macOS Sierra PB: Need testers for new AMD Radeon drivers!

[justr]

Getting the Sierra beta today and will begin working on installing it soon! (In school right now, taking all my time haha) But if you all interested I will post all my work with the Fury X.

Yes, of course we're interested!

 

[Intelmaster]

Hey Guys,

i hope i am not disappointing you with my noobish question.

I am looking for a cheap, real Mac Pro 4,1 on eBay which i want to Upgrade to a 5.1 one. (Its possible and easy to realize due to a patcher from netkas).

But I want to upgrade the Graphic Card to a AMD RX460. Do i need to use the Clover Bootloader tool too, to run the AMD Graphic Card with Full Acceleration and Metal Support or should the Card running native OOTB ?

 

[ky91]

Hey Guys,

i hope i am not disappointing you with my noobish question.

I am looking for a cheap, real Mac Pro 4,1 on eBay which i want to Upgrade to a 5.1 one. (Its possible and easy to realize due to a patcher from netkas).

But I want to upgrade the Graphic Card to a AMD RX460. Do i need to use the Clover Bootloader tool too, to run the AMD Graphic Card with Full Acceleration and Metal Support or should the Card running native OOTB ?

I don't think you would need Clover Bootloader on a real Mac since AMD Radeon Drivers (or Kext) is included in MacOS itself, just plug it in and it works (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202027), theres no need to install third party driver like Nvidia Maxwell Cards does, but the hardest part is to find RX 460 that matches correct Framebuffer, Reference Port Layout, & dev id. And since the reference RX460 doesn't available, and Next generation of Mac (and also final version of MacOS Sierra) Haven't come out yet, is hard to confirm which card works.
for more info please refer to the thread below.
Radeon Compatibility Guide - ATI/AMD Graphics Cards

 

[matryska]

Ok, I've made some more tests... and i was some kind of successfull!

...

Now i just got one problem: even if Primary Grafikadopter is set to "Onboard", system allways started from RX460 as primary card when Monitor is connecte to both internal HD530 and RX460, which results in NO GO. It only works when HD530 is really the primary or only GFX-card detected on PowerOn System or Reset System.

This really does sound like it needs to be renamed GFX1 via DSDT.
Whenever you have integrated graphics activated as primary, it must be GFX0 thereby pushing the RX460 to GFX1 which makes it work.
It even shows as GFX0 in IORegistryExplorer above - make it GFX1 and let us know how you go.

 

[edlvox]

So did a clean install, just to see how smooth it could go, minimal settings, normal injection of the X400 for the RX and Toleda script for sound, and honestly this is amazing, finally got the time to install Photoshop, Illustrator, Blender and Motion (have to install Maya/Mudbox/Smoke but need a free afternoon for the test), Adobe apps worked as expected without problem (including the RX 480 being detected as an Elsemere prototype), opened my files and worked on production level modifications at full speed.

Motion worked really great including previews full hd (need to compare the render times but again need a free afternoon for this).

Additionally moved the desktop to the living room, so I connected it to the 4k tv, and it works! I felt a bit of lag on the OS, not sure if it was just the mouse resolution, nevertheless tested basic functionality and didn't found any issue, including video playback of youtube 4k content on safari and chrome (interestingly chrome on windows didn't play at 4k but it does on edge), and it looks amazing, bellow are a couple images of the 4k tv working (sorry bad picture but wanted more than an screenshot in this case) and Motion at 1080p:

http://imgur.com/a/immCv
http://i.imgur.com/thucqs7.jpg

 

[Mork_vom_Ork]

This really does sound like it needs to be renamed GFX1 via DSDT.
Whenever you have integrated graphics activated as primary, it must be GFX0 thereby pushing the RX460 to GFX1 which makes it work. It even shows as GFX0 in IORegistryExplorer above - make it GFX1 and let us know how you go.

No matter if DSDT got changed/edited: tried it with GFX0, GFX1, IGPU <--- still NO GO.
Also tried to change GFX-Policy for iMac17,1 changed from "Config2" to "none" <--- still NO GO.

It just worx, if onboard INTEL is set to main GFX - otherwise allways black screen.
My thought is, that we have to patch the AMDRadeonX4000.kext bin somewhere to get the acceleration enabled when RX4x0 is used as one-and-only GFX.

 

[Fl0r!an]

Would be interesting to test this on a genuine MacPro. The infamous Tonga issue (boot to black screen unless iGPU = primary) doesn't exist there, so it can likely be fixed with a DSDT edit on stock kexts. Sadly no one found the difference yet...

 

[illudiumQ]

@Mork_vom_Ork, I'm glad to hear you got the RX 460 to work! Did you ever manage to get the RX 480 to do anything?

 

[Mork_vom_Ork]

@Mork_vom_Ork, I'm glad to hear you got the RX 460 to work! Did you ever manage to get the RX 480 to do anything?

Didn't tried that so far - would like to get the RX460 work w/o the use of internal HD530 GFX to work properly first.
Otherwise it doesn't make much sense for me work on different problems at the same time.

Thats cause i dont use the section "Graphic" within the config.plist . I use instead the ARBITRARRY Function within the DEVICES section to make my Hardware work. And it is very frustrating to make all these changes in config.plist w/o any usefull result

 

[Mork_vom_Ork]

So this is my UNIGINE HEAVEN Benchmark with my Sapphire RX460 NITRO (with IGPU enabled):

You decide, if this is good or bad. Was my first benchmark under macOS, so i have no other results to compare.