Radeon HD4770 Solutions

[Liability]

Hi Detosx,

Thanks for all your hard work. It's great to see someone so willing to experiment for the good of the rest of us.

 

Using all 10.6.3.1 with OpenGL.framework from 10.6.4 - the screen is brighter, looks better. in 64bit Quartz is 169.05 and Open GL is 168.19 /213 frames/sec. Under 32bit it runs a little bit slower.

 

^^ The above is the only configuration I have had any joy with. Every other combination I have tried has resulted in an unbootable system (perhaps just mistakes on my part. I'm new to this).

 

xbench says:

Quartz: 309.30

OpenGL: 492.47 624.73 frames/sec

(I have no idea if this is good or bad)

 

My only problem now seems to be that I only have a maximum resolution of 1440x960.

 

This is better than the VESA I had before but I would ideally like to get the native 1680x1050.

 

Are you getting full res out of your card?

 

 

*EDIT*

Preview doesnt display images. PDFs are fine. Any ideas?

 

*EDIT*

 

Hmmm. I'm an idiot. I dont have QE. Chess doesn't open. No transparent task bar. No widget ripples.

Yet Xbench is giving me a score for Quartz? Am I missing something? Are Quartz Graphics different from Quartz Extreme?

All i've gained is higher resolution.

Going to try some more.

 

*EDIT*

 

Swapping OpenGL.framework to Graphics Update gave me QE. Pictures a bit dark though.

Q: 301.86 OpenGL: 204.19 259.02 frames/sec

Chess KP's

 

*EDIT*

Wow. Now I feel really dumb. I have full resolution at last. Turns out that I had my main display plugged into what must be port 2 of my graphics card. Snow would only let me choose resolutions suitable for my smaller second display until I swapped them.

 

Well, after a week of trying I seem to have an almost working graphics card and OpenGL working in Photoshop

 

Thanks again for all your hard work Detosx and rafirafi

[Detosx]

Hi Detosx,

Thanks for all your hard work. It's great to see someone so willing to experiment for the good of the rest of us.

 

 

 

^^ The above is the only configuration I have had any joy with. Every other combination I have tried has resulted in an unbootable system (perhaps just mistakes on my part. I'm new to this).

 

xbench says:

Quartz: 309.30

OpenGL: 492.47 624.73 frames/sec

(I have no idea if this is good or bad)

 

My only problem now seems to be that I only have a maximum resolution of 1440x960.

 

This is better than the VESA I had before but I would ideally like to get the native 1680x1050.

 

Are you getting full res out of your card?

 

 

*EDIT*

Preview doesnt display images. PDFs are fine. Any ideas?

 

*EDIT*

 

Hmmm. I'm an idiot. I dont have QE. Chess doesn't open. No transparent task bar. No widget ripples.

Yet Xbench is giving me a score for Quartz? Am I missing something? Are Quartz Graphics different from Quartz Extreme?

All i've gained is higher resolution.

Going to try some more.

 

*EDIT*

 

Swapping OpenGL.framework to Graphics Update gave me QE. Pictures a bit dark though.

Q: 301.86 OpenGL: 204.19 259.02 frames/sec

Chess KP's

 

*EDIT*

Wow. Now I feel really dumb. I have full resolution at last. Turns out that I had my main display plugged into what must be port 2 of my graphics card. Snow would only let me choose resolutions suitable for my smaller second display until I swapped them.

 

Well, after a week of trying I seem to have an almost working graphics card and OpenGL working in Photoshop

 

Thanks again for all your hard work Detosx and rafirafi

Good to read your findings! I wonder if because my motherboard and CPU are old they are bottleknecking my scores. I have an old Asorck 945G DVI and one of the first core 2 duos. It would good to read your system spec and put my scores in some kind of context!

 

Stability report. Sorry I have been away a while, I got too wrapped up in testing and left other things unattended. The last combination that I outlined is the one that I have been using. No more slightly alarming twinkling spots on the screen that looked like winking hot pixels. Chess panics but I don't play chess, so... and display profile calibration only partially works; but the default settings are pretty much spot on for my Dell 2209WA.

[Liability]

Good to read your findings! I wonder if because my motherboard and CPU are old they are bottleknecking my scores. I have an old Asorck 945G DVI and one of the first core 2 duos. It would good to read your system spec and put my scores in some kind of context!

 

Here's my spec:

 

Mobo: Biostar TA790GX A3+ [LINK]

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition (over-clocked to 3.8Ghz) [LINK]

Graphics: HD4770

RAM: 8Gb (2Gb x4) Corsair XMS3 1333Mhz DDR3 Dual Channel [LINK]

Net: Realtek RTL 8111DL (built-in)

[Detosx]

Here's my spec:

 

Mobo: Biostar TA790GX A3+ [LINK]

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition (over-clocked to 3.8Ghz) [LINK]

Graphics: HD4770

RAM: 8Gb (2Gb x4) Corsair XMS3 1333Mhz DDR3 Dual Channel [LINK]

Net: Realtek RTL 8111DL (built-in)

Nice little over-clock you have going there on the 965! That lot puts my ancient assemblage to shame! I did consider getting a Phenom II 555 and trying to unlock it to four cores but it sounded like too much of a lottery; some unlock, some don't; who needs the tension! 

[Detosx]

Hi rafirafi, your inbox is full!

 

I just tried Kabyl's brand new boot file. I get kernel panic during boot up and in -v it shows KP on ATIRadeonX2000 with dependencies IOPCIFamily 2.6 IondrvSupport 2.2 and IOGraphicsFamily 2.2

 

If you or anyone else have any joy with it, please post what you did, thanks. 

 

To anyone starting out, I would consider holding off for now. (Edit: though there is a line scored through it, the old boot.gz file is still available for download. I have had no joy experimenting with the new one, yet).

[Detosx]

I updated to 10.6.6 via combo update. If you haven't tried this yourself and want to risk being an early adopter, I can report that the OpenGL.framework gets replaced, along with the ATI kexts. Replacing them with old ones again, it seems to work. My boot up time is quicker, though for the first few boots my Apple Bluetooth keyboard wasn't seen, requiring that I do a hard reset with the power button; after doing that on three occasions it was fine. I appreciate that it remains a less than ideal solution but Youtube functionality and a great looking picture meet my graphics needs. I remain very happy to be able to use this card.

 

I haven't had time to experiment with variations but if I make any discoveries or have any problems by Sunday, I will report back.

[Detosx]

An update.

 

I tried netkas's patched ATI kexts which he said are patched for ID ranges 94xx... (albeit he is referring to 4890 cards in his post) but just got native resolution, or what I call VESA and Finder windows flashing open and closed.

 

I then replaced his ATI x4800Controller with the native 10.6.6 one with my device IDs adde (I had before that tried additionally adding our cards ids to the plists of his 4800 and 2000 kexts) and got switchable resolution back, which gave me a momentary thrill - but Finder still crashes when you open a folder.

 

I tried Netkas's boot file (the most recent I could see on his site is Feb2010) but that booted me into a black screen; it worked with cpus=1 but VESA resolution and Finder crashing).

 

Kaybl has a brand new boot file out which I tried. The second one never worked for me. The third gives me a white screen rather than login screen. I experimented with VGA and DVI. I got it to work by unplugging it from the first DVI socket, plugging it into the second and then unplugging it form the second and plugging it back into the first... Gah. I had switchable resolution again but Finder crashes when I open a folder. For the experiment I used all 10.6.6 ATI kexts. and 10.6.6 OpenGL.Framework.

 

I will keep experimenting and report if I make any progress.

[Detosx]

This amounts to an edit.

 

With Kabyl's new Chameleon boot, just removing the DVI cable and inserting it again works with the 10.6.6 test configuration so to speak. Not ideal but do-able and perhaps there is a workaround.

 

One bit of positive news is that the colour calibrator in System Preferences / Displays /Colour works properly. Colour was by no means poor before on the defaults but I can fine tune without the colour fidelity looking poor/cloudy/very slightly ill defined. Of course, not having Finder function at this stage is something of a disadvantage!

[rafirafi]

Some news:

Finally next chameleon should handle the hd4770 correctly giving right resolution out of the box for 90% of the 4770 cards with GraphicsEnabler=Yes, thanks to Kabyl's work.

 

Sources(no binary) are available at:

http://forge.voodooprojects.org/p/chameleo.../branches/Kabyl

 

Eventually you coul try:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php...t=0&start=0

Looks at the release date of the boot file to see if it's updated, next versions should work.

[Detosx]

Some news:

Finally next chameleon should handle the hd4770 correctly giving right resolution out of the box for 90% of the 4770 cards with GraphicsEnabler=Yes, thanks to Kabyl's work.

 

Sources(no binary) are available at:

http://forge.voodooprojects.org/p/chameleo.../branches/Kabyl

 

Eventually you coul try:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php...t=0&start=0

Looks at the release date of the boot file to see if it's updated, next versions should work.

A lot depends on people with 4770 cards going over to that thread and reporting their results with the 4770 cards. At the moment I have to unplug the DVI (if I use the third boot file) when the screen goes gray (at that point you are at the login screen but you can't see it, just a gray screen) and then QUICKLY plug it back in otherwise the computer reboots. Not great. I will probably go back to the first boot file. Unless 4770 users report their results using kabyl's simple tests we could be stuck with this. Do it and feel good!

[waqy]

So whats the latest solution for the 4770?

 

Me personally, Im on retail 10.6.6 but cant, for the life of me, get my card to work. Im using a legacy kernel so does anyone think that might be preventing me from booting into OSX with this card?

[rafirafi]

Hello Waqy,

I'm actually on 10.6.6 and if you follow what I've tell you in your post:

All ATI kext from 10.6.3 and OpenGL framework from 10.6.3 it should work(use pacifist to install the OpenGL framework)

 

I've used legacy kernel (for testing) and it never prevents the acceleration to work.

 

 

The 'simpliest' will be to make a 10.6.3 install and see if you can make it works, then move to 10.6.6. (it's what I've done) : you have tutorial in the first two post, if you find other valuable info you can share here.

 

1/ install 10.6.3

2/ find the right framebuffer

3/ get acceleration working

4/ move to 10.6.6 or transpose your working 10.6.3 configuration to your 10.6.6 installation

 

Before hoping to have acceleration to work you have to find the framebuffer working for your card ( ie native resolution ok), it is indeed the painful part of all this, once you get it almost done.

[waqy]

Thanks for the reply raf.

 

Have you tried testing it on legacy with kernel flags? I have to use "-force64 arch=i386" to successfully boot into OSX. I have an AMD Athlon 3800 processor. is there a better kernel to use for mine rather then legacy one?

 

Also you said find the right framebuffer? how do i go about doing this? or is there one that you would recommend?

 

Sorry for the long list of questions. Its jus that i've spent alot of time on this and i know im very close to achieving my goals but theres that one bit of code missing

 

Edit: Also whats the best 10.6.3 distro u believe to be out?

[rafirafi]

Don't use distro, use retail snow leo + combo update (you find snow leo in shop and combo update at the apple website).

 

Don't use force64 : really no need, i386 is a mode good enough alone

 

Please read the first two post + tutorial, if that not clear enough for you perhaps go read posts about other cards as the steps are often close.

 

Framebuffer: Flicker, Motmot...

[waqy]

thanks rafi i will try this on retail 10.3.3 asap

 

i know how to install kexts etc since i was trying to get this card ruinning on 10.6.6 but got no luck whatsoever.

 

the kernel flag force64 was automatically inserted in by the legacy kernel pkg installer. if i remove the force64 flag and leave the arch=i386 in would it still work?

 

many thanks

[Zodiac]

Any success on 10.6.7 i'm still on 10.6.5 and wanna update asap but still not sure what to do about my HD4770 !

[rafirafi]

Any success on 10.6.7 i'm still on 10.6.5 and wanna update asap but still not sure what to do about my HD4770 !

 

 

If you're not willing to test 10.6.7 yourself you have to follow the instruction for 10.6.6:

ATI4800Controller + ATIFramebuffer +ATISupport kexts from 10.6.6 with your id in the controller kexts

The four ATIRadeon2000 kexts from 10.6.3, with your id in ATIRAdeon2000.kext

And install the OpenGL framework from 10.6.3

--> willl give you the same result as 10.6.3 so you should have qe/ci with the usual 95% working stuff.

Bye.

[Zodiac]

I updated my sys from 10.6.5 to 10.6.7 and replaced graph kexts and framework with 10.6.3 and everything worked fine.

after 2 days i updated Chameleon to the latest stable version and that's {censored}ed up my sys, with no error @ boot just black screen so it must be a graphic problem tried every thing but no success so reinstalled the sys.

 

Installed fresh copy of 10.6.3 and updated it to 10.6.7 now to the interesting part, replacing ATI4800Controller with 10.6.3 graphic update kext gave me error on boot "kext won't load" so sys boot with no native resolution after many tries to make it work i gave up so i thought lets take a leap of faith and use ATI4800Controller from 10.6.7 and with card ID added to info.plist and use other kexts and framework from 10.6.3 graphic update with ID added and the result was native resolution with qe/ci.

[Zodiac]

I tired Lion ATI kexts on Snow Leopard and it seems to work with native resolution using EVOenabler just by adding card ID to kexts.

 

Well there's a problem the sys boot by default into second screen not the main screen and i don't know how to switch to main display, tried to connect two screens but one of them is black and the other using sys second display.

I ran out of ideas so switched back to 10.6 kexts, any ideas on how to make the sys boot into main display !

 

btw. here's a link for Lion ATI kexts

Lion Kexts

[pr0ton]

Any news with Lion about this?

[vnline]

I have tried so many methods,but can not work in the loin, who can hlep me?

[Eiszeit]

I would like to know if there is anyway to make HD4770 work on Lion as well.

 

Thanks.

[rafirafi]

HD4770 will "work" with lion but you will never have QE/CI --> acceleration for 4770 is only available/working with 10.6.3 kexts and opengl framework and these are not compatible with lion.

 

Why ?

10.6.3 use an "experimental" RV740 opengl renderer, RV740 is the chip of the HD4770. But as finally no mac with RV740 had been made there is no more support.

 

But I don't test it, so maybe Apple is begining to support hardware they don't provide in Lion, I really don't know

[vnline]

Yesterday I used the 10.6.3 kexts in loin test, only in the DVI output, and display Huaping and color discoloration. But change it to change back to normal after resolution displays. QE \ CI is still not open.

[DarkFlagster]

if no QE/CI and no acceleration in Lion... we can forget this graphic card, right?