Radeon 5870 Mac Edition - Clover - Sierra

[JasGoldCoast]

Hi guys,

I was wondering if somebody would be kind enough to help me out.

I am having real trouble trying to get my Radeon 5870 working properly in my Clover/Sierra hackintosh build. I have purchased a Titan X Pascal, but decided to leave it unopened in the box until drivers are available, thus wanting to use my old card for the time being.

I have read through the ATI compatibility post and determined my FrameBuffer name is: Langur
I have determined my Device ID is: 0x68981002
I am using a Dell 3008WFP (30") as my main monitor over the DVI port with a DualLink DVI cable (Shows up as a 28" monitor with no name in 'About this Mac')
I am using a Raven MTi touch panel (For Pro Tools use) over one of the display ports
The second display port is unused
When booting, the bios screen shows on both monitors, but as soon as clover boot screen loads, I lose the DisplayPort monitor for good
About this Mac shows correct Card, but is only displaying 7MB VRAM (1024MB is correct amount) *Pic attached

I have tried Injecting ATI on its own, as well as spoofing the ID, and with everything I try, I can boot into OS X no problem, but there are major artifacts and it seems no acceleration is working.

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[Fl0r!an]

Strange, your GPU should work fine OOB, even without Inject / Ati. Maybe it's necessary to make it the primary GPU? System profiler shows a x8 link, so I guess it's not in the first slot?

You are not booting in safe mode I guess?

 

[JasGoldCoast]

Florian,

Firstly, thanks for your prompt reply, I'm new to the community so it's much appreciated.

You are correct, the card is in the second slot, mainly for aesthetic reasons, but also because I wasn't sure if the x16 lane would cause backward compatibility issues as I was under the impression that the card was designed for x8.

I made a little progress. After attempting to run one monitor off the Intel HD530 and the other on the 5870 without success (Prohibitory sign straight after Apple logo), I decided to go back to 1xDVI and 1xmDP on the 5870 alone. Initially I cleaned out my config.plist and made sure the injections were removed for everything pertaining to the graphics as mentioned in one of your posts. In BIOS, I disabled the Intel HD530 and selected slot 2 as my main GPU.

That has left me with a boot loop (the bar gets to about 60-70% before the computer resets).

When i boot in safe mode, I get both monitors at their respective full resolutions, as well as the full 1GB GDDR5 listed in the system profiler (it lists only 5800 series not the specific 5870) which I assume is a good thing right?

I also checked Verbose mode with debug to see what happened just before the reset, and it shows the last 5 lines as CodecCommander instructions with one line in between an osxfuse command. I will get a screenshot tomorrow when I'm at the computer.

Is there anything else besides moving the GPU to slot 1 that you think might help?

Again, thanks for your help.

Cheers,
Jase

 

[Fl0r!an]

When i boot in safe mode, I get both monitors at their respective full resolutions, as well as the full 1GB GDDR5 listed in the system profiler (it lists only 5800 series not the specific 5870) which I assume is a good thing right?

Yes, that's a good sign. Not sure why the system crashs when booting in normal mode, would be interesting to see a crash log.

Also try booting with Inject/Ati and FBName=Langur again. Additionally I'd try to boot with just a single display connected.
Switching the SMBIOS to iMac14,2 might also be worth a try. iMac17,1 usually doesn't cause trouble with AMD graphics, but I've never used it with a pre-GCN generation card.

 

[shaveblog]

FWIW I couldn't get my ATI HD5870 to work properly under Sierra either. I've been doing this a long time and the 5870 has worked flawlessly through several gens of OS X, but I'm convinced Apple has done something differently in macOS to break compatibility with this venerable GPU. I tried injecting ATI in Clover, not injecting, different frame buffers, default framebuffer, etc., but none of it fixed the numerous graphical glitches I experienced in Sierra.

I finally solved the problem by replacing it with an Asus R9 280X. Worked OOB with Sierra -- full performance without any Clover customization needed. And the 280X is a much faster card than the 5870 for OpenCL programs like FCPX, which is mainly what I use the system for. You can pick up a used R9 280X in good shape for $150-200 now, well worth the money. Unless you want to revert back to El Capitan, I think you're better off upgrading to a newer card that's known to work OOB with Sierra.

 

[JasGoldCoast]

Well it took me the better part of the day, but I FINALLY got it working with full acceleration on both of my monitors (1xDVI & 1xmDP). YAY! Along with my graphics card, all of the OS X features are working great, so I can get back to Pro Tools with a fully working studio build.

Thanks Florian, I'm pretty sure your suggestion to change PCIe slots, as well as system identifier (14,2) went a long way to helping this work. I'm not sure exactly which item fixed it, but here's what I did in case it helps someone else:

I started by basically cleaning out the config.plist. My aim was to get the Intel HD530 integrated graphics working glitch free and build from there. I removed the Radeon 5870 from the second PCIe slot and left it aside. I maxed out the BIOS memory for the iGFX. Some Clover Configurator settings:

In Install Drivers, make sure the OsxAptioFix2Drv is used, as the OsxAptioFixDrv made it nearly impossible for me to boot.

ACPI
DSDT Patch - Rename HDAS to HDEF (For Audio)

BOOT
Darkwake=0
dart=0

DEVICES
All Fake ID are 0x0
PikerAlpha's GfxYTile fix:

<key>AddProperties</key>
        <array>
            <dict>
                <key>Device</key>
                <string>IntelGFX</string>
                <key>Key</key>
                <string>AAPL,GfxYTile</string>
                <key>Value</key>
                <data>
                AQAAAA==
                </data>
            </dict>
        </array>

GRAPHICS
Inject Intel
ig-platform-id: 0x19120000

KERNEL AND KEXT PATCHES
Check KernelPm, Apple RTC and Asus AICPUPM
USB port Limit and Toleda's 10.11-SKL Patch:

<dict>
                <key>Comment</key>
                <string>Increase 15 port limit to 26 in AppleUSBXHCIPCI</string>
                <key>Disabled</key>
                <false/>
                <key>Find</key>
                <data>
                g710////EA==
                </data>
                <key>Name</key>
                <string>AppleUSBXHCIPCI</string>
                <key>Replace</key>
                <data>
                g710////Gw==
                </data>
            </dict>
            <dict>
                <key>Comment</key>
                <string>10.11-SKL-1912000-4_displays</string>
                <key>Disabled</key>
                <false/>
                <key>Find</key>
                <data>
                AQMDAw==
                </data>
                <key>Name</key>
                <string>AppleIntelSKLGraphicsFramebuffer</string>
                <key>Replace</key>
                <data>
                AQMEAw==
                </data>
            </dict>

RT VARIABLES
BooterConfig: 0x28
CsrActiveConfig: 0x67

SMBIOS
Product Name: 14,2

Once I had the Intel Graphics up and running, I added the Radeon 5870, this time into the x16 link speed PCIe slot 1. Upon rebooting, I entered BIOS and changed the main graphics to slot 1. I did not disable the iGFX just yet, as I didn't want to change too much at any given time. There was no need for me to change anything else... No need to inject anything or mess with FakeID's and FrameBuffers, it just worked OOB. I then went back to bios and disabled the iGFX completely.

I think you're better off upgrading to a newer card that's known to work OOB with Sierra.

Thanks for the info shaveblog, but I have actually purchased an NVIDIA Titan X Pascal. I have left it unopened in the box so I can sell it if the web drivers don't arrive for Mac within the next few months. I am just going to use the 5870 in the interim.

Thanks guys for your info and help.
Cheers,
Jase

 

[shaveblog]

Glad you're getting better results now that you've plugged your 5870 into the proper x16 PCIe slot, but note that System Profiler doesn't show the 5870 as supporting Metal, which is where Apple's moving now. So it's still not quite there, and you may continue to see graphical oddities in both the OS and apps which lean on Metal moving forward. When I was running the 5870 in Sierra I saw web pages without whole blocks of text, and other weird graphical glitches in the menu bar, etc.

I get it, the 5870's been a workhorse for a long time, and frankly I'm amazed it's kept up with OS X all these years - it's still one of the best FCPX GPUs to this day, as long as you're running El Capitan. But if you're making the move to Sierra, I do feel its time has passed, and that for $150 you can buy a card now that runs circles around it and supports macOS's new Metal graphics. The used $150 R9 280X I replaced it with benchmarks over twice as fast with Luxmark et al, renders BruceX in less than half the time, and consumes about half the power.

I can't vouch for the NVIDIA you bought but I would hang onto it in case you run into further issues with the 5870 under Sierra.

 

[Fl0r!an]

Yes, the HD 5870 doesn't support Metal, I think GCN 1.0 generation is the minimum requirement (HD 7xxx cards). It's not a dealbreaker though, since OS X still offers an OpenGL fallback for older GPUs as Apple still has lots of non-Metal GPUs on its "supported" list (e.g. Late 2009 iMac with HD 4xxx graphics).

The glitches you've mentioned most likely have a different reason.

 

[shaveblog]

I have no idea what caused the graphical glitches I saw under Sierra but they persisted no matter what Clover/DSDT/SSDT options I tried. As zero backflips were needed for the 5870 to work flawlessly under El Cap and the previous OS X gens, I have to conclude that Sierra doesn't fully support the 5870 anymore. Just the fact that it's not compatible with Metal seems to indicate that it's not a viable GPU moving forward for those who want to run the current and future versions of macOS.

Which, frankly, no longer describes me. I'm currently running both Sierra and El Capitan on various Hacks here, but for my main workstation I’ve gone back to El Cap. Even though the 280X works OOB with Sierra, macOS stresses the GPU so much more you need a faster graphics card just to equal the performance you had before with an older GPU under El Cap. My graphics benchmarks and Final Cut render speeds are twice as slow vs the same GPU under El Capitan. BruceX, the most relevant benchmark for Final Cut Pro X performance, clocks in at 15 seconds with El Cap and 33 seconds under Sierra with the 280X. This alone was reason to go back to El Cap for me. Even for a GPU that’s fully supported, Sierra seems to deliver significantly worse graphics performance vs. El Cap.

I feel Sierra (along with the new MacBook Pros) marks the beginning of the end for the Mac. A new philosophy is in place, one in which marketing overrules the engineers and developers. Whereas every new OS X up till now has been a careful iteration/continuation of the previous OS, I feel Sierra shows just how much brain drain there's been at Apple. The focus used to be about making sure the code worked on not just the new Mac you bought but the older Macs you already own, not BS features like Siri for Mac and Touch Bar, or killing much-loved features like MagSafe and the headphone jack just to slim laptops and phones down another fraction of a millimeter. And it's not just Hackintosh users feeling the pain of Sierra's widespread under the hood changes, genuine Mac users are reporting all kinds of broken behavior under Sierra, even with relatively recent hardware.

If someone really wants to keep using his 5870, which is still an excellent GPU for things like FCPX, I strongly advise going back to El Cap. Yes it’s a day spent reinstalling your system. But for me it was all positives, no regrets whatsoever. I like El Cap better and so do my GPUs.

 

[JasGoldCoast]

@shaveblog

I ran a BruceX test out of curiosity, but I have no comparisons as I did not run it with my 5870 on my previous genuine Mac Pro. Came in at an average of 37 seconds over 3 tests. When I first installed Sierra, I was having all kinds of graphics glitches with my HD530 iGFX. I followed as many tutorials as I could and finally got that going glitch free before I put the Radeon 5870 in my machine. It was certainly not smooth sailing setting it up, but I have to say now, after testing all of the software/hardware I use in OS X, it is working just fine/glitch free. I'll certainly post if things start going haywire.

My system is used primarily in a professional recording environment (with occasional Final Cut Pro X requirements), and I have a Slate Raven (Multitouch panel) with an Apogee audio interface that are must work items. They are working just fine. As I have mentioned in earlier posts, using my Radeon 5870 Mac Edition is just for the interim waiting for the Pascal Mac drivers. The very expensive Titan X I purchased destroys nearly everything in all the PC Benchmarks I have seen, so I am looking forward to the day I can pop that puppy in and have some fun in Windows (Don't want to crack the box open until I can run a single GPU system).

I absolutely agree with your sentiment regarding the direction of Apple, it seems some of their latest features are somewhat eyebrow raising, but as long as the Hackintosh community has smart people like yourselves, it should continue to grow.

This is my first experience with a Hackintosh, so I obviously do not have the knowledge and experience you guys have, but I am certainly pleased with the results thus far. So back to the topic, I have to say to anyone in the same situation as me, my system is running beautifully, this setup with the radeon 5870 can work in Sierra, but heed Shaveblog's advice as he has far more experience than I do.

Cheers,
Jase