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MP 1,1-5,1 MP3,1 never dies - Netkas patched AMD METAL drivers to work with MP3,1!
- Thread starter tsialex
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May I ask a follow-up to this?
For a long time I've been running High Sierra with an nVidia Quadro M4000 in my 3,1 but I'm thinking of upgrading to Catalina and replacing the M4000 with a Radeon Pro WX4100 or 5100.
Is it right that these AMD cards don't need web drivers like the nVidia cards do and that I therefore need not worry about installing new web drivers for each Security Update?
Kind regards
Philip
For a long time I've been running High Sierra with an nVidia Quadro M4000 in my 3,1 but I'm thinking of upgrading to Catalina and replacing the M4000 with a Radeon Pro WX4100 or 5100.
Is it right that these AMD cards don't need web drivers like the nVidia cards do and that I therefore need not worry about installing new web drivers for each Security Update?
Kind regards
Philip
the AMD drivers are built in, no web driver joke to deal with.
The WX4100 is pretty low end, falling between the AMD RX 550 and AMD RX 560 Mobile performance category.
The WX5100 is better, but according to one site is about 20% slower than the M4000 you have. Granted the WX5100 is 1 year newer and uses nearly 1/2 the electrical power. but like any benchmark, it really depends on what you need.
https://technical.city/en/video/Quadro-M4000-vs-Radeon-Pro-WX-5100
I've had no issues using RX 580 Sapphire Pulse 4Gb for a while now, I also had used PowerColor Red Devil RX580 8Gb with the only issue there being that it was 3 slots wide and used 8 pin and 6 pin power instead of the single 8 pin setup that the Pulse had, the pulse was also significantly narrower, but still slightly more than 2 slots wide making it a little difficult to use slot 2 but was still doable.
Thank you very much. It sounds awesome to be free from such complex updating procedures.
The reason I'm thinking of the 4100 or 5100 is that I'm looking for single-slot cards with relatively low power draw. I use the machine for image editing primarily and 10-bit colour over DisplayPort is important to me. I don't do any gaming.
Perhaps there are more modern AMD cards that I should be looking at?
The reason I'm thinking of the 4100 or 5100 is that I'm looking for single-slot cards with relatively low power draw. I use the machine for image editing primarily and 10-bit colour over DisplayPort is important to me. I don't do any gaming.
Perhaps there are more modern AMD cards that I should be looking at?
Don't forget that you'll still need SSE emulation for a MP3,1 that have any AMD GPU newer than the ancient HD 5xxx/6xxx series and this also create software update problems.
Thank you Alex. Now I'm a bit confused. @Syncretic's post at the previous page mentions that MouSSE is part of the patcher. Doesn't that make it less complex when updating?
Still a hassle.
You won't have a working display after the software updates reboot, totally black screen, and the display will only work after you reapply the patches booting from your USB-key with the preferred patch that you use.
Ok I understand. So the main difference is only that the install is not dependent on extra GPU drivers.
Still if I can get a more current OS than High Sierra it would be worth the hassle for me.
Still if I can get a more current OS than High Sierra it would be worth the hassle for me.
Mojave will get one more Security Update around August/September and will be obsolete, so, it won't be too much cumbersome to do it one time, but if you install Catalina/Big Sur, you will be doing this frequently since Apple is now releasing rolling updates.
Thank you, I didn't know that one more will come for Mojave.
It's the price to be paid I guess to have a more up-to-date system. I have a GT 120 that I can use for updates so that will simplify I suppose. The main hassle for me is not so much that the updates have to be done and the practicalities surrounding that, but that I need to rely on updated web drivers. And no more are coming from nVidia as I understand it so its EOL at 10.13.6.
It's the price to be paid I guess to have a more up-to-date system. I have a GT 120 that I can use for updates so that will simplify I suppose. The main hassle for me is not so much that the updates have to be done and the practicalities surrounding that, but that I need to rely on updated web drivers. And no more are coming from nVidia as I understand it so its EOL at 10.13.6.
I have OpenCore injecting the sse4.2 emulation kext which seems to take care of that annoyance.
I just want to chime in to confirm all of the above; esp, ≥ WX4100 will work fine, and your security updates will have to be manually downloaded, unpackaged, modified, re-packaged and applied; and even if you have a flashed AMD GPU, you must still reapply patches over the next two reboots.
Also, mysteriously enough, though it draws less power than many cards, it's still going to rev up your primary expansion chassis fan from 600-800 at idle to as much as 1400, unless you take steps to override. If moderate fan noise doesn't bother you, it's of no worry as far as overheating, though the MCH Die Diode gets smoking' hot, and I'm not super pleased with what that means for longevity.
Not even a year ago, before Trump's trade wars took effect (December '20), you could get a brand new Sapphire Pulse RX 580 everyday on Amazon for $169-$179 (I got mine on a lightning deal for $150), and you could find them for as low as $120 used on eBay. If you don't mind paying vastly more today (~3x), it is a better card, and doesn't cause the heat issues. Plus you can pop the extra $130 to have it flashed, and not fool around with musical GPUs with the GT120. Given how stuffed my rig is, that bit was worth every penny (as was the WiFi/BT upgrade back with HS).
Finally, and I advise you to avoid it, Catalina does run on these GPUs, but the OS itself and some 1st party apps are just not great compared to Mojave. I've had some limited success with basic testing and booting of Big Sur, but I'm not holding out much hope it will be worth it.
Though I really would like access to its advancements, I think Mojave may be the end for me; I got my new MP at work, and I am still crossing my fingers that the next Mac Pro with Apple Silicon will offer me what I need at home at a price that isn't completely ludicrous.
Thirteen years, <$5K all-time, and still kicking'; amortize that ****, Tim.
Also, mysteriously enough, though it draws less power than many cards, it's still going to rev up your primary expansion chassis fan from 600-800 at idle to as much as 1400, unless you take steps to override. If moderate fan noise doesn't bother you, it's of no worry as far as overheating, though the MCH Die Diode gets smoking' hot, and I'm not super pleased with what that means for longevity.
Not even a year ago, before Trump's trade wars took effect (December '20), you could get a brand new Sapphire Pulse RX 580 everyday on Amazon for $169-$179 (I got mine on a lightning deal for $150), and you could find them for as low as $120 used on eBay. If you don't mind paying vastly more today (~3x), it is a better card, and doesn't cause the heat issues. Plus you can pop the extra $130 to have it flashed, and not fool around with musical GPUs with the GT120. Given how stuffed my rig is, that bit was worth every penny (as was the WiFi/BT upgrade back with HS).
Finally, and I advise you to avoid it, Catalina does run on these GPUs, but the OS itself and some 1st party apps are just not great compared to Mojave. I've had some limited success with basic testing and booting of Big Sur, but I'm not holding out much hope it will be worth it.
Though I really would like access to its advancements, I think Mojave may be the end for me; I got my new MP at work, and I am still crossing my fingers that the next Mac Pro with Apple Silicon will offer me what I need at home at a price that isn't completely ludicrous.
Thirteen years, <$5K all-time, and still kicking'; amortize that ****, Tim.
I’m confused ... I never had to re apply or manually tweak anything with the updates. As long as the emulation kext is there it just works. Nvidia on the other hand was a pain.I just want to chime in to confirm all of the above; esp, ≥ WX4100 will work fine, and your security updates will have to be manually downloaded, unpackaged, modified, re-packaged and applied; and even if you have a flashed AMD GPU, you must still reapply patches over the next two reboots.
Also, mysteriously enough, though it draws less power than many cards, it's still going to rev up your primary expansion chassis fan from 600-800 at idle to as much as 1400, unless you take steps to override. If moderate fan noise doesn't bother you, it's of no worry as far as overheating, though the MCH Die Diode gets smoking' hot, and I'm not super pleased with what that means for longevity.
Not even a year ago, before Trump's trade wars took effect (December '20), you could get a brand new Sapphire Pulse RX 580 everyday on Amazon for $169-$179 (I got mine on a lightning deal for $150), and you could find them for as low as $120 used on eBay. If you don't mind paying vastly more today (~3x), it is a better card, and doesn't cause the heat issues. Plus you can pop the extra $130 to have it flashed, and not fool around with musical GPUs with the GT120. Given how stuffed my rig is, that bit was worth every penny (as was the WiFi/BT upgrade back with HS).
Finally, and I advise you to avoid it, Catalina does run on these GPUs, but the OS itself and some 1st party apps are just not great compared to Mojave. I've had some limited success with basic testing and booting of Big Sur, but I'm not holding out much hope it will be worth it.
Though I really would like access to its advancements, I think Mojave may be the end for me; I got my new MP at work, and I am still crossing my fingers that the next Mac Pro with Apple Silicon will offer me what I need at home at a price that isn't completely ludicrous.
Thirteen years, <$5K all-time, and still kicking'; amortize that ****, Tim.
the gpu cost change has nothing to do with politics or trump so let’s not bring that crap in here.
It’s all about the fact that mining cryptocurrency is back up so everyone is mining again On top of the fact that COVID shutdowns impacted chip production and there are more people at home that want to play games.
I’m sorry you’re confused. When you apply a security update to Mojave on Mac Pro 3,1 it will not boot up at all immediately after applying the security update (black screen, endless kernel panic loop), until you first boot from and reapply the DosDude patches from USB or other patcher volume; then after the patches are applied and it boots into the re-patched and updated Mojave, Patch Updater will warn you that certain extensions were overwritten, and offer to re-apply them, and you must restart once more for those updated patches — unless those updates have since been rolled into the newest available master patch software package. I hope that is clear.
I’m sorry if you’re a Trump fan and seem to be offended by verified facts; my statement had no political bent, just truth; yes it is true that crypto mining is also having an impact; yes it is also true that Covid caused production delays; yes it is true that more people want to stay home and play games; but it is also absolutely true that in mid/late December 2020, the tariff exemption for certain components of video cards expired and was not extended. Immediately prices only leapt up by about 30% through early January, and as the shortages then also took hold, especially on the less-desirable cards, they became completely outrageous. A peer of mine had to pay $240 at Christmas for an RX 580 (that went for $179 only weeks before.), and he was lucky to get it before all the 3rd party speculators bought all of the remaining inventory from AMD and it jumped to $300 then $350 and the last listing I saw on Amazon was $600 — *used*. The original tariff was reported on in numerous tech blogs at the time it went into effect. Cf. https://lifehacker.com/why-graphics-cards-are-even-more-expensive-in-2021-1846036657
You can find plenty more reputable tech sites saying same thing.
Good Luck
PS: i’ve been alpha testing a macOS Security Update repackaging app; it takes away a ton of tedium; if you want to beta test it, PM me.
I have never been able to get OpenCore working reliably so the Updates come easily; I finally threw up my hands. No doubt it has something to do with my RR480 SSD boot raid array.
Thank you very much both @Rico and @Ludacrisvp for your thoughts. It's pretty amazing to be able to post a question and get such relevant and helpful advice, and so fast, too.
I've been curious about OpenCore since I read about it when I did my current Dosdude HS install, but I'm a bit concerned about the seemingly quite involved installation process. Then I read that it doesn't work on cMP 3,1 but require at least a Westmere processor. If that's not true and provided I could get the installation done right it might be something to consider for me.
I'm really grateful for your thoughts Rico. That Sapphire card seems very good but it's unfortunately a double wide card and won't fit in my 3,1 because of other cards I use.
I'm a little bit concerned about the fan behaviour with the 4100. Is this on Catalina only or also on Mojave? I'm wondering if the 5100 will cause the same behaviour, or one of the other single-slot AMD Pro cards?
I love your last line too and suspect it rings true for many cMP owners. I got my 3,1 in the summer of 2008 and have over the years upgraded it with new drives a few times (currently I have 8 it), GPUs and wifi/BT. It just keeps ticking.
I had Mojave on my Macbook Pro for a long while but it was a bit laggy and sometimes a bit slow and I also was unsuccessful in installing it on my 3,1 so settled for High Sierra. In the handful of times I have installed Dosdude patched systems on my 3,1 I have noticed that sometimes an install will run great out of the box, being snappy and stable, and sometimes it won't and without any evident reason why that is. So my install on the notebook perhaps went wrong somehow. I upgraded it to Catalina the other day and am very pleased with the result, hence my thoughts about doing the same with the cMP because High Sierra is a bit long in the tooth now. I do think Apple missed the mark with the new Music app though and miss iTunes but it's not a deal breaker for me since I only use the app to access my home share on an old 2,1.
A question about the process to apply software updates. You wrote "unless those updates have since been rolled into the newest available master patch software package". Which software package is this? When I updated High Sierra with the 2020-005 security update I don't recall that there was an already-patched version of that update to be installed. Rather I had to apply patches manually after the security update had installed (I seem to remember that I did this while booted off the patched USB key but it might have been from the Dosdude preference pane).
I've been curious about OpenCore since I read about it when I did my current Dosdude HS install, but I'm a bit concerned about the seemingly quite involved installation process. Then I read that it doesn't work on cMP 3,1 but require at least a Westmere processor. If that's not true and provided I could get the installation done right it might be something to consider for me.
I'm really grateful for your thoughts Rico. That Sapphire card seems very good but it's unfortunately a double wide card and won't fit in my 3,1 because of other cards I use.
I'm a little bit concerned about the fan behaviour with the 4100. Is this on Catalina only or also on Mojave? I'm wondering if the 5100 will cause the same behaviour, or one of the other single-slot AMD Pro cards?
I love your last line too and suspect it rings true for many cMP owners. I got my 3,1 in the summer of 2008 and have over the years upgraded it with new drives a few times (currently I have 8 it), GPUs and wifi/BT. It just keeps ticking.
I had Mojave on my Macbook Pro for a long while but it was a bit laggy and sometimes a bit slow and I also was unsuccessful in installing it on my 3,1 so settled for High Sierra. In the handful of times I have installed Dosdude patched systems on my 3,1 I have noticed that sometimes an install will run great out of the box, being snappy and stable, and sometimes it won't and without any evident reason why that is. So my install on the notebook perhaps went wrong somehow. I upgraded it to Catalina the other day and am very pleased with the result, hence my thoughts about doing the same with the cMP because High Sierra is a bit long in the tooth now. I do think Apple missed the mark with the new Music app though and miss iTunes but it's not a deal breaker for me since I only use the app to access my home share on an old 2,1.
A question about the process to apply software updates. You wrote "unless those updates have since been rolled into the newest available master patch software package". Which software package is this? When I updated High Sierra with the 2020-005 security update I don't recall that there was an already-patched version of that update to be installed. Rather I had to apply patches manually after the security update had installed (I seem to remember that I did this while booted off the patched USB key but it might have been from the Dosdude preference pane).
I just want to chime in to confirm all of the above; esp, ≥ WX4100 will work fine, and your security updates will have to be manually downloaded, unpackaged, modified, re-packaged and applied; and even if you have a flashed AMD GPU, you must still reapply patches over the next two reboots.
Also, mysteriously enough, though it draws less power than many cards, it's still going to rev up your primary expansion chassis fan from 600-800 at idle to as much as 1400, unless you take steps to override. If moderate fan noise doesn't bother you, it's of no worry as far as overheating, though the MCH Die Diode gets smoking' hot, and I'm not super pleased with what that means for longevity.
Not even a year ago, before Trump's trade wars took effect (December '20), you could get a brand new Sapphire Pulse RX 580 everyday on Amazon for $169-$179 (I got mine on a lightning deal for $150), and you could find them for as low as $120 used on eBay. If you don't mind paying vastly more today (~3x), it is a better card, and doesn't cause the heat issues. Plus you can pop the extra $130 to have it flashed, and not fool around with musical GPUs with the GT120. Given how stuffed my rig is, that bit was worth every penny (as was the WiFi/BT upgrade back with HS).
Finally, and I advise you to avoid it, Catalina does run on these GPUs, but the OS itself and some 1st party apps are just not great compared to Mojave. I've had some limited success with basic testing and booting of Big Sur, but I'm not holding out much hope it will be worth it.
Though I really would like access to its advancements, I think Mojave may be the end for me; I got my new MP at work, and I am still crossing my fingers that the next Mac Pro with Apple Silicon will offer me what I need at home at a price that isn't completely ludicrous.
Thirteen years, <$5K all-time, and still kicking'; amortize that ****, Tim.
Fear not, I'm no fan of Trump. I was just mentioning that I didn't see any direct correlation between his changes and the cost of GPUs, that said I was not actively shopping for any GPUs at that point in the year as I already have a pair of RX 580s.
I still don't see why you're having issues with the 3,1 after security updates, unless that is re-adding the telemetry plugin that causes panic during boot. But that can be avoided if you have telemetrap.kext installed which disables that plugin. Injecting things via OpenCore takes care of a ton of pain points. I am not on the latest security update on the 3,1 so perhaps i'm not recalling something as it has been a while since ran the update. When I get around to updating it again i'll keep closer tabs on the process to see what i have in place that you may not that is causing more pain for you than i recall or if i'm wrong and forgot about some step. If it matters mine is also bootrom modified to boot APFS and NVME. I don't have speakers connected to it so the lack of audio is really the only thing i think is "missing" but that probably could be fixed by injecting the correct audio kext via open core as well that patcher replaces.
Booting from RAID in modern macOS is certainly going to add pain, in your case you could probably have just loaded opencore on a USB stick or any drive in the machine (even a small IDE HDD attached to the optical bay cables, or a drive connected to the 2 spare ODD_SATA ports under the fan assembly.
The Westmere requirement stems from the fact that the focus on this forum for OpenCore is the 5,1 which could have been upgraded from a 4,1 that may have nehalem or gainstown (i think) processors, and part of how catalina was run was by using a virtual machine extension (VMM) feature of the westmere CPUs to lie to the installer to claim it was being run inside a virtual machine instead of on the real hardware which passed the checks allowing the 4,1/5,1 to run catalina ... this didn't get the job done for Big Sur though.
I started running opencore on the 3,1 along side those doing it on the 5,1 at the same time and since early on the 3,1 was able to do GOP boot screens with the right boot loader (modified refind / clover / Opencore) the 3,1 even had a usable boot screen without a flashed GPU long before the magic was figured out for the 5,1.
You may want to check out https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mybootmgr-refindplus-opencore.2231693/ which focuses more on the 3,1 than anything to help you get opencore and if you want refind plus going to boot legacy windows 10.
The fan usage seems odd to me, as at least the RX cards don't turn the GPU fan on until the GPU temp is at least 60C, perhaps the single slot design is making the mac pro pick up on that heat and triggers the fans to ramp up a bit, but I don't see that happen when using the dual slot cards. MacsFanControl may be your answer as to a solution there.
My 3,1 is also an original owner from around april 2008 (thanks facebook for the reminder) i've had a pile of drive configurations in it, various GPUs, booting from mSATA SSD on PCIe card, and upgraded the CPUs to dual 3.2GHz and put in the newer iMac AC WiFi / BT4 card a while back in the place of the stock wifi and bt cards, and a sata bluray burner along with sata 3 for the bays 1-4 and routing the stock sata 2 ports into the optical bay and a 10Gb NIC and for a while USB3 but that never really meant much to me, I do also have a thunderbolt card laying around that i was going to try out in there but its in the xserve3,1 (cross-flashed to macpro5,1) instead.
the only patcher i know of would be in reference to dosdude's work, no security patches would be pre-patched for use on unsupported hardware. I don't believe much effort is put into making the 3,1 mac pro work reliably with the dosdude patchers especially since most have retired it with the lack of SSE4.2 many believe they are unable to run a modern AMD GPU, so those that are still running tend to have more complex configurations in place. I don't believe dosdude is even aware of the telemetrap.kext to be honest as last i recall the patcher still has it remove the plugin.
Thank you very for the detailed reply and for the further info on OpenCore and esp. the link to that thread.
Looking around for more on OC I found the dortania site on Github where there's a list of supported GPUs. I'm not sure if that's only in respect of OC and hackintosh only or if it's also with regard to dosdude patched systems?
I might still try a dosdude install with a WX4100 or 5100 since that seems less involved, but on that list the more recent W5500 is mentioned which could be interesting too if it applies to non-OC installs.
About swapping out the wifi/bt module. I installed a BCM94360CD in order to be able to upgrade to High Sierra. Any idea if that will work with Catalina? That exact model isn't mentioned on the dortania site but one without CD is).
Cheers
Philip
Looking around for more on OC I found the dortania site on Github where there's a list of supported GPUs. I'm not sure if that's only in respect of OC and hackintosh only or if it's also with regard to dosdude patched systems?
I might still try a dosdude install with a WX4100 or 5100 since that seems less involved, but on that list the more recent W5500 is mentioned which could be interesting too if it applies to non-OC installs.
About swapping out the wifi/bt module. I installed a BCM94360CD in order to be able to upgrade to High Sierra. Any idea if that will work with Catalina? That exact model isn't mentioned on the dortania site but one without CD is).
Cheers
Philip
Follow this improved approach instead: https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/27892821