Gigabyte Geforce 9880GT Silent Cell and Dual Monitor Setup

[slann303]

Hi there,

 

I want to report some of my findings regarding the Gigabyte Geforce 9800GT Silent Cell (1GB) in a dual monitor setting in a vanilla Snow Leopard 10.6.6 install (Motherboard: EP45-UD3P Rev. 1). I post this topic as a reply to the Topic "10.6.3 nvidia Blank Screen Issue", because as a new user I am not allowed to post a reply there. I hope this post is helpful for someone.

 

My goal was to build a Hackintosh that functions as a working station and a HTPC (Plex). I have the computer hooked up in the office room of my house to a 24" monitor (DVI Cable) and to a LG HDTV in the living room (15m long HDMI cable). Until 10.6.1 I was able to run this setup without problems, they started though with the update to 10.6.2. After Chameleon has loaded I stuck with a blank screen on DVI and a blue screen on HDMI. I tried every method known to man, like using different nvenablers, adding device-ids to the grafipchscs-kexts, modifying the DSDT, etc., etc. I also tried using the old drivers from 10.6.1 (NVDANV50Hal, NVDAResman, GL/CL Frameworks) with several recent updates of Snow Leopard, but it just wouldn't work.

 

The only solution I was able to pull off that satisfies me is as follows: The 24" monitor is connected via VGA cable. I get no restrictions on the resolution, so I can drive my pc-monitor with full HD (1920x1080). The TV is connected via the DVI port (I use a DVI to HDMI adapter) and no problems with resolution there either. In Snow Leopard I can mirror both panels. For Sound I use a Toslink cable that is connected to the optical out of the motherboard and to the optical in of my Receiver.

 

For the Snow Leopard installation I used [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] with Chameleon RC5 and the sound kext for alc889a. In com.apple.Boot.plist of the Extra folder I use Graphicsenabler=yes and I have full acceleration. I do not use a DSDT because I am using MacBios from Cartri (http:/tinyurl.com/cartribios).

 

I came up with this setup just recently, because some strange behavior made me believe, that VGA is not working right: When I hook up the 24"monitor only via VGA, I cannot set to resolution to full HD. I just found out recently, that when VGA and DVI outs of the GFX are connected, that the resolution of VGA goes up to full hd.