1 (512mb version) with OSx86 Tools (installed to normal partition rather than EFI one). I get lots of screen artifacts and some flickering (but the resolution is 1680x1050 as required). I've also tried installing Aqua-Mac's "nVidia 9 series driver v2" but that doesn't improve things. Has anybody got any ideas? Have I done something stupid along the way? Thanks. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/207646-advice-needed-on-a-couple-of-parts/#findComment-1397740 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scottapotamas Posted January 28, 2010 Share Posted January 28, 2010 other suggestions??? you could patch a DSDT.aml with the driver in it... there is two options for that... manual patching which others and i can help with, or auto patching in windows with koala's (or someone like that) DSDT.aml patcher... its quite buggy and it wouldn't generate for me, so i did it by hand (key) and i need no efi strings or roms, it just works for me... (thats a 9800, but ive done it for friends 9400, 9500, GTX250, 285) There are different strings for efi for a certain card... ill make some up for you to try... Netkas also has an alternative to nvinject with support for ati and nvidia.... worth a shot Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/207646-advice-needed-on-a-couple-of-parts/#findComment-1397888 Share on other sites More sharing options...
finster14 Posted January 28, 2010 Author Share Posted January 28, 2010 other suggestions??? you could patch a DSDT.aml with the driver in it... there is two options for that... manual patching which others and i can help with, or auto patching in windows with koala's (or someone like that) DSDT.aml patcher... its quite buggy and it wouldn't generate for me, so i did it by hand (key) and i need no efi strings or roms, it just works for me... (thats a 9800, but ive done it for friends 9400, 9500, GTX250, 285) Thanks - I'll start reading up about how to patch my DSDT.aml. I'm already using a prepatched dsdt.aml for my G31M-ES2L- will that make a difference? There are different strings for efi for a certain card... ill make some up for you to try... If you have any alternative 9400gt EFI strings for me to try, that would be fantastic. Netkas also has an alternative to nvinject with support for ati and nvidia.... worth a shot Thanks - I'll take a look. This is all with Leopard. Would I have a better chance trying to do a fresh installation of Snow Leopard instead? Cheers. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/207646-advice-needed-on-a-couple-of-parts/#findComment-1398382 Share on other sites More sharing options...
noNix Posted January 29, 2010 Share Posted January 29, 2010 I think the simplest way to get things up and running is to use PCWiz's Universal OS X installer its not up to date, but I have used it for a couple of 10.5 builds, one of which uses the G31-ES2L with great success. The beauty of the tool is that its almost a one click install of EFI, Chameleon and everything else you need to get up and running. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/207646-advice-needed-on-a-couple-of-parts/#findComment-1398599 Share on other sites More sharing options...
finster14 Posted January 30, 2010 Author Share Posted January 30, 2010 other suggestions??? you could patch a DSDT.aml with the driver in it... there is two options for that... manual patching which others and i can help with, or auto patching in windows with koala's (or someone like that) DSDT.aml patcher... its quite buggy and it wouldn't generate for me, so i did it by hand (key) and i need no efi strings or roms, it just works for me... (thats a 9800, but ive done it for friends 9400, 9500, GTX250, 285) Thanks - I've tried patching my current DSDT.aml with DSDTE after following this guide. I still get 1024x768 though and can't change resolution. I've put my memory and NVCAP values into the code before compiling and copying to /Extras on my EFI partition (I saved the existing dsdt.aml first!). That particular guide is based on the GA-P55M-UD2 motherboard rather than my G31M-ES2L - do I need to modify the code? Any pointers to patching my DSDT.aml with the nVidia stuff? I'm a bit stuck now... Thanks. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/207646-advice-needed-on-a-couple-of-parts/#findComment-1399613 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Velociraptor Posted January 31, 2010 Share Posted January 31, 2010 Thanks - I've tried patching my current DSDT.aml with DSDTE after following this guide. I still get 1024x768 though and can't change resolution. I've put my memory and NVCAP values into the code before compiling and copying to /Extras on my EFI partition (I saved the existing dsdt.aml first!). That particular guide is based on the GA-P55M-UD2 motherboard rather than my G31M-ES2L - do I need to modify the code? Any pointers to patching my DSDT.aml with the nVidia stuff? I'm a bit stuck now... Thanks. I have a G31M-ES2L w/nVidia 250 card. I used this guide when I rebuilt the box from Leopard to Snow Leopard. I only had to do a little tweaking for sound in dsdt.aml. It's pretty slick since it uses the myHack installer. You might give it a try.: http://www.infinitemac.com/f57/guide-retai...for-g31m-t3672/ Will probably try myHack + Tony Mac's guide for my next build, a P55 w/i5. =V= Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/207646-advice-needed-on-a-couple-of-parts/#findComment-1400199 Share on other sites More sharing options...
finster14 Posted February 6, 2010 Author Share Posted February 6, 2010 I have a G31M-ES2L w/nVidia 250 card. I used this guide when I rebuilt the box from Leopard to Snow Leopard. I only had to do a little tweaking for sound in dsdt.aml. It's pretty slick since it uses the myHack installer. You might give it a try.: http://www.infinitemac.com/f57/guide-retai...for-g31m-t3672/ Will probably try myHack + Tony Mac's guide for my next build, a P55 w/i5. =V= Thanks, yeah - that's the guide I followed when I upgraded to Snow Leopard. Still no luck with my 9400GT though I'm close to sticking it on ebay and getting something else instead... Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/207646-advice-needed-on-a-couple-of-parts/#findComment-1404801 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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