Are Vega, OpenCL... working?

[dronefriend]

How is this going guys. I will probably get the Vega 56 this Black Friday. How's performance under 13.1 or 13.2 beta?

 

[xelanaiznac]

Seconded. I use this for dual Monitor support for my RX 480, but now it's not working anymore.

hi. any news regarding multi monitor?

 

[PaulGemini]

All stock XFX Vega 64:

View attachment 274283 View attachment 274284

@RandomTech Just tossed my 1080 and switched to AMD. I have nearly the same config as you, but LuxMark and GeekBenck don't see the Vega FE. AMC10000.kext info.plist does have the ID in there. I get the "Venetian blind" / na acceleration effect when logging in.

About This Mac and System Profile do see it, name and all. I can also hook up 3 DP and 1 HDMI monitor all at once, and that works like a charm. Just seems that I'm not having the multi-monitor issue many have, while having OOB acceleration problems many don't.

I've tried many configs (kexts, clover, and BIOS) and just can't find the sweet spot.

Could you give a couple of pointers?

Much appreciated.

 

[RandomTech]

@RandomTech Just tossed my 1080 and switched to AMD. I have nearly the same config as you, but LuxMark and GeekBenck don't see the Vega FE. AMC10000.kext info.plist does have the ID in there. I get the "Venetian blind" / na acceleration effect when logging in.

About This Mac and System Profile do see it, name and all. I can also hook up 3 DP and 1 HDMI monitor all at once, and that works like a charm. Just seems that I'm not having the multi-monitor issue many have, while having OOB acceleration problems many don't.

I've tried many configs (kexts, clover, and BIOS) and just can't find the sweet spot.

Could you give a couple of pointers?

Much appreciated.

Actually I have done nothing special, in 10.13.4 LuxMark shows even the real name of my card as it is (RX Vega 64) because now Vega is officially supported from Apple in 10.13.4 High Sierra, in precious versions of HS I used whatevergreen.kext only to correct the name bur acceleration always worked for me.

Just to make sure, Vega cards needs High Sierra to be working, I chose iMac 18.3 but even 18.2, 18.1 and iMac Pro 1.1 works with my configuration.
Another thing, do you have IGPU enabled or disabled? either way is Ok but if disabled you'll have some H264 rendering problems in fcpx and DaVinci Resolve but not in Adobe Premiere, other video formats render just fine. You still can enable the IGPU but then you need some modifications to make it work.

I don't know if you fresh installed your system or its still the old one, if the old one you might need to remove Nvidia drivers you used for GTX 1080, I really don't know on which level your problem is. But if you want you can give me more details so I might be able to help.

 

[PaulGemini]

Actually I have done nothing special, in 10.13.4 LuxMark shows even the real name of my card as it is (RX Vega 64) because now Vega is officially supported from Apple in 10.13.4 High Sierra, in precious versions of HS I used whatevergreen.kext only to correct the name bur acceleration always worked for me.

Just to make sure, Vega cards needs High Sierra to be working, I chose iMac 18.3 but even 18.2, 18.1 and iMac Pro 1.1 works with my configuration.
Another thing, do you have IGPU enabled or disabled? either way is Ok but if disabled you'll have some H264 rendering problems in fcpx and DaVinci Resolve but not in Adobe Premiere, other video formats render just fine. You still can enable the IGPU but then you need some modifications to make it work.

I don't know if you fresh installed your system or its still the old one, if the old one you might need to remove Nvidia drivers you used for GTX 1080, I really don't know on which level your problem is. But if you want you can give me more details so I might be able to help.

@RandomTech thanks. I ran the Nvidia uninstaller and manual removed CUDA, but not RC scripts, for example. I'll try a fresh clover/EFI reinstall and see what happens. Will let you know.

UPDATE:
MB failed (crashed on apfs.afi copy), so I reinstalled Clover (4428) manually and removed boot and APIC options that I had to enable for the 1080 to boot. KP, then interdiction, then KP, and... most likely after NVRAM reset... voilà!

Inject Intel and IntelGraphicsFixup.kext, but no Whatevergreen.kext and no Shiki.kext. I still have Lilu, but will see if I truly need it. Without the Pike R Alpha patch for display policy, I had 2 monitors active; with it, I have all four.

FE works perfectly. Superfast, browsers have come back to life, Luxmark with FE smoked the 1080, and 8700k iGPU is active too.

Only weird benchmarks are from Unigine. They report about 1/3 lower than the 1080, but also that the FE only uses 256MB memory—which is clearly not the case. So I'll discount that result.

So glad I made the switch.

 

[RandomTech]

@RandomTech thanks. I ran the Nvidia uninstaller and manual removed CUDA, but not RC scripts, for example. I'll try a fresh clover/EFI reinstall and see what happens. Will let you know.

UPDATE:
MB failed (crashed on apfs.afi copy), so I reinstalled Clover (4428) manually and removed boot and APIC options that I had to enable for the 1080 to boot. KP, then interdiction, then KP, and... most likely after NVRAM reset... voilà!

Inject Intel and IntelGraphicsFixup.kext, but no Whatevergreen.kext and no Shiki.kext. I still have Lilu, but will see if I truly need it. Without the Pike R Alpha patch for display policy, I had 2 monitors active; with it, I have all four.

FE works perfectly. Superfast, browsers have come back to life, Luxmark with FE smoked the 1080, and 8700k iGPU is active too.

Only weird benchmarks are from Unigine. They report about 1/3 lower than the 1080, but also that the FE only uses 256MB memory—which is clearly not the case. So I'll discount that result.

So glad I made the switch.

Im glad as you that everything is working, and also happy you made the right decision to switch because there is nothing better than Apple official support for the GPU, before I couldn't suggest you that because you might think I'm an AMD fanboy which that never was the case for me, of course Vega smokes GTX when it come to professional work in Mac OS but for Unigine I think its because its highly optimized for Nvidia cards which in real life gaming doesn't affect AMD cards.
One more crucial thing, make sure that Hardware Encoding is supported in your system, I do that by installing MacX Video Converter Pro and check it in the App.

Shiki.kext and shikigva=4 bootflag are needed to make iTunes online videos work, Lilu.kext must be paired with it, too. As Lilu.kext should be also included with AppleALC.kext in addition to small config.plist edit to make audio working.

Nice hacks, have fun.

 

[PaulGemini]

Im glad as you that everything is working, and also happy you made the right decision to switch because there is nothing better than Apple official support for the GPU, before I couldn't suggest you that because you might think I'm an AMD fanboy which that never was the case for me, of course Vega smokes GTX when it come to professional work in Mac OS but for Unigine I think its because its highly optimized for Nvidia cards which in real life gaming doesn't affect AMD cards.
One more crucial thing, make sure that Hardware Encoding is supported in your system, I do that by installing MacX Video Converter Pro and check it in the App.

Shiki.kext and shikigva=4 bootflag are needed to make iTunes online videos work, Lilu.kext must be paired with it, too. As Lilu.kext should be also included with AppleALC.kext in addition to small config.plist edit to make audio working.

Nice hacks, have fun.

I suspected as much for Unigine. I'm a photographer & videographer, so gaming is less of a priority; however OpenCL... Vega is a beast! With the latest GTX, I couldn't even do a simple project plans (hence my suspicion of memory leaks). Now, I have greased lightning

HW encoding is supported; checked with Converter Pro and also checked DVD player supported features (100%).

Thanks for the tip on shiki. I will enable it again and switch flag 60 to 4. Good to know. So far (limited testing), all seems good. I already had AppleALC and Voodoo for sound and nothing appears to have changed on that — if anything, I seem to have more audio options.

PS. Vega FE coupled with a delidded, liquid-metal 5.4 GHz 8700k and a ThunderBolt 3 card. What could possibly go wrong?

 

[RandomTech]

I suspected as much for Unigine. I'm a photographer & videographer, so gaming is less of a priority; however OpenCL... Vega is a beast! With the latest GTX, I couldn't even do a simple project plans (hence my suspicion of memory leaks). Now, I have greased lightning

HW encoding is supported; checked with Converter Pro and also checked DVD player supported features (100%).

Thanks for the tip on shiki. I will enable it again and switch flag 60 to 4. Good to know. So far (limited testing), all seems good. I already had AppleALC and Voodoo for sound and nothing appears to have changed on that — if anything, I seem to have more audio options.

PS. Vega FE coupled with a delidded, liquid-metal 5.4 GHz 8700k and a ThunderBolt 3 card. What could possibly go wrong?

I never used Voodoo for Z motherboards and I always thought its needed for X99 and other X motherboards, our Gigabyte Z370 motherboards uses ALC1220 codec Audio where Voodoo is not needed (I think).. But the X motherboards uses an unique codec which can be enabled only with Voodoo.
Anyway, sharing information is fun and can let us learn from each other, I'll have Voodoo in mind just in case.

 

[Robvas]

Actually I have done nothing special, in 10.13.4 LuxMark shows even the real name of my card as it is (RX Vega 64) because now Vega is officially supported from Apple in 10.13.4 High Sierra, in precious versions of HS I used whatevergreen.kext only to correct the name bur acceleration always worked for me.

Just to make sure, Vega cards needs High Sierra to be working, I chose iMac 18.3 but even 18.2, 18.1 and iMac Pro 1.1 works with my configuration.
Another thing, do you have IGPU enabled or disabled? either way is Ok but if disabled you'll have some H264 rendering problems in fcpx and DaVinci Resolve but not in Adobe Premiere, other video formats render just fine. You still can enable the IGPU but then you need some modifications to make it work.

I don't know if you fresh installed your system or its still the old one, if the old one you might need to remove Nvidia drivers you used for GTX 1080, I really don't know on which level your problem is. But if you want you can give me more details so I might be able to help.

Hi there,
can you point me in a right direction in terms of having iGPU enabled. I trying to get info on that but some posts look like going 60 over pages long. Just don't want mess everything.

Thank you lots

 

[RandomTech]

Hi there,
can you point me in a right direction in terms of having iGPU enabled. I trying to get info on that but some posts look like going 60 over pages long. Just don't want mess everything.

Thank you lots

Hello Robvas,
In terms of iGPU I could easy help you but for i7 8700K CPU as mine is, as I see you run i7 7700 which should be totally different steps which I really don't know.
In case of H.264 video rendering in FCPX, I changed all methods about enabling iGPU in my system because in 10.13.4 things changed, now I have iGPU disabled, iMac Pro 1,1 SMBIOS and Vega 64 ssdt.aml placed in the EFI/ACPI/patched folder, now H.264 video rendering in FCPX works like never before and without iGPU.