AMD Radeon HD 7470 (Dell OptiPlex 7010)

[cstout]

My hardware is:
Dell OptiPlex 7010
Intel Core i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz
8GB RAM - 2x4GB PC3-12800U
500GB HDD - HGST HTS725050A7E630
AMD Radeon HD 7470 (1GB)

I've successfully installed macOS Sierra 10.12.1 via UniBeast (legacy boot, UEFI does not work on this model). My next hurdle is getting this totally decent, nothing special graphics card working. I've come across several posts of people getting it working in 10.7 and 10.8 but every post for 10.9-10.11 is left off with the OP asking "anybody? hello?" and I hope that's not the case here!

The graphics card in question is:
AMD Radeon HD 7470 (1GB, DisplayPort & DVI)
Vendor: 1002
Device: 6778
Sub Ven: 1028
Sub Dev: 2120
Device Name: Caicos XT [Radeon HD 7470/8470]

I've tried adding "0x67781002" to the IOPCIMatch string in "AMD6000Controller.kext", "AMDRadeonX3000.kext", and "AMD7000Controller.kext" all which has yielded no change.

The card is detected by macOS but lists 5MB VRAM and there is no active graphics acceleration so everything is painfully slow to redraw. The only resolution available is 1280x1024 and it's currently not changeable.

I'm willing to try your recommendations to get this card working properly. Thank you very much!

 

[firecall]

Hi - I'm trying on the same system - did you get the card going working?

 

[DarkAudit]

I have the same Optiplex and card, but the video card had a dead fan, so I pulled it and went with the onboard HD 4000 graphics instead. That seems to work okay so far.

Are there any advantages to running the card instead, besides freeing up that RAM?

 

[firecall]

Are there any advantages to running the card instead, besides freeing up that RAM?

I benchmarked both under windows using GeekBench 4. It's marginal. This is just one run - I find it varies from run to run in Geekbench.

• Scores
• HD 7470: 6108
• Intel 4000: 5978

If you want to upgrade the GPU you could put the new GT 1030 in it, or go for a low-profile GTX 1050ti at other end. Depends if you game or not. I've got triple monitors hooked up; two on the HD7470 card and one on the iGPU display-port. To clarify, thats under Windows 10 and Linux Mint. Not booting macOS right now.

I dont know much about it, but I'm wondering if macOS High-Sierra means that AMD cards will be well supported in the future?

I also put 24GB of RAM in mine and it has dual SSD's.

For the price it's a amazingly powerful machine. In my area there are auction houses just ditching ex-lease gov and corporate stock of these in the hundreds.

I dual boot Windows and Linux Mint right now, and will try High Sierra once I have some time.

If High-Sierra runs well on this box, once it's out, I suspect I'll switch full time on this box to macOS. (I have a MacBook as well, so dont need this for Mac tasks as such, just for more CPU performance in certain tasks).

 

[DarkAudit]

I paid $50 for my 7010 from the University of Pittsburgh surplus store. Very nice folks up there.

 

[DiscountGaming]

I have a Dell OptiPlex 3010 MT that has that same card and I'm having that same problem (resolution stuck at 1280 x 1024, Multibeast fixes not working, etc.) Any help?

 

[firecall]

I have a Dell OptiPlex 3010 MT that has that same card and I'm having that same problem (resolution stuck at 1280 x 1024, Multibeast fixes not working, etc.) Any help?

Did you try the internal video? It's probably faster anyway

 

[DiscountGaming]

Did you try the internal video? It's probably faster anyway

Tried it today, doesn't boot up to the point where the login screen is visible (when the system has fully booted). It said the following (see image attached).

 

[firecall]

Tried it today, doesn't boot up to the point where the login screen is visible (when the system has fully booted). It said the following (see image attached).

View attachment 309520

Hmm...

I dont have that Dell anymore.

Cant remember what I did exactly.

Maybe remove the card so it can only use iGPU?

Or or make sure the primary display was set in the bios? It has an auto detect primary display feature. Maybe set it to be the iGPU or the Card. Try both.

 

[DiscountGaming]

Thank You for your quick response, I had tried it by removing the graphics card earlier today, because if I tried to use the HDMI or VGA ports for the integrated graphics, the Mobo or BIOS or whatever would tell me to use the ports on the Card instead, so I took out the card and tried using iGPU to boot. I didn't work as shown in my previous post. So I'm going to leave and focus on my bigger issue which is Networking, which I'll post in a different thread. Thank You for the help