6600XT "working" (sort of) but not recognized in About This Mac and not usable for accelerated processing on Monterey 12.3.1

[JacCarson]

I have Sapphire RX6600XT, as yours, it is fully supported, running Monterey 12.3.1,
and also Intel i9 10850K,
Mac def is iMacPro 1,1, mainboard is Asus Z490P,
iGPU is fully disabled in BIOS, Netflix, AppleTV all shows run fine.
in BIOS the graphic card selection is automatic.
System boots into dGPU and boots to login in seconds.
Hardware decoding is fully supported (checked in Videoproc).
GPU also appears in about this Mac and System report.
Maybe try to update serials (using GenSMBIOS) and the Mac definition. Log out of iCloud before changing Mac definition, though.

 

[miliuco]

@henderpa
@hardcorefs
keepsyms=1 debug=0x100 are not related to the GPU.
alcid=12 is for the audio.
Most of the Navi cards (as 6600 XT) need agdpmod=pikera.

 

[miliuco]

@JacCarson
Very good Metal score!

 

[JacCarson]

@JacCarson
Very good Metal score!

Thank you!
BTW,
I also have pikera in boot-args, if that may be helpful

 

[henderpa]

I have Sapphire RX6600XT, as yours, it is fully supported, running Monterey 12.3.1,
and also Intel i9 10850K,
Mac def is iMacPro 1,1, mainboard is Asus Z490P,
iGPU is fully disabled in BIOS, Netflix, AppleTV all shows run fine.
in BIOS the graphic card selection is automatic.
System boots into dGPU and boots to login in seconds.
Hardware decoding is fully supported (checked in Videoproc).
GPU also appears in about this Mac and System report.
Maybe try to update serials (using GenSMBIOS) and the Mac definition. Log out of iCloud before changing Mac definition, though.

Thanks, @JacCarson. I'm going to try alternative SMBIOS serials with the same model, and if that fails I'll try a "headless" model (i.e. fully disabling iGPU). I think the iGPU is useful, sometimes, but if I have to sacrifice it, so be it!

 

[miliuco]

@henderpa
Don't worry too much about the help of the iGPU. On real Macs it works like this but in our hacks it is different.

I have done graphics tests of those that use the iGPU if it is available with the 2 options: iMacPro + iGPU disabled and iMac + iGPU headless mode and, surprisingly, some scores are higher with only the AMD. The reason may be that the iGPU is much less powerful than the dGPU; when you use both, part of the work goes to the iGPU that performs less and, on the other hand, when you use only the AMD, it does all the work and offers more performance.

 

[henderpa]

Thanks for the tip, @miliuco !

Hmmmm... some strange behaviour, I'm having. I can't get past login screen with anything but iMac20,2 definition. The text insertion cursor still blinks, but it's unresponsive and won't recognize input from bluetooth or even USB keyboard/mouse.

I've tried:
iMac20,2 definition, iGPU enabled in BIOS, iGPU present in DeviceProperties -
boots fine, dGPU not visible in About, dGPU not recognized by plugins, HEVC acceleration in VideoProc via iGPU
(best version so far)

iMac20,2 definition, iGPU disabled or auto in BIOS, iGPU removed from DeviceProperties -
boots fine, dGPU not visible in About, dGPU not recognized by plugins, no HEVC acceleration in VideoProc

iMacPro1,1 definition, iGPU enabled or disabled or auto in BIOS, iGPU present or removed in DeviceProperties (tried every combo of those) -
unresponsive at login

MacPro7,1 definition, iGPU enabled or disabled or auto in BIOS, iGPU present or removed in DeviceProperties (tried every combo of those) -
unresponsive at login

So weird...
Also my board takes ages to post to the BIOS, which I gather is an issue with some z590 Vision-D boards, so I may try fixing that and seeing if that does anything...? If nothing else it'll make troubleshooting less impatience-inducing!
Thanks for the assistance and sorry for the wild goose chase...

 

[henderpa]

Now I'm -really- confused... I rearranged my desk, grabbed the displayport instead of the hdmi by accident, figured, "meh, displayport should be fine also" so I plugged that in. Started it up and now the dGPU is recognized. Soooooo... no idea why. But displayport forced it to be recognized in About.
Still no love from the FCPX plugins, but that could be the fault of the plugins themselves at this point.

 

[henderpa]

Anyhow, thanks for the help, folks! I'll investigate the HDMI/displayport discrepancy and report back if I learn anything interesting.

 

[miliuco]

Anyhow, thanks for the help, folks! I'll investigate the HDMI/displayport discrepancy and report back if I learn anything interesting.

Okey, at least now you have the 6600 well detected. I don't know why your system doesn't like macpro or imacpro. Anyway, you can use it now and, about the plugin,s I don't have FCP and my skills about it are very little.