[Updated] Install a Radeon HD 4890 PC in a Mac Pro Without Flashing It!

We were dreaming about it, and Netkas did. Originating from the Hackintosh projects, those "extensions" can be installed on most PC version of Radeon without requiring to flash the BIOS of those cards. How does it work? In summary, those extensions works like the EFI code and force the card to be recognized by the Mac and to have them active in Mac OS X. Hereafter are results obtained after installing a Radeon HD 4890 PC version in a Mac Pro 2008:

Hereafter is the procedure to get to this point:

• Install Radeon HD 48x0 drivers shipping with Mac Pro 2009: http://www.sendspace.com/file/gvsi12
• Install extensions allowing recognition of those PC version cards: http://rapidshare.de/files/46982841/ATI_Init.pkg.html
• Install patched extension to activate 3D acceleration (only for cards not recognized by the system as HD 4890):  http://rapidshare.de/files/46893369/accel.tar.bz2.html You can also for those cards use the application kexthelper.

This procedure works with most Radeon: HD 4870, 4870X2 (recognized as 2 HD 4870), HD 3870, HD 4890, ... On our card, the first DVI works perfectly as a DVI Dual Link port, while the second one is only a single link. Beside this detail, everything is just working fine. Unlike with the Mac Edition card, such extension-activated card is becoming only active during the loading of Mac OS X and all components, and not immediately after the boot. This could be a problem is you want to boot from another partition or as a single users, however, it is so much easier than flashing the original BIOS of the card, that it should be considered by most users.

[update] With the release of Mac OS X 10.5.7, one does not need the previous non-official drivers provided for Radeon HD 48x0 with Mac Pro 2009. Thanks to Netkas, patched extensions are now available, you simply need to download and install the following package: http://rapidshare.de/files/47140484/...cards.pkg.html. without this patch, you will not benefit from Quartz acceleration.