Noob help for Macbook Pro graphics softmod

[24Chromium]

Hello folks,

 

I've got an aluminium 17" MacBook Pro with ATI Radeon X1600 graphics. I use Boot Camp to boot Windows XP so I can run 3D solids modeling CAD s/w.

 

I've been reading how others have updated their graphics driver so that they can "fool" the machine into thinking they actually have a FireGL V5200 GPU chip. This sounds great! However, when I tried it, I couldn't get it to work. I got some sort of error message stating something to the effect that my driver was incompatible. I'm guessing my problem is one of two things. 1 - the hacked file I was using is about three years old. Maybe MS or Apple updated something in the mean time that won't allow this hack to work any longer. 2 - Maybe I missed an important step. I'm pretty clueless on the Windows side of the world, so I need more than a little spoon feeding of all the details.

 

Can anyone help?

[BOXXLABS]

what is your goal for hacking your video card?

[24Chromium]

As I stated, my goal is to "upgrade" the graphics capabilities to that of the ATI FireGL V5200 (or whatever GPU is the equivalent for the Radeon X1600). My ultimate goal is to have much better graphics performance while running 3D CAD s/w when booted in Windows XP via Boot Camp. Does that help explain it?

[martincg]

hello, i think you will be maybe dissapointed - i had soft-quadros from older geforces 5900 and 6800 - in practice speed was just bit better - but some drivers futures for quadro were unlocked

 

- and sure, you will need quadro drivers for max too /for nvidia it is maxtreme, I dont know what is for radeon

 

- here is very good forum how to do it: http://forums.guru3d.com/index.php

 

try to search in forum: softquadro or softmod

 

actually quadro and geforce series are same hardware - just different drivers - so i think with radeon it is simillar

Edited June 11, 2009 by martincg

[24Chromium]

I got the driver to work finally. Yeah! However, now I have a new and different problem.

 

I attempted the driver update once more. However, this time I unplugged my laptop from all the other stuff plugged into it. Then when I did the driver swap, it magically worked. Solidworks rendered my model as promised - nice! Then, I shut down the laptop and plugged it back into my "normal" set-up. Mainly, an Apple 23" Cinema Display (all aluminum enclosure with a DVI connector - one generation old now). Now, however, only the laptop display works. When I bring up the Control Panel and try to change the settings, there is no external monitor even showing up! And when I look at the available resolution setting (my 23" uses 1920 x 1200), the maximum available to me is less (whatever the resolution is on this 17" laptop display).

 

That explains why I couldn't get the modified driver to work before. I had the 23" plugged in and I guess that the driver couldn't figure out what the display was, hence the error message.

 

So, my question now is... how can I get the modified driver to recognize the 23" display _and_ drive only that one it when it's plugged it (laptop display is turned off)?

[AJLynn]

Oh hell, that softmod topic must be 2 years old at least You need to ask this question on a forum like Guru3D that's full of people who do this sort of thing, because I'd be surprised if anybody on here were currently using that hack.

 

Did you get the right driver version for the mod? Did you copy the text of the .ini file I used or make your own? I'll be damned if I can really remember how to do this but I think you needed to have 2 lines in there for FireGL and I don't remember whether I got that working right.

 

Also, the FireGL driver uses a default clock speed that's higher than what Apple defaults to - Apple downclocked the video card. This may or may not cause heat problems, so you may need to use something like ATITrayTool to drop the clock by maybe 50 MHz.