AMD HD7950 Mac Edition question

[Steve H.]

Hello all,

 

I've posted on these forums before and you guys have been very helpful so thanks for that.

 

I have a friend that has a HD7950 Mac Edition and he wants to trade it with my aging GTX560Ti Direct CU II because he has one of these already and he wants to do an SLI. I have obviously said yes since that's a free upgrade but here's the catch from what I've read I should be able to crossflash a MAC 7950 to a "normal" 7950, the only difference between the cards, from what I've read on some forums is that the mac edition doesn't have that dual bios switch on the top of the card that the "normal" 7950s have and obviously the BIOS. I've seen people flashing mac bioses to GTX680s and 7950s so this basically should work without a problem in my mind.

 

Has anyone here on the forums did this before? Flash a MAC "only" card with a retail bios? I told my friend to flash it himself and tell me the results but he isn't really into computers so much and he's afraid of breaking it. He installed the card in his computer but nothing shows up on the screen maybe because the motherboard does not know how to identify the card properly since it has the mac bios on it. He told me that he's sending the card over next week so I can fiddle with it. Flashing should be straight forward since I'll be using my 560Ti as my primary card while plugging this bad boy in the second PCIex slot from my Maximus V Gene.

 

So what do you guys think? Is it worth a shot? Will this work?

 

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[RainColt]

if this is the card then yeah I don't know where the switch is but Elric says it's there and I believe him

[Steve H.]

This one is red and black and doesn't have that dual bios switch. My friend told me that this card was taken out of a 2012 Mac Pro.

[RainColt]

yikes, sorry mate, not a mac user and that was the only card for a mac that I knew of, hopefully someone else has more experience with mac.

[papeles]

Brand of the card? Momery it has?

You can check  http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/index.php?architecture=ATI&manufacturer=&model=HD+7950&interface=PCI-E&memType=GDDR5&memSize=

see if there is a BIOS for your specific card. Other then that, i believe you could try talking to the brand's support and ask about it.

[Steve H.]

It's an AMD OEM card, 3GB of GDDR5 RAM, don't know the ram manufacturer but it's either Hynix or Elpida, will see more when it arrives and I take off the cooling. Basically it's the same with a reference retail model. My friend says that it was 800MHz Core and 1250MHz Memory when it was functioning in the Mac Pro.

[papeles]

It's an AMD OEM card, 3GB of GDDR5 RAM, don't know the ram manufacturer but it's either Hynix or Elpida, will see more when it arrives and I take off the cooling. Basically it's the same with a reference retail model. My friend says that it was 800MHz Core and 1250MHz Memory when it was functioning in the Mac Pro.

probably one of these? http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/index.php?architecture=ATI&manufacturer=ATI&model=HD+7950&interface=PCI-E&memType=GDDR5&memSize=

 

Anyways, there is just a tweak you need to do in a ram, in order to make it work normally on pc's.

 

http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,5619.0.html   check here if there is some information that is usefull to you.

[Steve H.]

Yes, looks like that.

 

Btw, the second link you've posted is for Macs, it's basically a modded mac bios and it doubles the link speed. I believe that's a mac bios limitation on the card and will most probably disappear after I rewrite the bios.

[Steve H.]

Just a heads up for you guys if you're ever in need of such info. The card arrived some time ago and did flash a retail BIOS onto it but failed to post on the forums because I had little spare time. It works perfectly.