iMac Pro X299 - Live the Future now with macOS 10.14 Mojave [Successful Build/Extended Guide]

[Whydotheneedthis]

Just used this guide to install 10.14 on my computer and everything seems to work great except my graphics card.

I am using an AMD Vega frontier edition.

The fan on the card runs at full blast until I play a youtube video. The tach leds on the card are going crazy when the computer has no applications running! Randomly (random amount of time, no apps running) the leds will go blank and so will my displays. I have the displays plugged into the dp ports on the card. When this happens I have to power off the computer and turn it on again to get them to come back on. Sleep and hibernation are both turned off in my system settings. If anyone could point me in the right direction to solve this issue I would be very grateful.

 

[kgp]

Just used this guide to install 10.14 on my computer and everything seems to work great except my graphics card.

I am using an AMD Vega frontier edition.

The fan on the card runs at full blast until I play a youtube video. The tach leds on the card are going crazy when the computer has no applications running! Randomly (random amount of time, no apps running) the leds will go blank and so will my displays. I have the displays plugged into the dp ports on the card. When this happens I have to power off the computer and turn it on again to get them to come back on. Sleep and hibernation are both turned off in my system settings. If anyone could point me in the right direction to solve this issue I would be very grateful.

Sounds familiar to me.. Facing similar issues with a Gigabyte Radeon RX Vega 64 Gaming OC 8B under 10.14 PB1...

1.) No return with off-powered monitor when connected via HDMI.

2.) Black Screen Issue on wake from system sleep with monitor connected either via DP or HDMI.

3.) Always max. fan rotation

Vega 10.14 implementation seems still far from being optimal.

 

[tonyarnold]

Vega 10.14 implementation seems still far from being optimal.

And yet with my NITRO+ Vega 64, Mojave seems to respect the card's default fan settings that do 0rpm when under 55ºC. Perhaps it's just falling back to the defaults for the Gigabyte Vega?

 

[kgp]

And yet with my NITRO+ Vega 64, Mojave seems to respect the card's default fan settings that do 0rpm when under 55ºC. Perhaps it's just falling back to the defaults for the Gigabyte Vega?

It is commonly known that there are no fan speed issues with the NITRO+ Vega 64 under OSX. It is also commonly known that there are fan speed issues with the Gigabyte RX Vega 64 Gaming OC 8GB under OSX. It is also commonly known how to fix fan speed issues in general, however both possible approaches seem not to work for the Gigabyte RX Vega 64 Gaming OC 8GB..

That's why I decided to give a go for the NITRO+ Vega 64 on both my X99 and X299 systems. Still waiting for delivery though ...

Question: What about powered-off monitor return and system wake from sleep under 10.14 and 10.13.6 with the NITRO+ Vega 64 either connected via HDMI or Display Port? Any issues?

Do you use a 4K Monitor? Any Boot Screen resolution issues via DP? Any 30 Hz frequency limit issue with HDMI under 10.13.6?

 

[tonyarnold]

It is commonly known that there are no dan speed issues with the NITRO+ Vega 64 under OSX. It is also commonly known that there are nan speed issues with the Gigabyte RX Vega 64 Gaming OC 8GB under OSX. It is also commonly known how to fix fan speed issues in general, however both possible approaches seem not to work for the Gigabyte RX Vega 64 Gaming OC 8GB..

Ok, well I've been out of the scene for a couple of years so I'm missing some of the common knowledge (go easy on me!).

Question: What about powered-off monitor return and system wake from sleep under 10.14 and 10.13.6 with the NITRO+ Vega 64 either connected via HDMI or Display Port? Any issues?

My NITRO+ Vega 64 outputs via both DisplayPort ports to a Gigabyte Alpine Ridge rev 2.0, then out of that to an LG 5K Ultrafine display.

Powered-off monitor wakes just fine under both OSes - no issues there.

Waking from sleep crashes my machine with a Kernel Panic log referring to being unable to power on the Thunderbolt card. I've given up on sleeping this machine for the time being.

Do you use a 4K Monitor? Any Boot Screen resolution issues via DP? Any 30 Hz frequency limit issue with HDMI under 10.13.6?

Oh, yeah - 5K screen as I mentioned above, and yes, boot resolution is set to 2560x1440 (which is half the native res of the display). I don't use HDMI, as I don't have a HDMI input capable display.

 

[kgp]

Ok, well I've been out of the scene for a couple of years so I'm missing some of the common knowledge (go easy on me!).



My NITRO+ Vega 64 outputs via both DisplayPort ports to a Gigabyte Alpine Ridge rev 2.0, then out of that to an LG 5K Ultrafine display.

Powered-off monitor wakes just fine under both OSes - no issues there.

Waking from sleep crashes my machine with a Kernel Panic log referring to being unable to power on the Thunderbolt card. I've given up on sleeping this machine for the time being.



Oh, yeah - 5K screen as I mentioned above, and yes, boot resolution is set to 2560x1440 (which is half the native res of the display). I don't use HDMI, as I don't have a HDMI input capable display.

I see, thus if you would use full 5K resolution at boot, you would also face issues with the boot screen resolution? Where do you define the 2560x1440 boot screen resolution? In Clover Configurator under "/GUI/Screen Resolution/"? In the latter case at least the splash boot screen image would remain without proper boot screen resolution.

Anyway, as you do use TB instead of HDMI or DP, you might not face any boot screen resolution issue at all even when using full 5K screen resolution (5120x 2880) in Clover at boot.

To connect my screen via TB, I need a cable from one of Vega's DP ports to one of the mini-DP input ports on the Alpine Ridge and than a TB3 cable between one of the two Alpine Ridge TB3 ports and the TB/USB-C port on the back side of my monitor (LG 38UC99-W, 3860x1600 pix)?

Any recommendation for respective cables?

 

[tonyarnold]

Anyway, as you do use TB instead of HDMI or DP, you might not face any boot screen resolution issue at all even when using full 5K screen resolution (5120x 2880) in Clover at boot.

Oh, it doesn't show the right resolution on boot. You're correct in your earlier assumptions about the Vega having a dodgy frame buffer on boot.

Any recommendation for respective cables?

It depends what you intend to use it for. The CalDigit cables support all of the different power delivery (100W) and data transfer options - http://shop.caldigit.com/asia/TBT3-A20B-540

Otherwise, the Belkin cables that the Apple Store sell are probably fine for just a display connection. I'm using the 2m cable that came with the LG 5K display, and it's been great.

 

[Whydotheneedthis]

Just an update on my Vega Frontier card issue. I switched power supplies from a 1200w Platinum Coolermaster to a 1500w Titanium Thermaltake. First thing I noticed was my Tach LEDs on the Vega card stopped going crazy at idle. So I ran some benchmarks and tried running a bunch of applications. I then let the computer run for 24 hrs, and NO crashes. So I turned back on sleep modes, sleep wake functionality seems to work just fine! The fan on the card still runs at full speed unless computer is playing media, but this card also runs loud when I had it in my windows machine. I planning on switching to a full water cooling loop so I can deal with the fan issue for now.

I don't know how this relates to Vega 56/64 cards but my Vega frontier card seems to run into issues with power delivery. These cards also run hot and I think they would benefit from a better cooling solution.

 

[kgp]

Bye, bye Nvidia....

In the frame of the macOS 10.14 Mojave Nvidia web driver absence, I decided to drop my Nvidia Aorus Geforce GTX 1080 Ti 11Gb Waterforce Xtreme Edition and to opt for a natively supported Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX Vega 64 8GB..



.. which I equipped with a Bykski water block purchased at Aliexpress..



Perfect plug & play also thanks to my new Vega SSDT Device implementation attached below, which also works with the Gigabyte RX Vega 64 Gaming 8GB and even makes VegaGraphicsFixup.kext obsolete..

Perfect system implementation, even 60Hz with my LG 38UC99-W via HDMI under 10.14 Mojave...

Perfect "PCI" device implementation..

.. including HDMI and DisplayPort Hot Plug (2x HDMI and 2x Display Port)...

and flawless return from off-powered monitor and system sleep...

Finally, all GPU benchmarks scores with the GPU pimped to 1442 MHz clearly supersede those obtained under 10.13.6, apart from actual Geekbench results, which are significantly lower (Geekbench not yet optimised for 10.14?):

No further Nvidia WEB Driver pain now and in the future ...

 

[kgp]

Major Guide Update Completed

a.) Drop of Nvida AORUS Geforce GTX 1080 Ti Waterforce 11Gb Xtreme Edition. System implementation of Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX Vega 64 8GB. Revision/Update of Table of Contents and Section A.), C.2), E.2) and 9.2.2).
New SSDT-X299-iMacPro-vega.aml and SSDT-X299-iMacPro-Nvidia.aml system SSDT implementations in Section 9.2.2).
Adding Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX Vega 64 8GB benchmark results in Section F.2)..
b.) Modification of Section 9.3 - TB implementation
New SSDT-X299-TB3-iMacPro-Combo-ASUS.aml, SSDT-X299-TB3-iMacPro-Combo-GB.aml and SSDT-X299-TB3-iMacPro-Combo-DesignareEX.aml TB-SSDT implementations in Section 9.3.
c.) Audio: CodecCommander removed from Section E.3)
d.) Modifications in Section E.12) - iStatMenus Hardware monitoring...
e.) Guide update to macOS Mojave 10.14 PB3 (18A336e)
Implementation of new EFI-Folder Distribution EFI-X299-10.14-PB3-Release-iMacPro1,1-280718.
EFi-Folder related changes:
i.) Implementation of Clover_v2.4k_r4625
ii.) Removal of HibernationFixup.kext from /EFI/Clover/kexts/Other/
iii.) Disabling of FredWst DP/HDMI kext patch in config.plist, as not required by Vegas.. must be enabled/adopted for Nvidia GPUs.

Enjoy and have fun,