Enabling AMD RX 4XX cards in Sierra.

[Gigamaxx]

Can anyone please help me get my R9 290/390 to work on my hack? With Inject with and without kext mods I can get the driver to initialize about half way during the OS loading phase, and then there's a flicker and the DVI port loses signal. Everyone is saying to get around this you need use the iGPU but LGA2011 boards don't have integrated GPUs. I have two R9 290s so maybe there's a way around that? Can I just purchase another Nvidia card?

It's been done using a inexpensive AMD or Nvidia card that gets native Apple support. I used a Nvidia 8400gts and I've used a AMD 5450 both cost around $35-$40 US. They are used as an IGPU. They must be set for primary display in bios and then the other cards will get support.

The good thing about using a small card like these is they only use pcie slot power so your 6-8 pin connectors can be used for the R9 cards.

 

[The-Traveler]

It's been done using a inexpensive AMD or Nvidia card that gets native Apple support. I used a Nvidia 8400gts and I've used a AMD 5450 both cost around $35-$40 US. They are used as an IGPU. They must be set for primary display in bios and then the other cards will get support.

The good thing about using a small card like these is they only use pcie slot power so your 6-8 pin connectors can be used for the R9 cards.

Awesome, thank you! There aren't any 5450 near me but there are 8400GTS at the store so I'm going to go get one. My mobo doesn't let you pick which is primary, I'm hoping I don't have to move this ugly little card to the top slot.

 

[Gigamaxx]

Awesome, thank you! There aren't any 5450 near me but there are 8400GTS at the store so I'm going to go get one. My mobo doesn't let you pick which is primary, I'm hoping I don't have to move this ugly little card to the top slot.

That's where it should go, do you have 20-40 pcie lanes with that CPU? If you do it shouldn't be too much of a burden on the system. I've tested it with my 16 lane i5 6500 and it drops slightly in performance 7-10% compared to using my igpu which allows all 16 to go to RX 480. Good luck and please report back either way. Those are nice cards and it would be great to see you be able to run both with the help of the Nvidia card.

 

[The-Traveler]

That's where it should go, do you have 20-40 pcie lanes with that CPU? If you do it shouldn't be too much of a burden on the system. I've tested it with my 16 lane i5 6500 and it drops slightly in performance 7-10% compared to using my igpu which allows all 16 to go to RX 480. Good luck and please report back either way. Those are nice cards and it would be great to see you be able to run both with the help of the Nvidia card.

Well if I flick the motherboard switches to turn off the R9 cards this 8400GS boots up perfectly which is awesome. I have enough lanes to run both R9 at 16x but to get the Nvidia card as primary I would have to move my water cooled R9s lower down and then it wouldn't be both at 16x. But I have to triple check. Also then this itty bitty card would be visible which kind of sucks View attachment 233881

 

[Gigamaxx]

Check out the AMD Radeon Testers in Sierra thread by FlOr!an there are recent pages addressing this issue. One poster uses the helper card in a lower slot and is able to assign it as primary display output.


HomeForumsPost InstallationGraphics
macOS Sierra PB: Need testers for new AMD Radeon drivers!

 

[aseem.singh]

That's exactly what happened, you removed the SkL (Skylake) graphics support kexts so it won't function anymore. FCPX is fussy, so if you want to use it you need to make that sacrifice I guess, the previous version works just fine it's this new version that crashes.

Your valley score is good, it doesn't go much higher than that, my best was a 1956, the best I've seen is a 2000 score. You need your SKL CRB or hd 530 working to get the highest possible score but then FCPX won't work right.

10.2.3 for fcpx works well ..10.3 onwards having crashes guess we have to wait for further software updates next version of Sierra I guess

 

[FLoHIO117]

hey guys I'm wanting to update my graphic card badly! I'm running a gtx670 ftw that just can't handle editing 4k videos anymore. I do not game whatsoever. I just want to have a much better card for editing with final cut pro x. Can you guys tell me which rx480 I should buy for the best performance and easiest integration? I'll upload pics of my current build list. I'll also be going to 64 gb of ram at the same time i install the card. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Gigamaxx]

hey guys I'm wanting to update my graphic card badly! I'm running a gtx670 ftw that just can't handle editing 4k videos anymore. I do not game whatsoever. I just want to have a much better card for editing with final cut pro x. Can you guys tell me which rx480 I should buy for the best performance and easiest integration? I'll upload pics of my current build list. I'll also be going to 64 gb of ram at the same time i install the card. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

XFX RX 480 GTR 8gb, Sapphire nitro, and Powercooler Red Devil are the top contenders. They all have the highest benchs in open GL and open CL apps.

 

[FLoHIO117]

XFX RX 480 GTR 8gb, Sapphire nitro, and Powercooler Red Devil are the top contenders. They all have the highest benchs in open GL and open CL apps.

Can you tell me which one you would choose for the highest resolution output and al around best one? Price isn't to important. I just want the best one and the one that'll work the best for mackintosh and Final cut pro x. I'm probably going to buy on new egg.com

 

[Gigamaxx]

Can you tell me which one you would choose for the highest resolution output and al around best one? Price isn't to important. I just want the best one and the one that'll work the best for mackintosh and Final cut pro x. I'm probably going to buy on new egg.com

Take a look at the youtube video by Jays2cents on the XFX RX 480 GTR he had it at around 1500 MHz overclocked on air (fans) and the temps were very stable and he ran this for hours to test stability. He mentioned that the card was longer (the pc board) and that they spread out the power controllers which reduces heat and increases stability. This would be my #1 choice for that reason, second place would be the RED Devil but its large with three fans. Sapphire is a trusted AMD card maker and is 3rd on my list but still above the other brands.

FCPx is a tricky app at least the latest version is. Many RX card users are having crash reports but also Nvidia and other AMD card users are having issues. The latest version of FCPx along with Sierra which is still having weekly beta updates are both having reports of issues. The previous FCPx 10.2? has no problems with RX 480s its just the latest version that has issues.

Some have solved the issue by keeping a very lean intel graphics and CPU power management profile, for example injecting intel seems to crash FCPx because it is confused between the 2 graphics options. If you can get native intel support without injection it is reported working well without crashes.

P.S. if you can wait till may the AMD Vega 10s will be released which should be double the performance of the RX 480, like a GTX 1080 card performance wise. We've seen the code in Sierra and it has a lot of entries lie the RX 480 support.