RTX Series Cards have Native Bootscreen Support!

[goMac]

Looks like the ROM update was just to accommodate people putting PC cards in their Mac Pro and needing a boot screen and has nothing to do with secret Nvidia developments.

Except the ROM update... doesn't. It's been examined and it doesn't provide UEFI support for boot screens. As far as we know. It's certainly not doing anything for AMD cards which use the same UEFI boot screen standard as the Nvidia cards.

This would have to be a Mac ROM on the GPU itself. Which would be cool. But would mean Apple wasn't necessarily involved. A future Mac Pro would likely be UEFI GOP compatible, and wouldn't need any special Mac ROMs on the GPU.

Mac editions of cards usually do mean driver support gets added to macOS built in. So if Nvidia is trying to get all the 2000 series blessed as Mac compatible cards, that could explain where the retail drivers have gone to for Mojave.

 

[MarkC426]

Sorry I went to make a coffee while the mac was starting up in that new video..........snoooooorrrrrr.
Maybe it’s a 1.1 macpro.....

 

[MuNLoK]

Sorry I went to make a coffee while the mac was starting up in that new video..........snoooooorrrrrr.
Maybe it’s a 1.1 macpro.....

I was thinking that too jajajajaja

 

[abdyfranco]

Sorry I went to make a coffee while the mac was starting up in that new video..........snoooooorrrrrr.
Maybe it’s a 1.1 macpro.....

The internal layout its from a Mac Pro 4,1 or 5,1.. but yes... I also went to make a coffee, the boot screen takes too long to appear.

 

[goMac]

It looks like Barefeats has a 2080 in a Mac Pro (see the very end). They've said nothing about boot screens though. Might be worth an ask?

https://barefeats.com/gpus-gains-with-mojave.html

 

[MisterAndrew]

I just saw this thread. Pretty weird. I'm skeptical too, but even if it does there's no native driver etc. Plus I don't have much of a use for a boot screen now anyways. Also, I tried it with my Vega. It doesn't show anything.

 

[namethisfile]

He shows Device Manager under Windows. But, doesn't log in to MacOS and show System Info stuff....

--deleted-- it was negative and shows I care too much to be negative about something I purportedly could care less about...

 

[goMac]

He shows Device Manager under Windows. But, doesn't log in to MacOS and show System Info stuff....

--deleted-- it was negative and shows I care too much to be negative about something I purportedly could care less about...

macOS doesn't have drivers, so it's not unreasonable a macOS boot wouldn't be shown.

 

[bookemdano]

Seems definitely to clear up some of the "fake" complaints about the first video. They cleaned up their bench and it's easy to see there's no hidden MBP or other cabling shenanigans. It's also quite clearly a 2080 as they take it out of the machine and show it at the end.

What remains to be seen (and impossible for them to prove) is if this card was flashed with something to enable this functionality. What it will take is someone else buying one and testing it. Unfortunately, at $800 it's too rich for my blood (especially considering there is no web driver for Mojave). But I'm sure in time someone will test it.

If it shows boot screens OOTB, and it's determined that it does not do so under MP51.0089 or earlier, then it will be interesting to try to figure out what Apple did with 138 that enabled this. After all, we have an email from Craig F. already to a user here saying that Apple could not/would not fix it.

Totally intriguing though if it means that Apple is using the 5,1 as some sort of test bed for the 7,1.

 

[namethisfile]

macOS doesn't have drivers, so it's not unreasonable a macOS boot wouldn't be shown.

No. He goes into Device Manager in Windows to show GPU. Then reboots and holds option key to boot into MacOS, which is what the big-hoopla is about this video, which is "native boot screen" using an RTX 2080. My comment was why didn't he just continued and logged in to MacOS and show System Info stuff....

 

[fhturner]

They posted a new video.

My comment on the YT page:

I'll agree w/ the comment in the previous video— all of this needs far more description. Is this working OOTB for the RTX 2080? Has any firmware been flashed? Why has no one found/mentioned this until now? If stock, how is this working in the first place? Why are these videos the only 2 on a brand new YouTube channel? Video seems authentic but incredible...some explanation would make it more credible.

 

[BillyBobBongo]

My comment was why didn't he just continued and logged in to MacOS and show System Info stuff....

There are no native drivers for Nvidia cards in Mojave, my experience of this is that it's an absolute nightmare to move the mouse pointer and click on stuff in this situation.

 

[namethisfile]

Seems definitely to clear up some of the "fake" complaints about the first video. They cleaned up their bench and it's easy to see there's no hidden MBP or other cabling shenanigans. It's also quite clearly a 2080 as they take it out of the machine and show it at the end.

What remains to be seen (and impossible for them to prove) is if this card was flashed with something to enable this functionality. What it will take is someone else buying one and testing it. Unfortunately, at $800 it's too rich for my blood (especially considering there is no web driver for Mojave). But I'm sure in time someone will test it.

If it shows boot screens OOTB, and it's determined that it does not do so under MP51.0089 or earlier, then it will be interesting to try to figure out what Apple did with 138 that enabled this. After all, we have an email from Craig F. already to a user here saying that Apple could not/would not fix it.

Totally intriguing though if it means that Apple is using the 5,1 as some sort of test bed for the 7,1.

Well, if it's native boot screen like the title of this thread is called, then it's native. Meaning, no flashing, hacking, etc....

What's weird is that this is the only video source of this happening in the wild as of this writing and Mojave and RTX 2080 has been available for a couple weeks now. Surely, more than one source would have been heard by now. But, I could be wrong and that the statistic of a person with a Mac Pro 5,1 with the money to buy an RTX 2080 might be smaller than I realize....

Or, this is indeed a flashing tool and more than likely, the thread called "native boot screen" is, indeed, just your normal, average click baitey headline....
[doublepost=1539802214][/doublepost]

There are no native drivers for Nvidia cards in Mojave, my experience of this is that it's an absolute nightmare to move the mouse pointer and click on stuff in this situation.

Without hardware acceleration, sure. But, not even close to an "absolute nightmare" situation to move the mouse on the screen...

 

[BillyBobBongo]

But, I could be wrong and that the statistic of a person with a Mac Pro 5,1 with the money to buy an RTX 2080 might be smaller than I realize....

It's a damn expensive card to pick up knowing that you can't really use it yet. That said, I'm surprised that there's not been any mention of this on Netkas from MVC.

Without hardware acceleration, sure. But, not even close to an "absolute nightmare" situation to move the mouse on the screen...

Maybe my threshold for irritation is different than yours!

 

[bookemdano]

There are no native drivers for Nvidia cards in Mojave, my experience of this is that it's an absolute nightmare to move the mouse pointer and click on stuff in this situation.

It can be a bit on the sluggish side, depending on what resolution you're trying to drive (4K was bad enough with my MVC-flashed 750 Ti that I was always very eager to get the web drivers installed). Shouldn't be a nightmare though.

I don't think he did it because it probably didn't occur to him to do it. Like the video is unedited and shows the cMP booting between the two OS'es. He showed the physical card at the end and showed it in device manager as a 2080. Not sure what else would be proven by showing it in System Profiler.

At this point it seems we're down to three possibilities:

1. It is exactly as he stated. The card OOTB shows boot screens on the cMP 5,1 under 138 firmware
2. He's flashed the card with something that is making it work and is lying about it
3. He's modified the cMP itself to get Clover or some other third-party bootloader running and it would be showing bootscreens with any UEFI GOP GPU. If this is the case, while he's being totally misleading with the video, it would actually be a big development as it would open up boot screen support for lots of other GPUs.

 

[namethisfile]

It can be a bit on the sluggish side, depending on what resolution you're trying to drive (4K was bad enough with my MVC-flashed 750 Ti that I was always very eager to get the web drivers installed). Shouldn't be a nightmare though.

I don't think he did it because it probably didn't occur to him to do it. Like the video is unedited and shows the cMP booting between the two OS'es. He showed the physical card at the end and showed it in device manager as a 2080. Not sure what else would be proven by showing it in System Profiler.

At this point it seems we're down to three possibilities:

1. It is exactly as he stated. The card OOTB shows boot screens on the cMP 5,1 under 138 firmware
2. He's flashed the card with something that is making it work and is lying about it
3. He's modified the cMP itself to get Clover or some other third-party bootloader running and it would be showing bootscreens with any UEFI GOP GPU. If this is the case, while he's being totally misleading with the video, it would actually be a big development as it would open up boot screen support for lots of other GPUs.

Well, 3) would be a hackintosh situation....

 

[Synchro3]

He shows Device Manager under Windows. But, doesn't log in to MacOS and show System Info stuff....

--deleted-- it was negative and shows I care too much to be negative about something I purportedly could care less about...

Without web drivers the system info in macOS will only indicate a generic 'Nvidia graphics card' instead of the exact model name, so it makes no sense to boot macOS. Or even worse macOS will crash during boot without drivers.

But now I'm curious if this boot screen would also appear on a 4K monitor. This is a normal Apple 27" LED Cinema Display (1440p). Until now only MVC Maxwell and Pascal cards will show boot screen on 4K.

Could be that MVC still has to create a Mac EFI for these cards, for 4K boot screen support (when web drivers are available).

 

[bookemdano]

Well, 3) would be a hackintosh situation....

Right, but with native Apple hardware it's likely more reliable than it is with most hackintoshes. Like others have said though, with FV2 completely disabled going forward on the cMP, boot screens are a lot less enticing than before. While it would be nice to have the option of verbose/single user mode boot options, I use them very infrequently. Mainly the only use left is the boot picker. For those of us dual booting Windows and other OSes, it's still a very handy functionality to have.

 

[goMac]

1. It is exactly as he stated. The card OOTB shows boot screens on the cMP 5,1 under 138 firmware
2. He's flashed the card with something that is making it work and is lying about it
3. He's modified the cMP itself to get Clover or some other third-party bootloader running and it would be showing bootscreens with any UEFI GOP GPU. If this is the case, while he's being totally misleading with the video, it would actually be a big development as it would open up boot screen support for lots of other GPUs.

Maybe, except for the post here with a second person saying they didn't do any of these things.

If it's all true, things could get confused by who's made the ROM modifications. If it was Nvidia chances are better it would be all the 2000 series cards. If it was eVGA, or if other manufacturers are tweaking the ROMs, that will makes things a lot less consistent.

 

[bookemdano]

Without web drivers the system info in macOS will only indicate a generic 'Nvidia graphics card' instead of the exact model name, so it makes no sense to boot macOS. Or even worse macOS will crash during boot without drivers.

But now I'm curious if this boot screen would also appear on a 4K monitor. This is a normal Apple Cinema 27" Display (1440p). Until now only MVC Maxwell and Pascal cards will show boot screen on 4K.

Could be that MVC still has to create a Mac EFI for these cards, for 4K boot screen support (when web drivers are available).

Yeah, interesting observation. The first video was an LG curved ultrawide, likely still 1440p.

 

[namethisfile]

It's a damn expensive card to pick up knowing that you can't really use it yet. That said, I'm surprised that there's not been any mention of this on Netkas from MVC.



Maybe my threshold for irritation is different than yours!

Well, I do have a high threshold. But, not that high that I would call it an absolute nightmare... Like BookemDano stated, it will just be sluggish....

Without web drivers the system info in macOS will only indicate a generic 'Nvidia graphics card' instead of the exact model name, so it makes no sense to boot macOS. Or even worse macOS will crash during boot without drivers.

But now I'm curious if this boot screen would also appear on a 4K monitor. This is a normal Apple Cinema 27" Display (1440p). Until now only MVC Maxwell and Pascal cards will show boot screen on 4K.

Could be that MVC still has to create a Mac EFI for these cards, for 4K boot screen support.

Well, we would still see how it performs if he had logged in. Maybe, logging in would show too much, which he was not prepared to do. Whether it be sluggish (normal) or not sluggish (that aint normal) and even if it is a generic gpu name, we would see at least something. Maybe show About This Mac then System Report > Grpahics/Dispays, then System Report > PCI....

And/or, if it crashes, then why not show it, too? Who cares....

 

[bookemdano]

Maybe, except for the post here with a second person saying they didn't do any of these things.

If it's all true, things could get confused by who's made the ROM modifications. If it was Nvidia chances are better it would be all the 2000 series cards. If it was eVGA, or if other manufacturers are tweaking the ROMs, that will makes things a lot less consistent.

Are you talking about the OP? If so, he edited his post that said he got it working and was unwilling to defend his efforts, which makes me wonder if he saw an Apple logo (which can show up right before Mojave loads on non EFI cards) and assumed it worked. I asked him point blank if he specifically brought up the boot picker and he did not respond to it (and it was after that that he edited his post) so I'm not sure we can say that anyone else has verified Create Pro's experience.

 

[misanthrophy]

From https://create.pro/blog/nvidia-rtx-2080-boot-screen-in-mac-pro-51/

We’ve had an interesting revelation in the workshop today. After a recent firmware update, the RTX series Nvidia cards have full EFI support on the Mac Pro 5,1.

If you update your system to at least 138.0.0.0.0 your system will boot natively into macOS Mojave. Please note drivers are still not available.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

Except the ROM update... doesn't. It's been examined and it doesn't provide UEFI support for boot screens. As far as we know. It's certainly not doing anything for AMD cards which use the same UEFI boot screen standard as the Nvidia cards.

Thanks for clarifying. I assumed Radeons were also showing boot screens after the rom update.

So is this video fake or did create pro port the ROM from a 10 series to the 20 series? They would need drivers for acceleration anyway.

 

[Yahooligan]

--deleted-- it was negative and shows I care too much to be negative about something I purportedly could care less about...

Couldn't care less. Saying you could care less means you do care.

I'll be waiting patiently to see what develops with this, my wife's cMP has been running a GTX 680 for a bit, while it works OK it's getting a bit long in the tooth. I have no desire to give MVC a dime of my money and my wife needs boot screen support for the times that the Boot Camp boot manager doesn't work and she needs to manually select the boot drive, so upgrading the GPU to one without boot screen support is a no-go.

I do have a GTX 1080 Ti that I use as an eGPU, but I have no way to get it the necessary power in the cMP 5,1 to play with it there.