need advice for desktop hackintosh

[Jocelyn84]

On insanely? You need to login.

PS - Your not threadjacking, its your thread

 

[cakemonster]

the fastest graphics card in Macs right now is the 4870 which is what i chose and is flawless with GraphicsEnabler=yes in the Boot plist.

Rich, I had decided to go with an nvidia card based on the support here, but the recent issues with the 9800 GTs posted in graphics are making me reconsider.

I don't need the latest and greatest, I want good, dual DVI (or equivalent), and long term stability of my hack. I decided to go UD4P to get the 889a audio, for example.

Put in other words, are the video cards actually utilized in the mac pros/imacs always going to be enabled by "GraphicsEnabler-yes", no further hassles. I had come to hate ATI cards from linux, but could be persuaded.

I guess the real cream would be to figure out what cards they are putting in the new mac pros...

Any others who can comment on this?

 

[rich]

all i can say is i definitely recommend the 4870 based on stability and ease of use. this is my first PC build and first hackintosh and worked out great. the 4870 is also a pretty powerful card still even though its last generation. the only bad thing for me is it runs pretty hot and my Sapphire cooler was very loud… now has a new cooler, but is still easily the loudest in my case.

i suspect the card will continue to be supported and drivers continue to be updated by Apple until the Mac Pro 4,1 becomes obsolete. the 889a has turned out to be the best audio for 10.6.3 so i recommend that and the UD4P is a nice board with two x16 PCIe slots, Firewire 400 (works great), eSATA and two NICs.

 

[cakemonster]

Thank you, which method did you use to get it working...

 

[rich]

i used the retail DVD USB method to install back in November, but tony's boot cd would work fine. i have:

- Chameleon RC4 with AsereBLN 1.1.9
- DSDT from the latest MultiBeast with BIOS F8
- RealtekR1000 in System Extensions
- fakesmc & LegacyHDA from latest Multibeast in Extra
- iMac 11,1 smbios with my SUID added
- 32-bit Boot plist with GraphicsEnabler=yes added

MultiBeast has been a great standard for me. if anything breaks just fire it up again thanks tony!

 

[cakemonster]

i used the retail DVD USB method to install back in November, but tony's boot cd would work fine. i have:

- Chameleon RC4 with AsereBLN 1.1.9
- DSDT from the latest MultiBeast with BIOS F8
- RealtekR1000 in System Extensions
- fakesmc & LegacyHDA from latest Multibeast in Extra
- iMac 11,1 smbios with my SUID added
- 32-bit Boot plist with GraphicsEnabler=yes added

MultiBeast has been a great standard for me. if anything breaks just fire it up again thanks tony!

Wow, thank you. I just meant the graphics, but the rest looks like what I have planned. The 4870 just worked out of the box with that setup from Multibeast? No DSDT edits for graphics?

 

[Lnx2Mac]

Wow, thank you. I just meant the graphics, but the rest looks like what I have planned. The 4870 just worked out of the box with that setup from Multibeast? No DSDT edits for graphics?

My GV-N98TSL-1GI worked out of the box with iBoot...
GraphicsEnabler=yes seems to do the trick.

 

[cakemonster]

Cool. Seems like different 9800 GT cards act differently, or as likely, folks used different install methods, different kexts, alot of variables.

 

[rich]

Wow, thank you. I just meant the graphics, but the rest looks like what I have planned. The 4870 just worked out of the box with that setup from Multibeast? No DSDT edits for graphics?

yap out of the box even when i originally installed 10.6.0 with the hacked kernel.

 

[FatShenanigans]

so the 285 looks like a nice buy, but as you said the 4890 is more cost effective. apparently 4890s can be run in Mac Pros so should be fine in hacks.

Be very careful when assuming what works in Mac Pro will also work in Hackintosh. Keep in mind that they use a specific ROM for their video cards to work in native Mac. This is why you need to either buy a 285GTX from Mac to get it to run in a Mac Pro or do the same for an ATI....OR know how to flash the ROM if you buy a non-Mac native version.

Netkas has a blog on his website about this.

Most people make the mistake in thinking that just because a video card is supported by Mac it will also be supported by Hackintosh. What we usually see is that either the card doesn't work at all or the person has to wait until someone adds code to either the bootloader, comes up with DSDT code, or both.

There are tons of discussions on this based on people out there who have made the same mistake.

Be very careful.