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[Success] Big Sur on a GA-H97N-WIFI with 4600 GPU running at 4k

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Sep 16, 2013
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Motherboard
Gigabyte H97N-Wifi
CPU
i7 4790
Graphics
HD 4600
Running an older setup of
  • Gigabyte GA-H97N-WiFi
  • Intel Core i3 4360 / Intel Core i7 4790
  • 16 GB ram
  • Onboard 4600 intel GPU
  • 250 GB SSD (for OS install)
  • 1 TB spinning rust (for home directory)
And wanted to document getting it upgraded to Big Sur with working 4K.

A little history:
The machine had been running OS X fairly stable up to Catalina using Clover as the boot loader with minor tweaks that needed to be reapplied after each major(ish) OS upgrade. However, the upgrade to Big Sur crapped the bed.

Also, since I've been working from home (like everyone else) I upgraded to a nice 4K monitor, which was a bit of a pain in the butt to get configured to run on my setup, but after some new kexts and some magical injections I got it running.

A lot of what I read here was that updating to Big Sur with OpenCore had been relatively painless for most folks so that's the tact I took. My hackintosh is my main "work from home" machine so I ended up buying a new SSD to do the Big Sur install on so I had my known working install to fall back on if everything crapped out on me (and everything I read indicated that converting Clover over to OpenBoot can be more trouble that its worth).

While there aren't the cool tools like UniBeast and MultiBeast for OpenCore, I simply followed the directions at Dortania's OpenCore Install Guide:

https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Install-Guide/

I installed OpenCore 0.6.7 (the latest at the time of installation)

I opted to install Catalina first (as a. I already had a copy of it downloaded, b. I knew it would run on my setup, and c. wanted to make sure system updates worked correctly) and then, assuming everything worked, upgrade to Big Sur.

It's pretty straight forward; I basically followed the default directions. The following Kexts are needed:

  • AppleALC
  • AtherosE2200Ethernet
  • IntelMausi
  • Lilu
  • USBInjectAll
  • VirtualSMC
  • WhateverGreen
  • XHCI-unsupported
and the links to the latest versions are provided in the guide. Catalina installed with no issues, and booted by itself. Out of the gate sound and internet worked (that was never the case with Clover/Uni/MultiBeast), but was stuck at 1440p graphics.

After the Catalina install, I upgraded to Big Sur via the normal OS upgrade path (Software Update in System Preferences) which, again, went off without a hitch.

Updating to get the 4600 to output 4K ended up being much easier than with Clover. Essentially it was 3 entries in the config.plist

1. Set the framebuffer (Root: DeviceProperties: Add: PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x2,0x0): AAPL,ig-latform-id) = 0x0A2E000D

This comes from the WhateverGreen Index FAQ under graphics for Haswell processors.
ID: 0A2E000D, STOLEN: 96 MB, FBMEM: 34 MB, VRAM: 1536 MB, Flags: 0x0000040E
TOTAL STOLEN: 131 MB, TOTAL CURSOR: 1 MB (1572864 bytes), MAX STOLEN: 227 MB, MAX OVERALL: 228 MB (239607808 bytes)
Camellia: CamelliaDisabled (0), Freq: 5273 Hz, FreqMax: 5273 Hz
Mobile: 0, PipeCount: 3, PortCount: 2, FBMemoryCount: 2
[1] busId: 0x05, pipe: 9, type: 0x00000400, flags: 0x00000107 - ConnectorDP
[2] busId: 0x04, pipe: 10, type: 0x00000400, flags: 0x00000107 - ConnectorDP
01050900 00040000 07010000
02040A00 00040000 07010000

I believe this has enough Stolen, Framebuffer and VRAM to support 4k. All of the other desktop frambuffers would max out at 1440p.

2. Next, the device ID (Root: DeviceProperties: Add: PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x2,0x0):AAPL,device-id) = 0x0412

This is the device-id of the 4600 GPU.

Below is what it both items look like in ProperTree (endian swapped and padded)

Screen Shot 2021-03-22 at 12.30.17 PM.png


3. Lastly, the system ID (Root: PlatformInfo: Generic: SystemProductName) = iMac15,1.

Screen Shot 2021-03-22 at 1.45.11 PM.png


In the BIOS I have Graphics Memory Allocation set to 96M.

Things that don't work (and never did for me on any previous version of MacOS/OSX):
  • WiFi on Motherboard
  • Bluetooth on Motherboard
  • Sleep/Wake (crash on wake, but this actually seemed to have worked when I first installed Catalina with OpenCore, but has now gone back to crashing)
That's it. A working Big Sur install driving 4K over HDMI using the 4600 GPU.
 
Last edited:
Very nice! I would love to try it, could you share your EFI?
Thanks!
 
Hi, I have the same motherboard but instead of having an Intel i7, I have an Intel i5 processor.
I've tried to follow the same steps but opencore is stucked when boot form the pendrive.
Any idea?
I've used version 0.7.1 instead of 0.6.7.
Could you share with us all the files of the EFI partition, including drivers, etc? It would be very helpful to check if I am doing something wrong.
I will share mine.
Tahnk you
 

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