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AMD 7950 for Mac made easier


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Well our friends at Sapphire Technology has taken the AMD 7950 that quite a few users here at InsanelyMac have managed to get working and created a Mac Pro geared version of the card. Now you may look and say “hmm.. already got mine working why read about this one?” Aside from the cute white shroud and accentuated grooves in the shroud itself, there are BIOS differences which cuases this card to diverge from similarity with other 7950s alike.

 

This Sapphire variant of the 7950 is without a doubt based on the original 7950 that hum along at 850MHz with its sizeable 3GB of GDDR5 memory, the wide lane 240GB/s memory bandwidth, and a memory clock ticking at 1250MHz. As by news from PCGamesHardware, AMD does have intentions have releasing this card to the market of consumers with a price tag of $450. The IO port layout on the backside of the card is your standard DVI – HDMI – miniDP x2 layout found on other 7950s as well. If you do have intentions of dropping this into a Mac Pro (though I feel you readers would much rather do so in your Hackintoshes), be certain that you have the two six pin adapters that will be needed to feed this hungry little guy.

 

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Funny I actually own an NZXT Phantom and this would so look lovely in my case. Only concern is what would become of my 6870?

 

I currently have a 6870 too and wondering if the two cards can be SLI/Crossfired together.

I know the 7950 would be 'Mac compatible' but would it still be useable on Windows?

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Funny I actually own an NZXT Phantom and this would so look lovely in my case. Only concern is what would become of my 6870?

 

My machine is always accepting stray video cards of high pedigree... I am sure that a ... ahem... donation... of that card would be quite possible.

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I currently have a 6870 too and wondering if the two cards can be SLI/Crossfired together.

I know the 7950 would be 'Mac compatible' but would it still be useable on Windows?

Yes. It has a switch that swithes the card between Mac BIOS and PC BIOS, so it will be compatible with both platforms. This card was presented at CeBIT 2013, Sapphie guys there say that this card's hardware was modified too, so it can't be possible to just download MacBIOS and flash to normal cheap 7950, but I don't believe it. :)

Reference card is so referece. Need to have exaclty 1 piece and then that BIOS will be shared and used all over the place. :)

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My machine is always accepting stray video cards of high pedigree... I am sure that a ... ahem... donation... of that card would be quite possible.

I already donated a 5870 (in exchange for a 5770 to still have a back up card just in case) so my donation cup runnith dry :)

Yes. It has a switch that swithes the card between Mac BIOS and PC BIOS, so it will be compatible with both platforms. This card was presented at CeBIT 2013, Sapphie guys there say that this card's hardware was modified too, so it can't be possible to just download MacBIOS and flash to normal cheap 7950, but I don't believe it. :)

Reference card is so referece. Need to have exaclty 1 piece and then that BIOS will be shared and used all over the place. :)

Since they all have dual switchable bios, it doesn't sound like new hardware unless they mean the white shell :)

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I already donated a 5870 (in exchange for a 5770 to still have a back up card just in case) so my donation cup runnith dry :)

 

Since they all have dual switchable bios, it doesn't sound like new hardware unless they mean the white shell :)

 

I don't think it's even worth it anymore..

Would it be better to just buy a regular 7950 and wait for the 'Mac edition' BIOS to be ported to the regular one?

I'm looking into replacing my 6870 with something more stable and powerful for ML.

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I don't think it's even worth it anymore..

Would it be better to just buy a regular 7950 and wait for the 'Mac edition' BIOS to be ported to the regular one?

I'm looking into replacing my 6870 with something more stable and powerful for ML.

My 7970 works fine other than need to sleep/wake once at first boot, but if you can wait a bit too see what develops I would.
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