Asus X299 - Catalina Support

[djlild7hina]

Hello there! Yes it is flashed and DROM adjusted. I'm experimenting a bit and trying to expand my knowledge in case it ends up being possible to use 2 Titan Ridges together with one Sage/10G. I ended up jumping pins 3 and 5 as you mentioned in the other thread and it's working in Slot 2.
Have you had already had success in other slots? You're help has been wonderful.
Thank you!

Awesome can’t remember who has flashed their cards lol. But yes I’ve had it recognized in different slots since you don’t need the header anymore. I’m getting my other titan ridge card next week and I’ll flash both of them with nvm 50. Just need to adopt the ssdt using ioreg for the new location. Can you copy it to the slot you want and upload a copy of your ioreg?

 

[djlild7hina]

giving it a last try before I give up Could anyone have a look at my config and check if there is anything there which stops the USBMap to be loaded/applied?
Thanks

I can take a look. Few things
1. Please update your system specs in your profile so it’s easier to help. Remind me what motherboard/bios you have?
2. Can you upload your efi?
3. Did you make a list or screenshot of identifying what port is which?
4. Remember to enable above 4G encoding and disable CSM

 

[dithaack]

Awesome can’t remember who has flashed their cards lol. But yes I’ve had it recognized in different slots since you don’t need the header anymore. I’m getting my other titan ridge card next week and I’ll flash both of them with nvm 50. Just need to adopt the ssdt using ioreg for the new location. Can you copy it to the slot you want and upload a copy of your ioreg?

You bet! I moved it to slot 5 for now and here's the IOReg. THank you

 

[djlild7hina]

You bet! I moved it to slot 5 for now and here's the IOReg. THank you

Here try this. I just copied the SSDT you posted earlier and adapted to the slot.

If you look at the SSDT, the scope begins at SB.PC01.BR1A. We need to null SL01 and rename it to PEGP. I inserted a condition to only null if it's booted into macOS. Since the SAGE boards have PLX chips, there is an extra step and each slot is separated by pci-bridges. In this case, Slot-5 is pci-bridge @ address 10. Note: If you add extra cards/devices into the pci slots, the numbers may switch so you have to keep an eye on that.

Under the new scope PEGP, we give the device (pci-bridge@10) a name and specify the address. In this case, I named it EGP1 (name can be anything as long as it's not used already).

Here is some pseudo code on how it looks.

Scope (\_SB.PC01.BR1A)
{
    Scope (Sl01)
    {
        Null if macOS
    }
  
    // create new scope PEGP
    Scope (PEGP)
    { 
        // create new device and specify address 10
        Device (EGP1)
        {
            Name (_ADR, 0x00100000)
            // copy rest of thunderbolt code here
            { 
            }
        }
    }
}

Hope this helps! When I first started hacking X299, I was probably the first one here with a Sage and got very frustrated when I couldn't figure out how to adapt my SSDTs. Those pci-bridges can be annoying to understand and adapt in your SSDT at first!

 

[pieropontra]

Ohh... that was a bit of time waste, downgrading to bios 2002 and removing SSDT-AWAC.aml
Is still lagging as hell. I'm switching back to bios patched 3101 with SSDT-AWAC.aml.

I think this is related to having sync all cores, for some reason, it likes it better like that. But bringing the slides high so I don't completely melt my CPU. If I have the offsets as KPG had them

Spoiler: CPU offsets

AVX Instruction Core Ratio Negative Offset: "3"
AVX-512 Instruction Core Ratio Negative Offset: "2"

My CPU is reaching 108°C during benchmark ) So yeah the higher I slide the numbers, the lower it pushes the CPU limit.

Hey mate! Did you tried switching GPUs in your system? I suspect your theory regarding the reference card (anniversary) and Sapphire one could be correct. Actually, on Apple site regarding 3rd party GPU support, is stated “AMD Cards” for Navi and this could be important since for Polaris is otherwise recommended Sapphire. Hope to hear from you soon.

 

[InsomnIaHackintosh]

Hey mate! Did you tried switching GPUs in your system? I suspect your theory regarding the reference card (anniversary) and Sapphire one could be correct. Actually, on Apple site regarding 3rd party GPU support, is stated “AMD Cards” for Navi and this could be important since for Polaris is otherwise recommended Sapphire. Hope to hear from you soon.

Things sometime have no straight forward explanation but perseverance and great people from this community can get you there.

What I did was:
1. I re-took the bios patching process, then flashed.
2. I copied the EFI from 10980XE system 1 to System 2. Straight away I got read of 90% of the lagging after boot.
3. I then updated to 10.15.5 which made things sweet with this EFI. Is booting faster, comparing with my 2019 MBP the boot seems almost 1:1 as fast.
4. djlild7hina also kindly helped with the USB ssdt implementation for my motherboard.

Now both systems work great i would say. I heavy tested the both system's performance for the main use:
Premire Pro, Davinci using Arri Alexa Footage & R3D 4K, 6K & 8K Raw media. The system performs very well despite low Geekbench5 scores on Metal for 5700XT. I don't think they are so relevant to be honest in real life performance.

Flashing the Titan Ridge made impossible things possible now, patching to FM50 now the thunderbolt can read even eGPU's via Razer Core, T1&T2 adapted with the apple adaptor to T3, Thunderbolt network etc. CaseySJ guide here.

Now sure, if I overclock the cpu's they both get much higher points in cinebench but I see no point risking with that overheating. Now they seem stable and not going over 58-60 °C in full load. Also there is a post about a way to boost the GPU's scores guide here posted by CaseySJ but it seems a bit complicated for now. I will stick with what the machine can do and call it a wrap for now.

Some pictures attached of both systems.

I want to shout a big thanks to djlild7hina who's been so patient with me and guiding trough out. I also want to thank CaseySJ for his his incredible dedication in researching and supporting the hackintoch community.

PS: in case anyone has this config as myself, please avoid the struggle and use this EFi. You only have to add your new ID in PlatformInfo. If you unfold that section you will see the marked with "change here'.

 

[mm2margaret]

My second system is almost identical to the first one (10980XE) that runs great.
The only difference being: the CPU on system 2 7980Xe and system 1 has 10980XE. Also in system 1 the 5700xt is the 50-anniversary edition and System 2 has the 5700XT Sapphire with the 3 fans.

I've used for the 7980XE the same OC built from system 1, I only changed the system sn id and TB ID.

This machine is lagging after the boot massively then it settles and working a bit better. When performing certain tasks I have random freezes ie when moving the window of a finder around or trough watching youtube clips. Same after the screensaver when prompting the password has massive lags, then it goes back to normal.

I've attached the EFI, anyone has any idea why this could be? I wonder if the 7980xe needs an id or something I messed doing.

System 2 Specs:
CPU: i9 7980XE MB:
WS-X299-SAGE (base, not 10G)
GPU: 5700XT Sapphire Nitro
RAM: Corsair CMW128GX4M8C3200C16 RGB Pro 128GB (8 x 16GB) DDR4 3200 MHz C16 XMP
TB: GC-TITAN RIDGE (flashed fm50, working good)
NVME: 2X 500GB Evo 970 (1x for win 10, 1X for mac)
Blackmagic Mini 4k (HD &SDI)
6x 4TB HGTS (20Tb Raid)
OWC Express 4M2 Thunderbolt 3 (4X 2TB EVO 970)
Solarflare SFN5122F Dual-Port 10GbE SFP+

This machine is a video editing rig so I need it optimised to work properly.

If anyone knows anything that I could try to fix that would be great!

Thanks,

You may have already done this, but please don't use the bios version 3101, in IMHO, it's a piece of <insert favorite invective here>......

Asus has a terrible record with it's bios upgrades. Some work, but when I first received my Sage I got bios version 1001 (which Asus won't even let you download anymore), and that bios version made the board completely unusable.
Now they've done it again with this latest version. I have bios version 2002 and my Sage works just fine. I can lock or unlock the MSR, and everything works. I'm not touching 3101, don't need it, and don't want it. Downgrade to 2002 and see how things work. You won't need the AWAC ssdt, and I'm betting it will be much better.

You might want to add a USB map in yours, but maybe you left out for posting purposes. I'm also going to assume that you upgraded the Samsung EVO 970 firmware, right?

 

[pieropontra]

Hey @mm2margaret I noticed you have Radeon VII, can you confirm or deny you have same issues with great lags at cold boot (just after password insert) and general instability with GPU acceleration? because me and @InsomnIaHackintosh share a similar trouble, me with VII and him with 2 5700XTs (one reference and one Sapphire). I saw a new post form @InsomnIaHackintosh that I rapidly read but now seems disappeared. I read he solved by downclockin CPU but I still think it's GPU related. He also linked his EFI but post disappeared fast and I wasn't able to download and inspect it. Anyway, I removed all overclocks too, just stock speed without synced cores and standard frequencies without any benefit, same behavior than overclocked.

 

[mm2margaret]

Edit

Hey @mm2margaret I noticed you have Radeon VII, can you confirm or deny you have same issues with great lags at cold boot (just after password insert) and general instability with GPU acceleration? because me and @InsomnIaHackintosh share a similar trouble, me with VII and him with 2 5700XTs (one reference and one Sapphire). I saw a new post form @InsomnIaHackintosh that I rapidly read but now seems disappeared. I read he solved by downclockin CPU but I still think it's GPU related. He also linked his EFI but post disappeared fast and I wasn't able to download and inspect it. Anyway, I removed all overclocks too, just stock speed without synced cores and standard frequencies without any benefit, same behavior than overclocked.

Can I confirm or deny? Sounds like a very legalistic posit to me....Are you an Attorney? Should I raise my right hand and swear an oath........????

I'm going to guess that maybe, just maybe, English is not your first language? If not, then what is it with the legalistic question, actually?

I do not have any issues with slowdowns, period. But I run bios 2002 with no overclocking (just XMP, nothing else). And, please do not ask for my EFI. I won't post it, not on this thread or any of the other X299 thread....

 

[InsomnIaHackintosh]

You may have already done this, but please don't use the bios version 3101, in IMHO, it's a piece of <insert favorite invective here>......

Asus has a terrible record with it's bios upgrades. Some work, but when I first received my Sage I got bios version 1001 (which Asus won't even let you download anymore), and that bios version made the board completely unusable.
Now they've done it again with this latest version. I have bios version 2002 and my Sage works just fine. I can lock or unlock the MSR, and everything works. I'm not touching 3101, don't need it, and don't want it. Downgrade to 2002 and see how things work. You won't need the AWAC ssdt, and I'm betting it will be much better.

You might want to add a USB map in yours, but maybe you left out for posting purposes. I'm also going to assume that you upgraded the Samsung EVO 970 firmware, right?

Agree a bios upgrade is not a must as long as things work. However with my 10980XE on Windows I can see a cine bench boost from 6000pts with b2002 to 8600pts under 3101 so I think the cascade lake can benefit from the latest bios.

@pieropontra in my case it seemed that an EFI config was causing that. If your MB is the same try using my EFI posted before and see if that solves the trick.