nⓩxtMac Pro - i9-9900k - Gigabyte Aorus z390 Pro - macOS Mojave - Sapphire Vega 64 Reference

[boogieman77]

Can you give us any detail on the installation of the GC-Titan-Ridge TBT3 AIC? I'm thinking of getting one.

To be totally frank, I am not all that sure. I don't have any TB3 devices (currently, but some are on the way), and have been using it for small USB-C devices (Card readers, external drive dock, etc.). There's reports of the card working just with SSDT patches and that's it, but also reports of the card not initializing at all until activated in Windows. Mine initialized immediately, but again, without hands-on device testing, I can't say for certain.

Hopefully this will help. I installed https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07GBZL93X/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

However you must have Windows installed and not in a VM either. Once the drivers are installed in Windows, you can then boot into macOS, and it works. One little glitch that me and others have ran into, and there is some fixes but just not worth all the time for me. When you boot you must have a device attached to one of the Thunderbolt 3 ports. Or you will not see the PCI card or when you plug something in. I had a old Thunderbolt hard drive dock that I keep attached to one of the ports. Once booted everything is then hot swap able. My Razer CoreX EGPU will even work off it if I want to test another GPU for FCPX. Be glad to answer any other questions.

 

[MESwan]

Yo @boogieman77 - long time no chat, friend!

I'm strongly considering grabbing a second Vega 64. Worth or nah? Wedding season is picking up for me here shortly, and I feel like I can definitely make use of extended dGPU rendering power. Just wanna be sure the new FCPX update really does leverage both cards the way  claims.

 

[BoomR]

To be totally frank, I am not all that sure. I don't have any TB3 devices (currently, but some are on the way), and have been using it for small USB-C devices (Card readers, external drive dock, etc.). There's reports of the card working just with SSDT patches and that's it, but also reports of the card not initializing at all until activated in Windows. Mine initialized immediately, but again, without hands-on device testing, I can't say for certain.

Up until now, initialization/activation in Windows is pretty much a must. I'm guessing you had success because you only used USB3-C devices.

I'm working on a new build for my other half, and bought the Alpine Ridge card. I had a spare SSD & just did a quick Windows install on that drive. The install of the driver/TB Device Manager app that's on the in-box CD is very different than previous installs I've done... it's "silent" - in other words, not a lot of "wizard" steps to click through. Just a couple alert messages pop up & in 15 seconds, it's done.

I think the key to successfully initializing the card in Windows is to 1. Reboot after you install the TB3 drivers (I'd just download the latest version from the Gigabyte Web site vs. using in-box CD), and then 2. Actually plug in a TB3 device into the card while still in Windows. Windows is hot-swap enabled. I have a Necteck TB3 docking station that I used for my testing.

The Intel TB device manager will pop up the minute a TB3 device is detected in Win10. You need to use that utility to "authorize" the connection of the new device. Once I did that, I started seeing some Win10 "new device detected" alerts in the lower right corner. The TB3 dock has on-board USB audio, so Windows was installing the audio drivers for that. Within a minute or so, I was able to plug in a USB3 DVD drive, as well as a couple USB3 flash drives. All worked flawlessly, as well as audio from the TB3 dock.

I need to now investigate the patches that are available for the card. My understanding is that with the patches, you can now hot-swap in macOS. If you don't patch, you need to make sure your TB3 device(s) are connected when you power on the machine. I've found best success is to plug in the TB3 device when you're at the Clover boot screen & it's doing the pre-boot count-down.

Finally, I also need to figure out why the video that I'm routing from the RX580 card's DP out to mini-DP in on the TB3 card is not getting to my Thunderbolt display.

 

[boogieman77]

Yo @boogieman77 - long time no chat, friend!

I'm strongly considering grabbing a second Vega 64. Worth or nah? Wedding season is picking up for me here shortly, and I feel like I can definitely make use of extended dGPU rendering power. Just wanna be sure the new FCPX update really does leverage both cards the way  claims.

No. Duals are not worth it anymore. I have a spreadsheet at home I will upload for you to see the times compared on 5 videos.

 

[MattRobertson]

No. Duals are not worth it anymore. I have a spreadsheet at home I will upload for you to see the times compared on 5 videos.

I think it depends. I run dual Vega 64's right now and when I send to compressor for example it will turn an 8.5 min export into a 6 minute export for example which is a solid boost. I'm at the point in my machine where I need to leverage any performance upgrades I can to save time so for me a slight boost from the GPU is worth it.

 

[boogieman77]

I think it depends. I run dual Vega 64's right now and when I send to compressor for example it will turn an 8.5 min export into a 6 minute export for example which is a solid boost. I'm at the point in my machine where I need to leverage any performance upgrades I can to save time so for me a slight boost from the GPU is worth it.

Compressor, yes. However, I assumed we were discussing FCPX. The gains are very minimal compared to the cost. Pre FCPX 10.4.7 I would agree that a dual setup works better. If spending 400-800 dollars is ok for 30 seconds to at most a minute then by all means it is worth it for the user. One video I test with is 30 minutes of a Christmas Eve video. At present dual Vegas do it in roughly 12 minutes 52 seconds. A single is at 13 minutes 49’seconds if I recall correctly.


Edit: Here is my benchmarks through a few releases.

Benchmarks

Hackintosh I9 13900K 6900XT Hackintosh I9 13900K 6900XT,12.6.1,12.6.2,13,13.01,13.1,13.2,13.21 Bruce X,4.24,4.28 Christmas Eve,6:33.33,6:32.11 Just a Playin ,49.27,49.23 Morning Fog,41.48,40.12 Pool Time,29.15,29.16 Quail Creek Copperhill,18.02,18.33 Quail Creek Drive Air Time,25.89,24.32 Test,1...

docs.google.com

 

[c00lbeans]

@MESwan What BIOS are you using with your Aorus Pro? I have the same motherboard, i9-9900K, and Sapphire RX 580 Nitro. I installed Mojave 10.14.6 on my drive using my old hackintosh and can't find a working config for my EFI. I have tried every EFI in this thread and tried a fresh clover install too. My BIOS is the newest one, 12d.

 

[MESwan]

@MESwan What bios are you using with your aorus pro? I have the same mobo, 9900k, and sapphire rx580 nitro. I installed Mojave 10.14.6 on my drive using my old hackintosh and cant find a working config for my EFI. I have tried every EFI in this thread and tried a fresh clover install too. My bios is the newest one, 12d.

I'm using 12d currently as well. While I switched to OpenCore this past week for testing (and expanding the guide in this thread), I have a copy of my Clover EFI that works 100% - attached. You can remove/replace my SSDT's with your own once you're ready. SSDT-DTPG.aml and SSDT-Z370-AORUS-TB3HP-SLOT4.aml are for my Thunderbolt 3 add-in card. You can safely delete them if you don't have the Titan Ridge card from Gigabyte installed.

There is ONE caveat with my Clover folder here, and that is that I never switched from the OsxAptioFix2Drv-free2000.efi to the new Aptio fix with a custom slide value. You will want to do this asap.

 

[MESwan]

Compressor, yes. However, I assumed we were discussing FCPX. The gains are very minimal compared to the cost. Pre FCPX 10.4.7 I would agree that a dual setup works better. If spending 400-800 dollars is ok for 30 seconds to at most a minute then by all means it is worth it for the user. One video I test with is 30 minutes of a Christmas Eve video. At present dual Vegas do it in roughly 12 minutes 52 seconds. A single is at 13 minutes 49’seconds if I recall correctly.


Edit: Here is my benchmarks through a few releases.

Benchmarks

Hackintosh I9 13900K 6900XT Hackintosh I9 13900K 6900XT,12.6.1,12.6.2,13,13.01,13.1,13.2,13.21 Bruce X,4.24,4.28 Christmas Eve,6:33.33,6:32.11 Just a Playin ,49.27,49.23 Morning Fog,41.48,40.12 Pool Time,29.15,29.16 Quail Creek Copperhill,18.02,18.33 Quail Creek Drive Air Time,25.89,24.32 Test,1...

docs.google.com

WOW. I honestly expected a far more drastic variance between single and dual Vega 64. The other comparison numbers are great to have, too. Hopefully the rumored 5900XT will actually surpass the V64 in compute and rendering, rather than simply being better at (some) gaming like the 5700XT.

 

[c00lbeans]

@MEWSWAN

I'm using 12d, currently, as well. While I switched to OpenCore this past week for testing (and expanding the guide in this thread), I have a copy of my Clover EFI that works 100% - attached. You can remove/replace my SSDT's with your own once you're ready. SSDT-DTPG.aml and SSDT-Z370-AORUS-TB3HP-SLOT4.aml are for my Thunderbolt 3 add-in card. You can safely delete them if you don't have the Titan Ridge card from Gigabyte installed.

There is ONE caveat with my Clover folder here, and that is that I never switched from the OsxAptioFix2Drv-free2000.efi to the new Aptio fix with a custom slide value. You will want to do this asap.

Thanks I tried that EFI with the two Thunderbolt SSDTs removed. I also tried it with all the patched SSDTs removed and your graphics kext removed. This is as far as I got both times.

https://imgur.com/a/elDAzTw

I also tried the attached EFI that has free2000 removed. I think it went a bit further. This is where it got stuck.

https://imgur.com/a/KNWNa4i

Some of the other EFI's got stuck around the same spot. I'm wondering if my Mojave install needs to be redone? Do you see anything in these screenshots that might give away whats wrong?