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NootedRed — AMD Radeon Graphics — macOS Sonoma

Joined
Jun 13, 2017
Messages
3,324
Motherboard
Gigabyte A520i AC
CPU
Ryzen 7 4700G
Graphics
Radeon Vega 8
Mac
  1. MacBook Air
  2. Mac Pro
Classic Mac
  1. eMac
  2. iMac
Mobile Phone
  1. iOS
Screenshot 2023-07-19 at 1.45.15 PM.png


Sonoma! woohoo!, your next thought probably isn't 'Lets get a Ryzen 5 4600G'... I did and I don't regret it at all. Don't fear, the days of zero acceleration for Radeon Graphics are dead, well almost!. Formally WhateverRed, now NootedRed or simply referred to as NRed is a kext to replace WhateverGreen in the EFI when using Radeon Graphics, yes that simple and the results are surprisingly good, if not better than UHD630 in some scenarios!.



EFI
Let's build our EFI, your first port of call should be OpenCores Ryzen and Threadripper (17h and 19h) page. This will give you a run down of how to set up your EFI for AMD and will include BIOS settings at the bottom. Pay close attention to the patch section as you will be replacing patches already in your EFI, this is also where you edit your APU core counts in the first four algrey | Force cpuid_cores_per_package to constant (user-specified) patches. In my example below you can see I changed the replace value to match the number of cores for a Ryzen 5 4600G, 6 ignore the thread count, the hexadecimal value is 06.

B8000000 0000 —
Replace DATA Value for Ryzen 5 4600G — B8060000 0000
BA000000 0000 — Replace DATA Value for Ryzen 5 4600G — BA060000 0000
BA000000 0090 — Replace DATA Value for Ryzen 5 4600G — BA060000 0090
BA000000 0000Replace DATA Value for Ryzen 5 4600G — BA060000 00


You can't use NootedRed and WhateverGreen together, so you can either disable WhateverGreen in your EFI or simply delete it. Choosing the right SMBIOS is also important, currently MacBookPro16,3, iMac20,1 or iMacPro1,1 SMBIOS are working. I have used iMacPro1,1 and can confirm that it works, I'm currently using MacPro7,1 and I'm not experiencing any black screens as suggested on Nootinc, that's no guarantee it will work for all motherboards or APU. I have confirmation from another 4600G user that using SMBIOS MacPro7,1 worked for him/her too.

If you're using RestrictEvents.kext add the boot-arg revblock=media to the EFI, Ive noticed a big difference in how well Ventura/Sonoma look with the boot-arg compared to it not being in there.

Screenshot 2023-07-19 at 12.52.08 PM.png


ACPI
We're going to use SSDTTime to create our SSDTs, this is good practice in general and is recommended to do by Nootinc. If you haven't already, download Hackintool from GitHub, we're going to use this App to dump our DSDT.aml. Next, double click 'PatchMerge.command' in the SSDTTime Master folder, from the options select D first to open our DSDT.aml file. I recommend reading Nootincs ACPI guide to decide which SSDTs you'll need for your system.
Screenshot 2023-08-05 at 9.26.52 AM.png

Screenshot 2023-08-05 at 9.03.29 AM.png



BIOS
There are a couple of additional BIOS changes to make for NootedRed.kext to work.
Disable CSM, also known as Legacy Boot. This can cause panics such as 'Failed to get VBIOS from VRAM'
Increase VRAM. 512 MB is the minimum for NRed, 1 GB+ is preferred.

8GB.jpg



How will I know if it's working?.
Look in System Information under Graphics/Displays, check that VRAM is the same as what you assigned it in BIOS. I even have Metal 3 support. Visual stuff like the Dock resembling frosted glass, its the same for the 'About This Mac' window.
Screenshot 2023-07-19 at 8.45.21 PM.png
Screenshot 2023-07-19 at 8.51.55 PM.png
Screenshot 2023-07-19 at 7.53.09 PM.png

NootedRed.kext is where?
Yes not immediately obvious and you'll need a GitHub account to get it. But, if you click actions and look for the master in the following page, you'll be able to download the Artifact through there. Check in with the Actions page often to check for updates and always pick the Master to download.

I have documented my progress from researching, purchasing and building with a Ryzen 5 4600G in the threads below.

 

Attachments

  • config.plist.zip
    6.9 KB · Views: 392
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Just added my Radeon Graphics EFI to HackinDROM, (thanks @CaseySJ & @Inqnuam). Prime A320I-K APU is where you'll find it and has the NootedRed.kext ready for you. Tested in Ventura and Sonoma, If you enable 'Above 4G Decoding' you can remove the 'npci=0x3000' boot argument.

Screenshot 2023-07-22 at 2.42.55 AM.png
Screenshot 2023-07-22 at 2.46.28 AM.png
 
This is wonderful — glad to see the progress with NootedRed!

Hopefully they’ll support AM5 because all AM5 processors on the market today have on-board graphics.
 
This is wonderful — glad to see the progress with NootedRed!

Hopefully they’ll support AM5 because all AM5 processors on the market today have on-board graphics.
From the Nootinc discussion page, ChefKissinc just needs one tester!.

Screenshot 2023-07-22 at 9.31.13 AM.png
 
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@craighazan,

I wasn't able to find a compiled version of NootedRed so I compiled it from source code. The kext (DEBUG mode build) is attached.

Looking at its Info.plist shows that, unfortunately, the iGPU of my Ryzen 7 7700X (AM5 platform) is not supported. That GPU has device ID 0x164e. The driver goes up to 0x164c, but not quite to "e".

Has anyone simply added 0x164e1002 to IOPCIMatch? I may try this...
 

Attachments

  • NootedRed.kext.zip
    1.3 MB · Views: 432
@CaseySJ

If you have a GitHub account you can click on actions and download a compiled version through there. I download the ‘Master’ artifacts, last update was a couple of days ago.
 
@CaseySJ

If you have a GitHub account you can click on actions and download a compiled version through there. I download the ‘Master’ artifacts, last update was a couple of days ago.
I tried that, but didn't find the Master artifact. (I was and still am logged in to GitHub.)
 
For the interest of research and the public good, I upgraded my APU from the Ryzen 5 4600G to a Ryzen 7 4700G, there's a bit more involved than simply swapping out the processor and refreshing the thermal paste though. We also have to make some changes to our EFI because we've gone from 6 core to 8 core. First, our patches of Vanilla AMD, this is really complicated so prepare yourself, focus, be the algrey | Force cpuid_cores_per_package to constant (user-specified). Your going to change the first four algrey Replace values from;

B8060000 0000 — Replace DATA Value, 4600G to 4700G — B8080000 0000
BA060000 0000 — Replace DATA Value, 4600G to 4700G — BA080000 0000
BA060000 0090 — Replace DATA Value, 4600G to 4700G — BA080000 0090
BA060000 0000 — Replace DATA Value, 4600G to 4700G — BA080000 00

Good job, give yourself a 'Look at You!', just one more change, we're almost there. Navigate to PlatformInfo — Generic and look for ProcessorType. We are going to change 1537, (6 core and less), to 3841, (8 core and more). Congratulations, you are now master of the patch. You should probably reset VRAM on boot too, I didn't and got some echos from the previous SMBIOS, MacPro7,1.
 
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