i7-4930K - Asus Rampage IV Extreme - 32GB RAM - GTX 770 4GB [Success!!]

[shilohh]

@zadik,
Yes, the 2013 mac pro is a really great machine and if you're just doing pro audio I'd say it's a great choice especially when all you'll really need is a couple of external drives and a pro audio interface. And yes, it's probably quieter than most towers at idle. Mine is very quiet. The only things upgradeable on the Mac Pro are the CPU and ram (only 4 ECC DIMM slots so your options are limited and expensive). If you want to buy a 12core E5 V2 (aprox $2,800), it cost almost as much as Eric's entire build and is only about 15-20% faster than a $580 4930K @4.4GHz. The 8core is $1,700 and is beaten by a $580 4930K @4.4-4.5GHz. You're never getting new GPUs unless you put them in a thunderbolt bottlenecked expansion chassis and Davinci Resolve is the only app I can think of that would benefit from that.

OK let's compare my build's finickiness to a French Supermodel. She does whatever I say, when I say and exactly the way I want. Downloading the Combo update to update the OS is what most video pros do with real macs to. Reinstalling the audio kext after updates takes all of 20 seconds.

Im not knocking what the new Mac Pro is. I'm pointing out what it's not.

 

[shilohh]

Thank you for such an amazing guide! I was wondering if i7 4820k should also work following what you did, because they're both Ivy Bridge E socket 2011?

Yes that CPU should work fine. Ive seen other people using it.

 

[shilohh]

so this guy can afford to pay at least 4k for a computer and spend at least another 2k on periferals

Try $2K on just thunderbolt cables. This guy was just testing the limits of connectivity and yes, connectivity is awesome yet expensive and not pretty.

As far as what I need to put in my hack, I have 2 double with nvidia GPUs, a DeckLink card, a FireWire card and room for 1 more x16 card if I should decide to add anything else. I have 2 SSDs and 5 HDDs. All tucked neatly in my case

 

[zadik]

@zadik,
Yes, the 2013 mac pro is a really great machine and if you're just doing pro audio I'd say it's a great choice especially when all you'll really need is a couple of external drives and a pro audio interface. And yes, it's probably quieter than most towers at idle. Mine is very quiet. The only things upgradeable on the Mac Pro are the CPU and ram (only 4 ECC DIMM slots so your options are limited and expensive). If you want to buy a 12core E5 V2 (aprox $2,800), it cost almost as much as Eric's entire build and is only about 15-20% faster than a $580 4930K @4.4GHz. The 8core is $1,700 and is beaten by a $580 4930K @4.4-4.5GHz. You're never getting new GPUs unless you put them in a thunderbolt bottlenecked expansion chassis and Davinci Resolve is the only app I can think of that would benefit from that.

OK let's compare my build's finickiness to a French Supermodel. She does whatever I say, when I say and exactly the way I want. Downloading the Combo update to update the OS is what most video pros do with real macs to. Reinstalling the audio kext after updates takes all of 20 seconds.

Im not knocking what the new Mac Pro is. I'm pointing out what it's not.

I figure in 4 years or so the 12 core will be pretty old and be pretty cheap.. As for graphics bah. Who needs graphics for audio?? I know you do a lot of video stuff so for sure it makes more sense for you. You certainly are right on a lot if your points and a lot of people in the film industry are backing that up. A lot of them are pissed.:: but for me... The thing is awesome. So quiet that I can record audio in the room and the mic will never pick up the fan noise.

 

[cawi2001]

Sorry if I disappoint you, but I believe that your setup doesn't really work properly.
I have a similar setup with a GTX-760OC 4GB and a 4820K.

A few days ago I opened a thread in which I told about performance issues that rendered my setup unusable. It worked, but it was super slow. Other than stated by tonymac I found out that the issue was, that my graphics card isn't really supported at all. OS X doesn't support the GTX 7XX!

So why does your setup work?
Your CPU has an internal graphics processor and your GTX 770 is used for video output, but your graphics card doesn't do any computation. My CPU hasn't got an IGP. That's why my system is choppy and yours isn't.
Do a graphics benchmark and compare it to one in another OS in which your GPU is definitely supported and you'll see that your GTX 770 doesn't do anything but outputting the video signal, if you don't believe me...

Sorry, but it must be said that the GTX 7XXs are not supported, yet if ever... Don't buy these cards if you need good graphics performance!

 

[Patjamz]

@Patjamz,
SpeedStep allows the CPU to reach different power states depending on CPU load. It will clock down to 1.2GHz at idle and up to 3.2GHz or your maximum turbo speed at full load, if turbo is enabled.
http://www.tonymacx86.com/general-help/127574-guide-asus-x79-os-x-controlled-speedstep.html
since you've already done this guide, just do step 4...

For sound, there are 3 working stereo outputs...

For your Internet speed, check to see if your BIOS has NIC options...

Thanks a million for all this information Shilohh. Tied up with work until Saturday but going to work through the list and apply your recommendations so will let you know how I get on.

Just for the record - apologies if there is a delay in my reply to your messages, it is just that I am over in Ireland (so I think there is about an eight hours difference) and just means your day is our night and so on.

Appreciate all your help - your guides have really made my first Hackintosh a lot of fun and I think planted a seed of hunger to do more! A real inspiration.

Talk soon.

 

[shilohh]

Sorry if I disappoint you, but I believe that your setup doesn't really work properly.
I have a similar setup with a GTX-760OC 4GB and a 4820K.

A few days ago I opened a thread in which I told about performance issues that rendered my setup unusable. It worked, but it was super slow. Other than stated by tonymac I found out that the issue was, that my graphics card isn't really supported at all. OS X doesn't support the GTX 7XX!

So why does your setup work?
Your CPU has an internal graphics processor and your GTX 770 is used for video output, but your graphics card doesn't do any computation. My CPU hasn't got an IGP. That's why my system is choppy and yours isn't.
Do a graphics benchmark and compare it to one in another OS in which your GPU is definitely supported and you'll see that your GTX 770 doesn't do anything but outputting the video signal, if you don't believe me...

Sorry, but it must be said that the GTX 7XXs are not supported, yet if ever... Don't buy these cards if you need good graphics performance!

Wow! You couldn't be more wrong. You're not disappointing anyone. You're just showing how misinformed you are. You should educate yourself better before making claims like this. There is no such thing as a LGA2011 (X79) CPU with integrated graphics. None. The late 2013 iMac has GTX 775m and 780m options so yes OS X does support nvidia GTX 7xx (Apple sells iMacs with gk104 cards). The GTX 770 works really, really well and the performance is amazing. The only bug with nvidia is that if you don't have IGPU (again, X79 doesn't), OpenCL prevents the card from clocking down from it's highest power state (this happens with the GTX5xx cards too) but the full power is there.

"Do a graphics benchmark and compare it to one in another OS in which your GPU is definitely supported and you'll see that your GTX 770 doesn't do anything but outputting the video signal, if you don't believe me..."

If you look at the 2nd image in the OP, you'll see I already have. 75fps in CineBench's OpenGL test. The 770 is no slouch in OS X. It definitely is working, and very well at that.

If your IvyBridge-E system is running slow and choppy, it's most likely the fault of the Chimera bootloader. The newest versions of Chameleon and Clover work fine.

Also, if you have a gigabyte board, you need to install VoodooTSCSync.kext and remove the boot flag cpus=1 or your machine will only run on 1 core.

 

[appletwo]

Sorry if I disappoint you, but I believe that your setup doesn't really work properly.
I have a similar setup with a GTX-760OC 4GB and a 4820K.

A few days ago I opened a thread in which I told about performance issues that rendered my setup unusable. It worked, but it was super slow. Other than stated by tonymac I found out that the issue was, that my graphics card isn't really supported at all. OS X doesn't support the GTX 7XX!

@ cawi2001
DUDE
why don't you think before open your mouth?
C'mon... Mavericks has Nvidia drivers built-in since 10.9.0, and they support 7xx Nvidia cards from the day one.
It's a matter of fact they perfectly work (and in some cases even better [read: Davinci Resolve]), they work even if you have no NVIDIA web drivers installed (unless you went for a GTX 780 or higher, in that case NVIDIA Web drivers are mandatory).
So, please, in order not to get new people landing on this forum for the first time confused, document yourself before start saying anything that could make people out of wack.
Thanks.
Here's my natively supported EVGA 760 OC running with no web drivers on 10.9.2 (like yours dude) benchmark (with PM active if you don't need OPEN CL):

 

[cawi2001]

Wow! You couldn't be more wrong. You're not disappointing anyone. You're just showing how misinformed you are. You should educate yourself better before making claims like this. There is no such thing as a LGA2011 (X79) CPU with integrated graphics. None. The late 2013 iMac has GTX 775m and 780m options so yes OS X does support nvidia GTX 7xx (Apple sells iMacs with gk104 cards). The GTX 770 works really, really well and the performance is amazing. The only bug with nvidia is that if you don't have IGPU (again, X79 doesn't), OpenCL prevents the card from clocking down from it's highest power state (this happens with the GTX5xx cards too) but the full power is there.

Sorry. I should have known that there's no X79 with integrated graphics, but I was confused because so many websites praise the Intel HD Graphics capatibilities of your CPU, but it seems that they generally refer to i7 CPUs...

If you look at the 2nd image in the OP, you'll see I already have. 75fps in CineBench's OpenGL test. The 770 is no slouch in OS X. It definitely is working, and very well at that.

I wondered because some people on this forum use another benchmark tool, whose name I forgot, that made about nearly 400fps on Windows and on my OS X only 32fps.

If your IvyBridge-E system is running slow and choppy, it's most likely the fault of the Chimera bootloader. The newest versions of Chameleon and Clover work fine.

Thank you so much for that hint. I installed Chameleon 2.2 and now my system runs like sugar.
This would have saved me a week of angryness.
There are so many people on this forum having performance problems with LGA2011 because they use Chimera. Why does noone tell them?

Also, if you have a gigabyte board, you need to install VoodooTSCSync.kext and remove the boot flag cpus=1 or your machine will only run on 1 core.

I already had and set IOCPUNumber=7.

As I have everything running properly now I'm going to make a tutorial on my hardware configuration as there are still many people with the same config who have the same issues.

Once again sorry for my ignorance and a big thank you for the enlightenment.

 

[shilohh]

@Cawi2001,
I'm glad you got your system running correctly. Sorry if I came across harshly but it can be very confusing for new hackers if we spread misinformation.