Gigabyte Z490 Vision D (Thunderbolt 3) + i5-10400 + AMD RX 580

[Higgie]

On a different note, is anybody on this forum running big sur 11.1 with an AMD 6800 or 6800 XT graphic card? if so what are the performances? I read in a previous post here on this forum that someone had tried and performances were bad but that was on 11.0.1 and there were signs that 11.1 was going to support AMD 68xx chipsets. I have an AMD 5600 XT and recently bought a HP reverb G2 VR helmet for MS flight sim 2020 on windows. But the 5600 XT is borderline to run VR in its full specs. And running the Steam VR performance tool shows that the 5600 XT is not up to the task when it comes to VR. Hence I am looking at getting a 6800 or 6800XT. They are scarce but the local shop has a few available 6800 under Gigabyte or XFX brands, a few 6800 XT under the XFX brands.
Would you recommend the Gigabyte over the XFX, the other way round or none of them? The other brands like Asus, Sapphire, etc. are out of stock.

We are still waiting for the support of 6000 series GPUs, but it does look to be coming (hopefully soon)

 

[emistral]

We are still waiting for the support of 6000 series GPUs, but it does look to be coming (hopefully soon)

You mean it should be coming in 11.2? So there is no real purpose in buying a 68xx series card now given that it is not support to its full extent and they are scarce

 

[Higgie]

You mean it should be coming in 11.2? So there is no real purpose in buying a 68xx series card now given that it is not support to its full extent and they are scarce

We don’t know when. I’m hoping it will be 11.2, as then I can ditch my RX580 entirely. I found mine at a good price and my machine is a dual boot with Windows for gaming, so it made sense for me.

 

[johnvid]

If you're installing a PCIe card in the bottom x4 slot, then the third NVMe SSD may step down to x2. Feel free to try it and see what happens.

Some notes:

• One of my NVMe SSDs in one of my Hackintoshes is operating at x2 because of such a bandwidth sharing limitation.
  • Have I even noticed the speed difference? NO
  • Does it make any practical difference in my workloads? NO
  • During sustained read/write, every NVMe SSD heats up and slows down (thermal throttling). Try running any disk speed test utility repeatedly in succession and see what happens to your speeds.
  • Do people in general overreact to x2 link speeds? YES
• You can always buy a Thunderbolt 3 external enclosure for NVMe SSD in order to get close to x4 link speed if you really and truly need it.

Ok, I had some time extra so I tested a few use cases.

I populated slot 1 with my Samsung 960 EVO 500GB boot drive.

————First test————
In slot 2 and slot 3 I put 2 Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1 TB’s. The CNVi slot was still occupied with the WiFi 6 card. Plus my 10Gbit Network card was in the bottom PCIe slot

I tested the speed of slot 2 and slot 3. Slot 2 gave me the full x4 speed (around 3000 MB/s) and slot 3 gave me a x2 speed. (Also X2 speed info in Device Info)

————Second test————
In slot 2 and slot 3 I did again put the 2 Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1 TB’s. The CNVi slot was empty. Plus my 10Gbit Network card was in the bottom PCIe slot

I tested the speed of slot 2 and slot 3. Slot 2 gave me again the full x4 speed (around 3000 MB/s) and slot 3 still gave me a x2 speed. About 1500MB/s (Also X2 speed info in Device Info)

————Third test————
In slot 2 and slot 3 I did again put the 2 Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1 TB’s. The CNVi and bottom PCIe slots were both empty.

I tested again the speed of slot 2 and slot 3. Slot 2 gave me again the full x4 speed (around 3000 MB/s) and slot 3 gave me also a x4 speed. (X4 speed info in Device Info)

————Forth test————
In slot 2 and slot 3 I did again put the 2 Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1 TB’s. The CNVi and bottom PCIe slots were still both empty.

This time I tested the combined speed of slot 2 and slot 3 in a Mac software Raid 0. And I got a combined speed of still 3000MB/s.

————Fifth test————
In slot 2 and slot 3 where both empty. The CNVi and bottom PCIe slots were also still both empty.

I putted my 2 Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB NVMe’s on my Asrock X16 NVMe and the card in the second X16 (X8 speed) slot with bifurcation option on in the bios. (X8X4X4 mode). I did not change the software Raid 0 settings in Mac OS.

And the speedtest did gave me the combined X4 speeds. About 5500MB/s (Both X4 speeds info in Device Info)

————End of tests————

————Conclusion————
Removing the CNVi card did not make any speed difference for me.

Removing the bottom PCIe slot gave me back my X4 speed for slot 3.

Testing the speed of slot 2 and 3 combined in a Mac software Raid 0 gave me the speed of X4 total. So slot 2 and 3 share a X4 bandwidth.

Testing the same Mac software Raid 0 on a PCIe card without using slot 2 and 3 gave me the correct speed.


I hope this helps people with any problems they maybe facing. Every speeds mentioned in this post are all read speeds.

 

[joevt]

Testing the speed of slot 2 and 3 combined in a Mac software Raid 0 gave me the speed of X4 total. So slot 2 and 3 share a X4 bandwidth.

Those two slots are connected to the PCH which are limited by the DMI 3.0 (similar to PCIe 3.0 x4) connection to the CPU? There aren't a lot of motherboards that do more than DMI 3.0 (AMD?). I you want more than PCIe 3.0 x4 then you need to use some CPU slots or connections.

 

[johnvid]

Those two slots are connected to the PCH which are limited by the DMI 3.0 (similar to PCIe 3.0 x4) connection to the CPU? There aren't a lot of motherboards that do more than DMI 3.0 (AMD?). I you want more than PCIe 3.0 x4 then you need to use some CPU slots or connections.

That is what I noticed.

It is a shame macOS won’t boot from a Raid disk.

So I think I’ll be sticking with my PCIe NVMe extension card for now. I know my Vega 64 GPU will also run at X8 speed. But the performance difference is not that big if you compare it to X16.

 

[JDL]

Please use the third SSDT and disable or delete the ACPI rename. After rebooting, check whether Thunderbolt hot plug works.

Hi @CaseySJ

I had to use this one

• SSDT-TbtOnPch-Lenovo-730-13IWL.aml

As this one didn't work.
SSDT-TB3-HackinDROM.aml

Thanks a lot for your help.

 

[Ploddles]

You mean it should be coming in 11.2? So there is no real purpose in buying a 68xx series card now given that it is not support to its full extent and they are scarce

The 6800/6900 still aren't supported for video acceleration yet in the 11.2 beta 2. You could still use it in Windows for your VR stuff and your 5600 in Big Sur. You can use a SSDT to disable the 6800 in macOS, so you get the best of both worlds for the time being.

 

[MusicMac]

Hello @MusicMac,

Is Windows also installed in this system? If so, when a Windows feature update is installed, it can interfere with EFI partition on a Mac drive. To guard against this, we usually install the Windows NVMe SSD in the top NVMe slot (closest to CPU).

Anyway, the error you're getting from Disk Utility suggests that the EFI partition may have been corrupted. If Disk Utility is unable to repair the disk, then it would be best to restore from the backup, as follows:

• If the backup disk was made several days ago such that there are many documents, project files, etc. on the originaldisk that are not on the backup disk, then you have a couple of choices:
  • Option 1:
    • If you know where these files are on the original disk, you can manually copy them to the backup disk using Finder.
  • Option 2:
    • If too many files have changed between the original and backup disks, you could manually copy your entire Documents or Downloads or other data folder(s) from the original disk to the backup disk.
  • I would caution against cloning the macOS partition of the original disk to the backup disk because the system folders might not be trustable.
• Now that the backup disk has been made current to the best of your ability, you can proceed as follows:
  • Boot from the backup disk (press F12 at BIOS splash screen and choose the backup disk)
  • At the OpenCore Picker, boot macOS from the backup disk
  • Run Disk Utility, select the parent name of the original disk, and click Eraseto re-format the original disk.
    • Name: Any name
    • Format: APFS
    • Scheme: GUID Partition Map
  • Now run Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) and clone the backup disk to the original
  • When CCC is finished, mount the EFI partitions of the backup and original disks, then use Finder to copy the EFI folder from the backup disk to the original disk
  • Now the original disk should be bootable
• Reboot the system from the original disk to verify

Hi @CaseySJ

Thanks so much for taking the time to write the detailed instructions. I just finished cloning the main drive, and I didn't have any problems. It booted right up. I'm so glad to have CCC and your help, what a lifesaver!

 

[MusicMac]

Hey MusicMac,

If you're having HARD crashes (ie. can't move mouse and computer is completely stalled) this, in my experience at least, is usually down to hardware rather than software.

For example, my machine has been exhibiting similiar behaviour in LPX 10.6.1 that I use everyday for pro music work and I very recently found my ring ratio was set too high on my Vision G running a 10900K.

Its definitely worth running some stress tests in Win 10 to determine if your issues are hardware related.

Programs I use for this purpose:

• Karhu Software's RAM Test (paid) here
• Intel Xtreme Tuning Utility (free) here
• Coretemp (free) here

If your computer passes a 7 hour stress test using Intel Extreme Tuning both on the CPU and memory tester (if you don't want to pay for Karhu's RAM tester) then we can safely rule out the hardware.

I know this is a bit of a pain in the back side but its worth being scientific about this using a process of elimination to find out whats really going on.

I do however of course bow to the community's superior knowledge on this subject as I am, like you, at the end of the day just a music producer wanting to use Logic reliably on my hack until Apple get their arses in gear and release an M1 Mac Pro

Hey @hughythomas ,

I appreciate your help. Unfortunately I don't have Windows installed so I can't do these tests. I did Memtest though (it passed the test) when I suspected that it was my memory that was bad. When the memory on my 2008 Mac Pro went bad it just froze randomly similar to what I'm experiencing now with my hack. The strange thing is as long as I run Logic Pro I don't get any crashes. Since that is what I mainly use I gave up troubleshooting. My cpu setting is 1.2Volt which is not high.
Like you I'm waiting for Apple to release an affordable Mac Pro M? but in the meantime I use my hack.
Cheers