MP 1,1-5,1 MVC EFI BIOS for AMD 580?

[h9826790]

By request, here's how the MVC Sapphire Pulse RX580 appears in Windows:

View attachment 850311
Seems to work without issue in Windows 10 legacy / CSM mode. GPU-Z seems to think it's an MSI Armor card. Had some troubles on first boot that I think turned out to be related to a recent Windows Update patch as I'm running v1903.

Overall very happy with the purchase! Ordered Tuesday night, was shipped Wednesday night, had it in my hands on Friday. No original box, but included two mini 6-pin to 6+2 pin power cables and a dual 6-pin to 8-pin adapter. Was my first order from MacVidCards and was pleased it was very smooth.

Do you mind to dump the ROM via GPU-Z (NO need to publish it), then run PolarisBiosEditor 1.6.7 to check the ROM, and see if the parameters (e.g. Power Control Limit, Max RPM, Max Temp, etc.) still same as the original PULSE ROM?

For info, this is the original parameters from my PULSE RX580 8GB card.

According to your screenshot. Google 015.050.002.001.000000 give me this.

https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/198251/msi-rx580-8192-171113

And its parameter looks like this. Quite different than the native PULSE settings.

 

[atonaldenim]

Do you mind to dump the ROM via GPU-Z (NO need to publish it), then run PolarisBiosEditor 1.6.7 to check the ROM, and see if the parameters (e.g. Power Control Limit, Max RPM, Max Temp, etc.) still same as the original PULSE ROM?

For info, this is the original parameters from my PULSE RX580 8GB card.
View attachment 850314

According to your screenshot. Google 015.050.002.001.000000 give me this.

https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/198251/msi-rx580-8192-171113

And its parameter looks like this. Quite different than the native PULSE settings.
View attachment 850316

It seems to match the second screenshot you posted. Interesting, I wonder if perhaps they found this VBIOS was better for use with a variety of different RX580 cards, or something like that.

 

[h9826790]

It seems to match the second screenshot you posted. Interesting, I wonder if perhaps they found this VBIOS was better for use with a variety of different RX580 cards, or something like that.

View attachment 850523

From the ROM I downloaded via TechPowerUp, that MSI ROM contain data for all Samsung, Micron, Hynix VRAM.

But the dump from my own PULSE RX580 only contain the data for Micron. May be they consider that MSI ROM is more universal. So, develop the Mac EFI UGA ROM base on that. Which make sense if they plan to provide flash service for pretty much any RX580.

Anyway, if your PULSE is now actually running a MSI ROM. I bet it's using RadeonFramebuffer, but not the Orinoco framebuffer. The Subsystem ID also base on the MSI ID, but not the Sapphire ID. Do you mind to confirm this as well?

And if you attempt to run any stress test in macOS (e.g. Furmark). You may run this command in terminal during test to check the card's parameter.

ioreg -l |grep \"PerformanceStatistics\" | cut -d '{' -f 2 | tr '|' ',' | tr -d '}' | tr ',' '\n'|grep 'Temp\|Fan\|%\|(W)\|Hz'

With that MSI setting, I expect the fan will spin above the default acoustic max 2280 RPM (when the GPU runs above 75°C), but the GPU should able to stay at that temperature level, and go nowhere near the default PULSE max temperature 84°C.

 

[atonaldenim]

From the ROM I downloaded via TechPowerUp, that MSI ROM contain data for all Samsung, Micron, Hynix VRAM.

But the dump from my own PULSE RX580 only contain the data for Micron. May be they consider that MSI ROM is more universal. So, develop the Mac EFI UGA ROM base on that. Which make sense if they plan to provide flash service for pretty much any RX580.

Anyway, if your PULSE is now actually running a MSI ROM. I bet it's using RadeonFramebuffer, but not the Orinoco framebuffer. The Subsystem ID also base on the MSI ID, but not the Sapphire ID. Do you mind to confirm this as well?
View attachment 850529

And if you attempt to run any stress test in macOS (e.g. Furmark). You may run this command in terminal during test to check the card's parameter.

ioreg -l |grep \"PerformanceStatistics\" | cut -d '{' -f 2 | tr '|' ',' | tr -d '}' | tr ',' '\n'|grep 'Temp\|Fan\|%\|(W)\|Hz'

With that MSI setting, I expect the fan will spin above the default acoustic max 2280 RPM (when the GPU runs above 75°C), but the GPU should able to stay at that temperature level, and go nowhere near the default PULSE max temperature 84°C.

Yes, it's RadeonFramebuffer, just checked in 10.13.6 and 10.14.6 both. @h9826790 I saw you wrote that as of 10.14.5 RadeonFramebuffer should be just as good as Orinoco, is that correct?

.


Wow yes the fans do get quite loud under load. The temperature does seem to stay around 75-76ºC. Ran Luxmark a few times to test, this was about the peak:

Interesting to look under the hood, thanks for the questions. Do you think with this MVC card it would be possible to change some of these fan / temp parameters without messing up the boot screen support?

 

[MIKX]

Why is your RX 580 running at 300 Mhz ?

My MSI Armor RX 580 8gb is running at 1366Mhz in LuxMark 3,1

 

[atonaldenim]

Why is your RX 580 running at 300 Mhz ?

My MSI Armor RX 580 8gb is running at 1366Mhz in LuxMark 3,1

Yeah I just noticed that too, weird. The Core Clock and Memory Clock seem to fluctuate depending on the load. I wonder if it's reading the value at idle, and possibly the Memory Clock speed instead...

 

[h9826790]

Why is your RX 580 running at 300 Mhz ?

My MSI Armor RX 580 8gb is running at 1366Mhz in LuxMark 3,1

View attachment 850551

That's just cosmetic bug, very normal. If his GPU can achieve that score with just 300MHz, that's a super high efficiency GPU.

Yes, it's RadeonFramebuffer, just checked in 10.13.6 and 10.14.6 both. @h9826790 I saw you wrote that as of 10.14.5 RadeonFramebuffer should be just as good as Orinoco, is that correct?

View attachment 850537 .
View attachment 850539

Wow yes the fans do get quite loud under load. The temperature does seem to stay around 75-76ºC. Ran Luxmark a few times to test, this was about the peak:

View attachment 850540

View attachment 850541
Interesting to look under the hood, thanks for the questions. Do you think with this MVC card it would be possible to change some of these fan / temp parameters without messing up the boot screen support?

Thanks for all the info. So, it seems everything as expected (with those MSI parameters).

Yes, IMO, Orinoco framebuffer is not important anymore with the latest Mojave. I don't know if that can make any difference now. But just better to let all potential buyer know what they can expect to get.

I don't think you can mod the fan speed in macOS without flashing the card. And I do NOT recommend you to touch the MVC ROM. Even you didn't mod anything, but just dump the ROM out and re-flash it back to the card, you may lost the boot screen. I am very sure MVC will do something to protect his work. So, do NOT touch it.

You may search if anything similar to VGtab but for RX580. Or search the Hackintosh forum about how to copy the power table from Windows, and apply that in macOS. I personally never do this, so can't give you clear direction.

Another effective way to reduce the fan speed may be replace the stock thermal paste by liquid metal. This will greatly improve the cooler's efficiency, therefore, reduce fan noise indirectly.

I did this mod to my PULSE, so 100% can work, HOWEVER, liquid metal is much more danger than normal thermal paste, if any circuit is shorted by the liquid metal, you may kill your card.

I don't know why MVC choose this way to flash the PULSE RX580, because Flowrider's MVC ROM seems developed from the card's original Gigabyte ROM. You may try to contact MVC, and ask him, but I expect he is super busy now. And since the card is actually working, most likely he won't agree to re-flash it for you for free, especially we don't know if he has any Mac EFI UGA ROM that can work flawlessly base on the PULSE ROM.

Yeah I just noticed that too, weird. The Core Clock and Memory Clock seem to fluctuate depending on the load. I wonder if it's reading the value at idle, and possibly the Memory Clock speed instead...

View attachment 850552

It's normal that the clock speed keep changing. Especially when not under full load.

However, if under high demand (e.g. Unignie Heaven benchmark), the clock speed should pretty much stay at 1366MHz (at least this is what I get with my PULSE), unless overheating (which should never happen with that aggressive fan profile), or reach the power limit, etc.

Even the MSI ROM limited the Max Power Limit to 135W, but with 50% Power Control Limit. Your card should able to draw up to 135x1.5 = 202.5W, which very very close to the PULSE original limit 155x1.3 = 201.5W.

So, the clock speed should not be that easy to be limited by the power draw limit.

 

[LightBulbFun]

hmm I dont like the fact its not using the Orinoco frame buffer

especially as if it an MSI ROM on a Sapphire card

because the Pulse card is DP DP HDMI HDMI DVI

where as most other RX 580s are DP DP DP HDMI

and even when not using a custom framebuffer personality the generic radeon hd framebuffer is built from information contained in the cards VBIOS

so if the VBIOS port layout does not match the card you can run into issues as OS X will build a framebuffer for DP DP DP HDMI when your card has DP DP HDMI HDMI DVI

 

[Ludacrisvp]

Yeah makes me wonder if you can run all 5 displays like you are supposed to be able to do.

 

[atonaldenim]

Yeah makes me wonder if you can run all 5 displays like you are supposed to be able to do.

I could test it out but I don’t have enough cables. Anyone care to donate? I could use DP > DP, DP > HDMI or DVI, DVI > DVI

 

[atonaldenim]

hmm I dont like the fact its not using the Orinoco frame buffer

especially as if it an MSI ROM on a Sapphire card

because the Pulse card is DP DP HDMI HDMI DVI

where as most other RX 580s are DP DP DP HDMI

and even when not using a custom framebuffer personality the generic radeon hd framebuffer is built from information contained in the cards VBIOS

so if the VBIOS port layout does not match the card you can run into issues as OS X will build a framebuffer for DP DP DP HDMI when your card has DP DP HDMI HDMI DVI

FWIW the MSI Armor seems to have the same port layout as the Sapphire Pulse. I doubt MVC would be selling a card that didn’t work well, they have a reputation for other things but not for poor workmanship.

 

[LightBulbFun]

ah thats good if they have the same port layout then you should not have any issues hopefully

(still personally if I was buying/sending in a card for flashing id like it to have its proper factory ROM and especially if buying/sending in a Pulse card specifically because the one "benefit" those have over other RX 580s is the Orinoco framebuffer)

 

[donluca]

From the ROM I downloaded via TechPowerUp, that MSI ROM contain data for all Samsung, Micron, Hynix VRAM.

But the dump from my own PULSE RX580 only contain the data for Micron. May be they consider that MSI ROM is more universal. So, develop the Mac EFI UGA ROM base on that. Which make sense if they plan to provide flash service for pretty much any RX580.

Anyway, if your PULSE is now actually running a MSI ROM. I bet it's using RadeonFramebuffer, but not the Orinoco framebuffer. The Subsystem ID also base on the MSI ID, but not the Sapphire ID. Do you mind to confirm this as well?
View attachment 850529

And if you attempt to run any stress test in macOS (e.g. Furmark). You may run this command in terminal during test to check the card's parameter.

ioreg -l |grep \"PerformanceStatistics\" | cut -d '{' -f 2 | tr '|' ',' | tr -d '}' | tr ',' '\n'|grep 'Temp\|Fan\|%\|(W)\|Hz'

With that MSI setting, I expect the fan will spin above the default acoustic max 2280 RPM (when the GPU runs above 75°C), but the GPU should able to stay at that temperature level, and go nowhere near the default PULSE max temperature 84°C.

A bit OT here, but I've just noticed that my 8GB Sapphire RX480 flashed to 8GB Pulse RX580 (see here: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-8gb-vbios-study.2133607/page-5#post-27573681 ) is not using the Orinoco Framebuffer despite having all the IDs correct:

I'm on the latest High Sierra, is this the expected behavior?

 

[h9826790]

A bit OT here, but I've just noticed that my 8GB Sapphire RX480 flashed to 8GB Pulse RX580 (see here: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-8gb-vbios-study.2133607/page-5#post-27573681 ) is not using the Orinoco Framebuffer despite having all the IDs correct:

View attachment 850672

I'm on the latest High Sierra, is this the expected behavior?

It's not the ID, but the part number inside the ROM

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...580-pulse-into-the-mac-edition-card.2101909/-

Anyway, better NOT to assign orinoco framebuffer for any card other than the genuine PULSE RX580 8GB card.

 

[ftbtx]

I hope this is the correct post to ask this question, but what is the difference between the Orinoco and the Radeon Framebuffers?

Thanks,
Bill

 

[flyingmanatee]

Noobish question here, but after the Mac Pro 2019 ships, isn't it quite possible that'll it moot MVC's service with a proper PCIe RX580 ROM to dump?

 

[tsialex]

Noobish question here, but after the Mac Pro 2019 ships, isn't it quite possible that'll it moot MVC's service with a proper PCIe RX580 ROM to dump?

Macs after 2012/2013 timeframe use GOP pre-boot configuration protocol and are UEFI, MP5,1 is a EFI computer and need UGA pre-boot configuration protocol. A dump from a iMac or a Mac Pro 2019 with RX 580 is useless for a MP5,1.

 

[flyingmanatee]

Gotcha, didn't realize the Apple had made a transition to UEFI.

 

[donluca]

I hope this is the correct post to ask this question, but what is the difference between the Orinoco and the Radeon Framebuffers?

Thanks,
Bill

This is something I've always wondered myself.

 

[h9826790]

I hope this is the correct post to ask this question, but what is the difference between the Orinoco and the Radeon Framebuffers?

Thanks,
Bill

Credit to Fl0r!an

Framebuffers

Each of the AMDx000Controller.kexts contain a set of so-called framebuffers for one GPU family. For the scope of this guide you can think of them as set of port mapping tables, which tell the driver how each port of the graphics card is physically linked to the GPU chip. This is important, because a mismatch might result in a black screen, system freezes or a lack of certain features (e.g. no hot-plug detection or no audio).

Most of those framebuffers are Apple specific (e.g. 1 LVDS port and 2 DisplayPorts for a MacBook), but in the past they were kind enough to include some framebuffers for generic PC video cards despite they didn't use any themselves. Those framebuffers usually match AMDs reference layouts(see below), so they won't help you in case of any odd custom design card.

When using the graphics injection functionality of your bootloader, you'll tell the system (implicitly or explicitly) to use one of those framebuffers. This is fine if your card has a perfect match, but for non-reference cards usually you won't have much luck.

If you don't inject a specific framebuffer but rely on the drivers auto-init feature, the driver will fall back to the generic, so-called RadeonFramebuffer. This framebuffer is dynamically built from the cards vBIOS, so it will match any non-reference card. In the past there have been some issues with this approach, especially on multi-display setups and with certain apps (DVD player, Steam), but as of today most of this seems to have been solved. Note that your card won't show up with its correct name, but instead report something like „Radeon HD 7xxx“ or "Radeon HD 5000 series". This is only cosmetic though and shows that you're currently using the RadeonFramebuffer; usually nothing to worry about.

https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/radeon-compatibility-guide-ati-amd-graphics-cards.171291/

 

[LightBulbFun]

When using the graphics injection functionality of your bootloader,

just a quick clarification this little bit is for Hackintoshes

on a real Mac the Framebuffer personality is part/stored in/injected by the Graphics cards Mac EFI ROM, or explicitly chosen by the kext based on the Part number of the card stored in VBIOS as is the case with the Pulse RX 580 and the 2 Blackmagic eGPUs

 

[ftbtx]

just a quick clarification this little bit is for Hackintoshes

on a real Mac the Framebuffer personality is part/stored in/injected by the Graphics cards Mac EFI ROM, or explicitly chosen by the kext based on the Part number of the card stored in VBIOS as is the case with the Pulse RX 580 and the 2 Blackmagic eGPUs

So just for clarification, on a Mac Pro 5,1, using the Pulse 580, changing to the Radeon Framebuffer has no negative impact on performance, specifically gaming?



Thank you all for clearing this up for me, I appreciate it!!

 

[h9826790]

just a quick clarification this little bit is for Hackintoshes

on a real Mac the Framebuffer personality is part/stored in/injected by the Graphics cards Mac EFI ROM, or explicitly chosen by the kext based on the Part number of the card stored in VBIOS as is the case with the Pulse RX 580 and the 2 Blackmagic eGPUs

Correct, I just don't want to edit Fl0!an's post, and keep it as is. Just like the last paragraph said we won't get proper GPU ident, that's also history now. But I prefer to keep the whole paragraph as is.

The main idea was to explain what framebuffer is, and what problem experienced in the history (if use RadeonFramebuffer), etc.
[doublepost=1564680286][/doublepost]

So just for clarification, on a Mac Pro 5,1, using the Pulse 580, changing to the Radeon Framebuffer has no negative impact on performance, specifically gaming?



Thank you all for clearing this up for me, I appreciate it!!

No performance impact, in absolutely most cases, either the port work, or doesn't work.

In some case, as per Fl0r!an said, may lost hot plug ability, or HDMI Audio etc, but still not performance related.
[doublepost=1564680387][/doublepost]In fact, few RX580 users seems have some issue (e.g. can boot recovery) in multi monitors config, that may be framebuffer related.

 

[LightBulbFun]

So just for clarification, on a Mac Pro 5,1, using the Pulse 580, changing to the Radeon Framebuffer has no negative impact on performance, specifically gaming?

the generic Radeon framebuffer vs proper framebuffer personality

GENERALLY does not affect performance like gaming, so I would not worry about it

it only generally affects things like detecting your monitor properly etc

it can SOMETIMES affect performance in that certain framebuffer personalities have additional settings that get turned on when said personality is used (so in that regard they do a little bit more than just laying out the ports)

but I have not really heard of anything that affects the RX 580 in MP5,1s in this regard




my personal opinion on it is that id not worry about it too much but the Custom personalities do exist for a reason

for example if I was say given a choice over an RX Vega 56 which always uses the Generic framebuffer and a Pulse RX 580 which uses the Orinoco personality

id chose the RX Vega 56 because its faster

however if i was buying an RX 580 id go out of my way to make sure I got a pulse one that used the Orinoco framebuffer personality

hence why if I was buying a flashed pulse RX 580 from MVC (or sent one in for flashing), i would not be happy that its using the generic framebuffer personality

 

[donluca]

Interesting, maybe this has something to do with the seemingly unending flow of

[ERROR] - Unknown CGXDisplayDevice: 0x41dc9d00

I get in the logs.

Those happen everytime I focus a window, say, I focus Chrome, then Mail, then Console, then back to Chrome – each of those generate one or more of those errors.

I currently have two displays connected to my 8GB Sapphire Nitro+ RX480 > Pulse RX580, a DELL P2014H via DVI-D and a Philips 499P via Displayport.

EDIT: I've just read @LightBulbFun post and it's most interesting because I really had to do huge changes to my system in order to get my Philips 499P correctly recognized (and it still isn't, btw. It still thinks that 3840x1080 is its native resolution whereas it should be 5120x1440 – had to use switchresx to get the correct resolution working, among a billion other things).

Maybe I'll give this a try and see if by enabling the Orinoco Framebuffer will solve those problems.
Hell, my flashed RX480 is *exactly* the same as the Pulse RX580, there's absolutely no good reason for it to not use it.

While we're at it, can anyone point me to the thread with the guide to enable Orinoco?