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AMD writes the Mac driver. At various times they've made a web driver available. Apple does not write the AMD drivers.

I thought so–– it seems like AMD would know more about the hardware of their own devices than Apple would to create these drivers.

Anyone thought of asking AMD nicely for a web driver for their R9 Fury series cards?
 
2/3 of it is there

final piece is kept from release

guarantee it is written and been tested, will be released if/when Apple allows it

Keep in mind Hawaii driver (R9 290X/R9 390X) has been in OSX for some time. It has wilted on the vine, less functional now than before. Glitchy and locking now, used to work pretty well. WHen Apple holds the cards, customers be daxxed.
 
I thought so–– it seems like AMD would know more about the hardware of their own devices than Apple would to create these drivers.

Anyone thought of asking AMD nicely for a web driver for their R9 Fury series cards?

Asked for this month ago, got a very vague cryptic no as a response.
 
I thought so–– it seems like AMD would know more about the hardware of their own devices than Apple would to create these drivers.

Anyone thought of asking AMD nicely for a web driver for their R9 Fury series cards?
The thing about drivers is that for VR applications you want as low intervention of Driver to the application and hardware as possible. I believe that Metal was developed in this with mind in first place, to give as low access to GPU as possible. Of course it has its own drivers, but they do not have any optimization paths for applications. It is for hardware and the application to manage itself. Developers will have to work around this, but that is what they asked for when came to AMD with question of highest possible control over hardware. That is on the functional level of applications.

Other thing is giving DeviceID's for hardware. I think that if Apple will want external expansion for their computers, they will allow both Nvidia, and AMD to write their own drivers for GPUs that are connected through external enclosures. Yes, it is less convenient way than Plug and play version, where all drivers are already built into the system, you have to install them first, then you can use eGPU as plug and play device. But would open up world also for Apple ecosystem.

https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/146120127?trkInfo=searchKeywordString:Apple+Metal,searchLocationString:,+,vertical:jobs,pageNum:1,position:2,MSRPsearchId:7ee9e925-3cff-4162-8504-67a06fd887ac_1463062382407&refId=7ee9e925-3cff-4162-8504-67a06fd887ac_1463062382407&trk=jobs_jserp_job_listing_text
https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/147995904?trkInfo=searchKeywordString:Apple+Metal,searchLocationString:,+,vertical:jobs,pageNum:1,position:1,MSRPsearchId:7ee9e925-3cff-4162-8504-67a06fd887ac_1463062382407&refId=7ee9e925-3cff-4162-8504-67a06fd887ac_1463062382407&trk=jobs_jserp_job_listing_text
Anyone interested? ;)

After thinking a bit about this...
AMD and Nvidia has to focus on providing only drivers for API. It is the API that drives application and hardware, yes? Developers on the other hand have full control over the API, and therefore full control over the hardware, because it is the API that drives both: hardware and software side, yes? Simplified optimization. What other clues we have?
1) Nvidia few months ago was looking for person that would be coding drivers for OS X, and Metal.
2) MVC few months ago discovered that some of non-EFI GPUs from Nvidia work with external enclosures connected to TB2 in plug-and-play mode.
3) Mago in MP 2016 Thread have said that he heard rumors that Adobe works on CUDA 8 software that is connected to VR idea, for OSX.

Coincidence?

And yes, As I have many, many times said already, external expansion of computers is the only way for future of computing.
 
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Hi, sorry for the long delay,

I get the exact same error as Draeconis, so we're stuck with HW acceleration only working in Windows with this card for now...


Sorry, I seem to be getting an issue after modifying this kernel extension.

I already had SIP disabled, and enabled kext-dev-mode=1 in my NVRAM. I added 0x73001002 to the devices listed under the relevant <key>IOPCIMatch</key> entry.

I then did chown root:wheel and chmod 755 on info.plist and restarted.

Unfortunately, even with kext-dev-mode=1, this kernel extension still isn't loadable according to System Information;

Loadable: No
Signature Validation Errors: Kext signature validation error code -67030
Dependencies: Satisfied
Signed by: Unknown

EDIT

Just read that kext-dev-mode=1 in NVRAM now does nothing.. hmm. Unsure why this kext doesn't load with SIP disabled then.
 
Hi, sorry for the long delay,

I get the exact same error as Draeconis, so we're stuck with HW acceleration only working in Windows with this card for now...

..and also for the foreseeable future, unless Apple bring out a Mac with Fiji support.
 
Frustrating thing is driver is 2/3 there. It is likely that whole thing is written but Apple likes holding cMP back as much as possible to keep 6,1 seeming less absurd.

2 @ Nanos would be nice for FCPX work.

Pity the AMD drivers are stuck in 2011 era. Note that Nvidia would be too if they hadn't started issuing Web drivers.
 
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Frustrating thing is driver is 2/3 there. It is likely that whole thing is written but Apple likes holding cMP back as much as possible to keep 6,1 seeming less absurd.

2 @ Nanos would be nice for FCPX work.

Pity the AMD drivers are stuck in 2011 era. Note that Nvidia would be too if they hadn't started issuing Web drivers.

I'm not sure Apple is holding anything back exactly. It would have been nice if they could have supported the existing 5000 series better, since the Mac Pro 2010 isn't obsolete. It wouldn't even be that hard, since AMD have stopped supporting that range themselves, so they'd only have to update the drivers once.

On the other hand, you have Fiji. They may well have worked with AMD or independently to test its performance, but what's the point integrating it into their OS of they're not shipping the corresponding hardware.

Obviously, it would be great if like Windows there were an available web driver; while that isn't in Apple's interest it would be in AMDs; I was certainly thinking of an R9 Nano to replace my 680. But AMD don't seem interested. That or they might be legally prevented from doing so as part of a negotiation that Apple used for AMDs exclusivity in their current product range?

Either way, I'm looking at a 1080 or a 1070 now. We're not exactly a huge market segment, but I don't think we're going anywhere any time soon.
 
Funny thing is, there are endless complaints about the occasional screen flicker or the odd missing pixel with Web driver from Nvidia, but nobody seems to notice that AMD support ended with 2011 era cards.

And while Hawaii wasn't a perfect fit, Nano was. Would have made a fun little card for cMP. I'm sure I could find the PCiE 2.0 switch on it, but why bother?

Wish the community as a whole would realize that imperfect support from Nvidia is 1000% better than complete lack of support from AMD.
 
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Well, wait 2 weeks and we'll see. Apple in all likelihood will announce a new Mac Pro based on Fiji and we'll get the drivers by default. That's when we learn that OS X 10.12 has a thunderbolt requirement and we'll all get locked out anyway, but there you go ;) </sarcasm>
 
It can mean that Apple is working on eGPU with Fury Nano. It also means that Fiji Device ID is directly linked to... Mac Pro trash can framebuffer.
 
It can mean that Apple is working on eGPU with Fury Nano. It also means that Fiji Device ID is directly linked to... Mac Pro trash can framebuffer.
s/Fiji/Polaris/g

this is a pure luck, however it shows they are aiming polaris at nMP or n^2MP
 
Not exactly. 666 have said that none of personalities in AMD4000.kext are aimed at MP framebuffer. But Fiji Device ID, according to his words, was tailored for it. So that can be the issue, why it reads properly only in nMP.
 
How does one determine what egpu is for sure in regards to next nMP when Apple is the only who knows the answer?
 
Not exactly. 666 have said that none of personalities in AMD4000.kext are aimed at MP framebuffer. But Fiji Device ID, according to his words, was tailored for it. So that can be the issue, why it reads properly only in nMP.

Nothing aimed at MP framebuffer for internal gpu with DPs and HDMI, but You can't predict what will be the framebuffer aimed at eGPU for MP :p
 
It can mean that Apple is working on eGPU with Fury Nano. It also means that Fiji Device ID is directly linked to... Mac Pro trash can framebuffer.
Judging by MVCs screenshots he's using the card without IOReg injecting, thus falling back to the generic RadeonFramebuffer. This isn't linked to any specific port layout but dynamically built from VBIOS.

I guess there might be a check for a specific board-id, so it currently only works with nMP (+ untested computers?). Something similar happens to Nvidia drivers when used on recent AMD Macs (Hack with SMBIOS from iMac17,1, MP6,1, etc...)
[doublepost=1466440404][/doublepost]Btw, AMD9500Controller.kext contains one really interesting framebuffer: Next to the usual unappealing iMac stuff there's the Dayman framebuffer, which defines 3 DisplayPort connectors and 1 HDMI. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? ;)

Would love to get hands on RX 480 & RX 470 ROMs to verify those FBs actually match...
 
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Do deeper research and google “Baffin personality” ;) R9 Nano working since last Saturday, all my Macs are laptops and minis.
 
Quick question to a dead-ish thread -

I recently picked up an R9 Fury and installed it in a cMP 5,1 alongside the original card. It works, but is slow. I was going to do the kext mod, but found that the Accelerator to be modified under "Baffin" doesn't exist in the El Capitan driver. Oops.

There's:
Bonaire
Hawaii
Pitcairn
Tahiti
Tonga
Verde

Would adding the device ID to any of these result in acceleration, or do I need to upgrade to Sierra to make it work?

Thanks!

Surf
 
Quick question to a dead-ish thread -

I recently picked up an R9 Fury and installed it in a cMP 5,1 alongside the original card. It works, but is slow. I was going to do the kext mod, but found that the Accelerator to be modified under "Baffin" doesn't exist in the El Capitan driver. Oops.

There's:
Bonaire
Hawaii
Pitcairn
Tahiti
Tonga
Verde

Would adding the device ID to any of these result in acceleration, or do I need to upgrade to Sierra to make it work?

Thanks!

Surf

Fury is closest to Tonga, since they are both the same architecture but have a different number of compute units.
 
Meaning I can simply add the Device ID to the Tonga list of devices, replacing another?


Fury is closest to Tonga, since they are both the same architecture but have a different number of compute units.
[doublepost=1494353120][/doublepost]
Meaning I can simply add the Device ID to the Tonga list of devices, replacing another?

To answer my own question - no, it won't work. I modded both the AMD4000 and 9000 kexts under "Tonga" and IOPCIMatch, ran the util to reinstall them, rebooted, and ended up with two white/blank screens. Oh well.

Any other suggestions, or is this a Sierra-only supported config? I'll upgrade, but only if there's no other option.
 
Meaning I can simply add the Device ID to the Tonga list of devices, replacing another?



[doublepost=1494353120][/doublepost]

To answer my own question - no, it won't work. I modded both the AMD4000 and 9000 kexts under "Tonga" and IOPCIMatch, ran the util to reinstall them, rebooted, and ended up with two white/blank screens. Oh well.

Any other suggestions, or is this a Sierra-only supported config? I'll upgrade, but only if there's no other option.

You may have to upgrade. Barefeats got it running in sierra. Sierra also has support for other similar architectures such as the Radeon Pro 460 in the MacBook pro.
 
@SurfNorway: Sierra is required. Adding the Fury device ID to anything but "Baffin" will cause a KP at boot. Tonga doesn't work although both are GCN 1.2, I guess HBM support is missing (or something like that).
 
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