[Guide] Dell XPS 13 9360 on MacOS Sierra 10.12.x - LTS (Long-Term Support) Guide

[bozma88]

I'd also like to share with you the performance improvements before/after disabling the KBL spoof and switching to native KBL drivers:

GPU:

CPU:

Battery life also got a 10-20% boost. I think that's due to a more appropriate/energy efficient GPU driver.

That's for i7-7500U and HD620.
Note that MacOs was reporting a generic SKL graphics card before (even if the correct name was injected via AAPL properties), and reports Iris 650 after (even if the correct name is injected via AAPL properties). May this mean that the 650 driver is now used?

Can this be the reason of that performance boost?
Could this be the starting point to understand how to lower power consumption on HD640-equipped models (@RehabMan)?

 

[bozma88]

I am getting about 2W idle with 7560U, and can hear loud coil whine when I am using it.
Attached my 10.12.6 folder & ioreg.
Could someone please check it?

Also, try adding this boot flag: -disablegfxfirmware
I see from logs that it disables the (failing) attempt to load GUC: "[IGPU] Graphics firmware disabled via NVRAM".

 

[skydrops]

Also, try adding this boot flag: -disablegfxfirmware
I see from logs that it disables the (failing) attempt to load GUC: "[IGPU] Graphics firmware disabled via NVRAM".

Many thanks for your reply, I've added the boot flag you've pointed out.
Then the issue with coil whine is hardware related? I couldn't hear it when I first bought this laptop some weeks ago.
Will try to contact Dell for a replacement if that's the case...

 

[bozma88]

Many thanks for your reply, I've added the boot flag you've pointed out.
Then the issue with coil whine is hardware related? I couldn't hear it when I first bought this laptop some weeks ago.
Will try to contact Dell for a replacement if that's the case...

Coil whine is dependent on power draw, and it's due to the myriad or switching regulators inside the mainboard.
Two cases: 1) it developed naturally because of heat cycles. Contact Dell and swap. 2) CPU/GPU not correctly idling, and coil whine is caused by that. Anyway, if you hear it during workloads, it's 99% hw-related.

For your reference, my system has a very light whine during extreme GPU loads (= 3D CAD), otherwise it's 100% silent.

 

[skydrops]

Thanks for the heads up! I will open them an issue because is loud enough to be annoying while using some apps, completely silent @ idle.

 

[bozma88]

Thanks for the heads up! I will open them an issue because is loud enough to be annoying while using some apps, completely silent @ idle.

Before that, check whether it's the same on Windows (with properly installed drivers). Also, try to switch to spoofed skylake and see if the whine changes.

 

[bozma88]

To debug and understand power usage, I suggest Iris-equipped 9360 users to install some sort battery monitor app able to tell you how many watts you are drawing.
I'm using "coconutbattery".
On my system, it confirms my 10h battery life supposition at 100% screen brightness (and Chrome+Spotify open+Wifi connected).

A superb result for a ~1000$ Hackintosh, in my opinion.

 

[bozma88]

Guide in post #1 updated to final hotpatching revision.

 

[skydrops]

Here is mine with iris 640, seems that power usage doesn't match the ones from Intel PG

 

[bozma88]

Intel PG measures only the core subsystem. That's the whole usage, as seen by the battery controller.