MAXSUN AMD Radeon RX 550 4GB GDDR5 ITX - good for Hackintosh?

[Middleman]

Spoofing is not the issue. The issue is that AMD sold both Lexa and Polaris chips under the "RX 550" branding. Polaris RX 550 will work when spoofed to 560. Lexa RX 550 will not work—at all. And you may not know which lot you've drawn until it's plugged in your hack.

Hi etorix,

I know what you’re saying here, but believe it or not I do have a RX550 working very well in a B550 hack. Am not sure if it is Lexa core but I’m willing to bet it is. And yes it is spoofed. The key issue for me to get it going was to a) have it spoofed was using the no-gfx-spoof setting in device properties and removing the device-id line and b) adding npci0x2000 agdpmod=ignore to the boot-arg.

 

[Middleman]

Alright I did a check with the specs of my card today just to be sure. Happy to say it IS Lexa based!

 

[etorix]

Hi @Middleman,

Based on this page (device-id and memory speed), your card is Baffin (the supported Polaris subtype), not Lexa.

Correction for AMD RX550 GPU OSX Support · Issue #129 · dortania/bugtracker

Guide: AMD GPU https://dortania.github.io/GPU-Buyers-Guide/modern-gpus/amd-gpu.html#polaris-10-and-20-series The page lists the RX550 as unsupported due to being based on the Lexa core. "Regar...

github.com

This is quite confusing… Maybe the list of known compatible cards is safe enough. But going straight for a RX 460 or RX 560 is even safer.

 

[Nicholox]

Any not-too-old dGPU is likely to be better than the iGPU for games. But will it be enough for the kids?

Thats a great question haha, is it ever enough??

So a first step would be to define the performance target for gaming—which may well clash with the price target.
Then is it for gaming under OS X, or other Windows with dual boot?
Under OS X, there's the compatibility requirement: Polaris, Vega, RX 5500/5700/6600/6800/6900.
If it's under Windows, there's the possibility to pick any suitable gaming card, including nVdia or unsupported AMD models but to disable it with a SSDT for OS X and keep using the iGPU there.

Oh Wow!! I didn't realise this was a possibility. Yes the gaming of late has been on the windows partition.

I had always assumed we were limited to a compatible card that would work with the mac.

I'll have to consider this possibility and look at the options.

I'm guessing there isn't a huge cost benefit here just an increased range of cards available?

Spoofing is not the issue. The issue is that AMD sold both Lexa and Polaris chips under the "RX 550" branding. Polaris RX 550 will work when spoofed to 560. Lexa RX 550 will not work—at all. And you may not know which lot you've drawn until it's plugged in your hack.

Sound like a minefield of possibilities!! Especially when perusing those cheap unknown brands.


Thanks for all this info @etorix !!

 

[etorix]

I'm guessing there isn't a huge cost benefit here just an increased range of cards available?

Cost is how much you're ready to spend—assuming that nothing will ever be enough for the kids
But it could indeed expend the range of options. Have a wide look at second-hand and new entry-level GPUs before committing to old Polaris cards.

The procedure is the one used for laptops with unsupported dGPU, so you may find more guidance in the Laptop part of the forum if you go this road.

Disabling GPU | OpenCore Install Guide

For the sake of simplicity, the best solution would still be a supported AMD GPU, beginning with RX 560 (or 460) and moving on to Vega ($$$), RX 5500 (requires Catalina; possibly second-hand or stock clearance) and RX 6600 (requires Monterey).