Tahiti XT Prototype driver vs. D700 driver...
Hi all,
First of all, I am new here, and was astounded by finding out how far and nicely the hackintosh effort has come! The tools available now are great, so thanks!
Have been running my GA-EX58-UD5 as a hackintosh for a week now, working great.
As for graphics
I have dual AMD reference design 7970s. One ASUS and one Sapphire. I run them on the same GHz edition firmware, no problems (these are non-GHz edition cards..).
After 10.9.2 (my first install now), I understand the frame buffers changed. I can report
I had success using the Junsai profile, one of the display ports on each card (the port closest to the HDMI connector) is working with that one (driving my 27" Cinema Display). When setting GE=No, I can only use the DVI ports. Connecting to any of the mini-DPs will freeze the machine, requiring a reboot. HDMI might work in that last case, but not tested.
I plan to edit the profile and make all ports work well under Junsai.
One question: in 10.9.1 I understand most 7970 cards were using the D700 driver, both for compute and OpenCL. Is that confirmed? Or was it only reported as a D700 in Luxmark?
Now, the prototype Tahiti XT driver is used (in OpenGL and Compute). I am wondering if there is a quality difference/or performance difference, between the D700 drivers and Tahiti XT Prototype drivers? It should very well be possible to load the D700 drivers instead (and get all the benefits of the D700 optimizations etc. that are/will be done, as it is part of the new Mac Pro). I am not sure if the Tahiti XT Prototype and the D700 drivers are essentially the same or not. What would it take to use the D700 drivers, switch drivers?
Thanks
March 13th
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UPDATE 1
I have experimented with flashing one of my 7970s (NOT the BIOS default card) with the Apple D700 firmware (D700-a.rom, each of the two cards in the MP 2013 have different roms). This is all under 10.9.2, MacPro5,1 profile.
First, I used the Junsai frame-buffer, AtiPorts=4, and also defined "UseAtiROM" with the D700 rom file put in the /Extra folder. I had the DP connector in the port closest to the HDMI. After boot the screen is just white. I disconnect it, insert it, wait a few seconds. Login-picture appears. I can log in. Both mDP-ports on the "D700" card can be used after login.
Then, I used the MaguroS personality (apperently the one Apple uses with D700) after a reboot. The non-flashed card goes dark. I put the cable into the "D700" mDP-port closest to the HDMI (which now is the only mDP working). I can log in.
View attachment 86537
Interesting part, the card with the Apple firmware is now an "X-edition".
The D700 Compute engine (driver/runtime) has appeared. Likewise with the OpenGL engine; in "OpenGL Extensions Viewer" I now see the Tahiti XT Prototype AND the FirePro D700 OpenGL Engines.
View attachment 86536
The clocks seems to be set from the firmware of the card set as default in BIOS (GHz edition PC firmware). Here, each card gave me about 1400 in score each. About 2800 combined. Much lower than when I used the GHz-edition PC BIOS mentioned above (with Junsai personality), well over 2200 each, in the 4000nds range combined.
When running the "Heaven" OpenGL benchmark i get 28.1 FPS at 2560x1440 full screen, all settings set to Disabled/Off, and Quality set to "Medium".
At least, the one card is using the D700 driver. Now, if the performance is better when using the MacPro6,1 profile is not checked.
At the end, an interesting part. With the "D700" firmware, and MaguroS personality, the
AirPlay Display icon appears at the top right bar. It most probably means that on the Mac Pro 2013 the encoding of the image sent to the Apple TV is done on the discrete GPU D300/D500/D700 (as it of course lacks the Intel GPU part). If I enable it, setting up a external display, the image shown on my Apple TV is just black.. But we are on the path of something here.
I have not yet confirmed if the AirPlay icon appears with the Junsai personality.
Update 2
I disabled "UseAtiROM", and went back to Junsai personality.
Both the flashed "D700" and the 7970 GHz edition now run on the GHz edition speed (1050 MHz) and deliver the same high performance in graphics and compute. LuxMark score is back to ~4300 when running on both. Framerates are much higher as from before flashing the card with the D700 rom.
AirPlay Display icon is still there, Mirroring not working (if I press to select it it is not selected, still on Extend Desktop) and Extended display giving a black screen on the TV.
By the performance I observe in OpenCL and OpenGL, it is my belief that the drivers, Tahiti XT Prototype and FirePro D700, are virtually exactly the same both in compute and graphics. However, enabling the D700 driver makes AirPlay Display activate. The output issue of it has to be solved..
Lastly, I now tried with the D700-B.rom, re-flashing it. It seems to change nothing.
Update 3
I put the GHz edition PC BIOS back on the "D700", and tested giving each card the SSID of each of Apples D700s (0127106B and 0128106B). After rebooting, using Junsai personality still, the cards use the FirePro D700 graphics and compute engine. Good. AirPort Display icon still there, and still not functioning when enabled. My CPU is an old i7-920. Maybe some CPU instruction is also missing, to make it work 100%?
Happy to see that it crushes even the D700 model of the new Mac Pro 2013 in LuxMark, when running on GPUs. Just a matter of clock-speeds
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