Flashing Sapphire HD 7950 Boost to Mac Edition

[Imperator]

OK. in this case maybe the guy who edited your BIOS missed the logo.
The only thing that matter for me is that time spent until you have a picture. Way too long.
I believe it is more like a copy of the original one.
Made in china but only a copy.
Maybe i am wrong

 

[emojo5]

Is there a way to read the current BIOS to see what that reads?
-emojo5

Here is a whole shot of the back of the card. It does kind of look like the HD 7950 card on the siteAMD Radeon 7950 page you sent me to. Though my card has an "X" shaped heat sink on it.

 

[Imperator]

As i said earlier, you should put the card in a windows environment.
There you install GPU-z.
With that app you can save your BIOS.
Then you will use a BIOS editor to see what you have.
Cheers

 

[emojo5]

Thanks Impero.
I found the GPU-Z app (v2.43.0). Now I need to get help from a friend to use his PC to run it.
Question. Can I run Boot camp on my Mac Pro and access GPU-x that way or is it better to just use a PC for this?
Thanks so much to everyone who helped me with these questions.
-emojo5

 

[Imperator]

I believe you can.
I didn't tried GPU-z on boot camp.
So it is time to test it.

 

[imrazor]

GPU-Z should work fine in Boot Camp. Boot Camp is just Windows with a few custom Apple drivers. The standard AMD drivers work fine with Boot Camp, which should allow you to fully access your GPU. One thing to be aware of is that AMD no longer officially support the 7950, so you may have to download legacy drivers from amd.com.

However...official Boot Camp support for the old Mac Pro is only for Windows 7 I believe. To get Windows 10 working I had to do a 'normal' install of Windows, then look up some guides to download Apple's special drivers for Windows 10.

 

[emojo5]

Thanks for the heads-up on boot camp. I'll watch for that.
-emojo5

 

[emojo5]

Well. I needed to put this project on hold for awhile during the madness of the last year. Finally getting back to it.

I finally was able to borrow a friends PC to check out what is on this video card. Attached is what I found. Any suggestions about flashing this card would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
-emojo5

 

[imrazor]

The closest match to your card I found was this one: https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-hd-7950-monica-bios-1.c3076

Note that this version only 1536 shaders, whereas your Gpu-Z shot shows 1792 cores. Seems like either 1) somebody tried to unlock the blocked off shaders in the Monica 1 or 2) tried to overclock a slower card.

the solution would be to try to flash a stock bios and see if it works. If your BIOS is trying to unlock defective cores it might explain the weird behavior you’re seeing. Ditto if he tried to apply an over ambitious overclock. Maybe someone with more experience can zero in what the original card was.

oh definitely backup the bios you’ve got before trying anything!

 

[emojo5]

Thanks for your help.
Could you suggest where I might find "a stock bios to flash" And what app could I use to backup my current bios?
Thanks for your help and understanding. This would be my first time attempting this. I'm going to take it slowly.
-emojo5

 

[imrazor]

GPU-Z will let you back up your BIOS. Below the radeon logo, just to the left of the UEFI check box is a square with an arrow next to it. Clicking on that should copy your BIOS to your hard drive. I believe the AMD/ATI radeon flashing tools will also let you back up your BIOS, though the process may be a little more complicated.

By searching the interwebs for some of the part numbers on the back of your card, I came up with this 7950 variant (look at the "P/N code" on the webpage):
https://videocardz.net/amd-radeon-hd-7950

And it looks like this (unverified) BIOS would be the correct one to re-flash your card with:

AMD Radeon HD 7950 | VideoCardz.net

VideoCardz.net Graphics Cards Database

videocardz.net

Note that this one has the same number of shaders as your screenshot of GPU-Z, but a clock speed of 800Mhz. It looks like either the wrong BIOS was used as the basis for your MacEFI ROM, or the modder who flashed it was trying for an overclock.

That said, I'd feel much better if one of the more experienced forum members would chime in and verify my detective work.

 

[Imperator]

Hello

ATI HD 7950 VBIOS

3 GB GDDR5, 925 MHz GPU, 1250 MHz Memory

www.techpowerup.com

Default clock speed for all BIOS-es is 850 but OC speed is 925. This was implemented by ATI, it was not modded by the owner

 

[imrazor]

@impero Thanks for clarifying. I don't want to steer @emojo5 in the wrong direction.