[Success] AMD RX6000 Series working in macOS

[onemorething]

After selling my 5700 XT and getting a RX 6800, I've got a RX 560 2GB to use it on macOs. It works very well on my 1440p 144hz screen.
I've also tried RX 460 gb with a 4k 60hz screen, works great. I think animations are even smoother than 5700 xt.
I don't do GPU intensive work on macOs, so it's good enough for software development, web browsing and watching 4k videos.

My only issue is, macOs doesn't boot with RX 6800, I couldn't disable it with config file or DSDL. So my solution is to unplug one of the power cables of the GPU before I boot macOs. Then I plug it again before I boot to windows. I've disabled the screen output of RX560 on windows disaplay settings, so it only uses about 8 watts. (Do not disable it in Device manager, otherwise it won't go idle). They are both connected to the same monitor with seperate cables.

 

[Ploddles]

After selling my 5700 XT and getting a RX 6800, I've got a RX 560 2GB to use it on macOs. It works very well on my 1440p 144hz screen.
I've also tried RX 460 gb with a 4k 60hz screen, works great. I think animations are even smoother than 5700 xt.
I don't do GPU intensive work on macOs, so it's good enough for software development, web browsing and watching 4k videos.

My only issue is, macOs doesn't boot with RX 6800, I couldn't disable it with config file or DSDL. So my solution is to unplug one of the power cables of the GPU before I boot macOs. Then I plug it again before I boot to windows. I've disabled the screen output of RX560 on windows disaplay settings, so it only uses about 8 watts. (Do not disable it in Device manager, otherwise it won't go idle). They are both connected to the same monitor with seperate cables.

See THIS link on how to create an SSDT to disable the slot the 6800 is in so you don't have to unplug the power cable.

 

[onemorething]

See THIS link on how to create an SSDT to disable the slot the 6800 is in so you don't have to unplug the power cable.

Thanks, I've tried that, but still couldn't boot. It was fine with previous versions of Big Sur.
Actually, I'm fine with power cable approach, because when I disabled the RX 6800 with SSDT, It still uses around 200w on idle. But if I unplug one of the power cables, it only uses around 30w. (I've measured those with an external energy meter)

 

[auzer1]

Just saw on a Redshift forum a dev said :


" The short answer is “yes, it’s coming”. ..............."

" We’re planning on testing this configuration with Redshift around after GTC. "

I trust this response much more than the octane response.

 

[Ploddles]

Just saw on a Redshift forum a dev said :


" The short answer is “yes, it’s coming”. ..............."

" We’re planning on testing this configuration with Redshift around after GTC. "

I trust this response much more than the octane response.

GTC?

 

[Andy1983]

GTC?

Is that the Nvidia Keynote on 12th April. Bit weird but makes sense in terms of timing.

I think it is very promising if both Redhsift and Octane have commented. Redshift in OS X with a 6900xt sounds very good indeed.

Here is the full response...

"The short answer is “yes, it’s coming”. I believe other people have mentioned (and it’s common knowledge) that an upcoming macOS BigSur release will contain AMD 6XXX series drivers. However, we have not -yet- tested such a configuration. Performance *should* be great (based on benchmarks we’ve seen with videogames on Windows) but it’s also true that early drivers/compilers can sometimes contain bugs affecting stability and performance.

So, to recap, the reason why you see us being “quiet” on this topic is because we haven’t tested this config. We don’t want to give the impression of specific performance or stability because, at this point, we simply don’t know how these look like!

We’re planning on testing this configuration with Redshift around after GTC."

 

[TheBloke]

Thanks for the info, both

What I'm still a little confused/concerned about is how both the Octane and RedShift posts seem to talk about these drivers as if they're already here. The Octane dev said that he was told that support was coming in 11.3 beta 3 specifically. We're now on b6 with no improvement (indeed, a step back compared to 11.2)

Now this RedShift post again seems to talk as if it's already happened. How could it be common knowledge that support would be coming in an 'upcoming release' without it already being released in a beta?

So I'm not sure what to make of this. There's been various news articles in the last month 'announcing' 6000-series support in 11.3, but they all link back to that OTOY forum / Octane developer post as their source. I hope this Redshift person isn't just reading those articles and assuming that source was correct (which so far, it isn't) and actually has some specific knowledge of their own.

 

[tom111]

Big Sur 11.2.2 is booting without problems here with my Radeon™ Vega 64 LC and RX 6900 XT.

 

[TheBloke]

Big Sur 11.2.2 is booting without problems here with my Radeon™ Vega 64 LC and RX 6900 XT.

Yeah, this is expected:

In 11.3, a 6000-series GPU can not be used for anything. It won't give a picture, it won't show up as a Metal or OpenCL GPU, it can't be used for any computing tasks.

In 11.2, a 6000-series GPU will give a basic unaccelerated picture - meaning you can see macOS and move the mouse cursor around. It'll be choppy and slow, but it does provide a way to access the OS. But it still won't show up as a Metal or OpenCL GPU, so it can't be useful for any computing task.

You can boot and use any version of 11.x as long as you have a second GPU installed. 11.1 and 11.2 you can get a UI with only a 6000-series installed, though it'll be unaccelerated and unpleasant to use. Since 11.3 beta 1, even that basic picture has been lost as they removed the (incomplete) 6000-series framebuffer definitions that first appeared in 11.0.1 so a non-6000-series GPU is mandatory to get a UI in the 11.3 betas released so far.

 

[TurbineSeaplane]

Where do you guys place the odds of any 6xxx support?

I honestly am getting more and more pessimistic about it.

I think they might skip right to all Apple Silicon, even for GPU