Low Cost Graphics Alternative for Mojave 10.14.3
I wanted to report that there is another low cost graphics card alternative:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00R2M10SU/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
This is a $79 low-profile MSI Kepler GT 730 card with 2GB DDR5 RAM. It appears to be working
with QE/CI using Clover r4871, Lilu 1.3.4, WhateverGreen 1.2.6, and AppleALC 1.3.5.
I have just replaced a PNY GT720 card which provided a Cinebench 15 framerate of 26.5 fps to a 1080p monitor.
The MSI GT730 performed as follows. I ran Geekbench 4 Metal five times -- the mean score was
20,913 with a standard deviation of 90. I ran the Cinebench 15 OpenGL framerate test ten times,
and got a mean framerate of just over 51 fps with a standard deviation of 1.96. For some reason,
the OpenCL Geekbench 4 test quits without finishing.
By comparison, a low-profile MSI RX560 gets a Geekbench4 Metal score of about 74,000 and a framerate
of about 60 in Cinebench 15.
After initial installation, HDMI audio worked fine, but was lost after the first reboot. I followed
Sniki's recommendations here and am using his ssdt and CodecCommander. Sniki also recommends
defining various device properties for the ALC221, including a layout-id of 11. I am also using Sniki's
device properties, and have also set Clover Configurator to inject 11 and resetHDA in Devices/Audio.
I found I had to disable the renaming of GFX0 to IGPU in ACPI patches, and then HDMI audio worked
just fine.