Gigabyte Z77 G1.Sniper 3 For a Hackintosh?

[samisnake]

sli wont work in osx, but you can have both of the cards connected.
in windows youll get the benefit of sli, in osx youll get the power of one of the cards.

you can redownload the lion install app from the MAS, http://osxdaily.com/2011/08/02/re-download-mac-os-x-lion-from-app-store/
however, the 6xx cards arent supported in lion. youll want mountain lion.
also, the ivy bridge cpus arent yet compatible in lion (at least not from the app store version).
to get ivy cpus working in lion, youd need to use bridgehelper (which installs the kernel, pm kext, and a couple of graphics kexts from the 2012 macbook update).
imo itd be better/easier to use mountain lion than trying to use lion.

use a seperate hard drive for windows.
there are ways to get windows and osx on the same drive, but if possible keep the two seperate.

 

[epetersson]

Alright, that's great!

So from what I understand, I won't have any issues on my sabertooth and ivy bridge if I go eith lion? Audio will work, internet will work, I will be able to use all iLife programs?

 

[samisnake]

mountain lion, not lion, and yes to those questions

 

[epetersson]

My bad, I was thinking of Mountain Lion

That's bloody fantastic! Thank you very much for your help, much appreciated

 

[denour]

The audio now works if you install the audio universal from multibeast from ML

 

[gunnar]

Success: GA-Z77 G1.Sniper M3 / Core i7 3770K / ZOTAC GEFORCE GT640 Zone Edition / Mountain Lion 10.8.2

My beloved GA-Z68MX-UD2H-B3 died some days ago from the ATX power supply throwing an arc (blue spark) across a failing mains switch ("welding noise…") which it seems caused power supply spikes. Not sure yet to what extent there is damage but the motherboard does not turn on the power enable signal to the power supply. So I had to find a route to cure my battered soul.

My setup is originally based on a "Nofen Corporation" A43 set of passive cooler and its Dragon Slayer style of case along with a likewise silent power supply. My aim has been to accomplishing a dead silent machine with no moving parts for audio recording and low noise computing and this has been running nicely for a year on the Z68MX with Ubuntu and later OSX Lion.

I was desperate to get moving following the frozen Z68MX. To get some comparison material I went for a Seasonic silent ATX power supply and a Gigabyte "Z77 G1.Sniper M3" board that happened to be in stock at a local store a late sunday evening. Also I went for a Core i7-3770K CPU. So I now had a slew of new technology involved as well. I followed the DualBios EFI setting instructions on this forum and could boot from a Unibeast USB drive to install the purchased Mountain Lion on a blank formatted SSD.
Already on the Z68MX I had been successful on Mountain Lion with a Zotac Geforce GT 640 "Zone Edition" passively cooled graphics card that can display an extended desktop over up to three screens (2x DVI + 1 mini-HDMI). After the clean Mountain Lion install that card is up and running. I run the HDMI onto a Sony Google TV set at 1920x1080 and the triple head possibility is just wonderful. The machine must be declared a MacPro 3.1 in order to allow three displays as well as accepting installing the NVidia driver. I have success with Retail-304-2.00.05f02-macosx.dmg

I tested now standby/resume works flawlessly on the Sniper with keyboard key to turning back on. I was amazed to see this work after all earlier issues.

The universal audio of Multibeast for now gets the Voodoo audio driver running that enables analog surround audio out a Logitech Z609 5+1 speaker set and the unsupported optical out is not that much of an issue for now. Will be cool if someone finds a way to select the SPDIF but analog is sweet as well with the surround. The toslink infrared LED is on so I assume it would be mostly an issue of selecting the proper audio path in hardware to have the audio render over optical.
I am excited how all this is working now on the Sniper M3 with so minor issues in getting there. All the hints here proved priceless.
At first glance the Sniper is not the most natural choice of motherboard given it was made as a gaming motherboard for a Windows community and was getting a pessimistic tonymacx86 support forecast due to the exotic audio hw. The marketing says

"Onboard Creative’s top-of-the-line Sound Blaster X-Fi Digital Audio Processor with X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity and EAX Advanced HD 5.0 technologies gives you the highest caliber audio experience"

I will prepare a guide soon of the steps taken. Could be I revert back to the NOFEN power supply once I have replaced the power switch. As some reviewers out there have remarked the Seasonic passively cooled power supply (although superb quality) emit a very faint buzz from its switching electronics, while the NOFEN supply is truly silent. It can be a factor to care for when I begin recording using condenser mikes which pick up just about any noise there is including refrigerators, power supplies, moving feet and more.

 

[zoltantroll]

I eagerly await your tutorial!!!

 

[Going Bald]

At first glance the Sniper is not the most natural choice of motherboard given it was made as a gaming motherboard for a Windows community and was getting a pessimistic tonymacx86 support forecast due to the exotic audio hw.

IIRC I read somewhere you could use either ALC892 or ALC898 (I forget which) in OS X for this audio HW.

 

[samisnake]

IIRC I read somewhere you could use either ALC892 or ALC898 (I forget which) in OS X for this audio HW.

you thinking of the SupremeFX audio used on some asus rog boards, which is just a rebranded alc898 chip?.
the creative audio on the g1 sniper can only use voodoo

 

[gunnar]

I got Voodoo working with the analog rear output. I see on other forums people have been doing this voodoo stuff for some time and have the SPDIF going. I will look into what makes up the voodoo kext. A writeup of my recipe comes later this week.

EDIT: I forgot a great workaround
Plugging in a "Terratec Aureon Dual USB" stick in one of the USB jacks.
That cheap stick (has optical and analog out) is instantly recognized by OSX without the need for any driver. I use it on my iMac G4 to turn it into a hifi Spotify jukebox. It shows up in the Audio control panel as "USB PnP Sound Device". Perfect as optical out for now with the Sniper board.