Radeon HD 6870 owners what framebuffer setting do you use?

[NotoriousYJX]

500 W should be enough, I ran OCCT PSU test on my i7 2600K & HD6870 system and highest off the wall power reading on Kill-a-watt meter was 390 W. Cpu was running overclocked to 4.5 GHz and OCCT PSU test uses much more power than any real world applications. If we are talking about a PSU with normal 85 % efficiency ratio then even a 350 W PSU would have been enough for my test.

Cheap PSUs are are giant headache waiting to happen. YMMV.

 

[mmaenpaa]

500 W should be enough, I ran OCCT PSU test on my i7 2600K & HD6870 system and highest off the wall power reading on Kill-a-watt meter was 390 W. Cpu was running overclocked to 4.5 GHz and OCCT PSU test uses much more power than any real world applications. If we are talking about a PSU with normal 85 % efficiency ratio then even a 350 W PSU would have been enough for my test.

Cheap PSUs are are giant headache waiting to happen. YMMV.

I was telling OP that using a 500 W PSU is not the reason for his graphics card problems, not recommending people to buy cheap power supplys...

 

[magestrate]

For the Graphics Mode key, is there anything special that needs to be entered if you have two displays?

I have two identical samsung LCDs whose native resolution is 1920x1080.

Do I need two different "Graphics Mode" entries?

no

 

[magestrate]

First of all, thanks for such an awesome forum! you peeps truely kick some serious ass!
I finally got around to building my second hack. My first hack was an old Acer laptop and has seen better days at this point. So my new hack is:
i7 2600k
Gigabyte z68xp-ud5 (using bios F2 with associated tonymac DSDT)
Radeon HD 6870 ( Device ID: 0x6738 )
etc..I'm using the latest version of Chimera (1.5.4) and Lion 10.7.1 + Lion version of Multibeast

The install went quite smoothly except for one strange bug. My graphics card would occasionally glitch out and lock up. By glitch out i mean it would almost always crash (90%) of the time when i ran cinbench. The 10% of the time that it didn't crash i would get excellent cinebench results of something like 45 to 50FPS. It would often crash by first shifting the screen by several hundred pixels to the right or left. The mouse would still work, and the computer was still alive (i could vnc in and make changes to plists etc). Just the graphics would stop updating properly.

Finally i found some information about setting the AtiConfig to one of the available frame buffers. I'm attaching a list, perhaps it will help others.AtiFrameBuffers.txt

So far i have tried the following frame buffers:
Hydrilla, Elodea & Gibba by adding something like this to the org.chameleon.Boot.plist

	<key>Kernel Flags</key>
	<string>npci=0x2000 AtiPorts=5 AtiConfig=Gibba</string>
	<key>GraphicsEnabler</key>
	<string>Yes</string>

And here is some commands & information from the terminal

$ ioreg | grep ATY
    | |   |   | +-o ATY,Gibba@0  <class AtiFbStub, id 0x1000002fa, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (213 ms), retain 7>
    | |   |   | +-o ATY,Gibba@1  <class AtiFbStub, id 0x1000002fb, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (4 ms), retain 7>
    | |   |   | +-o ATY,Gibba@2  <class AtiFbStub, id 0x1000002fc, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (4 ms), retain 7>
    | |   |   | +-o ATY,Gibba@3  <class AtiFbStub, id 0x1000002fd, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (4 ms), retain 7>
    | |   |   | +-o ATY,Gibba@4  <class AtiFbStub, id 0x1000002fe, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (4 ms), retain 7>

$ bdmesg | grep ATI
ATI card POSTed, reading VBIOS from legacy space
ATI Barts AMD Radeon HD 6870 Series 1024MB (Gibba) [1002:6738] (subsys [1682:3107]):: PciRoot(0x1)/Pci(0x1,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)

$ sudo lspci -nnvd 0x1002: | grep -B2 Subsystem
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: ATI Technologies Inc Barts XT [ATI Radeon HD 6800 Series] [1002:6738] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
	Subsystem: XFX Pine Group Inc. Unknown device [1682:3107]
01:00.1 Audio device [0403]: ATI Technologies Inc Barts HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 6800 Series] [1002:aa88]
	Subsystem: XFX Pine Group Inc. Unknown device [1682:aa88]

I found that the only FrameBuffer setting that worked for my card was Gibba.
Under any other setting the card would occasionally crash (even when just doing normal things, not just in cinebench).

My only problem now is that the cinebench score is really low for this card
Screen Shot 2011-10-06 at 1.21.21 PM.png

Has anyone managed to get a good cinebench score with this card and have it running stable with no crashes? what settings are you using?

hey to get back to your issue did you know that the new chimera has added new support for our cards or added more cards using the hd 6870... just a thought... i hope you get your issue fixed please post results...

Screen Shot 2011-10-09 at 9.58.41 AM.png

 

[djtrix]

Yup, So turns out it was just a bad card. I took it back to the store i bought it at and they gave me a new one on the spot. Slapped it in and it works great now.

I tested a bunch of frame buffers out, Gibba, Elodea, & Hydrilla all of which at 5 ports just like my card. Most of them gave poorer Cinebench results and often didn't have all the ports on the card working. So I've removed all the kernal flags from my org.Chameleon.Boot.plist file and it defaulted back to Duckweed. It only detects 4 ports now but i only have two monitors so that doesn't really matter.

Here's my latest Cinebench results. Screen Shot 2011-10-10 at 1.26.07 PM.png

Edit: my only problem now is that the GPU fan runs at 100% constantly and is quite loud! The only way i have gotten it not to do with is by using the Gibba frame buffer, then it actually throttles quite nicely and only speeds up in Cinebench and games. Only problem is with Gibba frame buffer my Cinebench score is a measly 15FPS!

Thanks for all your help!

 

[magestrate]

check your com.apple.boot.plist and post the contents... I'm curious about the fan on your gpu running at 100%... it shouldn't be loud something could be off...

 

[djtrix]

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>Kernel</key>
	<string>mach_kernel</string>
	<key>Kernal Flags</key>
	<string>AtiConfig=Gibba AtiPorts=5</key>
	<key>GraphicsEnabler</key>
	<string>Yes</string>
	<key>Timeout</key>
	<string>2</string>
	<key>Legacy Logo</key>
	<string>Yes</string>
	<key>EthernetBuiltIn</key>
	<string>Yes</string>
</dict>
</plist>

= 14 FPS in Cenbench, Fan quite as a mouse, and GPU heatsink temp 35C and Diode 48C

OR with:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>Kernel</key>
	<string>mach_kernel</string>
	<key>Kernal Flags</key>
	<string></key>
	<key>GraphicsEnabler</key>
	<string>Yes</string>
	<key>Timeout</key>
	<string>2</string>
	<key>Legacy Logo</key>
	<string>Yes</string>
	<key>EthernetBuiltIn</key>
	<string>Yes</string>
</dict>
</plist>

These settings default to the Duckweed framebuffer, as can be seen here:

$ ioreg | grep ATY
    | |   |   | +-o ATY,Duckweed@0  <class AtiFbStub, id 0x100000301, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (156 ms), retain 7>
    | |   |   | +-o ATY,Duckweed@1  <class AtiFbStub, id 0x100000302, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (4 ms), retain 7>
    | |   |   | +-o ATY,Duckweed@2  <class AtiFbStub, id 0x100000303, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (4 ms), retain 7>
    | |   |   | +-o ATY,Duckweed@3  <class AtiFbStub, id 0x100000304, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (4 ms), retain 7>

= 42 FPS in Cenbench, Fan very loud, and GPU heatsink temp 35C and Diode 56C (during cinebench) but then it just stays that high even doing nothing, it is still showing GPU Diode at 55C.

So my guess is that the card is actually running hotter with the duckweed settings, and the fan is being autocontrolled by the temp.

One of the strangest parts of it all is that whenever i get a really good Cinebench result, i actually get a pretty crappy output, like the cars are moving really sloooooow. But when i'm on Gibba and only get 13-15 FPS the cars rip through the whole demo, this seems odd to me.

 

[magestrate]

go with the what i have below... . just copy and paste....then get rid of any DSDT and replace with easy beast and don't forget to repair permissions ...then go in bios and disable speed step if its enabled run test then repost

key>Kernel</key>
<string>mach_kernel</string>
<key>Kernal Flags</key>
<string></key>
<key>GraphicsEnabler</key>
<string>yes</string>
<key>Instant Menu</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>LegacyLogo</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>EthernetBuiltIn</key>
<string>Yes</string>
</dict>

good luck!!!! btw stop messing with the frame buffers leave it on the default settings you shouldn't have too.... this card is compatible...

 

[djtrix]

go with the what i have below... . just copy and paste....then get rid of any DSDT and replace with easy beast and don't forget to repair permissions ...then go in bios and disable speed step if its enabled run test then repost

key>Kernel</key>
<string>mach_kernel</string>
<key>Kernal Flags</key>
<string></key>
<key>GraphicsEnabler</key>
<string>yes</string>
<key>Instant Menu</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>LegacyLogo</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>EthernetBuiltIn</key>
<string>Yes</string>
</dict>

good luck!!!! btw stop messing with the frame buffers leave it on the default settings you shouldn't have too.... this card is compatible...

Oh, well, that's the setting i had it on that was causing the loud fan. Currently running it on the Gibba frame buffer as it runs much quiter and i don't need accelerated graphics while i work. If i'm gonna play a game i just reboot and override the framebuffer to the default one (Duckweed). But most likely i'll play most games in windows 7 so it doesn't really matter, just stick with Gibba, quieter fan

Thanks for all your help!