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[GUIDE] Injection of AMD Vega Power and Fan Control Properties

thanks p-chef... yeah.. hacky... that pretty much amplified hackintoshing on really OLD hardware .. a hack on a hack

as any more definitive answers been arrived at as far as best framebuffer for the 58 airboost? how about your final vgtab/softpower table settings for the MSI Vega 58 airboost... you were running a slight mem clock boost and lower voltage right?

thanks for helping out.. appreciate it

Yes, I replaced the stock thermal paste with liquid metal then increased memory clock slightly and lowered voltage.

However, I have since sold that card and purchased a used PowerColor Vega 56 Red Dragon. Again, I replaced the thermal compound with liquid metal. I also replaced the thermal pads with pads from Thermal Grizzly and increased mounting pressure of the heatsink. Then I flashed it with Sapphire Nitro+ Vega 64 firmware.
 
Yes, I replaced the stock thermal paste with liquid metal then increased memory clock slightly and lowered voltage.

However, I have since sold that card and purchased a used PowerColor Vega 56 Red Dragon. Again, I replaced the thermal compound with liquid metal. I also replaced the thermal pads with pads from Thermal Grizzly and increased mounting pressure of the heatsink. Then I flashed it with Sapphire Nitro+ Vega 64 firmware.

with the current airboostfanfix.kext I found, the card runs pretty good.. fans ramp nicely and unlike apple it doest stop and allow the card to run high 50s at idle.. more like mid 30s.. which is nice..

luxball 3.1 is 28080.. and GB4 metal 58350 and OpenCL 50350 is respectable..

video toolbox hardware encode with handbrake will take a 1080p blu-ray 264 file and encode at apple4k60 setting to 265 at an average ~130FPS... compared to 9fps for my hex core xeon.

I think the power play table in that kext is probably pretty good... I doubt its undervolted and it looks like power caps were taken off as stat doesn't report watts.. but it allows the card to hit 1.58Ghz

if you think your undervolt vgtab will work post it up if you still have it and I will give it a whirl.

I think my ports issue is like not going to get fixed.. slice said its a compatibility issue with the card and my old ass chipset and intels half baked first gen EFI environment not loading the card right
 
with the current airboostfanfix.kext I found, the card runs pretty good.. fans ramp nicely and unlike apple it doest stop and allow the card to run high 50s at idle.. more like mid 30s.. which is nice..

luxball 3.1 is 28080.. and GB4 metal 58350 and OpenCL 50350 is respectable..

video toolbox hardware encode with handbrake will take a 1080p blu-ray 264 file and encode at apple4k60 setting to 265 at an average ~130FPS... compared to 9fps for my hex core xeon.

I think the power play table in that kext is probably pretty good... I doubt its undervolted and it looks like power caps were taken off as stat doesn't report watts.. but it allows the card to hit 1.58Ghz

if you think your undervolt vgtab will work post it up if you still have it and I will give it a whirl.

I think my ports issue is like not going to get fixed.. slice said its a compatibility issue with the card and my old ass chipset and intels half baked first gen EFI environment not loading the card right

I don't remember exactly what settings I used with my Vega 56 Air Boost...

WhateverGreen should enable all all the ports. But even without WhateverGreen, two of the four ports on my card works. I never tried multi-monitor setups though.
 
I don't remember exactly what settings I used with my Vega 56 Air Boost...

WhateverGreen should enable all all the ports. But even without WhateverGreen, two of the four ports on my card works. I never tried multi-monitor setups though.
I would love to dump WEG.. but in order to get hardware encode on both codecs and DRM.. it almost seemed mandatory

I need to upgrade my hardware one of these days to something more 'mainstream' and easier .. I have a hp6300 i3 I picked up for the cost of a 12 pack and that hacks easy.. but my w3680 is a powerhouse.. seems a shame to toss her yet
 
@dragonmel,

Like @pastrychef I too have no experience of using a split personality SMBIOS/BoardID as my Haswell based system with Vega 64 (see my sig for full spec) has been super stable with just the iMac15,1 SMBIOS and WEG and i tend to agree with @pastrychef that the split personality route is a bit "Hacky" although is some circumstances (such as yours) it may be the only option.

In my case sleep wont work due to the onboard ASMedia USB controllers and hubs on the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 motherboard so I simply shut it down when i'm not using it. If i disable the ASMedia USB ports in the BIOS it sleeps and wakes fine but i loose over half my USB ports so its not really an option.

WEG in most cases is mandatory to enable all output ports on a Vega based GPU as long as it based on the AMD reference design. It is possible to patch the AMD framebuffer/driver if your Vega is not a reference design but it's not something i've done as my Vega 64 LC follows the AMD reference design with 2 X HDMI and 2 x DP.

If you search the forums you find a few guides that outline the AMD Framebuffer patching process.

Intel Motherboards are pretty notorious for not being particularly suitable for a Hackintosh and are known to be problematic, the main issue is that Intel use their own UEFI implementation in the BIOS which many users have commented on as being only half compliant which is why i suspect you have been forced down the split personality route and you've done well to get it as stable as you have.

Cheers
Jay
 
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@dragonmel,

Like @pastrychef I too have no experience of using a split personality SMBIOS/BoardID as my Haswell based system with Vega 64 (see my sig for full spec) has been super stable with just the iMac15,1 SMBIOS and WEG and i tend to agree with @pastrychef that the split personality route is a bit "Hacky" although is some circumstances (such as yours) it may be the only option.

In my case sleep wont work due to the onboard ASMedia USB controllers and hubs on the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 motherboard so I simply shut it down when i'm not using it. If i disable the ASMedia USB ports in the BIOS it sleeps and wakes fine but i loose over half my USB ports so its not really an option.

WEG in most cases is mandatory to enable all output ports on a Vega based GPU as long as it based on the AMD reference design. It is possible to patch the AMD framebuffer/driver if your Vega is not a reference design but it's not something i've done as my Vega 64 LC follows the AMD reference design with 2 X HDMI and 2 x DP.

If you search the forums you find a few guides that outline the AMD Framebuffer patching process.

Intel Motherboards are pretty notorious for not being particularly suitable for a Hackintosh and are known to be problematic which is why i suspect you have been forced down the split personality route and you've done well to get it as stable as you have.

Cheers
Jay
Thanks guys. Back in the day when I had hair and was hackintoshing leopard and snow leopard. intel board were doing great and rumor had it that apple was actually using some intel g45, d975, and dx58 boards as dev platforms especially during the move out of PPC g4/5

the airboost looks reference with 3dp and 1:HDMI but has a dual bios one which is clocked so the bios clearly isn’t reference

biggest issue with the Dx58 is running it with a half implement intel UEFI to keep up with clover 10 years past this boards prime

the board will auto sleep and wake more often than not but either the latest security update or clover 5115 brought back what looks like cmos corruption during restarts and sometimes wakes. Get weird dead battery notices and dates not set etc when the battery is fine and the board wasn’t unplugged

i have / had that patched in my DSDT but something doesn’t like it. My 2008 macbook is also running Mojave and it’s RTC address and length are the same as this board and not having issues.

I have a 6 port SATA card I would love to use its marvel/asm1091 and works great but after sleep it shits the bed and I get 10k plus kernel pid 0 wake ups in activity monitor. Again likely not UEFI initing properly. Works fine in a ho 6300sff running Mojave

I have a USB3 card works fine.

I am sure my DSDT could use a polish and a really well created SS for the Vega. But it’s getting pas my abilities at this point. Hacking is a young guys game unless you have lots of time to stay on top of it. Hehe
 
Thanks guys. Back in the day when I had hair and was hackintoshing leopard and snow leopard. intel board were doing great and rumor had it that apple was actually using some intel g45, d975, and dx58 boards as dev platforms especially during the move out of PPC g4/5

the airboost looks reference with 3dp and 1:HDMI but has a dual bios one which is clocked so the bios clearly isn’t reference

biggest issue with the Dx58 is running it with a half implement intel UEFI to keep up with clover 10 years past this boards prime

the board will auto sleep and wake more often than not but either the latest security update or clover 5115 brought back what looks like cmos corruption during restarts and sometimes wakes. Get weird dead battery notices and dates not set etc when the battery is fine and the board wasn’t unplugged

i have / had that patched in my DSDT but something doesn’t like it. My 2008 macbook is also running Mojave and it’s RTC address and length are the same as this board and not having issues.

I have a 6 port SATA card I would love to use its marvel/asm1091 and works great but after sleep it shits the bed and I get 10k plus kernel pid 0 wake ups in activity monitor. Again likely not UEFI initing properly. Works fine in a ho 6300sff running Mojave

I have a USB3 card works fine.

I am sure my DSDT could use a polish and a really well created SS for the Vega. But it’s getting pas my abilities at this point. Hacking is a young guys game unless you have lots of time to stay on top of it. Hehe

Yes, the Vega 56 Air Boost is reference.

Sounds like your motherboard is quite difficult to hack. I have never had to use a patched DSDT with any of my desktop hackintoshes. I don't even need one for me laptop anymore.
 
Yes, the Vega 56 Air Boost is reference.

Sounds like your motherboard is quite difficult to hack. I have never had to use a patched DSDT with any of my desktop hackintoshes. I don't even need one for me laptop anymore.

it wasn't bad until hardware cards and clover got heavy into needing fully working UEFI and nvram.. of which the older intel motherboard suck at ... the UEFI on the dx58 is awful and doesn't have a shell, doesn't have any way of maintaining the UEFI boot list, has no bios switches for compatibility modes, has no way to modify efi modules so yeah.. its getting sporty... but mostly because of the graphics and add in cards..

hell my 2008 macbook runs mojave better.. its not about power, its about compatibility .. hehe

but my x58 hex holds own.. I want to say a GB4 cpu multicore of 17,200ish if memory serves.. its an overclocked hyperthreaded hex xeon with ECC memory that works.. see no reason for more processing power.. yeah.. ok with the vega it IDLES at 130W at the wall .. so that sucks by modern standards... but its not terrible and for the couple grand it would cost to get into evquivelent benches.. would take me a decade in saved electricity to pay for it!!
hehe
 
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it wasn't bad until hardware cards and clover got heavy into needing fully working UEFI and nvram.. of which the older intel motherboard suck at ... the UEFI on the dx58 is awful and doesn't have a shell, doesn't have any way of maintaining the UEFI boot list, has no bios switches for compatibility modes, has no way to modify efi modules so yeah.. its getting sporty... but mostly because of the graphics and add in cards..

hell my 2008 macbook runs mojave better.. its not about power, its about compatibility .. hehe

but my x58 hex holds own.. I want to say a GB multicore of 17000ish if memory serves.. its an overclocked hyperthreaded hex xeon with ECC memory that works.. see no reason for more processing power.. yeah.. ok with the vega it IDLES at 130W at the wall .. so that sucks... but its not terrible and for the couple grand it would cost to get into evquivelent benches.. would take me a decade in saved electricity to pay for it!!
hehe

Have you ever tried going with legacy installation?
 
Thought about it.. at one point I think back during snow leopard. I was working with a project that was using some parts of chameleon and a really well put together dsdt/Kexts specifically for d975 and Dx58so boards.. and as I transitioned to clover I started off legacy I think

But at some point during testing clover just seemed to run better from a UEFI boot on this board .. sleep and some other finer points seemed more stable.. might have to roll back and try it again but that would mean going back to fake Nvram which was a pain when I have multiple drives in the system because sometimes clover just wrote the file wherever it wanted to.. and that lead to issues of thier own having like 4 different nvram files floating around in the box
 
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