Dual RX 480s in Mac Pro 5,1 running MacOS (w/ How-to)

[handheldgames]

Installed fresh copy of beta 4 this evening, on a XFX rx 480 8gb, booting to desktop without acceleration. With the rx480 installed, i was able to boot to the recovery interface to disable sip. Modifying the .plist contained within the x4000.kext, I installed the update and rebooted with full acceleration without OpenGl support. Extension viewer fails on test run, Metal is fully supported.

About the most painless GPU upgrade to date. Nice...

 

[theitsage]

I installed MacOS Beta 4 upgrade with Sapphire RX 480 GPU attached for the entire process. A nice improvement over the GTX 980 Ti was that I get to see the progress screen as well as the iCloud sign-in screen after upgrade. With the GTX 980 Ti, I had to put a flashed 7970 GPU in to get past this screen (remote access doesn't work).

AMDRadeonX4000.kext shows newer version but no improvement with OpenGL.

 

[handheldgames]

By default... HDMI 2.0 on the rx480 is capped at 2560x1440 for 60hz. 3840x2160 @ 30hz is available. A with SwitchresX may be the trick. No issues with dp.

 

[theitsage]

I will have a second RX 480 tomorrow to test a pair of these in both MacOS 10.12 beta and Windows 10. My Asus G20AJ gaming rig has a GTX 1070 which can be benched for some reference as well.

 

[theitsage]

Picked it up early at a local Best Buy. This XFX RX 480 is clocked higher than the Sapphire RX 480. My Mac Pro boots up fine with both RX 480 GPUs into MacOS beta.

I'm installing Windows 10 on another drive atm. The 18 year old kid at Best Buy who was ringing me up asked if I was building a gaming system. I nodded my head and said YES! I would really confuse him if I was going into details what I'm doing. Fun to act like teenage boy once in a while.

 

[theitsage]

After a day struggling with Windows 10 install and driver issues, not messing with that anymore.

Is there a restriction where 2 GPUs cannot be installed next to one another in the Mac Pro PCIe slots? The computer cannot boot with the GPUs in slot 1 and 2. It can only boot with one in slot 1 and the other in slot 3.

The RX 480 in slot 1 shows 16x at 2.5GT/s. Interestingly, the RX 480 in slot 3 shows 4x at 5.0GT/s.

 

[h9826790]

After a day struggling with Windows 10 install and driver issues, not messing with that anymore.

Is there a restriction where 2 GPUs cannot be installed next to one another in the Mac Pro PCIe slots? The computer cannot boot with the GPUs in slot 1 and 2. It can only boot with one in slot 1 and the other in slot 3.

The RX 480 in slot 1 shows 16x at 2.5GT/s. Interestingly, the RX 480 in slot 3 shows 4x at 5.0GT/s.

View attachment 643829

Never heard that issue. I am now running 2x 7950. I end up install them in slot 1&3 just because of better cooling. But I can boot the Mac with them installed in 1&2.

And interesting the card can negotiate at 5.0 GT/s in slot 3, my card is the real Mac Edition card, so must able to get PCIe 2.0. The other card also removed R17, so can't test if a normal PC Card can really run at PCIe 2.0 x4 natively.

 

[ClassicMartini]

Picked it up early at a local Best Buy. This XFX RX 480 is clocked higher than the Sapphire RX 480. My Mac Pro boots up fine with both RX 480 GPUs into MacOS beta.

I'm installing Windows 10 on another drive atm. The 18 year old kid at Best Buy who was ringing me up asked if I was building a gaming system. I nodded my head and said YES! I would really confuse him if I was going into details what I'm doing. Fun to act like teenage boy once in a while.

View attachment 643694

Nice.

If you get a chance, can you try BruceX too?

Thanks in advance.

Sydney, Australia.

 

[Xanix]

Hello to all.

I've read all the posts so far... can anyone explain me, the procedure on "how to" edit /add my RADEON R9 nano to the AMDRadeonX4000.kext on Sierra?

Maybe I should have waited for the RX 480 but, I really love the nano's size and the HBM memory, from Hynix. I've the ASUS model.

*Also, I've already done the "pixlas" mod and I have another R9 nano, waiting...


I really wanted to see if I can get acceleration working on Sierra. Help world be really appreciated!


Regards,
Xanix

 

[Draeconis]

It's been such a long time coming it's now hard to get the R9 Nano for a decent price in the UK, but I'd still like to see if this card works by the time the Sierra GM is released.

 

[theitsage]

Nice.

If you get a chance, can you try BruceX too?

Thanks in advance.

Sydney, Australia.

I tried this test and timed it 3 times for average. 20.25s is what this setup got.
[doublepost=1470711729][/doublepost]

Hello to all.

I've read all the posts so far... can anyone explain me, the procedure on "how to" edit /add my RADEON R9 nano to the AMDRadeonX4000.kext on Sierra?

Maybe I should have waited for the RX 480 but, I really love the nano's size and the HBM memory, from Hynix. I've the ASUS model.

*Also, I've already done the "pixlas" mod and I have another R9 nano, waiting...


I really wanted to see if I can get acceleration working on Sierra. Help world be really appreciated!


Regards,
Xanix

Step 1 - Disable SIP in Recovery mode (Command + R at boot, open Terminal then type csrutil disable).
Step 2 - Reboot then locate AMDRadeonX4000.kext in /System/Library/Extensions/. Right click and choose show package content. Edit the info.plist within Contents folder to include your GPU ID. I believe the Nano ID is 7300 so the full ID to add is 0x73001002. Refer to my post #27 for the exact line where you add your GPU ID.
Step 3 - Use Kext Utility to repair the kext permissions then reboot.

If all goes well you'll have acceleration.

 

[Xanix]

I tried this test and timed it 3 times for average. 20.25s is what this setup got.
[doublepost=1470711729][/doublepost]

Step 1 - Disable SIP in Recovery mode (Command + R at boot, open Terminal then type csrutil disable).
Step 2 - Reboot then locate AMDRadeonX4000.kext in /System/Library/Extensions/. Right click and choose show package content. Edit the info.plist within Contents folder to include your GPU ID. I believe the Nano ID is 7300 so the full ID to add is 0x73001002. Refer to my post #27 for the exact line where you add your GPU ID.
Step 3 - Use Kext Utility to repair the kext permissions then reboot.

If all goes well you'll have acceleration.

Hi. My friend, thank you very, very much... you're a life saviour!

I only have one doubts; you placed the ID on <key>AMDBaffinGraphicsAccelerator</key>; right?

Kind regards and thank's,
Xanix

 

[theitsage]

Hi. My friend, thank you very, very much... you're a life saviour!

I only have one doubts; you placed the ID on <key>AMDBaffinGraphicsAccelerator</key>; right?

Kind regards and thank's,
Xanix

It's a string under Baffin where you'll see 3 existing IDs which ends in 1002. You can open System Profiler to double check the ID of your AMD Nano.

 

[Xanix]

It's a string under Baffin where you'll see 3 existing IDs which ends in 1002. You can open System Profiler to double check the ID of your AMD Nano.

Hello again. With the help of member "ongnoi", I got the things running...
*Relevant or not, my Sierra Beta is running from an external, USB drive.

- OpenCL running (OK)
- OpenGL running (OK)

My Sierra is working good and stable. For better or worse; here are the pictures:
* All tests; LuxMark, Heaven and Valley on default / basic.

Regards to all,
Xanix

RADEON R9 NANO TESTS...

 

[MarkC426]

Ongnoi, am I correct in saying you have the RX 480 working in OSX 10.12 without any mods, i.e. plugged it in and rebooted?
If so this is great news.

 

[theitsage]

Ongnoi, am I correct in saying you have the RX 480 working in OSX 10.12 without any mods, i.e. plugged it in and rebooted?
If so this is great news.

Yes, it's plug and play in MacOS 10.12 beta. To get full acceleration, you'll need to add the RX 480 ID to the AMDRadeon4000.kext.

This is by no mean fully working because many OpenGL software crash with the RX 480. I'm very hopeful by the time the GM comes out, it's going to work fully (except for boot screen).

 

[theitsage]

Installed Beta 5 last night.

I saw a new version in the kext, ATI-1.44.68 (dated Aug 5th). I was really excited to find out what changes this brought. Unfortunately, the RX 480 still crashes OpenGL applications.

I'm starting to think these drivers are built for a Polaris 11 chipset such as the RX 460 to be used in the new line of MacBook Pro. My logic? RX 480 ID is 0x67DF. The official supported IDs within AMDRadeon4000.kext are 0x67EF, 0x67FF, and 0x67E0. Glad to see Apple continues the tradition of using low-end graphics cards for their premium line of Macs.

[doublepost=1470835289][/doublepost]That didn't take long. AMD shows RX 460 indeed has PCI ID of 0x67EF. http://developer.amd.com/resources/ati-catalyst-pc-vendor-id-1002-li/

 

[Draeconis]

Huh, so a drop-in RX 460 should just work?

 

[theitsage]

Huh, so a drop-in RX 460 should just work?

Most likely but you don't want a RX 460.

 

[Draeconis]

I know that Ideally would like the R9 Nano, but they're hard to get now, and the price is insane as a result. Economically it's looking like the 1070 might be the better choice. :/

 

[theitsage]

I got so close last weekend and thought I tried installing Windows 10 again. Finally, I'm able to run a pair of Sapphire AMD RX 480s in CrossFire. Last but not least, VR testing in the morning.

 

[Draeconis]

I see you've still got them installed in slots 1 and 3, is there still an issue with them being connected to 1 and 2 when trying to boot? Do you see any performance degradation running the second RX 480 from a PCIe 2.0 4x slot?

Are you concerned about power draw? Under Windows 10, the AMD fix for power should be effective, but those settings wouldn't carry across to Sierra would they?

 

[Flint Ironstag]

What's the word on that VR test?

 

[theitsage]

What's the word on that VR test?

It was successful. I moved the second RX 480 to slot 4 in order to plug in a USB PCIe adapter. The Oculus program shows a warning that my Mac Pro is not fully compatible due to the CPU (2 x 6 core 2.93GHz). Besides that warning, everything works exactly the same way as the Asus G20AJ I tried earlier with Oculus Rift.

 

[Flint Ironstag]

More pics, benchmarks, subjective thoughts? I'm assuming you're running VR in bootcamp?