Hey guys, I found something today that solved ALL of my VEGA 56 video card problems. I can't tell if this "fix" is only for my configuration, or if this will work for everyone, but I want to share it anyway so you can test it and hopefully fix the problems as I did.
In my experience, I had TWO (2) problems with my Vega 56 video Card:
- Problem 1: Fan speed fixed at 100%, sounding very loud. The fix of this triggered the next problem.
- Problem 2: High temp of 71°C (and rising) at boot, without fan speed going up as it should.
After reading about fixing those problems with the injection of PowerTables with VGTab, I decided to first config my system and take care of the Vega problems later. At this point, the 100% fan speed problem was taking care of High temp problem, so temps were under control. With High Sierra I used to have all my configs done in a (rather old now) DSDT edits file. As we know, Whatevergreen kext is the result of the merge of many kexts into one, and recent versions are including patches and/or fixes to automatically take care of some device configurations. So I wanted to eliminate duplicate/conflicting patches between my kexts and my DSDT edits file by configuring everything relevant with Hackingtool & Clover Configurator, removing the DSDT edits file, and leaving the rest to Lilu, Whatevergreen & AppleALC kexts. That's what lead me to discover this:
Solution to Problem 2: Enable CPU power management using Clover Configurator. As simple as that. Why did it worked? I don't know, but I suspect it's related to Solution of Problem 1 (later on this). In Clover Configurator I went to ACPI/Generate Options, and activated "Plugin Type".
Solution to Problem 1: Activate IGPU in BIOS. Again: As simple as that.
And that's it. My Vega is working fine now, natively with no additional fixes or PowerTtables injection. No additional fix kexts, nada. It's working at 31°C, Fan Speed: 48% at 2399 RPM, exactly as it works in Windows.
I also did some other things, I'm not 100% sure they are part of the fix, but I believe they contribute to success (and certainly it won't hurt to do them). Please consider doing the following:
- Be sure to have installed latest versions of Clover and kexts (Lilu and Whatevergreen ARE MANDATORY).
- Be sure to eliminate from Clover config file all the renaming patches related to IGPU. Whatevergreen apply them automatically now, and it can create conflicts with Rename Patches present in your Clover config file.
- Since we enabled IGPU along with the Vega card, please be sure to correctly configure an Intel Framebuffer Patch with a headless Platform ID and inject it to Clover config using the new method of Device Properties injection (Use Hackingtool for this, it's getting better and smarter with every version, it's great).
- Be sure to correctly configure your PCI devices using the same method with Hackingtool.
- Do NOT use FakeSMC SENSORS, I've read they are incompatible with Vegas (at least for now) and the only reading they gave me on Vega was a REALLY disturbing 127°C temp (I almost die of a heart attack the first time I saw this). Instead I use iStats Menu and Intel Power Gadget for monitoring temps (Vega temp included as iStats is able to read it).
Also, you can monitor Vega's temp and fan speed with the following command in terminal:
ioreg -l |grep \"PerformanceStatistics\" | cut -d '{' -f 2 | tr '|' ',' | tr -d '}' | tr ',' '\n'|grep 'Temp\|Fan'
My theory of why this works (this is a BIG MAYBE since I'm not an expert): It's known that problems with Vega cards (at least the two we are talking about here) are macOS related since version 10.14.5 does NOT have these problems (obviously they changed/fixed something in that version). Maybe the problems are related to how macOS controls the video system(s), attaching or mixing Vega properties (and maybe control) to Intel ones. A disabled IGPU means no control/properties of the system over it, so maybe it also means no control over Vega's. The fact is that (at least in my case) enabling IGPU, properly configuring Intel Framebuffer AND activating a correct CPU power management (the IGPU curiously RESIDES in the CPU), all the problems are resolved (at least in my case). In other words: fixing and properly configuring the CPU AND the IGPU will contribute to a healthy Vega 56 card (maybe also all Vegas). As we know Apple did SERIOUS changes in video system in Mojave (Metal 2 implementation for instance). I believe this required SERIOUS changes under the hood, and those changes brought problems like the ones with Vega cards. Maybe this is one of the reasons for the lack of Nvidia drivers until today. Don't get me wrong, I was VERY angry at Apple and NVIDIA for this situation, I was an Nvidia user (GTX 1770) and I had to buy my current Vega 56 in order to use Mojave (I'm a video/audio editor), but now I'm starting to suspect that the absence of Nvidia drivers may be a sort of "Damage Control" instead of just "Apple ignoring Nvidia". Maybe they are working to fix macOS with AMD devices (the ones that currently are present in Apple new products), and then, after the problems are resolved, they will give green light for Nvidia. It would be a much bigger problem to resolve the OS problems including Nvidia video cards in the actual fix process. Anyway, back to the problem's fix, If I'm right on this, it means that every Vega card can be fixed using this method. Again, this a BIG MAYBE.
I hope my post helps you to fix your Vega problems.
