Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Installing a PCI Nvidia 8400 GS graphics card on a D945GCLF

Otherwise known as how to really screw up your OSX Leopard Installation

Because the onboard Intel GMA950 video card on my Intel D945GCLF isn’t able to decode Hulu video smoothly (jumps and jerks) I got the brilliant idea to purchase a Sparkle Nvidia 8400 GS 256 meg PCI video card for my Hackintosh, this should give it a nice little boost, and OSX Likes Nvidia graphics cards right?

WRONG!

I have reloaded my system twice now, and have tried adding EFI strings for my video card, and have tried Netkas’s ATY_Init Injector found here http://netkas.org/?p=107

without either of these methods I get a 1024x768 display with severe visual artifacts, smears,etc. on screen.

after I use either method to get my 8400 gs recognized by the system I lose system stability. My system randomly freezes for no apparent reason. After doing a little research I determined that OSX is recognizing my PCI video card as a PCI Express video card and this most likely is why OSX is flipping out.

Thank god for Carbon Copy Cloner, I cloned my hard drive on my hackintosh before I installed the new video card so this evening I will be removing this PCI video card and then restoring my hard drive to before the new card was installed, this will put me back to when my system ran great other than the hulu problem.

 

Anyone want to buy a used 8400 GS PCI video card???

4 comments:

Harry McLaughlin said...

I thought about doing the same thing on a 945GCLF2 Hackintosh- I'm glad I didn't try it.

I don't think OSX supports PCI graphics cards, or at least not with PC hardware. At least I recall reading that on a forum somewhere, but never tried to verify it. Very interesting that you got it to work at all.

Doctor Evil 30564 said...

I'm thinking about trying it again but with a higher wattage power supply. I'm not sure what the recommended wattage is for this video card. It doesn't have the power connector on it like most of the pci-express cards have. I've been eyeballing a new ATX power supply to go in my hackintosh, something that has SATA connectors on it, and around 500 or so watts. I may even get one with one of those cool light up LED fans just for the "bling" factor. *grins*

Steven said...

hey have you tried it out? i know the 9600 gt pci card requires a 350 watt powersupply. 500 is overkill. for an atom board..

im wondering cuz im looking at this board again. and i would like to have ion-par graphics.

Doctor Evil 30564 said...

Steven, I did change out the power suppy for a 500 watt Java power ATX Power supply from APEVIA that I got a frys, and got the same results. I haven't messed with it again since my last attempt.