What about AMD's R9 Series (280x, 290x) on our Hackintoshes?. Further explanation.

[arisythila]

I just wanted to send response here.

These drivers work... HOWEVER..... If your running 4k display an trying to achieve 60hz, you will not do it. These drivers are only seeing 30hz for my Dell UP3214Q.

If you are running 2560x1440 it works perfect!

Thanks again Randall for letting us know about this.

 

[AndyAndreas]

Hi Guys,

I am planning to build my very first Hackintosh. I am a cameraman and an editor and I work with FCPX so the AMD R9 series can help me with the software by Apple.

My first choice is the Asus R9280X-DC2T-3GD5 (link to the one I found on Amazon)

The Sapphire TRI-X R9 290 4GB GDDR5 OC(UEFI) (link) seems very good too, but I have a couple of questions.

Since I'ver never tried such things, when you say that the graphic card works out of box, what do you mean? I prepare my Hackintosh, follow the steps by tonymacx86 and then I start working with these cards?

If I buy one of these cards (can you suggest which one is better for compatibility) can I ask you for help if I have some issue? My needs: use FCPX and connect two monitors (one by HDMI and one by DVI-I using a DVI-I to VGA adapter, waiting for another monitor).

Probably I'll need a step by step guide

I chose a GA-Z87X-UD3H, so I can use the internal graphic card for the secondary monitor, if it's better.

Thank you for your help and for your contribution I really appreciate what are you doing.

 

[michaelcly]

Andy,
If you are planning on using either of these cards and don't have much hackintosh experience, you may get frustrated. The r9 series requires boot files on an efi partition. The 290 series will be even harder—just read this thread. Just saying. Then, when it's all said and done, the r9 series will not perform as well in OSX as Windows. Many have had trouble getting two monitors working.

Do you really need this card? I'm not familiar with the software your using, but the Nvidia cards are much easier build-wise.

But is you really want this series card, I'd go with the 280x

Good luck. Step by step are all here in the guides.

 

[rwillett]

I can't comment on your choice of which 280 card to use but I can tell you that if you use the internal graphics card on the z87x ud3h then you will not get FCP X to work very well.

i have the same motherboard and benchmarked my dual 5770 cards with and without the internal graphics card configured and found that when the internal graphics card was used, FCP X prioritised that over the far more powerful 5770 and things took far longer to work. Turning off the internal graphics made a massive improvement.

I also benchmarked a nVidia 660gtx with FCP X and was astonished how slow it was. I recall things took 3x longer for what was and is a decent graphics card. The nVidia range of cards are not very good with FCP X. They are great graphics cards for other uses, but FCP X is optimised for AMD, hence I use 5770s.

Check out out on Google for brucex benchmark for a whole series if benchmarks of what people have done.

Bottom line, forget about the internal graphics card and nVidia if you use FCP X.

Rob

 

[AndyAndreas]

Thank you guys for the answers, I really appreciate your replies.

@michaelcly,

I would go to Nvidia cards as well, but like rwillett wrote, performances are much better with AMD cards using FCPX, which is OpenCL based. A lot of times I thought to chose a GTX 760, but this card is not what I am looking for.

I read a lot of topics and articles, including this one and these ones:

• ASUS AMD R9 280X - Working OOB
• List of Confirmed Radeon HD 7xxx Series
• R9 280X problems (sapphire and asus)
• Install Bootloader and Extra to EFI Partition

A lot of times I read things like these:

Tsunade

I tested Asus R9 270X last couple hours. I can only say that this card working perfect OOB, recognized as 7xxx. I tired many apps and didn't saw any errors. Only error have with HD content in iTunes, but that is unique problem. I was happy after LuxMark benchmark with 1533 points

gromalle

Same card (GV-R927XOC-2GD), same result but without any side-effects. I use UEFI boot with Clover r.2236 UEFI bootloader.


Just installed 10.9 with this card (Internal graphics (HD4000) == disabled in bios), everything works natively

Bioteq

I'm positively surprised.

My R9 280x works Out of Box, no kext editing, no nothing.
Everything works from boot onward, integrated GPU is now entirely off.
The only setting I kept from my original HD4600 setup was the forced initial resolution of 1080p (not even sure whether this is necessary, but it sure doesn't hurt).


Card: Asus R9280X-DC2T-3GD5
System: 10.9


Correction: everything works, including HDMI audio, my settings in the display were all funky

So I was pretty convinced that everything worked out of the box. There are several posts by users that are not able to run these cards as well, but not everyone is using the same exact model.
I really appreciate your help, I hope to made a decision soon. Maybe I can go with the Radeon 7xxx series. What do you think about it?

Note: I also posted a question here, where you can follow my post (List of Confirmed Radeon HD 7xxx Series). I also started a new thread for my very first Hackintosh.

@rwillett,

I read somewhere that to avoid any issue with a secondary monitor, someone is using the AMD card to run FCPX and the internal graphic card for the secondary monitor. For main use I want to avoid internal graphic cards and Nvidia cards. The 5770 seems an interesting solution. Do you suggest these ones? Are they going to work easily?

On the thread "List of Confirmed Radeon HD 7xxx Series (10.8.3+)" there are other suggest AMD cards. They are not the last ones, but I think they'll be fine. Will my life be easier if I use the Radeon 7xxx series?

Note: I also posted a question here, where you can follow my post (List of Confirmed Radeon HD 7xxx Series). I also started a new thread for my very first Hackintosh.

Anyway, thank you so much for your help, I really appreciate it.

 

[michaelcly]

Andy, you've been doing your homework!

I can't help you much beyond my experience with my own Hackintosh. I have a Saphire 270x and it works out of the box in 10.9.4. I know the 270x and 280x use the same architecture but the 290 and 290x use something different. The 7xxx Radeon cards to the r9 series isn't a quantum leap—they're similar. A friend of mine who used them on PCs to mine says the 290 isn't that much faster than the 280x because of the "x" acceleration.

This was the hard part for me... making the efi partition. It's not that it's hard, but when I did it with 10.8.5, this card did not play well. Every time I had any trouble, I had to physically pull the card out of the slot and change bios settings to boot from another device. It was frustrating at times. Complicating that, my sg05 case is small...really small... and it took a lot of time to disconnect the card. In some instances, I could boot up with no monitor and work on it through the network with another Mac.

Now with 10.9.4 and many successful builds using the 280x, I'll bet you can find a model to follow and bypass the frustrations I had.

Good luck! I know you'll do fine with it.

 

[AndyAndreas]

This was the hard part for me... making the efi partition. It's not that it's hard, but when I did it with 10.8.5, this card did not play well. Every time I had any trouble, I had to physically pull the card out of the slot and change bios settings to boot from another device. It was frustrating at times. Complicating that, my sg05 case is small...really small... and it took a lot of time to disconnect the card. In some instances, I could boot up with no monitor and work on it through the network with another Mac.

Now with 10.9.4 and many successful builds using the 280x, I'll bet you can find a model to follow and bypass the frustrations I had.

Hi michaelcly!
Thank you for your reply, you are very kind

In order to make your Sapphire 270x works out of the box you had to make the EFI partition on Mavericks 10.9.4 as well? Or you simply updated your Mountain Lion install?

Again, thank you so much for your effort!

 

[Mulder]

Hi Andy,

Like me, you are a first time Hackintosher. I also did my homework before I bought a Sapphire 280X Toxic. It worked out of the box by disabling the IGFX and it loaded the AMD7000 kext straight away. Dual monitors work by using DVI dual link and mini display port. However in total only four of the five ports are recognised. It benchmarked fine too in LuxMark 2.1, straight out of the box. I tested this on 10.9.4 with Clover r2758.
Of course I can't guarantee that your install will be as easy as mine, but it will hopefully give you confidence to at least try it

 

[AndyAndreas]

Hi Andy,

Like me, you are a first time Hackintosher. I also did my homework before I bought a Sapphire 280X Toxic. It worked out of the box by disabling the IGFX and it loaded the AMD7000 kext straight away. Dual monitors work by using DVI dual link and mini display port. However in total only four of the five ports are recognised. It benchmarked fine too in LuxMark 2.1, straight out of the box. I tested this on 10.9.4 with Clover r2758.
Of course I can't guarantee that your install will be as easy as mine, but it will hopefully give you confidence to at least try it

Hey Mulder,

thank you for describing your experience. Now I have another graphic card to consider
I am really interested in the dual monitors part, because I always work with two screens. So the HDMI port didn't work, right? Too bad.

 

[Mulder]

Hey Mulder,

thank you for describing your experience. Now I have another graphic card to consider
I am really interested in the dual monitors part, because I always work with two screens. So the HDMI port didn't work, right? Too bad.

I was looking at the 270X too, but not many people had success with two monitors. The 280X was a safer bet, which turned out great! To be honest, both HDMI and the standard DVI port didn't work. DVI was recognised by IOJones though. For the mini display port, I used a mDP to HDMI adapter, which I used on my MacBook Pro, and that worked without any problems. Also, the two displays I had connected had different resolutions, but Mavericks handled both great.
If you are thinking about getting a 280X, may I point out that the MSI is very cheap in comparison to the Toxic, at least here in the Netherlands. A member here has two of those MSI's working with dual monitors if I remember correctly, so you should be good