Tips for switching from the Nvidia GTX460 to the ATI 5870

[galael]

With no resolution in sight for the Nvidia Fermi OSX system freezes, i decided to bite the bullet and purchase an ATI/AMD graphics card. I had a very nice MSI Hawk GTX460 that gave me excellent OC'd performance in Windows and was a breeze to install on my Hackintosh - except for the highly annoying random system freezes. So here are some tips on how I switched and what I had to do to make my ATI 5870 work in OSX:

The card:
I purchased a Gigabyte GV-R587UD-1GD which uses the ATI 5870 chip. I paid $250 for the card and there was a $50 mail-in rebate so not a bad price, although these cards are clearly being cleared out in favor of the better 6000 series cards (there was only one left at the store I visited).

Experiences:
I'm not a big fan of ATI. It's not so much the hardware as their flaky software. Even on Windows 7, I had to download the very latest ATI Catalyst drivers from AMD's website to get rid of the flickering and other issues associated with running on a 1080p monitor. And don't even get me started with Linux support.

For OSX, I did the following:
- With the GTX460 still plugged in, I downloaded the latest Multibeast and installed the ATI boot loader
- Shutdown my computer, swapped cards and rebooted
- And I was done...not quite!
- My card displayed very annoying screen flicker, especially when using Parallels. To fix this you have to set the ATI framebuffer parameter in com.apple.boot.plist. I recommend you experiment on the boot command line first before editing this file.
- For my Gigabyte card, the only frame buffer setting that worked for me was "AtiFb=Zonalis"
Edit: Use "AtiConfig=Nomascus"
- All other frame buffer values like Verbet or Uakari did not eliminate the flicker. This value may vary from 5870 model to model so you might have to experiment some to find the right frame buffer value. A complete list of frame buffer values are at the end of this post. These and the AtiFb command are case sensitive values.

I now appear to have a perfecting functioning Hackintosh free of glitches and system freezes - hooray!

Some Cinebench numbers:
- MSI Hawk GTX460 - 37fps (50s on Win7)
- Gigabyte ATI 5870 - 42 fps (70s on Win7- whoa!)

AtiFb values:

Alopias
Alouatta
Baboon
Cardinal
Caretta
Colobus
Douc
Eulemur
Flicker
Galago
Gliff
Hoolock
Hypoprion
Iago
Kakapo
Kipunji
Lamna
Langur
Megalodon
Motmot
Nomascus
Peregrine
Quail
Raven
Shrike
Sphyrna
Triakis
Uakari
Vervet
Zonalis

 

[galael]

An update:
I'm still getting some screen flicker although it's tolerable. If anyone has a flicker-free 5870 install, I'd love to hear how you accomplished it.

Galael

 

[joshua90009]

I HOPE THIS WILL HELP LITTLE. I CHECK USER DSDT,SYSTEM UTILITI,ATI EXP,64 BIT APPLE BOOT,RUN AND SHUTDOWN. SWAP MY GTS 250 TO HD 5770 AND START MY HACKINTOSH 100% WORKING

 

[galael]

Re-reading the DSDT was a good idea but alas! It did not help the flicker.

I might have found the right frame buffer setting, however.

For one thing, the correct key to set is AtiConfig and not AtiFb (AtiFb was deprecated).

AtiConfig=Nomascus might have done the trick. Nomascus is a fairly new frame buffer value that wasn't in my original list. I'm flicker free so far.

30 minutes and not a single flicker. I think this is he right setting for the Gigabyte 5870. Time will tell.

Galael

 

[Connie Mac]

Galael, do you have any tips for a clean install? I cannot seem to get my hackintosh to boot when I replace my 9800 with a Sapphire 5870/2GB card. I choose the ATI bootloader, but cannot reboot, even with -x or the iBoot disc.

Thanks.

 

[sfroom]

Galael, do you have any tips for a clean install? I cannot seem to get my hackintosh to boot when I replace my 9800 with a Sapphire 5870/2GB card. I choose the ATI bootloader, but cannot reboot, even with -x or the iBoot disc.

Thanks.

The EyeFinity cards have poor compatibility. What do you mean when you say that you cannot reboot? Do you get to the Chameleon prompt? Apple logo, then black screen? Try experimenting with framebufffers, otherwise, another member on this forum might have experience with the Eyefinity 6 5870's, but I don't believe they're supported.

 

[Connie Mac]

The EyeFinity cards have poor compatibility. What do you mean when you say that you cannot reboot? Do you get to the Chameleon prompt? Apple logo, then black screen?

With either a boot from the hard drive or the iBoot CD I get to the gray screen with the spinning gray bars (not a kernel panic beach ball) and no further. I've tried -x and the same thing happens.

Try experimenting with framebufffers, otherwise, another member on this forum might have experience with the Eyefinity 6 5870's, but I don't believe they're supported.

Hmm, that would be a bummer. I got the card for a very good price. Thanks, though.

 

[ghorwith]

Galael, do you have any tips for a clean install? I cannot seem to get my hackintosh to boot when I replace my 9800 with a Sapphire 5870/2GB card. I choose the ATI bootloader, but cannot reboot, even with -x or the iBoot disc.

Thanks.

The EyeFinity cards have poor compatibility. What do you mean when you say that you cannot reboot? Do you get to the Chameleon prompt? Apple logo, then black screen? Try experimenting with framebufffers, otherwise, another member on this forum might have experience with the Eyefinity 6 5870's, but I don't believe they're supported.

I experienced a similar problem when switching cards. Required a reinstall of 10.6.6 update with the new card installed. My conclusion, admittedly biased by a sample size of 1, is that the update installs some drivers or other software based on the display card being used during the update (for arguments sake, let's call this an "undocumented feature").

 

[MrShoot]

I galael,

Thanks for the post. Quick question, maybe you are able to help.

I installed Snow Leopard using my 8800GTS. I then installed EasyBeast + System Utilities + Nvidia injector and now I am running at 1900x1200 native resolution (looks freaking gorgeous) Anyway... I was wondering, what should I do in my case when I have a stable system working but just want to switch cards now?

I'm afraid that just installing an ATI bootloader will mess up my installation. What do you recommend I should I?

 

[ghorwith]

I galael,

Thanks for the post. Quick question, maybe you are able to help.

I installed Snow Leopard using my 8800GTS. I then installed EasyBeast + System Utilities + Nvidia injector and now I am running at 1900x1200 native resolution (looks freaking gorgeous) Anyway... I was wondering, what should I do in my case when I have a stable system working but just want to switch cards now?

I'm afraid that just installing an ATI bootloader will mess up my installation. What do you recommend I should I?

Well, since my experience is n=1, I'd love to see if this is a real issue. To do that, I would simply swap the card, run MultiBeast again, and see if everything works. If it does, then I would say my experience was unique to the cards I tried. If however, you get a kp then we know it's something that would benefit others. Even with a kp, you should be able to boot with iBoot cd, re-install 10.6.6 and select the appropriate options from MultiBeast.