RTX Series Cards have Native Bootscreen Support!

[Synchro3]

I just asked on the youtube site to repeat the demonstration with a 4K monitor.

I am still very sceptical the boot screen would also work in 4K. But yes, up to 1440p boot screen seems authentic.

 

[goMac]

They're once again claiming that this was added by the latest Boot ROM update. Might be worth trolling back through the boot ROM to see if there is any evidence, and if it points to anything on AMD cards.

 

[crjackson2134]

.

 

[Fl0r!an]

Very interesting. So while people here were arguing why this couldn't be possible, I downloaded a random RTX ROM from TechPowerUp (Asus.RTX2080.8192.180831.rom) and had a brief look at it. Besides its enormous size (1MB, seems to contain to identical copies of the same VBIOS and UEFI) I found an interesting bit in the decompressed UEFI binary:

Offset 1A28: 8B29 2C98 FAF4 CB41 B838 77AA 688F B839
That's the definition of EFI_UGA_DRAW_PROTOCOL, sitting right next to the definition of EFI_GRAPHICS_OUTPUT_PROTOCOL_GUID (Offset 1A18)!

My experience with other UEFI ROMs is quite limited, but a quick look into an GM204 UEFI binary revealed just the GOP part, but no mention of UGA support (and as we all know, they won't output anything in a cMP unless flashed).

So this might actually be legit!

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).

I don't think that's an issue. 4K boot screens have been troublesome, because the original "Mac Edition" EFIs didn't support DisplayPort 1.2. My Dell U2515H in DP1.2 mode won't show anything either, although it's just WQHD. On the other hand, 4K boot screens do work on HD 7xxx or Kepler GPUs when connected by HDMI 1.4 or DP 1.1 (obviously not 60Hz in this case).
The RTX UEFI drivers will surely support DP 1.2.

 

[Yahooligan]

Seriously! This is what you post about

Seriously! You didn't read the rest of my post that was relevant to this thread?

The insinuation being that if it works for the RTX cards due to boot ROM update then it should/could potentially work for the 1000-series cards unless there is something specific in the RTX cards to support this. Or it's just a complete troll by CreatePro.

Regardless, not sure why you decided to reply and contribute nothing other than complain about the first line of my post.

 

[mikeboss]

this is big. great news for everybody except MacVidCards...

 

[crjackson2134]

Seriously! You didn't read the rest of my post that was relevant to this thread?

The insinuation being that if it works for the RTX cards due to boot ROM update then it should/could potentially work for the 1000-series cards unless there is something specific in the RTX cards to support this. Or it's just a complete troll by CreatePro.

Regardless, not sure why you decided to reply and contribute nothing other than complain about the first line of my post.

Actually, I contributed quit a bit more than that. I decided to delete the post, and didn't scroll up far enough and didn't delete that line. I got a laugh out of it, but I went back and deleted the rest of the post before you posted this.

Sadly, my edit didn't update before hand. Sorry about that...

 

[fhturner]

Seriously! This is what you post about

We're talking about a particular video card, and possible BootPicker screens enabled in the EFI. We're not here for English lessons.

Nope, I agree w/ him! Not so much English as *logic*, which is what all of this computer mumbo jumbo boils down to anyway! It helps to be clear:

 

[crjackson2134]

Very interesting. So while people here were arguing why this couldn't be possible, I downloaded a random RTX ROM from TechPowerUp (Asus.RTX2080.8192.180831.rom) and had a brief look at it. Besides its enormous size (1MB, seems to contain to identical copies of the same VBIOS and UEFI) I found an interesting bit in the decompressed UEFI binary:

Offset 1A28: 8B29 2C98 FAF4 CB41 B838 77AA 688F B839
That's the definition of EFI_UGA_DRAW_PROTOCOL, sitting right next to the definition of EFI_GRAPHICS_OUTPUT_PROTOCOL_GUID (Offset 1A18)!

My experience with other UEFI ROMs is quite limited, but a quick look into an GM204 UEFI binary revealed just the GOP part, but no mention of UGA support (and as we all know, they won't output anything in a cMP unless flashed).

So this might actually be legit!



I don't think that's an issue. 4K boot screens have been troublesome, because the original "Mac Edition" EFIs didn't support DisplayPort 1.2. My Dell U2515H in DP1.2 mode won't show anything either, although it's just WQHD. On the other hand, 4K boot screens do work on HD 7xxx or Kepler GPUs when connected by HDMI 1.4 or DP 1.1 (obviously not 60Hz in this case).
The RTX UEFI drivers will surely support DP 1.2.

Thanks for chiming in. I hope someone here will soon purchase one of these and post full confirmation. It will be a nice upgrade path for some when NVIDIA releases Mojave drivers.

 

[eksu]

Is UGA a new protocal? Is there somewhere I can read more about it? Do we expect AMD to support UGA or should someone open a ticket about it?

 

[TheStork]

Very interesting. So while people here were arguing why this couldn't be possible, I downloaded a random RTX ROM from TechPowerUp (Asus.RTX2080.8192.180831.rom) and had a brief look at it. Besides its enormous size (1MB, seems to contain to identical copies of the same VBIOS and UEFI) I found an interesting bit in the decompressed UEFI binary:

Offset 1A28: 8B29 2C98 FAF4 CB41 B838 77AA 688F B839
That's the definition of EFI_UGA_DRAW_PROTOCOL, sitting right next to the definition of EFI_GRAPHICS_OUTPUT_PROTOCOL_GUID (Offset 1A18)!

My experience with other UEFI ROMs is quite limited, but a quick look into an GM204 UEFI binary revealed just the GOP part, but no mention of UGA support (and as we all know, they won't output anything in a cMP unless flashed).

So this might actually be legit! ...

@Fl0rian, could you look at a 2070 RTX ROM to see if it is similar. The 2080 costs $800-$1,000 USD which is expensive as hell! If the 2070 has the same characteristics, then the 2070 might be a better cost/performance choice until the next generation of Mac Pro. TIA.

 

[bookemdano]

Is UGA a new protocal? Is there somewhere I can read more about it? Do we expect AMD to support UGA or should someone open a ticket about it?

UGA is the OLD format. GOP is the new one. The EFI on the cMP is the old version 1.10 which used UGA for graphics. Newer Macs use UEFI which supports GOP.

 

[goMac]

this is big. great news for everybody except MacVidCards...

I still wouldn't be surprised if maybe Nvidia hired him... His page is oddly silent on this release.

Is UGA a new protocal? Is there somewhere I can read more about it? Do we expect AMD to support UGA or should someone open a ticket about it?

UGA is actually the old protocol. Everyone moved on to the new one which is why current cards don't have boot screens in the Mac Pro.

It would be hard to see AMD adding support for UGA to already shipped cards. Maybe they would do a Mac edition.

GOP is the current protocol. Both AMD and Nvidia support GOP. I'd expect a new Mac Pro, if it took PCIe cards, would be GOP and not UGA.

I'm pretty sure if the idea here is that Nvidia wants to sell these as officially supported Mac cards, they'd be working with Apple to roll the drivers into macOS, which could be why they said they were waiting on Apple for driver QA or whatever.

 

[Fl0r!an]

@Fl0rian, could you look at a 2070 RTX ROM to see if it is similar. The 2080 costs $800-$1,000 USD which is expensive as hell! If the 2070 has the same characteristics, then the 2070 might be a better cost/performance choice until the next generation of Mac Pro. TIA.

I would, but TechPowerUp only lists RTX 2080 and 2080 Ti.

I wouldn't expect any differences within one family though, they might even share exactly the same driver binary.

 

[bookemdano]

I think another Mac edition is beyond unlikely. There are simply not enough cMPs still in the wild to support all the R&D, production, marketing, etc. that would be required. They could do as NVIDIA (apparently) is doing and just put UGA and GOP on every card, but there's still extra R&D involved for that with really minimal return on investment.

 

[goMac]

I think another Mac edition is beyond unlikely. There are simply not enough cMPs still in the wild to support all the R&D, production, marketing, etc. that would be required. They could do as NVIDIA (apparently) is doing and just put UGA and GOP on every card, but there's still extra R&D involved for that with really minimal return on investment.

And another hardware SKU. Honestly I'm surprised that Nvidia is bothering to do this (again, a shortcut for them would be to hire MacVidCards.) Maybe they have a customer with a whole lot of Mac Pros or something. Or maybe they have enough space on the ROM anyway, and someone with existing experience (like MVC) would be cheap enough to hire that they could make their money back.

 

[eksu]

I'm pretty sure if the idea here is that Nvidia wants to sell these as officially supported Mac cards, they'd be working with Apple to roll the drivers into macOS, which could be why they said they were waiting on Apple for driver QA or whatever.

If they get the drivers rolled in and feature parity in the OS with Polaris & Vega (HEVC decode) then Nvidia would seem like a no brainer choice.

 

[ActionableMango]

So, @CreatePro, want to weigh in here with some details?

 

[bookemdano]

Maybe they have a customer with a whole lot of Mac Pros or something.

I had this same thought. Maybe a UGA driver was requested by a large corporate customer with a huge fleet of cMPs that need boot screens for their workflow. Could also explain all the other goodies Apple has been baking into the new boot roms.

But I am totally intrigued about CreatePro's contention that 138.0.0.0.0 was required for this to work. I would think that if it were just as simple as including the UGA and GOP drivers in the card's BIOS then it should provide boot screens on the cMP even with the older boot rom installed. And maybe they're wrong about that and it does work on older versions.

But if they're right, then this lends even more credibility to the idea that Apple is using the 5,1 as the base for what will become the 7,1--beginning with 138.0.0.0.0 (and explains why they adopted a whole new versioning scheme for it). And perhaps they are working behind the scenes with NVIDIA (as someone speculated earlier in the thread) to make GPUs for it. If NVIDIA is testing the card themselves on 5,1s for driver development purposes, then their devs would need to write an EFI UGA driver to be able to use verbose mode (which seems like it would be helpful when writing/debugging the OS drivers).

Maybe NVIDIA just decided not to remove it from shipping cards since it doesn't hurt anything--if a system can use the GOP driver then it will just ignore the UGA one.

Just rampant speculation on my part, but I assume we will know more in time. First things first, someone open your wallet and buy a 2080!

 

[BillyBobBongo]

I think another Mac edition is beyond unlikely. There are simply not enough cMPs still in the wild to support all the R&D, production, marketing, etc. that would be required. They could do as NVIDIA (apparently) is doing and just put UGA and GOP on every card, but there's still extra R&D involved for that with really minimal return on investment.

Maybe you're thinking too small, what if Apple and Nvidia are working together once again and the goal is not to necessarily bring Nvidia GPUs to the Classic Mac Pro but in fact to the new Modular Mac Pro. Apple have been told time and time again that professionals need more than the offerings of AMD...perhaps they listened?!

 

[goMac]

Maybe you're thinking too small, what if Apple and Nvidia are working together once again and the goal is not to necessarily bring Nvidia GPUs to the Classic Mac Pro but in fact to the new Modular Mac Pro. Apple have been told time and time again that professionals need more than the offerings of AMD...perhaps they listened?!

A new Mac Pro would support GOP cards, so this change wouldn't make sense for the new Mac Pro. Doesn't mean Apple might not be testing stuff on the 5,1, but the existing GOP ROM that Nvidia has been shipping for a while in previous cards should work on a new Mac Pro.

Apple shouldn't really need any boot screen support for the work they're going to do in since a new Mac Pro would load boot screens completely differently, and we haven't seen modern boot screen support that new Macs have come back to the 5,1.

 

[namethisfile]

Just rampant speculation on my part, but I assume we will know more in time. First things first, someone open your wallet and buy a 2080!

Well, if I am not mistaken, according to reviews the thermal envelope of RTX 2080 is higher than GTX 1080 Ti under load. So, you'd need to do a PSU mod to use it in a cMP.

But, the RTX 2070 is closer to GTX 1080 and maybe slightly higher under load according to reviews of it. So, it would fit more perfectly in a cMP without PSU mods. And, the wallet doesn't need to be open as wide as the RTX 2080 to boot....

RTX 2070 is also faster than GTX 1080...

 

[Synchro3]

Well, if I am not mistaken, according to reviews the thermal envelope of RTX 2080 is higher than GTX 1080 Ti under load. So, you'd need to do a PSU mod to use it in a cMP.

Could work with the EVGA power link: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ower-question-on-mp5-1.2053492/#post-26296484

 

[tsialex]

But if they're right, then this lends even more credibility to the idea that Apple is using the 5,1 as the base for what will become the 7,1--beginning with 138.0.0.0.0 (and explains why they adopted a whole new versioning scheme for it).

This is totally unrelated. All Macs changed to the new EFI versioning scheme.

Mac Pro 5,1 wasn't even the first one, iMac Pro and MacBook Pros 2018 got it first.

 

[h9826790]

If NVIDIA is testing the card themselves on 5,1s for driver development purposes, then their devs would need to write an EFI UGA driver to be able to use verbose mode (which seems like it would be helpful when writing/debugging the OS drivers).

I don't think this is the reason, otherwise, all Nvidia cards will have UGA support.