- Joined
- Jul 21, 2019
- Messages
- 12
- Motherboard
- ASUS Rog Strix Z390-E
- CPU
- Core i9-9900K
- Graphics
- Sapphire Radeon 5700XT Nitro+
- Mac
- Mobile Phone
Hi,
I have spend the last few days getting my new Radeon 5700 XT fully running under macOS Catalina. Since I read many posts and tried a lot of different things I wanted to share my findings here, hope to help other users with similar problems.
My goal was to get a two monitor setup running, my main 34'' display over DisplayPort and my secondary 27'' screen via HDMI.
But I want to point out that what worked for me does not necessaryly need to work for you. Since I read so many different approaches and solutions in other threads there might be other pitfalls in your case.
Prerequisites
I would strongly advice to create a bootable usb stick with a copy of your currently working boot loader from your hard drives EFI partition.
Every time something goes wrong and you are not able to boot your system you can just select the stick as boot device and revert changes made to your EFI folder.
Steps
1) Upgrade to macOS Catalina
So first of all you should upgrade your system to the latest macOS Catalina version, since the card is only fully supported since 10.15.2. I've chosen the direct update route from Mojave described here. All this can be done with your currently installed graphic card.
The only error I got was "apfs_module_start:1683" during the installation process. So if your installation seems to stuck, restart it in verbose mode by pressing space bar on the Clover boot entry and choosing the "-v" boot option.
There are several threads here in the forum the point out that you need to install SSDT-EC.aml in the /EFI/CLOVER/ACPI/patched folder of your EFI partition.
I then swapped the graphic card to the Radeon 5700XT and run into different problems, which I describe at the beginning of each step. You can easily boot with your old card and do all the setup before having to change between the two cards back and forth!
1) Deactivate GPU Injection
I got a black screen directly after choosing my Clover boot entry (no macOS load bar or Apple logo appeared).
To avoid this mount your EFI partition with Clover Configurator, load your config.plist from /EFI/CLOVER and choose the Graphics section. Deactivate Inject ATI, Inject Intel and Inject NVidia.
Save your configuration with CMD+S.
2) Config your macOS model
After step one my system booted with a progress bar and the Apple logo, but right before the login screen the monitor got back into stand by and stood black.
I could work around this by configuring an accurate macOS model with the help of Clover Configurator. Load you config.plist like described in step one and navigate to the SMBIOS section.
Go to everymac.com and navigate to the exact processor you have. In my case I own a Core i5 6600 which brought me to the following detail page. Just below the headline the model is mentioned - in my case iMac17,1.
Back at the SMBIOS section i could choose this exact model by clicking at the double arrow on the right side just below the model image. Afterwards all the other fields at this page got filled out automatically.
Save your configuration with CMD+S.
3) Update WhatEverGreen.kext and Lilu.kext to the latest version
After step two my system booted till the login screen but only the secondary screen at the HDMI port worked. The main monitor still stood black.
Download the latest version of WhatEverGreen.kext (1.3.6 for me) and Lilu.kext (1.4.1 for me) from the Download Section. These files need to be put under /Library/Extensions but can not be copied directly. Just follow the instructions here by using Hackintool to install any kind of kext file.
As a last step go back to Clover Configurator and choose the Boot section. With a right click in the Boot Arguments window you can choose "agdpmod=pikera" from the WhatEverGreen submenu.
Save with CMD+S as always.
Sidenote: I also updated AppleALC.kext and FakeSMC.kext in the same way but I can't tell if this was necessary.
After this my system booted with both monitors working as I might expect it.
I have spend the last few days getting my new Radeon 5700 XT fully running under macOS Catalina. Since I read many posts and tried a lot of different things I wanted to share my findings here, hope to help other users with similar problems.
My goal was to get a two monitor setup running, my main 34'' display over DisplayPort and my secondary 27'' screen via HDMI.
But I want to point out that what worked for me does not necessaryly need to work for you. Since I read so many different approaches and solutions in other threads there might be other pitfalls in your case.
Prerequisites
I would strongly advice to create a bootable usb stick with a copy of your currently working boot loader from your hard drives EFI partition.
Every time something goes wrong and you are not able to boot your system you can just select the stick as boot device and revert changes made to your EFI folder.
Steps
1) Upgrade to macOS Catalina
So first of all you should upgrade your system to the latest macOS Catalina version, since the card is only fully supported since 10.15.2. I've chosen the direct update route from Mojave described here. All this can be done with your currently installed graphic card.
The only error I got was "apfs_module_start:1683" during the installation process. So if your installation seems to stuck, restart it in verbose mode by pressing space bar on the Clover boot entry and choosing the "-v" boot option.
There are several threads here in the forum the point out that you need to install SSDT-EC.aml in the /EFI/CLOVER/ACPI/patched folder of your EFI partition.
I then swapped the graphic card to the Radeon 5700XT and run into different problems, which I describe at the beginning of each step. You can easily boot with your old card and do all the setup before having to change between the two cards back and forth!
1) Deactivate GPU Injection
I got a black screen directly after choosing my Clover boot entry (no macOS load bar or Apple logo appeared).
To avoid this mount your EFI partition with Clover Configurator, load your config.plist from /EFI/CLOVER and choose the Graphics section. Deactivate Inject ATI, Inject Intel and Inject NVidia.
Save your configuration with CMD+S.
2) Config your macOS model
After step one my system booted with a progress bar and the Apple logo, but right before the login screen the monitor got back into stand by and stood black.
I could work around this by configuring an accurate macOS model with the help of Clover Configurator. Load you config.plist like described in step one and navigate to the SMBIOS section.
Go to everymac.com and navigate to the exact processor you have. In my case I own a Core i5 6600 which brought me to the following detail page. Just below the headline the model is mentioned - in my case iMac17,1.
Back at the SMBIOS section i could choose this exact model by clicking at the double arrow on the right side just below the model image. Afterwards all the other fields at this page got filled out automatically.
Save your configuration with CMD+S.
3) Update WhatEverGreen.kext and Lilu.kext to the latest version
After step two my system booted till the login screen but only the secondary screen at the HDMI port worked. The main monitor still stood black.
Download the latest version of WhatEverGreen.kext (1.3.6 for me) and Lilu.kext (1.4.1 for me) from the Download Section. These files need to be put under /Library/Extensions but can not be copied directly. Just follow the instructions here by using Hackintool to install any kind of kext file.
As a last step go back to Clover Configurator and choose the Boot section. With a right click in the Boot Arguments window you can choose "agdpmod=pikera" from the WhatEverGreen submenu.
Save with CMD+S as always.
Sidenote: I also updated AppleALC.kext and FakeSMC.kext in the same way but I can't tell if this was necessary.
After this my system booted with both monitors working as I might expect it.
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