Create hybrid smbios.plist for Gigabyte P55

[cakemonster]

A potential new project...

So like many folks I went with the imac 11, 1 smbios.plist as it

1) Enables speedstep with no DSDT edits
2) Seems to make sense, as we are using those processors

http://www.tonymacx86.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1499

For i5, use 1537. For i7, use 1793, etc.

However, folks with audio are reporting, like myself, alot of plops and pops...And even that they initially had no plops, then they changed something, and couldn't get rid of it.

Curiously, switching to the mac pro smbios.plist seems to fix the audio, but you presumably lose speedstep (without doing it in DSDT) etc.

http://www.tonymacx86.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=108

For some reason, I had that problem after trying one of the legacyHDA kexts. It then kept happening with everything I tried after that. The only way I got rid of the popping was restoring a good SuperDuper clone. I'm back to zero popping. The other thing known to cause audio issues is the iMac smbios.

Tim

It seems that we should be able to make a smbios.plist that has the benefits of both. I don't have a ton of experience with this, but if people have expertise, I am willing to try to help make something that is a good hybrid.

It looks like cbooty has done done some work, but not sure if he has speedstep...

Hey themac:

As far as editing the smbios.plist its really straightforward, I've entered the edits for your plist below. Paste, save, reboot and you should be good to go

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>SMbiosvendor</key>
<string>Apple Inc.</string>
<key>SMbiosversion</key>
<string>IM111.88Z.0034.B00.0910301727</string>
<key>SMbiosdate</key>
<string>11/06/2009</string>
<key>SMboardmanufacturer</key>
<string>Apple Computer, Inc.</string>
<key>SMboardproduct</key>
<string>Mac-F2268DAE</string>
<key>SMfamily</key>
<string>Mac Pro</string>
<key>SMmanufacturer</key>
<string>Apple Inc.</string>
<key>SMproductname</key>
<string>MacPro3,1</string>
<key>SMserial</key>
<string>W88033AKY51</string>
<key>SMsystemversion</key>
<string>1.0</string>
<key>SMUUID</key>
<string>C0CE2600-93D7-3B41-843A-4D7C8E2C12E2</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Cheers,

Christian

Cbooty many thanks - worked perfectly.

For anyone else wanting to try this out, there are only two changes:

1 - iMac to Mac Pro
Original:
<key>SMfamily</key>
<string>iMac</string>
Updated:
<key>SMfamily</key>
<string>Mac Pro</string>

2 - iMac11,1 to MacPro3,1
Original:
<key>SMproductname</key>
<string>iMac11,1</string>
Updated:
<key>SMproductname</key>
<string>MacPro3,1</string>

Note: I still get a very quite plop during startup and quite a loud one on return from sleep but now no plops when playing sound for the first time during normal use or after some time which is definitely a worthwhile improvement for me.

Questions:

1. It seems like the same edit that gives you speedstep also messed up the audio? Any insights? Or do I have it wrong?
2. Any other insights, besides using mac pro smbios.plist and DSDT edits for speedstep?

 

[ne0shell]

Does the CPU string only work with 10.6.3? I've tried both smbios and I can confirm, once I loaded the iMac one I also started hearing some strange audio noise now and then. TO me it sounds like the audio circuit in the mobo is turning itself off and on - like some kind of "speedstep / sleep" function for the audio.

Even with the CPU type string mine still shows up as "unknown quad core xeon".

Also - if you're on 10.6.3 there's a higher version number for the Mac Pro and iMac now - don't use these but I believe the Mac Pro is 4,1 or so now.

 

[snorkelman]

bear in mind smbios plist is more of a preset profile rather than a set of direct instructions.

as the sound plops versus no plops illustrates, you can influence how some aspects of the OS behaves by changing it from one recognised profile to another, but I cant see how we could dictate precisely how it behaves by rolling our own (cos as soon as we go outside the recognised presets it knows what to do with I suspect it will just default to a generic option for handling an unrecognised config).

tbh I tend to stick with one and leave it there as Ive found FCP and a few other apps started asking for their serial number again once a swap from imac to macpro plist was done.

 

[ne0shell]

bear in mind smbios plist is more of a preset profile rather than a set of direct instructions.

as the sound plops versus no plops illustrates, you can influence how some aspects of the OS behaves by changing it from one recognised profile to another, but I cant see how we could dictate precisely how it behaves by rolling our own (cos as soon as we go outside the recognised presets it knows what to do with I suspect it will just default to a generic option for handling an unrecognised config).

tbh I tend to stick with one and leave it there as Ive found FCP and a few other apps started asking for their serial number again once a swap from imac to macpro plist was done.

That's from changing the system serial number. I never liked the idea of using the same serial everyone else is so I used Lizard to generate my own. From what I can tell keeping the same one for either hardware profile doesn't hurt anything though judging by the serial generator in Lizard there is a difference between the serials for iMacs and the ones for Mac Pros.

The smbios plist is actually a powerful entity in the OS. From what I've seen it has an effect on what kexts and frameworks are loaded by the OS on boot which has all kinds of ramifications for how well the system runs or how compatible the hardware is. There are quite a few strings that can be used which "we" aren't using at this time.

I think we can safely assume the smbios has a definite effect on power management functions, for example.

 

[MacMan]

I think this is a great topic for the New Projects forum so I will move it there.

 

[cakemonster]

Thank you for the posts.

I think one thing that makes me wonder if we can the cpu specification to the mac pro smbios.plist, but keep the other info from the mac pro.

If mixing them is a bad idea, that would be good to know as well.

But you get my point, it would be cool to have a gigabyte P55/ Core i5 750-Core i7 860 smbios.plist for Gigabeast that gives you speedstep and audio working.

I would like to understand more about what all the lines in the smbios.plist mean as well, in terms of what they affect before I start playing too much. I need to setup a new installation on another drive to play with first.

Which smbios.plist are most people using now? I went imac 11,1 for speedstep...

 

[winstonace]

Are you sure MacPro 4,1 doesn't give you native speedstep?
I'm pretty sure it is

 

[cakemonster]

Are you sure MacPro 4,1 doesn't give you native speedstep?
I'm pretty sure it is

I am not sure, but if it does, does it do speedstep settings for the i7 860 or i5 750 as opposed to settings for a Nehalem xeon (if it matters)? The "new" mac pros are not out yet. I have one of the ones from last March at work, not sure if that is 3,1 or 4,1, but that has xeons as opposed to the i7 860 or i5 750 in the Imac. Now I don't know if it recognizes the chip, then assigns speedsteps appropriately, or if it assigns the wrong speedsteps if you use say a mac pro smbios.plist with an i7 860...

Or if you use the mac pro smbios.plist, but add in

<key>SMcputype</key>
<string>1793</string>

For the i7 860, will that take care of it and you get the best of both worlds(Mac Pro smbios.plist with pop free audio with i7860 speedstep)?

In other words, which lines of the smbios.plist determine the speedstepping, it makes "sense" the SMCputype would do it, but I do not know.

Any one have further insight on this? Furthermore, does anyone have a link to an MSR tools that works for Snow Leopard or CPUI? I can't find a version that works (even 32 bit)...

 

[winstonace]

The speedstep is according to the ssdt setting
which are the right one for i5/i7 processors
it's built in by Gigabyte and working as long Appleintelcpupowermanagment is loading

 

[cakemonster]

The speedstep is according to the ssdt setting
which are the right one for i5/i7 processors
it's built in by Gigabyte and working as long Appleintelcpupowermanagment is loading

Thank You. That helps a great deal. Thank You for your expertise.

So just to be clear, you are saying that the Mac Pro 4,1 smbios.plist will enable the correct speedstep for i7 860 etc, and that the SMCpu edits:

<key>SMcputype</key>
<string>1793</string>

are just cosmetic for reporting in about this mac?

And that as as long as your smbios.plist has either


<key>SMfamily</key>
<string>iMac</string>

or

<key>SMfamily</key>
<string>Mac Pro</string>

and

<key>SMproductname</key>
<string>iMac11,1</string>

or

<key>SMproductname</key>
<string>MacPro4,1</string>


Then speedstep will work correctly for the i5/i7, as opposed to setting for the processors in the mac pro 4,1? From Bansuko's post it seems like you need to have the imac information there, but that does not mean that it does not also work with MacPro info there. Is that what you are saying, you just need one of them there?

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1499

He seems to imply that the speedstep is based on the SMproductname, but perhaps I am not understanding correctly? Is specification of those two parts necessary for it to look up the ssdt information and get speedstep?

What I would ultimately like to do is have a couple of pre-edited smbios.plists for folks with the i5 750 and i7 860, with the correct SMcputype, picking the one that is most robust with optimal setup for sound, speedstep, and About this Mac working straight out of Multibeast. It should be the same for all the Gigabyte boards, correct me if I am wrong.