Radeon Compatibility Guide - ATI/AMD Graphics Cards

[neofusion]

@neofusion,

Sapphire Radeon RX Vega 64 Nitro should run ok on MacOS Mojave 10.14.6
Installing Lilu + WhatEverGreen should take care of injecting the correct ACPI device name and AMD FrameBuffer.

If you have issues with the fan or want to over clock the card then you can use VGTab Utility.

[GUIDE] Injection of AMD Vega Power and Fan Control Properties

Injection of Device Properties for Power and Fan control Last updated 14th May 2019 Update: MacOS Mojave 10.14.5+ includes a major overhaul of the Vega GPU drivers which should resolve all the power and fan control issues with most Vega cards and thus should make the methods outlined in this...

www.tonymacx86.com

Cheers
Jay

Thank you!
So the lack of IGPU will not be a problem for me? If that's the case, that's good.

Will the dual monitor setup "just work"?
Can I keep my system definition MacPro6,1 or will that need to be altered?
Does the Vega 64 require Mojave or can I do some "does it work?"-testing before updating from Sierra? The OP suggest there's some support in 10.12.6 but another thread indicates possible issues.

 

[jaymonkey]

So the lack of IGPU will not be a problem for me? If that's the case, that's good.

@neofusion,

As long as you use a SMBIOS that does not require headless IGPU it should work fine.

Will the dual monitor setup "just work"?

Yes as long as the correct framebuffer is used, Installing Lilu + WhatEverGreen should take care of this.

Can I keep my system definition MacPro6,1 or will that need to be altered?

Yes ... MacPro6,1 did not ship with IGPU so should work fine.

Does the Vega 64 require Mojave or can I do some "does it work?"-testing before updating from Sierra? The OP suggest there's some support in 10.12.6 but another thread indicates possible issues.

Vega support in MacOS 10.12.6 is very limited and prone to crashing, it got a lot better in 10.13.X and is quite usable in 10.13.6. Apple gave the AMD Vega drivers a big overhaul in MacOS 10.14.5 which resolved all of the remaining issues (sometimes high core clock at idle and control of GPU fans on OEM vega cards).

I would recommend that you update to Mojave 10.14.6+ to get the best results from a Vega GPU.

Cheers
Jay

 

[neofusion]

That's very promising, much obliged for the guidance!

 

[Tanos]

I've done some research.

Just need a confirmation.

My best bet would be to geta 580 8GB Pulse, if i'm lucky it will work OOB. Otherwise, I might need to flash the bios (unsure of which utility I have to use, probably through windows). The thing is that pulse doesn't have dual bios like the Nitro. Is there any chance that Nitro can work OOB?

Also something that is still not clear.
Can I use 4k60 over HDMI or only DP?
Is hardware encoding supported for 264-265?
Can I have multiple monitors on the card?

Sorry for duplicate questions but I haven't found any conclusive answers to these questions.
Also a last one, any changes coming on with Catalina and newer gpus? My guess would be more versatility since Mac Pro is on the works.

 

[bartjansen]

Just changed from an NVIDIA 1070GTX to an AMD 5700XT. Any news on support for the 5700 XT? Possibly with Catalina Betas?

Could an alternative be that I just let the 5700 XT sit there and try running macOS off my integrated Intel 630 HD? Would that also run at 3840x1600 @ 60Hz? Cheers

 

[jaymonkey]

Just changed from an NVIDIA 1070GTX to an AMD 5700XT. Any news on support for the 5700 XT? Possibly with Catalina Betas?

@bartjansen,

No working drivers yet for AMD 5700 series GPU in any of the Catalina beta's.

Apple are currently concentrating on the release of Catalina, once it's stable and rolls out support for AMD 5700 will most likely be included in one of the Catalina updates (eg: 10.15.1 or 10.15.2)

Use the IGPU for now until MacOS officially supports AMD 5700 ...

Cheers
jay

 

[arvinsim]

> Use the IGPU for now until MacOS officially supports AMD 5700 ...

So plugging in your monitor directly to the motherboard will be enough to use the iGPU? No need to disable a plugged in 5700 XT?

 

[jaymonkey]

So plugging in your monitor directly to the motherboard will be enough to use the iGPU? No need to disable a plugged in 5700 XT?

@arvinsim,

You may need to use Lilu + WahtEverGreen to correctly configure your IGPU :-

An iDiot's Guide To Lilu and its Plug-ins

An iDiot's Guide To Lilu and its Plug-in's Last Update: 22nd Jan 2021 (Add note about OpenCore config.plist modifications) About this Guide Note: This guide was written when Clover was the boot loader of choice as such the config.plist examples in this guide are mostley Clover specific ... if...

www.tonymacx86.com

You may also need to disable the VESA level drivers from attaching to the 5700 dGPU using this SSDT method :-

[FIX] "Window Server Service only ran for 0 seconds" with dual-GPU

Overview If you have a dual-GPU (Intel+Nvidia or Intel+AMD Radeon), you may have trouble reaching the macOS High Sierra installer. It is a new bug in the system somewhere that stalls boot if the VESA drivers try to connect to the secondary (discrete) graphics device. There are essentially...

www.tonymacx86.com

Although that guide is aimed at disabling the VESA drivers for the Installer it also works well for MacOS, many Nvidia owners use the method to disable an unsupported Nvidia Card in Mojave .. the same applies to unsupported AMD GPU's.

Cheers
Jay

 

[arvinsim]

@arvinsim,

You may need to use Lilu + WahtEverGreen to correctly configure your IGPU :-

An iDiot's Guide To Lilu and its Plug-ins

An iDiot's Guide To Lilu and its Plug-in's Last Update: 22nd Jan 2021 (Add note about OpenCore config.plist modifications) About this Guide Note: This guide was written when Clover was the boot loader of choice as such the config.plist examples in this guide are mostley Clover specific ... if...

www.tonymacx86.com

You may also need to disable the VESA level drivers from attaching to the 5700 dGPU using this SSDT method :-

[FIX] "Window Server Service only ran for 0 seconds" with dual-GPU

Overview If you have a dual-GPU (Intel+Nvidia or Intel+AMD Radeon), you may have trouble reaching the macOS High Sierra installer. It is a new bug in the system somewhere that stalls boot if the VESA drivers try to connect to the secondary (discrete) graphics device. There are essentially...

www.tonymacx86.com

Although that guide is aimed at disabling the VESA drivers for the Installer it also works well for MacOS, many Nvidia owners use the method to disable an unsupported Nvidia Card in Mojave .. the same applies to unsupported AMD GPU's.

Cheers
Jay

Thanks Jay. Will follow this guide then.

 

[vinnymac]

I use an Sapphire RX 580 Pulse 8 GB graphics card, which appears to be one of the more compatible ones. Unfortunately I have an issue where the card randomly freezes in macOS (does not happen in Windows or Linux).

I have verified my BIOS settings on my Z390i are optimal, and my memory is working great at the proper timings with a full 4 pass run in MemTest86.

I have tried iMac18,3 (and iMac19,1 after reinstall) with the iGPU + dGPU together. It results in the freeze, which I cannot reliable reproduce. It can happen 15 minutes after boot, or after a week of running the machine. Not using the dGPU and using iMac18,1 makes the machine stable, and the issue no longer occurs. During the freeze I can move my mouse, and I get a colored square over where the mouse would appear eventually. The GPU appears to crash and I can still access the system over SSH and view logs. At this time I can see that the logs repeatedly write `com.apple.DumpGPURestart` over and over.

I have also tried only using a dGPU with iMacPro1,1 and this resulted in the same as above.

My EFI is fairly simple, I have no unusual kexts, just Lilu 1.3.8 + Whatevergreen 1.3.2 (latest as of posting). I am using Clover 5070 (also latest). All tests were done using Mojave versions 10.14.1-6, all of them have had the same problem.

I'd like to be using iMac19,1 as it would ideally work best with my Coffee Lake i9, and my RX 580. Do you think windows/linux aren't pushing the GPU the way macOS is? Should I just buy another card and roll the dice? Any advice on how I could get this working would be greatly appreciated. I can provide more details if anyone wants, I've been chasing this problem for 6 months.

Here is a link to my sapphire cards BIOS.

EDIT: Given some advice to try disabling XMP in another thread, I decided to try that with iMac19,1 SMBIOS and things have been stable so far (40 hours). I have tried this before in iMacPro1,1 and iMac18,3 but it never worked. I wonder if the combination of the SMBIOS that is more compatible with my chipset and processor fixed this. I am little surprised that my 3200 MHz RAM must be kept at 2133 MHz to run macOS, especially when it runs perfectly fine in Windows/Ubuntu at the desired speed, but it is a small price to pay for stability.