Contribute
Register

[GUIDE] OC Monterey Z590I Gigabyte VISION D + i9 11900K + AMD RX6600

Joined
May 10, 2011
Messages
2,925
Motherboard
Gigabyte B550 Vision D
CPU
Ryzen 5900X
Graphics
RX 6800
Mac
  1. iMac
  2. MacBook
  3. MacBook Air
  4. MacBook Pro
  5. Mac mini
  6. Mac Pro
Classic Mac
  1. Power Mac
  2. PowerBook
Mobile Phone
  1. iOS
IMG_1550.png


IMG_1549.png


Screen Shot 2021-12-01 at 12.12.41 AM copy.png


This is a guide for the Gigabyte Z590I Vision D Mini ITX motherboard.

Origins of the build

I had been using a Gigabyte Z170N WiFi as a backup hackintosh on Catalina at work for many years and felt it was time to upgrade my system. As I already had a Rocket Lake i9-11900K in my other Z490 Aorus Xtreme motherboard at home and I wanted to maximize the full use of the chip's capabilities but didn't want to spend any extra money on the build I decided to swap it out and use it in a new Z590 motherboard.

When the Gigabyte Z590I Vision D first came out some months back I was already thinking it could become a very useful 'Mac Pro Mini' motherboard because of the mini-ITX design but didn't have much time to explore the idea. I was always a fan of the mini ITX boards for its small and compact size. As Alder Lake began to release recently [November 2021] and my local computer dealer notified me all older Z590 boards would soon be phased out by their distributors, I felt it was time to get hold of a Z590I Vision D board before they were no longer available to test out the board and see what how good it really was.

The Z590I Vision D came in a very small box and was packed with minimal parts. Unlike previous Gigabyte boards that I had owned such as the Z490 Aorus Xtreme which had all manners of goodies such as a USB-DAC, dozens of cables, metal stickers and so forth this had nothing else other than some small screws, a manual, some SATA cables and a WiFi antenna.


Screen Shot 2021-12-01 at 12.24.25 AM.png


Screen Shot 2021-12-01 at 12.16.59 AM.png

Screen Shot 2021-12-01 at 2.24.28 AM.png


Screen Shot 2021-12-01 at 1.44.15 AM.png

Screen Shot 2021-12-01 at 1.44.32 AM.png

Screen Shot 2021-12-01 at 12.21.35 AM.png


Screen Shot 2021-12-01 at 2.26.12 AM.png


Screen Shot 2021-12-01 at 12.15.22 AM.png



Screen Shot 2021-12-01 at 12.27.07 AM.png


Screen Shot 2021-12-01 at 12.28.02 AM.png


Z590Ivisiond-atx-2.png


COMPONENTS

What works

NVMe detection and bootup
USB 3.1, 3.0 & 2.0 (hot-plugging and eject on USB 3.1 works)
Full sound with volume adjustment
Full screen 1040P
Video playback
Graphics acceleration
2.5GBe Ethernet
Thunderbolt 3 (board is TB4 Maple Ridge)
VDA Decoding
(from OC 0.7.8)
WiFi
Bluetooth
Airdrop
Screen-mirroring
Sleep/wake from USB

What doesn't

Thunderbolt hot-plugging


BIOS settings

AHCI Mode
VT-d disabled
Above 4GB Decoding Enabled
Thunderbolt enabled
CSM Disabled
TPM Disabled
Secure Boot disabled
UEFI Boot Mode

(First release: 1st December 2021)

With this build I have managed to get most of the functions enabled for Monterey working on the Z590I Vision D on Opencore 0.7.4 build. I am using an Asrock Challenger RX6600 card to boot the system on both macOS and Windows, and it is running stable. As it has no standard HDMI out on the board itself the Intel IGPU has to be disabled.

Performance from the system is excellent, almost matching the Geekbench 5 results of my other recent Asus Z690 Prime P D4 Alder Lake setup. In fact the Geekbench scores have been so good on this system that I think it matches even the Comet Lake i9-10900K speeds (despite it utilizing less cores because 2 cores have been assigned to TB4/PCIe4 functions). And the PCIe 4.0 spec Samsung 980 EVO M.2 NVMe 500GB SSD works fine with Monterey (despite the recent warnings by the Opencore team).

Although the system can only run Monterey (as it uses the RX6600 card which is only recognized by macOS 12.1) I am sure it is more than capable of booting Big Sur if paired with the right card.

The only downside I found with this board is a surprising lack of HDMI and extra sound output ports. There are no digital outputs on this board only a phono in and mic out, so this makes it not really ideal for home theatre use (unless you use a USB-based DAC for output).

(8th April 2022 update)

With this update I have made some minor improvements to the build. EFI is now updated to OC 0.7.8. and Intel wireless and Bluetooth should work after update 12.3. SSD write speeds on Aja System Lite also seem to be a little 10% quicker. Airdrop and Screen-mirroring now also works.

(12th April 2022 update)

I have added a few SSDTs and kexts to resolve the AMD RX6600 dGPU sleep/wake issue, namely SSDT-BRG and SSDT-XSPI which should further make the system more stable. Also removed the dGPU device properties and added in RadeonSensor.kext and SMCRadeonGPU.kext to improve the RX6600's sensor functions. CPUID is now spoofed to proper Comet Lake values (55060A).

(3rd October 2022 update)

With this update I have brought OC up to version 0.8.4 and also cleaned up the SSDTs for Thunderbolt - TB3HP is the one we now use for best connectivity. Bluetooth is now fixed thanks to OpenIntelWireless' latest v2.2.0 update.
The issue we had before was because IntelBluetoothFirmware.kext wasn't updated and did not have new IntelBTPatcher.kext added for the latest firmwares. To add to the confusion, for BT to work on Monterey, BlueToolFixup.kext must also be present in the kernel whilst IntelBluetoolInjector.kext is only used for 10.15 Catalina or earlier (in place of BluetoolFixup.kext which is only used for Monterey+).

Also the EFI is now Ventura-compatible.

However I have also made a startling discovery with regards to system performance. It seems that the IPC can now be lifted a little further to around the 9800 mark (Rocket Lake on average achieves only around 8200). This is thanks to vit9696's guide on the Z590's CPUFriendData mod here which injects proper frequency vectors for Rocket Lake chips. The mod can also be used for Comet Lake chipsets. > https://github.com/dortania/bugtracker/issues/190

Screenshot 2022-10-03 at 2.26.00 PM.png


Also I discovered that iMac20,2 is a better match for overall Geekbench 5 performance than SMBIOS iMacPro1,1.
 

Attachments

  • z590i-vision-d.jpeg
    z590i-vision-d.jpeg
    194.2 KB · Views: 540
  • EFI OC 0.7.4 for Monterey 12.1.zip
    26 MB · Views: 669
  • Z590Ivisiond-atx.png
    Z590Ivisiond-atx.png
    1.3 MB · Views: 304
  • Z590Ivisiond-atx-2.png
    Z590Ivisiond-atx-2.png
    348.2 KB · Views: 306
  • Z590Ivisiond-atx.png
    Z590Ivisiond-atx.png
    1.3 MB · Views: 597
  • EFI OC 0.7.8 for Monterey.zip
    32.5 MB · Views: 399
  • EFI Monterey OC 0.7.8 Sleep Wake.zip
    38.2 MB · Views: 563
  • EFI OC 0.8.4 for 12 13.zip
    30.1 MB · Views: 570
Last edited:
Thread title is intended to be 10900?

I glanced at page summary and saw a Geekbench 1500 score and wondered how did he do that?
I've never used the 11900, but after many hours of goofing around with 10900 Geekbench and Cinebench, your 11900 benchmarks seems about 10% below where they should be. IOW, if I compare what my 10900 kit measured against GB browser and use same reckoning for 11900, I would expect your scores to be about 1700 / 11000.

Not a lot and not noticeable in use, but something to shoot for if you enjoy tweaking (in electronics sense haha) But the board should do it.

On this factory overclocked kit, 3 areas that contrbute 3% off the mark could account for it. For example, RAM to 3600, raise BIOS power/temp thresholds (subject to case / cooling), plus maybe cancel some overlooked background app eating a few percent?

I messed around with overclocking features a lot on a Asus z590 board, to see how top-end gaming think about system performance. I came away with impression that these systems don't leave much on the table for the customer while offering insanely many options and ways to go wrong. More and more fussing over less and less. Maybe "tweaking" is a better term than I thought! Anyway I do enjoy the goofing around. I gained new appreciation for Apple HW designs...

Thanks for the writeup. It gave me some ideas for additional stuff to try on my kit.

One last detail: can I suggest that in your summary you qualify that VDA decode is not iGPU — unless you have made a breakthru of epic proportions.

Food for thought: I think this aspect of iGPU is misunderstood and under-valued. Having a supported iGPU counts for an additional performance bump of at least 50% of system multicore on the tasks to which the iGPU is suited in exchange for a very small amount of silicon area and power budget. It's a really good performance value. For example iGPU it's ubiquitous for encode/decode in media player and teleconferencing apps. Having proper onboard VDA leaves the CPU and dGPU free for other work.

To grok a use case: In Windows gaming, this means your Twitch feed or vid chat runs in parallel to your game session without impinging on your gameplay compute resources. On Mac similar effects apply for mixed multimedia and graphics apps, but there's no official Mac use-case for such.

You will notice how Apple is putting similar specialized units to work in AppleSi, such as Bionic chip.

From this perspective we get clues about the future of SoC approaches, including the meaning of Alder Lake, on Mac and we may begin to suspect that raw core performance is passé. It's system balance that matters and all those transistors and power on general compute cores may be better spent elsewhere. Apple moved on from Intel because PC gaming doesn't represent Apple's way of the future. OTOH it's the main way Intel knows how to think about marketing desktop performance.

This way of seeing helps me understand the industry trends better. Unfortunately, it also spells the end of an era.
 
Thread title is intended to be 10900?

I glanced at page summary and saw a Geekbench 1500 score and wondered how did he do that?
I've never used the 11900, but after many hours of goofing around with 10900 Geekbench and Cinebench, your 11900 benchmarks seems about 10% below where they should be. IOW, if I compare what my 10900 kit measured against GB browser and use same reckoning for 11900, I would expect your scores to be about 1700 / 11000.

Not a lot and not noticeable in use, but something to shoot for if you enjoy tweaking (in electronics sense haha) But the board should do it.

On this factory overclocked kit, 3 areas that contrbute 3% off the mark could account for it. For example, RAM to 3600, raise BIOS power/temp thresholds (subject to case / cooling), plus maybe cancel some overlooked background app eating a few percent?

I messed around with overclocking features a lot on a Asus z590 board, to see how top-end gaming think about system performance. I came away with impression that these systems don't leave much on the table for the customer while offering insanely many options and ways to go wrong. More and more fussing over less and less. Maybe "tweaking" is a better term than I thought! Anyway I do enjoy the goofing around. I gained new appreciation for Apple HW designs...

Thanks for the writeup. It gave me some ideas for additional stuff to try on my kit.

One last detail: can I suggest that in your summary you qualify that VDA decode is not iGPU — unless you have made a breakthru of epic proportions.

Food for thought: I think this aspect of iGPU is misunderstood and under-valued. Having a supported iGPU counts for an additional performance bump of at least 50% of system multicore on the tasks to which the iGPU is suited in exchange for a very small amount of silicon area and power budget. It's a really good performance value. For example iGPU it's ubiquitous for encode/decode in media player and teleconferencing apps. Having proper onboard VDA leaves the CPU and dGPU free for other work.

To grok a use case: In Windows gaming, this means your Twitch feed or vid chat runs in parallel to your game session without impinging on your gameplay compute resources. On Mac similar effects apply for mixed multimedia and graphics apps, but there's no official Mac use-case for such.

You will notice how Apple is putting similar specialized units to work in AppleSi, such as Bionic chip.

From this perspective we get clues about the future of SoC approaches, including the meaning of Alder Lake, on Mac and we may begin to suspect that raw core performance is passé. It's system balance that matters and all those transistors and power on general compute cores may be better spent elsewhere. Apple moved on from Intel because PC gaming doesn't represent Apple's way of the future. OTOH it's the main way Intel knows how to think about marketing desktop performance.

This way of seeing helps me understand the industry trends better. Unfortunately, it also spells the end of an era.
Nope, the thread title was meant to be 11900K, I've now corrected it. :D

Thanks for the performance tip suggestions I will look into them - I am still fine tuning the setup. Yeah I think it can run a little bit hotter for sure, shouldn't be a problem.

As for the VDA decoding, it is from the dGPU and not the IGPU. I will have a look at the IGPU a bit further however, since on my Z490 system I remembered I did manage somehow to enable it before (and got it to recognise under a CML CPUID & device id). It wasn't accelerated however.

Between the tests of the Z590I & Z690, the only things I am slightly more disappointed is probably the M.2 speeds and Cinebench score. The M.2 should be a lot higher (given it is PCIe 4.0) and Cinebench is about 6,000 points lower.
 
Folks, I just wanted to clarify, I realised the M.2 NVMe I used is a standard Samsung 980. I checked its specs - it is NOT PCIe 4.0, but PCIe 3.0 which is why the disk test speed results is what it is (under 3,000Mbps).

As for the rest of the system, I did some further testing earlier today and found that the speed could be increased a little further by enabling Intel Adaptive Boost in the BIOS (as well as enabling the All Multicores setting) but that was about it. My DDR4 3200Mhz RAM could not go any further speed wise and also increasing the CPU ratio from 35 to 40 actually slowed down the machine and dropped its Geekbench and Cinebench scores by 1,500 points. Also using iMacPro1,1 on this board lowers the overall Geekbench system score, so iMac20,2 is the best setting to use.
 
Folks, I just wanted to clarify, I realised the M.2 NVMe I used is a standard Samsung 980. i checked its specs - it is NOT PCIe 4.0 but PCIe 3.0 which is why the disk test speed results is what it is (under 3,000Mbps).

As for the rest of the system, I did some further testing earlier today and found that the speed could be increased a little further by enabling Intel Adaptive Boost in the BIOS (as well as enabling the All Multicores setting) but that was about it. My DDR4 3200Mhz RAM could not go any further speed wise and also increasing the CPU ratio from 35 to 40 actually slowed down the machine and dropped its Geekbench and Cinebench scores by 1,500 points. Also using iMacPro1,1 on this board lowers the overall Geekbench system score, so iMac20,2 is the best setting to use.
will you be finishing off the guide in post 1?
 
Would be good to put in the Z590I mobo picture too. It shows the ATX Vision D now.

2.png
 
View attachment 535978

View attachment 535979

View attachment 535968

This is a guide for the Gigabyte Z590I Vision D Mini ITX motherboard.

Origins of the build

I had been using a Gigabyte Z170N WiFi as a backup hackintosh on Catalina at work for many years and felt it was time to upgrade my system. As I already had a Rocket Lake i9-11900K in my other Z490 Aorus Xtreme motherboard at home and I wanted to maximize the full use of the chip's capabilities but didn't want to spend any extra money on the build I decided to swap it out and use it in a new Z590 motherboard.

When the Gigabyte Z590I Vision D first came out some months back I was already thinking it could become a very useful 'Mac Pro Mini' motherboard because of the mini-ITX design but didn't have much time to explore the idea. I was always a fan of the mini ITX boards for its small and compact size. As Alder Lake began to release recently [November 2021] and my local computer dealer notified me all older Z590 boards would soon be phased out by their distributors, I felt it was time to get hold of a Z590I Vision D board before they were no longer available to test out the board and see what how good it really was.

The Z590I Vision D came in a very small box and was packed with minimal parts. Unlike previous Gigabyte boards that I had owned such as the Z490 Aorus Xtreme which had all manners of goodies such as a USB-DAC, dozens of cables, metal stickers and so forth this had nothing else other than some small screws, a manual, some SATA cables and a WiFi antenna.


View attachment 535970

View attachment 535973

View attachment 535986

View attachment 535980

View attachment 535981

View attachment 535974

View attachment 535988

View attachment 535975


View attachment 535971

View attachment 535972

View attachment 535976

COMPONENTS

What works

NVMe detection and bootup
USB 3.1, 3.0 & 2.0 (hot-plugging and eject on USB 3.1 works)
Full sound with volume adjustment
Full screen 1040P
Video playback
Graphics acceleration
2.5GBe Ethernet
Thunderbolt 3 (board is TB4 Maple Ridge)
VDA Decoding
WiFi


What doesn't

Thunderbolt hot-plugging


BIOS settings

AHCI Mode
VT-d disabled
Above 4GB Decoding Enabled
Thunderbolt enabled
CSM Disabled
TPM Disabled
Secure Boot disabled
UEFI Boot Mode

(First release: 1st December 2021)

With this build I have managed to get most of the functions enabled for Monterey working on the Z590I Vision D on Opencore 0.7.4 build. I am using an Asrock Challenger RX6600 card to boot the system on both macOS and Windows, and it is running stable. As it has no standard HDMI out on the board itself the Intel IGPU has to be disabled.

Performance from the system is excellent, almost matching the Geekbench 5 results of my other recent Asus Z690 Prime P D4 Alder Lake setup. In fact the Geekbench scores have been so good on this system that I think it matches even the Comet Lake i9-10900K speeds (despite it utilizing less cores because 2 cores have been assigned to TB4/PCIe4 functions). And the PCIe 4.0 spec Samsung 980 EVO M.2 NVMe 500GB SSD works fine with Monterey (despite the recent warnings by the Opencore team).

Although the system can only run Monterey (as it uses the RX6600 card which is only recognized by macOS 12.1) I am sure it is more than capable of booting Big Sur if paired with the right card.

The only downside I found with this board is a surprising lack of HDMI and extra sound output ports. There are no digital outputs on this board only a phono in and mic out, so this makes it not really ideal for home theatre use (unless you use a USB-based DAC for output).
you forgot to enable this rename:
Rename GPRW to XPRW (as you have listed SSDT-GPRW.aml as enabled)

assume that you also do not need Rename PEGP to GFX0 as whatevergreen takes care of that?
 
Folks, I just wanted to clarify, I realised the M.2 NVMe I used is a standard Samsung 980. i checked its specs ... ...enabling Intel Adaptive Boost in the BIOS (as well as enabling the All Multicores setting) but that was about it. My DDR4 3200Mhz RAM could not go any further speed wise and also increasing the CPU ratio from 35 to 40 actually slowed down the machine and dropped its Geekbench and Cinebench scores by 1,500 points. Also using iMacPro1,1 on this board lowers the overall Geekbench system score, so iMac20,2 is the best setting to use.

Ah-ha! That makes sense re 980.
Not surprising that RAM is topped out. That's the way it's sold these days. Does the BIOS give you control over fine-grained power details re boost frequencies? Something related to max package power or that sort of lingo? If so, you might read up on those controls. In my Asus kit there's a vast control panel for tuning in many dimensions.

But it's academic.

I would be curious to hear anyone's subjective response increase of PCI4 storage but I don't think the improvement really matters for subjective response. The way I see it I can already compare a 300 MB/s SATA SSD on a 2008 Mac Pro to a 4-to-10x more powerful 10900 that has infinite RAM and a 3 GB/s NVMe. I promise everyone that the subjective experience improvement of the 10x more powerful system feels like 1.25x for daily activities, including Photoshop and media transcoding. What the new system reveals is how the speed of data access is always limited by something, and that short or long waiting is waiting. If you have to wait 20 mins for a big job on old system or 2 minutes on new, you still have to wait! The speedup can make waiting worse because of hanging on in anticipation. If I download a new version of LibreOffice both old and new system benefit from fibre internet. Both make me wait twiddling thumbs for LibreOffice dmg to mount and the app to copy. Both throw up "Are you sure?" click-throughs, and both process my slow key presses and menu hunting equally well. As to new kit allowing faster access to video, content creation that's always gated by interface to the rest of the world.

As we can see, even Apple can only boast about their new kit in terms of features like OCR copy/paste, scanning your library for faces, or FINAL CUT F/X

So no worries on your drive. I doubt you're missing anything!
 
Back
Top