Poor performance with NVMe and High Sierra

[inequals]

RehabMan, I really want to learn how to do this SSDT thing. I've got a 10.13 Hackintosh working 'just fine' finally, but I'm sure things aren't as good as they could be. In particular, running the BlackMagic disk test seems to show my 960 EVO NVME stick running like a quarter as fast as it did in 10.12 with your patch.
So I have two questions really. 1, does that sound like it might be the issue? I.e., Apple's baked-in NVME support in High Sierra isn't up to snuff, or is doing things in some unnecessarily safe - slow - way compare to your method?

Secondly is my more important question. I'm willing to learn, to do trial and error and minimal system eliminative troubleshooting (I'm an ex "Genius", hehe) to get an as-close-to-perfect SSDT/DSDT/Clover configuration as I have German heritage and just DON'T LIKE that there may be eliminate-able inefficiencies in my beautiful system (I'm also like super lonely).

So, where do I start? What guides do you recommend I read? I'm not afraid of reading and have tried to find stuff myself but pretty much all the info beyond this site is super fragmented, or incomplete, or conflicting, so if you have some pointers I'd be really super grateful. Thanks RehabMan, not only for this but for all the incredible stuff you do for this awesome community, and to all the rest of you for putting up with me!

 

[RehabMan]

RehabMan, I really want to learn how to do this SSDT thing. I've got a 10.13 Hackintosh working 'just fine' finally, but I'm sure things aren't as good as they could be. In particular, running the BlackMagic disk test seems to show my 960 EVO NVME stick running like a quarter as fast as it did in 10.12 with your patch.
So I have two questions really. 1, does that sound like it might be the issue? I.e., Apple's baked-in NVME support in High Sierra isn't up to snuff, or is doing things in some unnecessarily safe - slow - way compare to your method?

Secondly is my more important question. I'm willing to learn, to do trial and error and minimal system eliminative troubleshooting (I'm an ex "Genius", hehe) to get an as-close-to-perfect SSDT/DSDT/Clover configuration as I have German heritage and just DON'T LIKE that there may be eliminate-able inefficiencies in my beautiful system (I'm also like super lonely).

So, where do I start? What guides do you recommend I read? I'm not afraid of reading and have tried to find stuff myself but pretty much all the info beyond this site is super fragmented, or incomplete, or conflicting, so if you have some pointers I'd be really super grateful. Thanks RehabMan, not only for this but for all the incredible stuff you do for this awesome community, and to all the rest of you for putting up with me!

Did you install on APFS or HFS+J?
If you installed APFS, try HFS+J instead.

 

[inequals]

I installed on HFS+J, thinking it would convert automatically (I think it didn't because it's not an Apple supplied SSD). Everything seemed more or less OK, but I wasn't going to rest until I put my OS drive onto the new shiny (not to mention my general disgust at the antiquated, albeit road-tested, HFS+). Problem is, these components are so fast in general that it's hard to know whether it's all in my head. I acknowledge that there are worse problems to have heh.

I'm currently trying to get my second display to work, which is also being a bugger, but as I say what I'd really like to do is learn how to do the ACPI/DSDT/SSDT magic to create an as-good-as-I-can-make-it config, so again I'd appreciate any pointers. Sorry for the hassling.

 

[RehabMan]

I installed on HFS+J, thinking it would convert automatically (I think it didn't because it's not an Apple supplied SSD). Everything seemed more or less OK, but I wasn't going to rest until I put my OS drive onto the new shiny (not to mention my general disgust at the antiquated, albeit road-tested, HFS+). Problem is, these components are so fast in general that it's hard to know whether it's all in my head. I acknowledge that there are worse problems to have heh.

I'm currently trying to get my second display to work, which is also being a bugger, but as I say what I'd really like to do is learn how to do the ACPI/DSDT/SSDT magic to create an as-good-as-I-can-make-it config, so again I'd appreciate any pointers. Sorry for the hassling.

Unless you take special actions, conversion to APFS will happen automatically for solid state boot drives.
Read here:
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...n-high-sierra-update-or-fresh-install.232855/

 

[inequals]

Well, that's what I was expecting but it certainly didn't occur in my case. The funny thing is, I definitely thought it was performing the conversion because it came up with a '41 minutes remaining' screen that actually did take around 30 minutes, but no. HFS just as before.


[edit] I think I just may have worked out what happened. After the non-conversion to APFS I obviously tried the conversion myself. The option was greyed out in Recovery Mode's Disk Utility, which I thought was odd, but didn't let it stop me - I then ran 'diskutil apfs convert' from Terminal in Recovery Mode, which did work - almost - it got to 90%, then complained about the 'fsroot tree' (which gave me the same heebie jeebies as seeing messages about b-trees in HFS). It couldn't mount at the end of the conversion process, but seemed to mount it normally in Disk Utility, but Clover couldn't see it at boot. It was at this point I decided it needed to be nuked and restored from a (HFS) backup onto a fresh APFS container/volume. Am now happily booted from that.

Are my latter questions just too dumb to be answered then? Again, I'd love to spend today getting my DSDT etc just right, and if the answer is "the resources are out there already" and you have no specific recommendations as to where to start, just say so sir.

 

[RehabMan]

Well, that's what I was expecting but it certainly didn't occur in my case. The funny thing is, I definitely thought it was performing the conversion because it came up with a '41 minutes remaining' screen that actually did take around 30 minutes, but no. HFS just as before.


[edit] I think I just may have worked out what happened. After the non-conversion to APFS I obviously tried the conversion myself. The option was greyed out in Recovery Mode's Disk Utility, which I thought was odd, but didn't let it stop me - I then ran 'diskutil apfs convert' from Terminal in Recovery Mode, which did work - almost - it got to 90%, then complained about the 'fsroot tree' (which gave me the same heebie jeebies as seeing messages about b-trees in HFS). It couldn't mount at the end of the conversion process, but seemed to mount it normally in Disk Utility, but Clover couldn't see it at boot. It was at this point I decided it needed to be nuked and restored from a (HFS) backup onto a fresh APFS container/volume. Am now happily booted from that.

Are my latter questions just too dumb to be answered then? Again, I'd love to spend today getting my DSDT etc just right, and if the answer is "the resources are out there already" and you have no specific recommendations as to where to start, just say so sir.

Without correct FirmwareFeatures inject and apfs.efi, the conversion cannot be done, and lack of those may explain why the conversion was not done.

You probably have an old version of Clover, may have forgotten apfs.efi (or do not have the current version), or have unnecessary entries for FirmwareFeaturesMask or FirmwareFeatures in config.plist/SMBIOS.

 

[inequals]

Well I obsessively update all my components whenever I can, and followed your guide so none of that does in fact apply. Latest Clover, added apfs.efi as instructed in your guide, and my SMBIOS settings are all good (as I need iMessage or I don't feel right). However this time around I tried going ahead without software NVRAM emulation, which didn't seem to cause issues but I couldn't log on to iMessage until I added it back in. Perhaps that's the cause, but not to worry, I'll try and find out how to get it sorted. Thanks so much for your help!

 

[RehabMan]

Well I obsessively update all my components whenever I can, and followed your guide so none of that does in fact apply. Latest Clover, added apfs.efi as instructed in your guide, and my SMBIOS settings are all good (as I need iMessage or I don't feel right). However this time around I tried going ahead without software NVRAM emulation, which didn't seem to cause issues but I couldn't log on to iMessage until I added it back in. Perhaps that's the cause, but not to worry, I'll try and find out how to get it sorted. Thanks so much for your help!

If you need more than guesses:

Read FAQ, "Problem Reporting"
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/faq-read-first-laptop-frequent-questions.164990/

 

[inequals]

Hi there RH,

Thanks again for your patience. I've followed the instructions from the link. Here are my current issues in order from most to least concern:

• I cannot for love, money nor effort get my second display to output anything whether over HDMI via my Radeon, or HDMI and DVI from the motherboard (I'd ideally like the second display to run from the Intel 630, as the Radeon seems to have its tiny arms full with my 4K monitor, but I'd be happy with running it from the GPU if necessary. The secondary monitor is 1080p.)
• booting takes a long time compared to previous 10.12.6, (particularly after collecting via F2+F4, possibly coincidence but also got lots of strange un-Googleable messages, which I've included a blurry but just-about-readable jpg of). I don't really mind if booting takes a long time and everything is configured correctly, but right now I'm not sure that's the case.
• performance seems slower both when running from HFS and APFS on the system (NVME) drive, compared to Sierra. This seems contrary to my perception of other hackintosher's reports. No fair!
• I haven't tried much yet, but onboard sound doesn't work. I got that successfully working under Sierra as well (with this config, which is odd). Can live without this and use USB instead, but, again - I'd rather things were configured as correctly as possible

Thanks again - I really appreciate your time and expertise, I've included all files within one ZIP. Hope that's alright.

 

[RehabMan]

Hi there RH,

Thanks again for your patience. I've followed the instructions from the link. Here are my current issues in order from most to least concern:

• I cannot for love, money nor effort get my second display to output anything whether over HDMI via my Radeon, or HDMI and DVI from the motherboard (I'd ideally like the second display to run from the Intel 630, as the Radeon seems to have its tiny arms full with my 4K monitor, but I'd be happy with running it from the GPU if necessary. The secondary monitor is 1080p.)
• booting takes a long time compared to previous 10.12.6, (particularly after collecting via F2+F4, possibly coincidence but also got lots of strange un-Googleable messages, which I've included a blurry but just-about-readable jpg of). I don't really mind if booting takes a long time and everything is configured correctly, but right now I'm not sure that's the case.
• performance seems slower both when running from HFS and APFS on the system (NVME) drive, compared to Sierra. This seems contrary to my perception of other hackintosher's reports. No fair!
• I haven't tried much yet, but onboard sound doesn't work. I got that successfully working under Sierra as well (with this config, which is odd). Can live without this and use USB instead, but, again - I'd rather things were configured as correctly as possible

Thanks again - I really appreciate your time and expertise, I've included all files within one ZIP. Hope that's alright.

Problems:
- CPU PM not implemented
- ioreg shows NVMe with APFS. Known to cause slow boot/other problems. Use HFS+J instead.
- USB configuration is wrong (port limit patch is not for long term use, see my USBInjectAll/custom SSDT guide linked from laptop FAQ: http://www.tonymacx86.com/el-capita...faq-read-first-laptop-frequent-questions.html)
- audio: https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/high-sierra-desktop-realtek-applehda-audio.226433/

Other comments:
- no experience with AMD graphics. Off-topic anyway.