Apple ATI Radeon 5770

[kitkonis]

I dont want to open another topic about these apple cards. I have only one question.

WHAT is the difference between an APPLE ati radeon and the normal ati radeons from different manufacturers(gigababyte, asus etc.)?

are these apple cards more compatible and out of the box or not? do they work in 64bit mode out of the box?

 

[kennethsteven]

I dont want to open another topic about these apple cards. I have only one question.

WHAT is the difference between an APPLE ati radeon and the normal ati radeons from different manufacturers(gigababyte, asus etc.)?

are these apple cards more compatible and out of the box or not? do they work in 64bit mode out of the box?

The Apple version has 2 MINI Display ports, and 1 DVI port. Most of the others have 1 REGULAR display port, 2 DVI ports, and 1 HDMI port.

The Apple card involves some extra tweaking to get it working, you need to edit plist files to change frame buffer settings. The only compelling reason that I can see to get the Apple version is that the new Apple Cinema Displays will ONLY work with the Apple card because of the MINI display ports. Otherwise, the others are cheaper, and easier to get working.

I have the Apple 5770 card with the 27 Apple cinema display, and its awesome!

 

[kitkonis]

I dont want to open another topic about these apple cards. I have only one question.

WHAT is the difference between an APPLE ati radeon and the normal ati radeons from different manufacturers(gigababyte, asus etc.)?

are these apple cards more compatible and out of the box or not? do they work in 64bit mode out of the box?

The Apple version has 2 MINI Display ports, and 1 DVI port. Most of the others have 1 REGULAR display port, 2 DVI ports, and 1 HDMI port.

The Apple card involves some extra tweaking to get it working, you need to edit plist files to change frame buffer settings. The only compelling reason that I can see to get the Apple version is that the new Apple Cinema Displays will ONLY work with the Apple card because of the MINI display ports. Otherwise, the others are cheaper, and easier to get working.

I have the Apple 5770 card with the 27 Apple cinema display, and its awesome!

tnx for the info! and I though they were an more compatible but also more expensive option. seem this is wrong. hmm now I really dont know, what to buy and when to buy to get 64 bit and good graphics for gaming. Should I get radeon 6xxxx or wait that they release some gtx470/480 drivers or just buy 5870???
Half of the world is talking about that now is buying a 5870 the biggest mistake you can make, because it is to expensive and the nex 6xxx radeons are here. so what to do?

 

[Ivanovitch]

Should I get radeon 6xxxx or wait that they release some gtx470/480 drivers or just buy 5870???

if your initial goal was to buy a 5870 / 50 don't go for the 6870(50) because they aren't faster (even slightly slower in some apps) than their 58xx counterparts. Besides the fact that they currently are not supported by OSX (no drivers), they are cheaper and a bit more power efficient.
In fact AMD has changed the name codification of their GPUs, high end market will now be called 6950 (70) and will be released in a few months.

Nvidia GPUs may not be a good idea as apple seems to drop their high end cards for ATI ones in their mac pros and imacs. (nvidia drivers may only be optimized for mobile GT330m like)

WHAT is the difference between an APPLE ati radeon and the normal ati radeons from different manufacturers(gigababyte, asus etc.)?

I don't think that the lack of mini-DP output on regular amd 5770 is the problem because special eyefinity 5770 / 5870 / 5970 cards (which HAVE mini-DP ports) have been reported to not work with ACDs only.)

Moreover, the APPLE card, except the dvi+2 mini-DP port is different because:
-PC-card has a BIOS (basic input output system, like the one on your mainboard)
-Apple card has a BIOS + an EFI (extensive firmware interface). The EFI chip does the same job the bios but is especially tweaked for apple hardware (the EFI system itself is not Apple only, we'll see more and more EFI motherboards in the upcoming years)

Problem is that when MacOS sees a cinema display hooked up, it wants to trigger the EFI to boot up and take control of the screen. Which, in case of a bios-only card does not work...

However you can get the screen working if you hook it up to a bios-only card and boot a Windows OS (windows will talk to the bios part of the card as it does not know the EFI one).

The only way to use a non-apple card with cinema display is to hide it from Mac OS. This can be achieved with an Atlona AT-DP400 (not sure about the part number) which presents itself as a regular screen to macOS (and therefore asking for default bios signals) and sends regular bios signals to the screen.

This may be incorrect but it's how I see the situation.

 

[xenophex]

Thanks for the tips guys. I ordered up (2) 27's and a Apple ATI 5770. Should be here monday so I hope it doesn't end it tears.

 

[kennethsteven]

Thanks for the tips guys. I ordered up (2) 27's and a Apple ATI 5770. Should be here monday so I hope it doesn't end it tears.

Good luck!

 

[BuzzAldrin]

I took the plunge this weekend and built a hackintosh with the Gigabyte X58A-UD5 (Rev.2) board, the Apple-branded 5770 Graphics Card Upgrade, and the 27" LED cinema display.

It took a little work, but I'm happy to say that it's now working flawlessly under 10.6.5. As someone mentioned previously, it is a LONG card. I had to take some tin snips and cut away a portion of the drive cage in my case to make it fit. The results were worth it, though. I have iSight & USB audio through the display, and keyboard brightness & volume are working fine.

The only video-related mod I had to make was the "Hoolock" fix to ATY_Init.kext.

 

[xenophex]

My stuff got here today. Followed everything on this board and it worked out of the box.
I haven't checked the auto-brightness yet but man these monitors are awesome.
Still trying to get over all the pixels!

That Apple ATI card is a bit big with that bracket!

Thanks for all the help guys.

EDIT: Guys I noticed a couple times booting up one of my monitors gets some static bouncing around and some times it blips off/on. It's random though . I booted up this time and it was fine. Any tips?

Should I be using the:

<key>UseAtiROM</key>
 <string>yes</string>

Only other thing I can think is its a mini displayport extender issue but I'll have to try swapping the cables.

Update: One of my cable extenders was the issue. Would cause distortions and sometimes no picture. It was random. Just removed it and thankfully my right monitor is close enough to the video card.

Next issue I see is when its posting I get:
ATY_Init 0x68b8 was not posted. Researching that now, but the monitors work.

 

[vladitude]

Wife's company just bought her the 27" ACD for her home office to go with her macbook pro. Lucky us! This monitor is amazing.

So now I want to update our old PowerPC workhorse under the desk and finally build that i7 screamer I've been coveting.

I'll be going the steadfast route:

GA-X58A-UD3R with the i7 950 quad, and of course, the Apple branded card as described in this thread. Seems like it will play nice with the 27 and be a stable build. But here's my question. I want to make it a three monitor system. We have our older 20" Apple Cinema Display with a DVI connection and a 20" Wacom Cintiq screen, also DVI (this one HAS to get hooked up).

From what I've read on this thread, there seems to be an issue with the second MDport converting to DVI through a basic adapter. Is this true? Has anyone had success with the 27 and 2 DVI monitors?

Some more questions off subject if anyone cares to chime in - I'm new to this:

1. Will the eSATA on the UDR3 MOBO play with OSX for external drives or do I need to get a FireWire800 Card (and if so, which?) I'll be doing video editing.
2. Best wifi card?
3. Best RAM? Should I go for 12 gigs or will 6 suffice for HD video on FCP and a truckload of CS5 work.

 

[jprzybyl]

Hi guys,
I have been reading your posts and got a lot of info. My system is gigabyte x58 ud5 i980x 24 gb gskill memory and 470 evga gtx 470 card. The process was painful but I guess I am getting close to a resolution of my problem. I used empire efi as bootloader then mac os x 10.6 retail install. I then installed combo updates 10.6.4 and subsequently 10.6.5. I got ethernet package for internet and that works fine. My major problem was 470gtx card that was not recognized. I came across gtx fermi package for 480 gtx. It now recognizes my 27inch apple cinema resolution. I connect both via an atlona dpi 400 and my hackintosh seems to be working. My problem though is that I would like to use this as dual boot and I can not see anything in bios so another words I will bnot be able to choose OS after I turn on the computer untill an operating system is already displayed on the screen. Any ideas?
Moreover, the APPLE card, except the dvi+2 mini-DP port is different because:
-PC-card has a BIOS (basic input output system, like the one on your mainboard)
-Apple card has a BIOS + an EFI (extensive firmware interface). The EFI chip does the same job the bios but is especially tweaked for apple hardware (the EFI system itself is not Apple only, we'll see more and more EFI motherboards in the upcoming years)

Problem is that when MacOS sees a cinema display hooked up, it wants to trigger the EFI to boot up and take control of the screen. Which, in case of a bios-only card does not work...

However you can get the screen working if you hook it up to a bios-only card and boot a Windows OS (windows will talk to the bios part of the card as it does not know the EFI one).

The only way to use a non-apple card with cinema display is to hide it from Mac OS. This can be achieved with an Atlona AT-DP400 (not sure about the part number) which presents itself as a regular screen to macOS (and therefore asking for default bios signals) and sends regular bios signals to the screen.

This may be incorrect but it's how I see the situation.[/quote]