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How to get ATi 3870 X2 working in a Mac Pro?


Mercuricoxide
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Hi,

 

I understand that this forum may not be for people with actual macs, but I think you guys are the only people who could help.

 

I have a Mac Pro (early 2008), with a HD 3870 X2 which I use for Vista in slot 1 and a HD 2600 XT which I use for OSX in slot 3. Both cards work fine in Vista, no issues.

 

But while in OSX, the X2 has it fans rev up really high, which is annoying and could possibly damage the card as it is constant.

 

I know people have gotten OSX to recognize the card here, so I would like some help on getting my Mac Pro to do the same.

 

I do not need the card to fully function and do every program, the 2600 is fine for that. I just want OSX to at least recognize the card so the fans will slow down and not damage the card by constantly being at full blast. But if it's easy to get the card fully functioning, then I welcome that advice.

 

Also, if by having a Mac will help you guys with any particular files you may need to better your systems, I will be glad to help in return.

 

Thanks for any advice.

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Hi mercuricoxide,

 

I'm not sure I'll be of great help for you, but here's my 2 cent.

 

1st) Netkas has been of great help and you can find usefull information on his website: http://netkas.org

There is a topic on Ati 3870 and I've read that 3870x2 should work as a single 3870.

 

2nd) When want to use a graphic card in our hackintoshes; one solution is to use natit, which (someone correct me if I'm wrong) is a way to bind an existing driver in OsX to a device id (ex: my X1950xtx has dev id 7240).

Natit is to be placed in /System/Library/Extensions but hopefully, you may find an installer package built for 3870 that will insert natit, set the correct permissions on it so that it'll work correctly.

 

On that relies the activation of Quartz extreme and core.

The other solution is emulating efi and passing a string to Osx. This does the same thing as natit.

 

3rd) As a rule of a thumb, always do a backup of your system before messing with display (or anything else) unless you're ready to boot in safe mode and fix your system in console.

 

I don't know if it will fix your noise problem but you'll have a better graphic card in OsX.

For the noise problem, if it doesn't fix it, you could look in an after market cooler wich will run quieter.

 

Good luck

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will not work, because this any card need to be initialized, in pc's it's done by vga bios, in macs by uga efi driver, But this card will not be initialized, and even after u will install natit for it, and fixed kexts, it will ne shown in ioreg just fine, but no output u will have on it.

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