Three monitors with GTX 670 and HD4000

[franco199]

I just recently built myself a new machine now running Mountain Lion, thanks to the guides here!

I have a problem, though. OS X will only allow me to use two monitors at a time with my Gigabyte GTX 670 WindForce OC, even though I have three connected. 2 with DVI, one with DisplayPort.

When I boot up with all three plugged in, one of the DVI's will be black, so only the DisplayPort and the other DVI will show anything. If I then unplug the DisplayPort, the other DVI turns on as well.

I'm not sure how to fix it or where even to begin. Could system definitions matter? (Running iMac12,2). I have considered EFI String Injection, but I haven't been able to find anything relating to GTX 670.

In my build, I have an Core i7 I7-3770K, so if the above isn't possible, I'd be happy to just get the third monitor working using the integrated HD4000 graphics card, but OS X doesn't seem to know I have it (only the GTX 670 shows up in System Report -> Graphics/Displays). Even when I disconnect the other monitors, and enabled the HD4000 in the BIOS (Tried both with Automatic and Enabled), nothing seems to work. Only when I remove the GTX 670 from the socket, the HD4000 works.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

My installation is a clean ML installed with UniBeast and MultiBeast.

EDIT: I just realized this should probably be in Post-Installation -> Graphics instead. Sorry, please move it!

 

[nfsgamer]

Triple monitor

What happens if you connect 1 monitor via HDMI instead of DVI?
So:
One monitor through DVI
One through HDMI
One through Displayport?

Question from my side: are you using an adapter to connect a monitor to DisplayPort? Or have your monitor native DisplayPort support?

I want to get 3 monitors working with MSI GTX 680 Twin Frozr III. If you succeeded I'll buy the GTX 680 and give it a try .

Thanks beforehand for your reply.

 

[johnjkle]

I have 3 monitors working in ML with my PNY GTX 680 + HD3000 - my understanding (and what I've found to be the case) is that only 2 monitors ever work from NVidia cards, so you'll have to get the HD4000 up and running. In my case, the GTX 680 is connected to a DVI monitor and an HDMI projector, while the HD3000 powers my other DVI monitor.

I'm using an ASUS P8Z68/Gen.3 motherboard, I had to set the IGPU setting to be the first display initialised and needed a DSDT for my mobo to get the HD3000 recognised (without it, ML could still see the IGPU, but only as a generic display device, with no kext loaded) but it does now work in any combo of the 3 connections. Unfortunately, I do not have a Displayport monitor to try out but 3 monitors with the 2 graphics cards does seem possible.

Everything works correctly, except for Flash video (grrrr) when the IGPU is enabled, which leads to a crash about 5-10 seconds after playback starts (but works fine if only the GTX 680 is enabled) - Airplay mirroring also becomes available for me in this configuration, but I can't get it to work either.

 

[franco199]

What happens if you connect 1 monitor via HDMI instead of DVI?
So:
One monitor through DVI
One through HDMI
One through Displayport?

Question from my side: are you using an adapter to connect a monitor to DisplayPort? Or have your monitor native DisplayPort support?

I want to get 3 monitors working with MSI GTX 680 Twin Frozr III. If you succeeded I'll buy the GTX 680 and give it a try .

Thanks beforehand for your reply.

From my testing, I can only get two monitors to work at a time. The preference seems to be DisplayPort, then DVI, then HDMI.

This means if I connected

- DVI1, DVI2, HDMI -> DVI1, DVI2 works
- DVI1, DVI2, DisplayPort -> DVI1, DisplayPort works
- Displayport, DVI1, HDMI -> again DVI1 and DisplayPort works

 

[franco199]

I have 3 monitors working in ML with my PNY GTX 680 + HD3000 - my understanding (and what I've found to be the case) is that only 2 monitors ever work from NVidia cards, so you'll have to get the HD4000 up and running. In my case, the GTX 680 is connected to a DVI monitor and an HDMI projector, while the HD3000 powers my other DVI monitor.

I'm using an ASUS P8Z68/Gen.3 motherboard, I had to set the IGPU setting to be the first display initialised and needed a DSDT for my mobo to get the HD3000 recognised (without it, ML could still see the IGPU, but only as a generic display device, with no kext loaded) but it does now work in any combo of the 3 connections. Unfortunately, I do not have a Displayport monitor to try out but 3 monitors with the 2 graphics cards does seem possible.

Everything works correctly, except for Flash video (grrrr) when the IGPU is enabled, which leads to a crash about 5-10 seconds after playback starts (but works fine if only the GTX 680 is enabled) - Airplay mirroring also becomes available for me in this configuration, but I can't get it to work either.

Thank you for your reply! The flash crash is unfortunate - does it happen even if the flash playback happens on the GTX 680-connected monitor?

You say I have to make the IGPU-connected display be the first one to be initialized. How did you manage that? Or I guess it's a prerequisite that ML knows I have a HD4000 in order for it to recognizes it. . When I go to  -> About this Mac -> More Info -> System Report... -> Graphics/Displays, only NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 is listed. Do you have any suggestions for sorting this out? What did you do to make ML know you had a IGPU? I'm guessing that was a result of installing a DSDT? In which case, I seem to be lost, I haven't been able to find a DSDT for my motherboard (Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H).

 

[nfsgamer]

Oke, many thanks for testing . Seems that the HDMI port doesn't work in all the combinations you tested out...
At the moment I don't know a possible solution to manage this :S.

If you tried anything else, please let me know.

 

[johnjkle]

Thank you for your reply! The flash crash is unfortunate - does it happen even if the flash playback happens on the GTX 680-connected monitor?

Yep, unfortunately the Flash crash happens on a system level with the iGPU enabled, even on the monitor connected to the 680. What's interesting is that I've made sure my GTX 680 is being used as the active card (as the graphics cards seem to switch just like a real Mac) by running Geekbench or a game first, but the crash still happens. Disabling the iGPU completely in the BIOS and leaving only the GTX 680 enabled restores full functionality. Still a bit at a loss about this but I'll update this thread if I get it working...

You say I have to make the IGPU-connected display be the first one to be initialized. How did you manage that? Or I guess it's a prerequisite that ML knows I have a HD4000 in order for it to recognizes it. . When I go to  -> About this Mac -> More Info -> System Report... -> Graphics/Displays, only NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 is listed. Do you have any suggestions for sorting this out? What did you do to make ML know you had a IGPU? I'm guessing that was a result of installing a DSDT? In which case, I seem to be lost, I haven't been able to find a DSDT for my motherboard (Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H).

Ok, initialize first - I actually have an option like that in my ASUS mobo's BIOS - it gives me options of Auto, iGPU, PCIe and PCI - I set this to iGPU and my hackintosh picked up the iGPU but only as a generic display device. I did in fact need a DSDT then to get it properly recognized as an HD3000. Like you, I could not find a DSDT in the the database here, but looking through various other OSx86 forums, I managed to find one for a close enough board (a P8Z68 Pro instead of my "vanilla" one). You should be able to use a DSDT that's a close enough match - if you have another hard drive, I'd advise making a full working copy of your hack with Carbon Copy Cloner and then experimenting with DSDT.

I'm a complete noob with all this and have made my hack unbootable too many times to count, but it's pretty trivial to get back up and running with CCC in 5 minutes or so (since I'm restoring to an SSD).

Best of luck and I'll post updates here if I get any further too - the one thing I am pretty sure about though is that you will need both cards, more than 2 monitors on NVidia cards is not possible apparently (no idea why this is the case though).

 

[animator]

Hi, here is what ive done to run GTX 680 and HD4000 together.

At first i tried to connect 3 displays to the GTX680, of course it wont run... My hd4000 was not recognized in macosx until i switch the IGPU as my primary card in BIOS. Then it was recognized as Display. With boot option "Graphics Mode"="1920x1080x32" i was able to have three monitors running and also with graphicsenabler=yes. Of course not with full acceleration...

So I went for the last chance and added device string to my boot loader (/Extra/org.chameleon.Boot.plist). Added:

<key>device-properties</key>
<string>7f0000000100000001000000730000000200000002010c00d041030a000000000101060000027fff04002c0000004100410050004c002c00690067002d0070006c006100740066006f0072006d002d006900640000000800000005006201140000006800640061002d0067006600780000000d0000006f6e626f6172642d31</string>

And it worked like a charm also with no graphicsenabler. Full acceleration.

My specs:
Intel DZ77SL-50K Motherboard
Gigabyte GTX 680 2 Gb
Intel HD 4000 - only HDMI output
Intel core i7-3770K 3,5 GHz
Intel eXtensiblde host controller usb 3.0
Allegro fw400 PCI-e card

 

[genzai]

Everything works correctly, except for Flash video (grrrr) when the IGPU is enabled, which leads to a crash about 5-10 seconds after playback starts (but works fine if only the GTX 680 is enabled) - Airplay mirroring also becomes available for me in this configuration, but I can't get it to work either.

My best guess is that you haven't got this configured quite right. as @animator posted this should be possible to get working. However the trick is that from my understanding nvidia 6xx currently works best with graphicsenabler=no while normally hd3000 and hd4000 need graphicsenabler=yes.

However because many people have issues with current hd4000 enabler in chimera, people have developed a nice list of EFI device-property injections. Using the device injection in boot plist would allow you to run both 6xx and hd4000 properly with graphicsenabler=no. and this should allow up to 5 monitors to work perfectly as long as you have the proper ports on motherboard (2 from 6xx and 3 from hd4000).

The issue with hd3000 sounds more problematic since i have not seen any device-property injections for hd3000. But it may be easy enough to create them. Please ask the folks who created them for hd4000 to help you create a device-property injection for your hd3000. Then setting to graphicsenabler=no should give you a fully working graphics setup.

I will be running a 6xx (propbably 660ti) + hd4000 3 monitor setup soon as well, and i will be able to test this better once the rest of my parts arrive. For the time being i am using hd3000 by itself and flash works just fine. It may be that adding a secondary card would screw this up somehow but i think its more likely that your graphics setup isn't quite right due to the enabler situation. I have friends who have both hd3000 and older nvidia/ATI cards working together and none have expressed issues with flash. In that case both graphics systems are using graphicsenabler=yes though so the setup is very straightforward.

Cheers.
g\

 

[johnjkle]

Thank you for your suggestions Genzai - I am sure that the solution Animator tried is the one that applies in my case too but I can't get it to work as I can't find the correct property for the HD3000 - this one crops up a lot:

<key>device-properties</key>
        <string>600000000100000001000000540000000100000002010c00d041030a000000000101060000027fff04001e0000004100410050004c002c006f0073002d0069006e0066006f0000001800000030490111111108000001f01f0100000010070000</string>

But does not work at all in my case. I can only get the HD3000 to work with GraphicsEnabler=Yes, but then that leads to the Flash and Airplay problems, even though everything else seems to still work (including MKV video playback at seemingly full speed and my menu bar is semi transparent which would indicate acceleration is still enabled?).

Who are you referring to that created the strings in the first place?