Bluetooth strangeness, intermittent connection loss

[JohnRobie]

Hi there,

I have just installed Monterey (with OC 0.7.5) on my GB Aorus Master Z390 with i9900k and Radeon5700XT and 64GB 3600Mhz RAM on a WD_BLACK SN850 m.2 NVME SSD.
Everything works just fine: Ethernet, Audio, iCloud, iMessage, etc.

Even the Bluetooth card I have installed (a PCI-e card for WiFI and BT with a BCM943602CS chip) works for WiFi and Apple BT keyboard and trackpad.

But…
About once per hour the BT trackpad becomes unresponsive. Even the haptic click freezes. Sometimes the mouse pointer can still be moved, but extremely slow and erratic.
Most of the time, switching the trackpad off and on again fixes the issue.

When I boot the same hardware from a second SSD with my old Catalina installation (Clover boot), bluetooth works for days without any issues.

Has anyone seen something like this before?
Any ideas, suggestions, pointers?

Cheers,

John

 

[Edhawk]

Are you using AirportBrcmFixup.kext in either or both setups?

If yes, check which version of the kext you are using and see if you have any boot arguments in place that aren’t or are used in the other bootloader.

 

[Henties]

@JohnRobie , I am also using 2 of the BCM943602CS cards, each with a GA-Z490 Vision G build, and both work OOB without any extra kexts or whatever. Both these Vision G builds also dual boot between Big Sur and Monterey, and other opsyses with only OC 0.7.6 nightly built boot loader configured.
Now the crux of the matter is that on Big Sur, BT works unrestricted with my XMP memory clocked at profile-1 and 3600 MHz in bios, Apple has however moved the BT code to user space in Monterey, with a peculiar side effect that I have to down clock (throttle) the memory to no more than 2933 MHz for BT to work reliably and also be available after these particular hacks have woken up from sleep when booted to Monterey. I believe I know the reason for this but have not yet concluded all testing in this regard and feel it would be a bit premature to elaborate on details. Will however post my findings once I am certain of the facts. In meantime I suggest you start clocking your memory from say 2600 MHz. incrementing the frequency in the smallest step available in your bios, and thoroughly test. You may find that everything will work as expected until you reach an upper memory clock setting when the BT wheels start falling off, your upper clock setting may however be different to the one applying to my mobo/memory combination.

On my builds, throttling the memory down from 3600 to 2933 MHz (18.53%) has no measurable and or user perceived reduction in performance.

Would appreciate if you let me know the outcome as well as upper frequency where your BT peripherals stop to function properly.

Greetings Henties.

 

[JohnRobie]

Hi Edhawk, hi Henties,

I don't know why, but the BT issues have vanished after about a day or so.
I'm not aware of any change I did to the bluetooth stack.
Obviously I'm in the progress of setting up the system and install a lot of software.

The only change to the OC EFI was the addition of my old USBMap.kext from my Catalina build.
I had the USB ports mapped nicely on the old install.
Maybe that is one explanation, as the PCIe card with the bluetooth module does connect to an internal USB port.
Maybe the old USBMap.kext configures this internal USB port (better).

@Henties : that's an interesting theory about the RAM clock speeds... I have selected my RAMs XMP in the BIOS and that sets them to the desired 3600Mhz. As said above, currently no issues any more with BT on Monterey with RAM on 3600Mhz.

Cheers,
John

 

[Ronzelver]

I had similar issues, BT was working just fine immediately after a cold boot, but whenever it woke up from sleep BT was not working for about 30-45 seconds, and then everything was fine again. I never had these issues with Big Sur and previous editions of MacOS.
I then disabled the XMP Profile 1 memory setting in the BIOS (F11) and reverted back to 2600 MHz and all problems are gone. I really wonder how this can play a role in the way Apple changed the position of the BT stack?!

 

[Henties]

@JohnRobie then you are lucky because most that use GA-7490 mobos and above suffer from the problem that at speeds higher than 2933 MHz bluetooth works properly however once the machine has gone to sleep and subsequently woken again bluetooth peripherals - magic mouse and keyboard - stop functioning, only a reboot brings these devices back to life or alternatively clocking the memory down to below 3000 MHz. It maybe that the Z390 Mobo series is not affected by this anomaly. By the way for an overall cleaner and leaner EFI folder remember that the BCM943602CS does not require any kexts to get it working properly.

Greetings Henties

 

[Ronzelver]

@JohnRobie then you are lucky because most that use GA-7490 mobos and above suffer from the problem that at speeds higher than 2933 MHz bluetooth works properly however once the machine has gone to sleep and subsequently woken again bluetooth peripherals - magic mouse and keyboard - stop functioning, only a reboot brings these devices back to life or alternatively clocking the memory down to below 3000 MHz. It maybe that the Z390 Mobo series is not affected by this anomaly. By the way for an overall cleaner and leaner EFI folder remember that the BCM943602CS does not require any kexts to get it working properly.

Greetings Henties

It also occurs with the Z390 Series (see above)

 

[Henties]

@Ronzelver you can leave XMP profile 1 on just find the highest speed under which BT still functions normally, and stick to that instead, with XMP profile 1 remaining on.

Regards Henties

 

[Ronzelver]

@Ronzelver you can leave XMP profile 1 on just find the highest speed under which BT still functions normally, and stick to that instead, with XMP profile 1 remaining on.

Regards Henties

I've tried multiple manual multipliers down to 2800MHz with XMP Profile 1 enabled, but still the same issue, so I'm gonna stick with XMP disabled for now.

Update: manual setting of 2666Mhz (XMP disabled) is the highest I can go without BT issues.