Amd radeon hd 7970 mac os

Apple added support for the 7000 series of AMD Radeon HD graphics cards last week, in version 10.8.3 of OS X Mountain Lion. Prior to this, 7000-series graphics cards did not work properly in Mac OS X; while you could still boot a Hackintosh with these cards, you couldn’t view your computer screen in full resolution or run any applications that required graphics acceleration. With this new support in Mac OS X, however, 7000-series graphics cards have finally become a practical option for your Hackintosh.

Don’t like this method? Check out tonymacx86’s alternative EFI partition method.

LATEST UPDATE (January 6, 2013): This method also works with newly-released Radeon R9 270, 270X, and 280X, all of which are really just rebranded 7000-series models.

Computer Requirements
Graphics cards in the AMD Radeon HD 7000 series can now display Mac OS X at full resolution with graphics acceleration. That being said, graphics support for the 7000 series still isn’t perfect. For starters, Chameleon and Chimera bootloader don’t support booting Mac OS X with these graphics cards, which use larger video BIOSes than previous generations of cards. As a result, you have to rely on your computer’s integrated graphics card card to boot your computer (more on that later). Here are the full requirements for enabling 7000-series support:

A Hackintosh running OS X 10.8.3: Only version 10.8.3 of Mountain Lion (and newer) includes the new graphics drivers for the AMD Radeon HD 7000 series, so you will have to update your Hackintosh.
AMD Radeon HD 7000-series card: Currently, most desktop graphics cards in the 7000 series are supported. As of March 24, 2013, the AMD Radeon HD 7970, 7950, 7870, 7770, and 7750 have been confirmed to work without the need for additional drivers. The AMD Radeon HD 7850 only works with specially edited kext files. Check out this forum thread for a list of specific graphics card models that have been confirmed to work.
Integrated graphics card: You will have to set your integrated graphics card (located on your computer processor) as the primary graphics card. Most desktop processors include integrated graphics, though there are a few rare exceptions. Nowadays, all new motherboards include support for integrated graphics cards, but older motherboards using chipsets like P67 and P55 don’t work (e.g. the Gigabyte GA-P67A-D3-B3 or GA-P55-UD3). Alternatively, if you own a second graphics card that works with Mac OS X, you can add it to your computer and set it as the primary graphics card instead.

If you do not have an integrated graphics card or second graphics card available, this guide will not work. Instead, you will have to follow this alternative guide to installing your bootloader on an EFI partition.

Sleep mode (optional): In some cases, Hackintoshes with 7000-series cards suffer from the «white screen» glitch, where you have to sleep and wake your computer for Mac OS X to start. If this is the case, your Hackintosh must be able to wake from sleep mode in Mac OS X properly.

1. Set your integrated graphics card as the primary graphics device
Since Chimera and Chameleon bootloader don’t work with 7000-series graphics cards yet, you’ll have to go to the BIOS of your motherboard and set your integrated graphics card as the primary graphics card instead. This way, Chimera/Chameleon can rely on your integrated graphics card to start Mac OS X.

Boot your computer, and enter the BIOS. To enter the BIOS on a Gigabyte motherboard, you have to press the delete key when it boots (before the operating system starts). Different manufacturers set different keys for opening the BIOS.

On the newest Gigabyte motherboards that use the UEFI standard for their BIOS, you need to set «Init Display First» as «IGFX» (which stands for integrated graphics), and set «Internal Graphics» as «Disabled».

On older Gigabyte motherboards, set «Init Display First» as «Onboard». On motherboards from other brands, this setting will be called something similar, such as «Primary Display».

2. Plug your monitor into your 7000-series card
This part is self-explanatory. Connect your computer monitor to your 7000-series graphics card. This way, your monitors will use your 7000-series card in Mac OS X, even though you set your integrated graphics card as the primary graphics card in the previous step.

From now on, your computer to boot with a black screen. Basically, you won’t be able to see anything on your computer screen until Mac OS X actually starts (once Mac OS X starts, everything will work as normal). Your computer is using your integrated graphics card card to run the boot process, but your monitors are connected to your 7000-series card, so the screen is blank.

3. Boot your Hackintosh
Once you’ve set up your BIOS, reboot your computer. Wait for Mac OS X to boot; your screen will be black for a while. Of course, if you do not have Chimera bootloader set to automatically boot Mac OS X, you will have to press the «Enter» key to start the boot process. If Mac OS X does not boot within a few minutes, you may have to enter the boot flag «GraphicsEnabler=No» (without quotation marks). You won’t be able to see what you’re typing, but the normal method for entering boot flags will still work.

Eventually, Mac OS X will start. If you reach the desktop, congratulations— you’re done!

NOTE 1: If you reach a white screen instead of the Mac OS X desktop, you will have to apply the «sleep fix». Put your computer to sleep. You can usually do this by quickly pressing the power button of your computer. Then, wake your computer up from sleep by pressing the power button again. You will now be able to view the Mac OS X desktop. You need to apply this fix every time you boot Mac OS X.

NOTE 2: If you needed to use the «GraphicsEnabler=No» boot flag to start Mac OS X, you can apply this boot flag permanently by installing the «GraphicsEnabler=No» option in Multibeast.

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Question: Q: Sapphire HD 7970

I’ve just purchased a Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 from eBay and triple checking that it is compatible with my 2009 Early Mac Pro. I’ve been told by a Mac Facebook group that is is plug and play however the ebay seller said I need to buy a Mac specific one. There doesn’t seem to be any definitive answer on this. I have a few hours till he posts it out so really need the help. He said it’s a PC version and no mention of Mac. I am using the Latest El Capitan OS. Thank you.

Posted on Feb 16, 2016 1:15 PM

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It will work fine in a Mac. You have to connect each power input (two total) to one AUX power connection on the logic board. You need a Mac cable since the connection on the logic board are not the same as in a PC.

However, since it is not a Mac card noting will show on the screen until the drivers load which is righ before the login screen.

Thus you can’t use the special keyboard startups like Option and Recovery mode.

Feb 16, 2016 1:31 PM

Thank you for your reply, can you please send me a link of the Mac cable I need to buy. Thank you

Feb 16, 2016 1:33 PM

Feb 16, 2016 1:45 PM

As Illaass says the card will work fine in a classic Mac Pro even under El Capitan but you will not get access to the pre-boot Mac features like selecting an alternate boot drive or using the Recovery Partition and hence using FileVault encryption.

There was never an official Mac version of the Radeon HD 7970 however Apple provide drivers for it as standard and it is possible to ‘flash’ the firmware in this card to add full pre-boot Mac support. (I have done this to a 7970 myself.)

The process basically boils down to extracting the existing Windows firmware, appending the Mac EFI code and then writing the new combined firmware back to the card. This is done in Windows typically via Boot Camp, it cannot be done in a virtual machine. Or you can take a chance and use a 7970 ROM image (firmware) created by someone else.

Feb 17, 2016 2:06 AM

I’m considering purchasing a used flashed 7970 for my mid-2010 MacPro 5,1.

Does anyone have experience using this card with the Adobe CC 2015 suite? I read that it’s fine for FCP, but Adobe’s CUDA may be a problem for the 7970.

Also, I have several PCIe cards and am wanting to get an Accelsior PCIe SSD. Will the 7970 generate too much heat (and potentially endanger the Accelsior)?

May 19, 2016 9:41 AM

I’m considering purchasing a used flashed 7970 for my mid-2010 MacPro 5,1.

Does anyone have experience using this card with the Adobe CC 2015 suite? I read that it’s fine for FCP, but Adobe’s CUDA may be a problem for the 7970.

Also, I have several PCIe cards and am wanting to get an Accelsior PCIe SSD. Will the 7970 generate too much heat (and potentially endanger the Accelsior)?

Only Nvidia cards support CUDA so an AMD Radeon HD 7970 is never going to support CUDA. As a result Adobe software will work better with an Nvidia card than an AMD card.

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Question: Q: Radeon HD 7970 Question — Mac Pro 5,1

I just installed a flashed Radeon HD 7970 video card into my Mac Pro 5,1. The card is working fine — all boot screens and runs very well in Boot Camp (Windows 7). My question is about the System Information for PCIe. It lists the Radeon HD 7970 twice. One type is Display Controller and shows the driver installed. The other one is ‘ATY, Himachi Parent’ and shows no driver installed.

I am just trying to figure out if something is missing or if this is normal with flashed cards. I am attaching a couple of pictures so you can see what I am talking about. If anyone has any ideas, your input will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Mac Pro, macOS Mojave (10.14), 24 GB, Radeon HD 7970, Blu-ray

Posted on Oct 1, 2018 10:19 AM

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I believe this is normal with flashed video cards. I have a flashed PC Radeon 5770 in my 5,1 and it shows up twice just like your Hd 7970. The reason it shows up is that the Mac detects the actual PC card and then a sort of «Fake» card that provides you with the boot screen. Nothing to worry about, it’s normal.

Oct 1, 2018 11:03 AM

This is normal even for non-flashed cards including genuine Mac edition Radeon HD 7950 cards.

Putting it simplistically the one with the driver installed is the video portion, the one with no driver installed is the audio portion e.g. for the HDMI port. It is not loaded for the audio portion because Apple have disabled it.

Sadly Apple have deliberately disabled the HDMI audio support for this and most other PCI video cards. The hardware definitely is capable of it — it still works in Windows via Boot Camp on the same computer but Apple have chosen to kill it for some insanely unfriendly reason.

Even more annoyingly Apple are making deliberate steps to make it even harder to get the audio working again with each newer version of macOS.

See this — GUIDE: HDMI Audio | Page 31 | MacRumors Forums I have skipped the link to page31. It seems some people managed to get it working once more in 10.13.6 but not yet in Mojave.

Apple are skirting on the edge of breaking some countries laws by doing this. In the UK the Computer Misuse Act 1990 says that «Unauthorised acts with intent to impair, or with recklessness as to impairing, operation of computer, etc.» is illegal. Disabling the audio support seems to count as impairing the operation of the computer to me.

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Confirmed AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition Running on Mac Pro

blackwoodfx

macrumors member

Confirmed working, AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition on OS X 10.8.3, Mid 2012 Mac Pro, no flashing required. Also confirmed working since 10.8.1 beta. Strongly believe this is here to stay. Beautiful hardware. Real-time playback of full-resolution 4K footage in FCPX. Also tested with Adobe apps and lots of GPU crunching. Stable. No issues at all.

Attachments

View media item» href=»/attachments/mp-radeon1-png.382886/» target=»_blank»>

blackwoodfx

macrumors member

hwcompare doesn’t have the 7970 GHz Edition listed yet, but they’ve got the ‘vanilla’ 7970 compared with the GTX 570. Very nice results:

If you don’t need CUDA (which if you read the Adobe message below, you probably don’t), then this is the card to use right now.

DanielCoffey

macrumors 65816

Excellent news. I am sure folks will want to see benchmarks vs the 5870.

How did you handle the power requirements for the 7970? Isn’t it 250W (PCI+6+8pin)?

blackwoodfx

macrumors member

Excellent news. I am sure folks will want to see benchmarks vs the 5870.

How did you handle the power requirements for the 7970? Isn’t it 250W (PCI+6+8pin)?

Spacedust

macrumors 6502a

macrumors 6502

This is exciting! Can you say which vendor card you bought exactly?

How about fan noise? Any idea if 3×30″ monitors works?

DanielCoffey

macrumors 65816

There won’t be one, of course. Not that it really matters for users of a single Windows partition if you use the BootChamp app.

blackwoodfx

macrumors member

This is exciting! Can you say which vendor card you bought exactly?

How about fan noise? Any idea if 3×30″ monitors works?

We’ve tested both the MSi Radeon 2PMD3GDS ‘vanilla’ HD 7970 and the XFX Double D HD 7970 GHz Edition FX797GTDFC. Both work perfectly although we prefer the XFX, of course.

Noise is much better (ie. quieter) than the oscillating, loud, and generally more irritating GTX 570 that we had been running previously. Quieter than dual 5870’s but louder than a single, ‘Apple Stock’ 5870.

Yes, 3 monitors do work. Tested 3 Apple LED Cinema Displays in vertical (90 rotated mode) with 2 of the monitors connected to the mDP ports and 1 connected via the Atlona Dual Link DVI to Mini DisplayPort Converter (powered by USB). Worked perfectly.

blackwoodfx

macrumors member

I think you’re fuzzing math. The 6-pin is 75w and 8-pin is 150w. PCI slots offer combined 300w (450w total). Already tested with full burn-in render tests and real-work RED R3D 4K files (debayering and rendering for final).

*But perhaps to your point, you can’t stuff a Quadro in with this thing or think about SLI-mode (although why would you?). The Mac Pro can handle the 7970 perfectly well. Just play nice with your other PCI slots. eSATA and USB cards are fine. We’ve even got a RED Rocket in one of ours. But that’s the red line.

DanielCoffey

macrumors 65816

The MacPro officially supports only 225W for a graphics card in a PCI slot with 2×6-pin connectors.

This has been clearly discussed in the «FAQ about nVidia PC Graphics cards» sticky thread. I am not fuzzing anything.

blackwoodfx

macrumors member

The MacPro officially supports only 225W for a graphics card in a PCI slot with 2×6-pin connectors.

This has been clearly discussed in the «FAQ about nVidia PC Graphics cards» sticky thread. I am not fuzzing anything.

DanielCoffey

macrumors 65816

I assume you appreciate that plugging an 8-pin into the 6-pin motherboard header does not magically deliver 150W? It delivers the 75W from the header (but allows the card to draw more, exceeding the design spec of the 6-pin cable and traces).

The TDP of the 7970 GHz Edition is listed as 275W. That is significantly over the Mac Pro’s 225W limit which is made up of 75W from the PCI slot, 75W from the first 6-pin and 75W from the second 6-pin that you have put the 8-pin cable into.

While your card does run, you are depending on the ability of the traces on the logic board to deliver the extra current that the card is drawing. In fact the card will probably be throttling itself down to protect the logic board since that model has the ability to do so.

blackwoodfx

macrumors member

Same page. Not sure why you’re suggesting I’m not aware of this. There’s no magic here. It’s pulling 75w+150w on those lines. However, it’s not exceeding the design spec at all. In fact, the only difference between a 6 pin and an 8 pin connection is the number of grounds. Both use 3x 12v rails. The 6 pin has 3 grounds and the 8 pin uses 5. Pins 1-3 are hot, 4-6 are ground + 7-8 ground. So those two extra pins are grounds only. They tell the graphics card it’s ok to draw 150w — which it is. Exceeding the design spec? Not at all.

The MP has a limit of 300w across the 4 PCI slots and that 8-pin adapter does, as you said, allow the card to pull down more watts. We’re not exceeding the LB or the PSU or even uncomfortably close to it. There is nothing unsafe about running this card either. You’re being quite a bit alarmist here.

*Edit: The reason I keep pointing out the PCI lanes are 300w combined, is because that’s how the LB is wired to power them; as a 300w lumped together channel. We’re not overdrawing the lane and we’re well within what’s needed from the PSU. We’re not putting the LB at risk with this setup. Your hard-and-fast ruling is just inaccurate, sorry. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with a little level-headed consideration and people should be aware of these things, but in this case, it’s unwarranted. Also, while the Tahiti 7xxx cards do throttle, they do so to keep temps down while you browse the internet or other mundane tasks that don’t require full-draw. Much more similar to a mobile graphics card would to conserve battery-life and manage heat. Something a little more ‘novel’ for desktop solutions. I’m not fighting with my graphics card here. It’s doing quite well.

Mr.Gurke

macrumors newbie

blackwoodfx

macrumors member

I’m not sure, Mr.Gurke. While I did quite a bit of hacking around with the 4,1 MP (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1076970/), I haven’t cracked open anything prior.

A quick glance here doesn’t raise any flags that might be an issue:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Pro#Specifications

I’d make sure you’ve got power supply with the same wattage as the 4,1-5,1-2 first, then make sure you have 2x 6-pin PCI cables and a 16x PCI Lane. If those three things check out, you should be in the clear.

initialsBB

macrumors 6502a

flowrider

macrumors 604

^^^^No, from all that is now known, the OS 10.8.3 beta removes the 2GB RAM limitation.

Garamond

macrumors regular

Asgorath

macrumors 68000

You’re missing the point though. That’s 300W across four slots, or 75W per slot. One 6-pin cable provides an extra 75W. The second cable provides the final 75W for a total of 225W for one slot. You’re pulling up to 150W from one of those cables, which is not in the 300W budget for all PCIe slots, it’s from the separate connector on the motherboard. People have damaged their cards by trying to make an 8-pin connector work by using a 6-pin to 8-pin converter, trust me this has been discussed at length in many different threads. We’re not just making **** up here.

More power to you (no pun intended) if you want to ignore our warnings and run with a converter cable, but our standard advice for anyone using a card that has one or more 8-pin connectors is to drive it with an external power supply. Links in my FAQ thread with more details. Edit: Actually, I guess I haven’t posted links to the discussion of how to rig up an external power supply yet. Should be easy to find with a bit of searching, someone posted a detailed guide on how to do it for both internal and external PSUs.

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