RTX Series Cards have Native Bootscreen Support!

[LightBulbFun]

so I decided to do a little bit of testing of my own

I threw together a PC UEFI System

and then threw in a couple different video cards I had lying around and made a couple interesting discoveries

1 the Apple NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 will actually initialise in a PC UEFI GOP system but is very buggy, this is not running in CSM mode as I disabled CSM (and when I do a driver listing I dont see the CSM video driver being loaded)

2: and then for comparison I installed an EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GT 740, my only "UEFI" video card in the collection, and its interesting compared to the RTX card in the MP5,1 here it says "NVIDIA GPU UEFI Driver and then prints out the VBIOS version string

all in all its pretty interesting to see the MacPro4,1 GeForce GT 120 works in a modern(ish) PC UEFI GOP setup and its interesting to see how the GT 740 specifically says "UEFI Driver" where the RTX 2080 in the MP5,1 does not

at some point soon ill stuff the GeForce GT 740 into my MP5,1 and see what exactly it does via an EFI shell. (I also have an ATI Radeon 5770 Mac Video card hiding in my MP2,1 that ill pull out and do testing with)

 

[LightBulbFun]

alright I did some quick testing with my M5,1

the GeForce GT 740s EFI VBIOS does not load at all in the MP5,1 (140 Firmware) (theres nothing in drivers, but doing a PCI list shows the Video card is there at EFI time) (I was hoping/expecting even if no boot screens that the cards UEFI VBIOS would load but interestingly it does not)

also worth mentioning that the GT 740 and Radeon HD 7950 Combo do not play nice together in Mojave

on boot up the Display connected to the Flashed Radeon HD 7950 got stuck at a blank white screen while the display connected to the GT 740 lit up fine as the drivers initialised the card, showing a secondary desktop

im curious if this happens with say a GeForce GTX 680 Mac edition and an AMD Radeon RX 560, because I know in the world of eGPUs NVIDIA Based Macs cant handle AMD eGPUs

and if this bug also exists on MP5,1s with officially recommended Video cards then we might be able to submit a bug to apple and covertly kill 2 birds with 1 stone

heres a couple Sys profiler shots of the GT 740, even tho it says 2.5 the card was running at PCIe 2.0 speeds

 

[DearthnVader]

rEFInd drivers -b, both pages, all images from @Bion1nc:

View attachment 797581
View attachment 797580
View attachment 797582

A little easier way than screen shots is these commands support pipe.

fs0:
drivers -b > drivers.txt

At any rate, the driver is a GOP nVidia driver, just somehow they hacked it to work with UGADraw, so it can at least get the Boot Selector.

@netkas confirmed that you can't use two EFI option roms in the same rom image.

Very interesting findings.

 

[ortholing]

(not my video)

Great news!!

EDIT:

A better video (not my video)

Confirmed by MVC on Netkas http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,13881.0.html


Confirmed by CreatePro on MacProUpgrade on FaceBook

EFI UGA has also been located in RTX 2080 roms!

Read the latest comment from Nvidia:

Source: https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/1042279/?comment=5286813

It seems pretty clear that:

1. They have no drivers for Mojave.
2. They need help making Mojave drivers.
3. They are trying to get help from Apple to make Mojave drivers.

 

[tsialex]

Verbose/single mode works, all images by @Bion1nc:

 

[DearthnVader]

Also, once the Boot Selector calls UGADraw it can hand it off to boot.efi and you can do verbose booting or boot to single users mode.

You won't get the Apple boot screen if you boot the boot.efi directly, because it needs to be handed UGADraw, meaning something needs to call it first, as the boot.efi does no do UGADraw it only knows what to do with it, once it's been handed a UGA Framebuffer.

 

[Pressure]

It makes sense since UGA basically works in a virtual machine. Would be nice if we could inject a generic UGA driver for boot screen.

 

[DearthnVader]

It makes sense since UGA basically works in a virtual machine. Would be nice if we could inject a generic UGA driver for boot screen.

It would be nice if we could figure out why the 3,1 can do GOPinit, but the 5,1 can't. Both systems load and link the GOP driver during PCI Probing, but only the 3,1 gets a boot screen.

I don't know if anyone has tried on the 5,1 with 1.38 firmware.

Anyway, now we need to ask ourselves if Apple's Boot Selector calls UDADraw on Apple UEFI systems, or if they too have this hybrid ROM hack.

 

[Pressure]

It would be nice if we could figure out why the 3,1 can do GOPinit, but the 5,1 can't. Both systems load and link the GOP driver during PCI Probing, but only the 3,1 gets a boot screen.

I don't know if anyone has tried on the 5,1 with 1.38 firmware.

Anyway, now we need to ask ourselves if Apple's Boot Selector calls UDADraw on Apple UEFI systems, or if they too have this hybrid ROM hack.

I can try on my 2009 model with 1.38 firmware later today.

 

[DearthnVader]

I can try on my 2009 model with 1.38 firmware later today.

Check the GOP Boot Screens thread for instructions.

Boot menus for graphics output protocol.
[doublepost=1540306708][/doublepost]@Bion1nc

Were you able to get Boot Screens without holding opt to bring up the Apple Boot Selector?

Inquiring minds want to know

Looks like you were able to get video by booting the Shell, how did you invoke the Shell, did you bless it or did you use rEFInd/other?

@Pressure @h9826790 already tried the 4,1>5,1 with 1.38 firmware, it's a no go for GOP boot screens, doesn't get any supported modes. We don't know about the 4,1 firmware, as most people have flashed to 5,1 and likely have CPU's that won't work with the 4,1 firmware.

 

[Bion1nc]

Check the GOP Boot Screens thread for instructions.

Boot menus for graphics output protocol.
[doublepost=1540306708][/doublepost]@Bion1nc

Were you able to get Boot Screens without holding opt to bring up the Apple Boot Selector?

Inquiring minds want to know

Looks like you were able to get video by booting the Shell, how did you invoke the Shell, did you bless it or did you use rEFInd/other?

@Pressure @h9826790 already tried the 4,1>5,1 with 1.38 firmware, it's a no go for GOP boot screens, doesn't get any supported modes. We don't know about the 4,1 firmware, as most people have flashed to 5,1 and likely have CPU's that won't work with the 4,1 firmware.

Boot screen is definitely there with the RTX definitely ...

 

[DearthnVader]

Boot screen is definitely there with the RTX definitely ...

I see that, what I am asking is if you get boot screen without holding OPT at startup?

 

[fireedo]

so is it a safe bet if I buy a ZOTAC RTX 2080 AMP ? or is there a special edition/version that I have to look?

 

[tsialex]

so is it a safe bet if I buy a ZOTAC RTX 2080 AMP ? or is there a special edition/version that I have to look?

Only FE versions are checked for now. It's best to find a dump for the card you want and post here.

 

[fireedo]

Only FE versions are checked for now. It's best to find a dump for the card you want and post here.

oic, thank you for the information

 

[Bion1nc]

I see that, what I am asking is if you get boot screen without holding OPT at startup?

Yes to answer your question.
[doublepost=1540313930][/doublepost]I'm now waiting for the 2080Ti version coming this afternoon... Hey Hey

 

[tsialex]

I've reconstructed MP51.0089.B00 with NVMe v127 for @Bion1nc check the 138.0.0.0.0 allegation, all images are his.




It's not necessary 138.0.0.0.0 or newer for BootSelector/Verbose/Single user mode to work with RTX 2080.

 

[LightBulbFun]

very interesting

I wonder if one of these cards would display boot screens in a MP3,1? would be fun to try for Giggles (in theory they should)

also could someone rocking an RTX card in a MacPro provide a sudo ioreg dump? im curious how it shows up in the OS X device tree so to speak

 

[DearthnVader]

Yes to answer your question.
[doublepost=1540313930][/doublepost]I'm now waiting for the 2080Ti version coming this afternoon... Hey Hey

That's great info, keep us up to date on what you find with the Ti.
[doublepost=1540315123][/doublepost]

very interesting

I wonder if one of these cards would display boot screens in a MP3,1? would be fun to try for Giggles (in theory they should)

also could someone rocking an RTX card in a MacPro provide a sudo ioreg dump? im curious how it shows up in the OS X device tree so to speak

When we get a cheaper version of the RTX cards( ?2050? ), I'm sure I'll be testing it in my, now resurrected, 3,1.

 

[tsialex]

Mojave RTX2080 System Information with MP51.0089.B00 NVMe v127 from @Bion1nc Mac Pro:

 

[tsialex]

Full ioreg from @Bion1nc Mac Pro with RTX2080 and MP51.0089.B00. Search for 10de, 12a6 and 1ad9.

 

[Bion1nc]

That's great info, keep us up to date on what you find with the Ti.
[doublepost=1540315123][/doublepost]

When we get a cheaper version of the RTX cards( ?2050? ), I'm sure I'll be testing it in my, now resurrected, 3,1.

very interesting

I wonder if one of these cards would display boot screens in a MP3,1? would be fun to try for Giggles (in theory they should)

also could someone rocking an RTX card in a MacPro provide a sudo ioreg dump? im curious how it shows up in the OS X device tree so to speak

I could test in the MacPro 3,1 too. But it should also work in theory ...

 

[DearthnVader]

I could test in the MacPro 3,1 too. But it should also work in theory ...

Proof is better that theory, if you have a 3,1 ticking around, shove it in there and let us know.

I'm sure a few of us would be very interested in the results.

 

[Bion1nc]

Proof is better that theory, if you have a 3,1 ticking around, shove it in there and let us know.

I'm sure a few of us would be very interested in the results.

I bet as soon as I have a moment I will I promise ...

 

[LightBulbFun]

I did some more testing and broke out a 2015 MBA7,2 which is a GOP Mac rather then UGA and did a drivers listing

its interesting to note, that while UGA macs have a "UGA Console driver" thing in the driver list, this GOP mac does not have anything like "GOP Console driver" so I wonder what this UGA Console driver thing is exactly (also worth noting is the Generic XHCI driver I might try extracting that and loading it on my MP5,1 and see if that does anything with the USB 3.0 card I know the MP6,1 XHCI driver would cause the boot picker to lock up on a MP5,1)