GA-H67N-USB3-B3-F5 i3-2100 OS X 10.6.7 = OK

[josjev]

Just for the sake of sharing the experience with this board configured as follows:

GA-H67N-USB3-B3-F5
Core i3-2100
ATI HD4670 (Sapphire Ultimate 512MB GDDR4)

1. BIOS HPET64-bit, AHCI, disable all CPU mgt, busratio 29, prioritise Intel graphics
2. iboot legacy; install 10.6.3
3. iboot again, boot fresh install, run: 10.6.6 + ^Andy^ SB package + BridgeHelper + MB with following settings: DSDT, FakeSMC, SysUtils, 64-bit bootscreen, iMac 11,2 sysdef, chameleon default theme
4. reboot, change BIOS to prioritise the ATI card, boot into chameleon, boot fresh install using AtiConfig=Motmot (default is Flicker framebuffer but using Motmot in my config turns out to give VGA + HDMI dual screen with full CI/QE) which I later added permanently to the boot.plist file)
5. Add network (Realtek website) and Audio (MacMan's ALC8xx driver (HDMI audio does not work)
6. I verified and can confirm that busratio=30 and setting all CPU powermgt functions to AUTO still works fine (default 31x doesn't)
7. Using software update to install all updates except 10.6.7 worked fine
8. 10.6.7 via software update gives kernel panic on reboot. For the time being I am happy with 10.6.6

The system only boots smoothly from cold boot; rebooting from SL or Win does not work very well. Shutdown works, sleep doesn't which ultimately is a must have for me as well as having P/C States. I chose 10.6.6 in order not to complicate things too much and I am not going to push things with 10.6.7 and beyond further until support has improved.

btw my DSDT is auto-patched (based on the closest related board in the list which I believe was the GA-H67MA-D2H) and I just removed IDE2.

Well, I hope things will improve over time. If not I am tempted to go back to 1156 platform (H55) which so far has worked 100% perfect for me.

EDIT: this system now works great on 10.6.7. Check my post further down in this thread how I got there: viewtopic.php?p=118210#p118210

 

[mazjohn]

Re: GA-H67N-USB3-B3-F5 i3-2100 OS X 10.6.6 = OK

Thanks. I have this same board and appreciate your update. Lets hope things improve soon. Thanks again for sharing how you got this to work!

 

[yura_3d]

Re: GA-H67N-USB3-B3-F5 i3-2100 OS X 10.6.6 = OK

to: josjev

I'm currently also running 1156 system. But want to build another HTPC on 1155.

While buying Gigabyte motherboard have you looked at Zotac or Asus options?
Can you also explain what is a problem with system after reboot? You mentioned that it happen under Windows too.

 

[Gordo74]

Re: GA-H67N-USB3-B3-F5 i3-2100 OS X 10.6.6 = OK

To get to 10.6.7, install the combo update (NOT from software update, download the combo update STRAIGHT from the apple site and run BridgeHelper and ^Andy^'s package again BEFORE reboot.

 

[josjev]

Re: GA-H67N-USB3-B3-F5 i3-2100 OS X 10.6.6 = OK

@Yura3D

While buying Gigabyte motherboard have you looked at Zotac or Asus options?
Can you also explain what is a problem with system after reboot?

Honestly I normally prefer Asus, but my H55 hack works that well and so far Gigabyte support on this forum was much better so I figured buying Gigabyte would maximize my chances to success. However, the tide these days seems to be turning towards Asus so you can probably go for that just as well.

My board still tends to be a bit flaky at reboots in the sense that my USB keyboard sometimes is not recognised. I had this with BIOS F2 and F5 with 2 different keyboards (IBM with USB-hub and HP PS2 via PS2>USB adapter). Haven't rebooted a lot out of Windows so not sure if the OS has much to do with it.

@Gordo74
I will try to do that. I think I saw on Netkas blog he is posting a patch to enable "some 4xxx cards" in 10.6.7...

 

[josjev]

Re: GA-H67N-USB3-B3 + i3-2100 + HD4670: DSDT with sleep

Just an intermediate update on some progress I made.

After I matched the SB kernel from Bridge Helper with the appleintelcpupowermgt kext from 10.6.7 MBP 2011, I got Cstates to work and seemingly also Pstates.

Even sleep worked a couple of times until I started messing with pmset hibernatemode, that was the end of it.

The downside still is that according to MSRtools (32-bit, couldnt get SMC monitor to work--doesn't show the right voltages, temps, freqs for me to chose) the CPU is always at it lowest pstate (1.6GHz).

Also, IOreg shows 15 pstates but in light grey. Can't remember if that's normal or not.

I am on to something though and probably need to experiment further with busratio flags and sysdef's. I tried MBP8,1 and later went back to MacPro 3,1 but the impact seems unclear or may not do anything at all.

[EDIT] OK, went from scratch: 10.6.3 retail, 10.6.7 combo (regular), Bridgehelper, Multibeast DSDT and Andy's package. I then added just the appleintelcpupowermanagement kext from 10.6.7 MBP 2011 and it is now working flawlessly including sleep (AUTOSLEEP included!), except MSRtools indicates it is on multi 8x, 1.6GHz (!?) the whole time. Since this is a HTPC this is good enough for me for the time being. Will report back if I make any progress on this.

Now I am just on the lookout for a bluetooth dongle that lets me go into BIOS or select the boot option (win7 or SL) in Chameleon. Anyone?

 

[Tasqa]

Re: GA-H67N-USB3-B3-F5 i3-2100 OS X 10.6.6 = OK

I'm looking into a build with this mobo and a i5-2400.
For the time being it'l be a Windows setup with plans to switch over after my exams.
Very interested in your progress, please keep us updated!

 

[josjev]

Re: GA-H67N-USB3-B3-F5 i3-2100 OS X 10.6.6 = OK

I can confirm my system now works 100% vanilla including native powermanagement and sleep on idle.

To summarise the installation:
1. activate and connect onboard graphics, set multiplier to 30x in BIOS, set all CPU powermgt features to enabled rather than auto, set all voltages to normal rather than auto, HPET 64-bit, AHCI...
2. boot with iBoot legacy
3. install 10.6.3 retail in safe mode
4. re-boot into fresh install again using iboot
5. install regular 10.6.7 combo update followed by latest bridgehelper, sandy bridge supporting chameleon bootloader (new chimera should do fine), auto-patched DSDT (see attached, rename into dsdt.aml), sysdef MacbookPro8,1 (in my case iMac11,1 or MacPro3,1 works just as well)
5a. For my ATI HD4670 I had to add ATIconfig=Motmot and GraphicsEnabler=Yes to my boot.plist to enable the VGA and HDMI ports
6. re-boot, switch to PCI-E graphics in BIOS, then boot into new install
6a install Network, Sound, USB3 etc.
7. verify speedstep (using MSR-Tools) and sleep, switch to 64-bit if desired and enjoy!!

[EDIT]
8. I also enabled audio over HDMI on my HD 4670 card as follows:
a) Generic DSDT patch to add device GFX0 + HDAU to PEG1 (see DSDT_hdmi attached), this is not specific for my graphics card so should work with others as well.
b) Use recent AppleHDA kext patched for ALC889 (rollback AppleHDA from 10.6.2 does not enable audio over HDMI), also attached (sorry i cannot recall where I picked this up, I think it was over at insanely either from The King or Mongol...). I think this means I can delete Macman's ALC8xx kext but haven't tried that yet.

The only imperfection is that Geekbench and DVDplayer crash. It may be related to the ATI drivers from the 10.6.7 update for MBP2011 which I also installed.
EDIT: this is related to the fact that the default radeonframebuffer loads. Probably the ATI kexts in 10.6.7 are preventing any custom framebuffer specified at the chameleon/chimera prompt from loading. Which is actually for the better since this is the only way for me to have HDMI + VGA using my ATI HD4670 card. None of the custom framebuffers (Motmot, Flicker etc.) provide this functionality (tested in 10.6.6).

@Tasca
To create a dual boot set-up I proceed as follows. It may not be the easiest method but I did this on two systems now and the result is for me the cleanest
1. Format your HDD as MBR, create 3 primary partitions: 1xNTFS for Windows, 1xFAT32 for Mac (will be reformatted later on) and 1xFAT32 as data drive accessible both for Windows and OS X. Do not use the Windows install DVD to create these partitions to avoid the 200MB hidden system partition.
2. Install Windows into the first partition. You may reformat in the process but do not delete the pre-formatted partition.
3. Install OS X into the 2nd partition. For this, you need to copy your 10.6.3 retail disk to a USB-drive/stick and patch 2 files which allows diskutil to format the target partition even though the HDD is MBR (normally the HDD must be GPT). See instructions and files here: http://deviato.wordpress.com/2010/05/06 ... ard-disks/.
4. Install Chameleon using the boot0hfs option, which allows you to boot OS X even when it is not the active partition. For this I use the most recent experimental installer here: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index. ... try1547304 (you can later overwrite this with a regular chameleon/chimera install)
4. You can now boot both Windows and OS X, but re-activating the windows partition will restore Windows hibernate functionality (Windows partition must be active for this).

It seems somewhat complicated but at least I end up with straightforward partitions, easy to back-up, no confusing EFI or windows system partitions... I am not in favour of using FAT32 but in my experience OS X cannot reliably write to NTFS partitions, no matter what tools you use. Macdrive for windows works a bit better but still... I prefer something simple and store the bulk of my data to NAS anyway.

 

[turtleknight]

Re: GA-H67N-USB3-B3-F5 i3-2100 OS X 10.6.6 = OK

I can confirm my system now works 100% vanilla including native powermanagement and sleep on idle.

To summarise the installation:
1. activate and connect onboard graphics, set multiplier to 30x in BIOS, set all CPU powermgt features to enabled rather than auto, set all voltages to normal rather than auto, HPET 64-bit, AHCI...
2. boot with iBoot legacy
3. install 10.6.3 retail in safe mode
4. re-boot into fresh install again using iboot
5. install regular 10.6.7 combo update followed by latest bridgehelper, sandy bridge supporting chameleon bootloader (new chimera should do fine), auto-patched DSDT (see attached, rename into dsdt.aml), sysdef MacbookPro8,1 (in my case iMac11,1 or MacPro3,1 works just as well)
5a. For my ATI HD4670 I had to add ATIconfig=Motmot and GraphicsEnabler=Yes to my boot.plist to enable the VGA and HDMI ports
6. re-boot, switch to PCI-E graphics in BIOS, then boot into new install
6a install Network, Sound, USB3 etc.
7. verify speedstep (using MSR-Tools) and sleep, switch to 64-bit if desired and enjoy!!

The only imperfection is that Geekbench and DVDplayer crash. It may be related to the ATI drivers from the 10.6.7 update for MBP2011 which I also installed.

Hi , thanks for your sharing
that's great help for me(really)

Can you make it more detail on install Network, Sound and USB3 installation?
Which driver you used and do i have to DSDT first? (still don't understood how DSDT works..)

I have tried install 10.6.7 on GA-H67N-USB3-B3-F3
but failed on installing network( I use officail 2.0.6 driver in Multibeast and Lnx2Mac's driver WITHOUT DSDT from you)
and audio (i take these three option in Multibeast : "ALC8xxHDA"?"AppleHDA Roolback" and Non DSDT Enabler ALC 899
there is only strange noise when i try to play music from itunes

thanks!

 

[josjev]

Re: GA-H67N-USB3-B3-F5 i3-2100 OS X 10.6.6 = OK

To be honest I never tried a non-DSDT install as I do not want a patched, crippled system which could be a pain to keep up to date. I also want native speedstepping to minimise power consumption which is what you are probably also after looking at your CPU.

Since my DSDT is only related to the motherboard (not related to CPU or graphics) there is no harm in using it for your system as well. The only thing to consider is the BIOS update, but probably it works for your version as well.

Besides sound, network and USB3 you got it all running? Be aware though that with the onboard graphics you are going to have to stick with 1024x768 resolution and no acceleration whatsoever, as there is no support for this just yet...

Sound, network, usb3: these are all standard installs from Multibeast. Just select the ALC8xx driver from macman, the realtek 2.0.6 for network (lnx2mac's version did not work for me) and the NEC/Renesas driver for USB3 (under drivers/miscellaneous). Make sure to also select sys utils. Re HDA enabler for audio... no experience with that since I have DSDT install. Use the rollback though.