My experience of switching from Nvidia to AMD

[HaoGou]

Several months ago I built my first hackintosh. The specs was in my bio.

GTX 970 worked well with web driver for me, but it was a bit out date and the warranty had already been voided. So I decided to sell it and bought a brand new Sapphire RX 580 Pulse.

I deleted the Nvidia web driver and kexts, and switched to RX 580. The card should work OOB as I had WhateverGreen in my EFI kexts folder and checked RadeonDEINIT in the config.plist. Unfortunately the hackintosh wouldn’t boot, it rebooted every time when loading. Safe mode or verbose didn’t work either.

I borrowed and GTX960 and boot on my back up ssd to check the settings in clover. It seemed that nothing wrong in the config.plist. After several fails I decided to get a fresh install, then copy all my applications and data from my back up ssd.

Now RX 580 works flawless, 2k@60Hz via a single DP cable.

So is there any easy way to switch from Nvidia to AMD?

 

[mitch_de]

Normally such an switch works.
1. Only use Whatevergreen - NOT also the Clover Option RADINIT.
2. look in the Clover ..kexts for any Nvidia related (Nvidiafix.. ) kext and remove them. : if not sideeffects can happen
3. Be sure your set of LILU+WEG is BOTH! new. Sometimes, newest WEG also need new LILU (mother for the lilu-plugins like WEG) or vice versa , newest LULU needs updated WEG.
4. it may happen (eben your card works near OOB) that not all ports (DP,HDMI) work - try other before get worried.

 

[Jamesbond007]

Several months ago I built my first hackintosh. The specs was in my bio.

GTX 970 worked well with web driver for me, but it was a bit out date and the warranty had already been voided. So I decided to sell it and bought a brand new Sapphire RX 580 Pulse.

I deleted the Nvidia web driver and kexts, and switched to RX 580. The card should work OOB as I had WhateverGreen in my EFI kexts folder and checked radeon something in the config.plist. Unfortunately the hackintosh wouldn’t boot, it rebooted every time when loading. Safe mode or verbose didn’t work either.

I borrowed and GTX960 and boot on my back up ssd to check the settings in clover. It seemed that nothing wrong in the config.plist. After several fails I decided to get a fresh install, then copy all my applications and data from my back up ssd.

Now RX 580 works flawless, 2k@60Hz via a HDMI cable.

So is there any easy way to switch from Nvidia to AMD?

If you are running High Sierra 10.13.4 or later with the RX 580, you should not need to use the WhateverGreen kext or RadeonDeInit in Clover. I don't, and the card works natively with High Sierra 10.13.6.

 

[HaoGou]

If you are running High Sierra 10.13.4 or later with the RX 580, you should not need to use the WhateverGreen kext or RadeonDeInit in Clover. I don't, and the card works natively with High Sierra 10.13.6.

I'll check that out.
btw, will hardware acceleration work OOB on RX 580?

 

[Jamesbond007]

I'll check that out.
btw, will hardware acceleration work OOB on RX 580?

Yes, hardware acceleration will work with the RX 580 OOB.

 

[Wolax]

I have an Asus RX580 for testing and it doesn’t run OOB. Are you all using the Sapphire one?

 

[Jamesbond007]

I have an Asus RX580 for testing and it doesn’t run OOB. Are you all using the Sapphire one?

I am using the Sapphire Pulse.

 

[HaoGou]

I have an Asus RX580 for testing and it doesn’t run OOB. Are you all using the Sapphire one?

I still have to enable iGPU.

 

[izo1]

I still have to enable iGPU.

Enabling iGPU is essential to get it close to the iMac SMBIOS.

It will make the system more stable.

You don't have to use the iGPU at all, just have it enabled. You can just use the RX580.

 

[ahendarman]

Just want to share my experience moving from Nvidia GTX970 to AMD RX580 on my hack.
It was actually a more straightforward and easier than I expected.

1. Remove the NVIDIA Web Driver - it has a built in uninstall
2. Make sure you have both Lilu and WhateverGreen in the kext/other directory
3. Set IGPU in the BIOS to either ON or AUTO (not OFF)
4. Set the GPU priority in the BIOS to PCIe

Then reboot, and everything works