Guide: Dell XPS 8500

[lunarmouse]

Hi JHM,

Is the NVDIA card working right out of the box? I ordered an XPS8500 w/GT640, some naive questions:
1. During installation do I need to take the GT640 card out, or just leave it as-is and connect the monitor with HD4000 using GraphicEnabler=No option?
2. After reboot to the actual OSX system, should I change the GraphicEnabler=Yes in order to use GT640?

Thanks very much!

 

[Riderat]

Hey there
I wasn't intending on hacintoshing when I originally bought my XPS8500. So ordered it with the ATI HD 7770 graphics card and left it on during the Hacintosh process.
But was able to run through the whole hacintosh process using the HD400 on-board video with the "GraphicsEnabler=No" option and the ATI HD7770 card stayed on the M/B the whole time. Just no monitor connected to it.

Im not sure, but if your using an GT640, if you can utilize it during the Hackintosh process or the HD4000. But the GraphicsEnabler option should be very useful. To either use the GT640 with it set to "yes" or the HD4000 with it set to "no"

Only after getting the system up & running did I go out an buy a NVidia GTX550 Ti graphics Card. And it did work out of the box almost effortlessly. Plugged it in, set GraphicsEnabler to "yes"

As I have a dual-monitor setup., I seem to recall that there was a bit of an issue after initial boot-up after installing the card with which video controller/graphics card the Primary monitor was plugged into on boot-up. But if I remember correctly, at least one monitor came up but would either have or have no login screen. So it was just a case of powering down, swapping the monitor connections and re-booting.
Then after able to login, using the system preferences/display setting to swap primary monitors etc

Good luck, this thread was extremely helpful to me.

 

[lunarmouse]

Hey there

Hi thanks very much for your input! Now things are pretty clear and straightforward to me, can't wait to hackintosh it

 

[JHM]

Lunarmouse,

Caveat: I am new at this. But I think you should first try leaving the GT640 card in. In my experience, it was detected and identified normally and required no drivers or anything else; truly worked "out of the box".

I used GraphicsEnabler=No but frankly not certain about this.

You may have bought one of the ultimate easy hackintoshes BTW. The WiFi will never work, according to Leonowski, as the WiFi chip is not supported. And some of my USB ports aren't working (have not had time to explore this). But otherwise stable and required very few tweaks.

Good luck

J

 

[JHM]

Here's a screenshot from multi beast that i used.

 

[lunarmouse]

Hi guys, thanks for all your inputs and I finally managed to install OSX on the XPS8500. However mine Mountain Lion is 10.8.2 and after installation I could only get into the system in safe mode (i.e. 1024X768 resolution, cannot install 3rd party software, etc.) by adding GraphicsEnabler=No -x .

 

[hawkscorpion]

Got my 8500 up and running great on ML. Only trouble I'm having now is with the USB3 ports. Same problem describe elsewhere.. The system profiler detects the Super Speed USB but nothing plugged into them seems to work.

I find the VoodooHDA driver really noisy and that it has pretty terrible quality. The AppleHDA provided in the latest Multibeast (5.0.2) works very well for the Realtek ALC 887 codec in the 8500. No crackling or hiss. See attached for my selection in Multibeast. I get sound from the rear green port when I select "Internal Speakers" in the Output section of the Sound Pref panel. Plugging some headphones into the port on the top of the 8500 auto-switches the output to Headphones like you'd expect (want).

Can't test the top mic or multi-channel, but I'm fairly sure they work. The "Internal microphone" switches to "Line in" when I put my headphones into the "mic" port on top of the 8500. I don't have a discrete 3.5mm microphone kicking around to confirm 100% though.

 

[lunarmouse]

Got my 8500 up and running great on ML. Only trouble I'm having now is with the USB3 ports. Same problem describe elsewhere.. The system profiler detects the Super Speed USB but nothing plugged into them seems to work.

I find the VoodooHDA driver really noisy and that it has pretty terrible quality. The AppleHDA provided in the latest Multibeast (5.0.2) works very well for the Realtek ALC 887 codec in the 8500. No crackling or hiss. See attached for my selection in Multibeast. I get sound from the rear green port when I select "Internal Speakers" in the Output section of the Sound Pref panel. Plugging some headphones into the port on the top of the 8500 auto-switches the output to Headphones like you'd expect (want).

Can't test the top mic or multi-channel, but I'm fairly sure they work. The "Internal microphone" switches to "Line in" when I put my headphones into the "mic" port on top of the 8500. I don't have a discrete 3.5mm microphone kicking around to confirm 100% though.

View attachment 34226

Hi hawkscropion, did you install Mountain Lion 10.8 or 10.8.2? I tried 10.8.2 but got no luck, could only enter system in safe mode.

 

[KoolAid23]

Does anybody got working Atheros AR9485 wireless for this computer? I do not have router near me, its like in another room.

Thank you.

 

[JHM]

Hawkscorpion,

Oh my. Nice work on the audio. Agreed, works. I have attached a screenshot from MB 5.1.1 that I used for my install. Plus Easybeast (I can't make a screenshot tall enough to show it all).

Note that I have an nVidia 640 card and I also added TP-Link TL-WDN4800 wireless card, both of which work OOB.

OSX 10.8.0 installs fine and 10.8.1 updater works fine but I haven't been able to get 10.8.2 to work, nor the front USB3 ports. But a lot is working.

J