Enzino

Hmm, I don't know, at least not for sure... quite some things can affect driver compatibility, e.g. the VBIOS, the hardware IDs etc. The VBIOS should be compatible with the normal and FirePro drivers. The question is whether the Mac OS drivers work with the FirePro VBIOS. Can you quickly check the hardware string of your card, e.g. with HWiNFO or check the device manager.

I'd say check your hardware ID and post it here. And then give it a try... that's the easiest way for such things (imo), trial and error... I simply don't have all the information about how exactly driver installation, compatibility checks etc. work, most things I've accomplished with my cards were kind of "learning by doing".

Windows should boot fine on your system with the FirePro VBIOS, then you can install the drivers. The question is whether the Mac OS GPU driver will still be doing its job... chances are that it works, if not we might find a way by modifying a hardware ID in the VBIOS.

Thank you very much for your help, as soon as I finish current projects , I will try the solution that you suggested and I'll publish the results of my tests on this page.

(my clients would not be pleased if I can not work because of a computer crash, they do not understand )

Here is my Hardware ID:

Hmm, I'm no expert when it comes to Mac OS or generally spoken unix-like systems. Driver compatibility is still a common issue. There should be Linux drivers for the FirePro Series, but I never heard about Mac OS drivers.

Exactly .. so far Apple has never released FirePro drivers.

Did you already try the mod with the Apple 6970m?

I have not had time to do tests on my graphics card yet..

The regular 6970m have the same hardware ID as the FirePro M8900, this means it might be possible to use a regular Radeon HD driver with a M8900. I haven't tried this yet, my 6970m isn't in my system at the moment.

Can you check the hardware ID of your card? Post a GPU-Z screenshot, or a copy of your VBIOS.

This is my iMac system booted in Win7x64 via Boot Camp

The hardware id seems to be the same as the rest of the technical characteristics with the exception of Subvendor.

In case the hardware ID is the same and the Apple driver works with the M8900 VBIOS there wouldn't be any need to flash the card all the time.

How would I know if the Mac OS X drivers for Apple's 6970m will also work on the M8900 VBIOS modified version even before trying to flash the VBIOS? You know, prevent is better than cure..

Otherwise I can't really help, the only other way I can think of would be reflashing the card everytime you boot to another OS. Flashing is a quick process, but there's always a slight chance of failure... I never had issues with it, but there's no warranty that you never get any corruption while programming the VBIOS chip.

I had already thought of this possibility, but I do not think is healthy for the chip card and also impractical for me that often switch from one system to another.

Another option would be a hardware mod, but you probably don't really want to do this. You could simply install a second VBIOS chip with another VBIOS on it and modify your card in a way that you have a switch which lets you choose between the two chips.

This is another great idea, shame that I have no knowledge to be able to face such a sophisticated transformation.

I look forward to a new opinion after you have assessed the data of the screenshot above.

In any case thanks for your time!

Hello svl7 & Star Forge,

I am new to the forum and I joined to find a way to do the softmod on my iMac 27 2011.

I am a technical illustrator and to achieve many of my designs often use CAD software like Solid Edge, SolidWorks, Inventor and 3DVIAComposer.

Your solution is spectacular for owners of personal computers that use mainly traditional Microsoft operating systems.

In my case I could still apply the changes to the BIOS, but lose the ability to restart in Mac OS X, since up to now there is no driver for the FirePro series (up to now, Apple does not install on their systems FirePro graphics cards).

I already tried in other forums, but I realized that if you do not have the updated patchscript compatible with the related driver, you have little chance of success.

Since I can not find suitable patchscript, I was wondering if you could give me some advice on how to find one or suggest a safe way to apply the method You described to flash back and forth (Win7 x64 > Mac OS X) without destroying the graphic chip (replace the iMac's graphics card could be very expensive).

Probably in my case I have to wait for the release of a new patchscript, however I also wanted to ask the opinion of a professional like You.

Latest AMD FirePro M8900 driver from Autodesk

8.83.5.3_Win7_A02_R304146

iMac 27 2011 specifications:

3.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7

16GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4x4GB

1TB Serial ATA Drive

AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2GB GDDR5

Mac OS X Leopard 10.6.8

Windows 7 Ultimate x64 (Boot Camp 3.3)

I hope I was clear and I thank you again for the wonderful guide You wrote.