1st Hackintosh! & questions

[Bapple]

Hey all,

I'm a tinkerer who's new to the Hackintosh scene and considering building a machine in the "CustoMac Pro" range. I am debating whether to get an AMD RX 480 or an Nvidia GTX 980 to support 2 4K displays @60Hz running Windows 10 & MacOS 10.12.

So far I understand that the RX 480 has native support (w/ Kext modifications), is arguably a better value/money proposition, and its OpenCL is better optimized in FCP and other OS X applications. But I also hear that AMD chips have had sleep-wake issues and are cumbersome when booting into Windows rather than MacOS. How significant are these complications (and are they still relevant)? Are there other qualifiers/limitations/issues I should be aware of? Which do you recommend I go with and why?

Thanks in advance,
Bapple

 

[Adrian B]

Hey all,

I'm a tinkerer who's new to the Hackintosh scene and considering building a machine in the "CustoMac Pro" range. I am debating whether to get an AMD RX 480 or an Nvidia GTX 980 to support 2 4K displays @60Hz running Windows 10 & MacOS 10.12.

So far I understand that the RX 480 has native support (w/ Kext modifications), is arguably a better value/money proposition, and its OpenCL is better optimized in FCP and other OS X applications. But I also hear that AMD chips have had sleep-wake issues and are cumbersome when booting into Windows rather than MacOS. How significant are these complications (and are they still relevant)? Are there other qualifiers/limitations/issues I should be aware of? Which do you recommend I go with and why?

The complications are real and extremely relevant. For Dual booting to avoid booting blind with no boot options you need to boot with cables connected from the integrated graphics ports of your motherboard and use this input on your monitor then switch to the GPU monitor connection that is connected back to the AMD GPU to see the desktop. I suggest that you search for the RX 480 threads that detail other users experiences. Ask specifically what is working and what does not. RX 480 is due an upgrade in a matter of weeks.

A second option would be to use a hot swap 5.25 inch bay to switch your either 3.5" or 2.5" boot drives between macOS and Windows. This would have the benefit of only loading in the operating system that you required and would make any UEFI changes easily with the Windows drive.

My personal preference is to run a Windows box and a macOS box to really get the best performance in gaming and in macOS.