TheBloke

I am on 18G95 - I assumed that that was the latest, given I only applied the update yesterday, and no further updates are shown as available? (Besides macOS 10.15 beta) EDIT: Yes, found confirmation that 18G95 is supplemental 2, the latest version. For me, I think both are working. Certainly h264 and h265 encoding are OK, I tested today via Handbrake. I do have the issue I mentioned earlier where h264 encoding in Premiere Pro caused a GPU freeze, which is not yet diagnosed or resolved. But in general, both HW encoding and decoding appear to work. As for DRM, I've tested Netflix in all of Google Chrome, Firefox and Safari. In Safari I hear sound but I just see a red screen. But it works fine in Chrome and Firefox. I also tested Amazon Prime streaming in Chrome, which also worked OK. Both with Netflix and Prime, I checked ACtivity Monitor while playing a video, and CPU usage was low, which I believe indicates the decoding was being accelerated. Also in Chrome I see a process called "Google Chrome Helper(renderer)" and another "Google Chrome Helper (GPU)" using small amounts of CPU while playing videos. I think that shows DRM is working fine? It's not something I really use much, as I have another computer for watching streaming/movies etc. EDIT: After doing some more Googling, I'm not sure my Netflix test prove that DRM works. The fact that it doesn't in Safari seems like a common issue, which obviously I haven't solved. And the fact that it does work in Chrome/Firefox possibly doesn't prove anything, given that I've read that on these browsers, it defaults to 720p rather than 1080p. There's a browser extension for Chrome that is meant to remove this restriction, but it's no longer on Play store and I can't be bothered to try installing it manually from Github. I have now also tried some iTunes movie trailers, which played fine at full screen, with minimal CPU usage. I don't know if this proves anything or not, given they're only trailers? I'm not going to buy anything to see if that works

[ref]MaLd0n[/ref], OK, I rebooted with the DSDT.aml and config.plist you provided, and here are the new RunMe files. Thanks very much for looking at this! Send me Marvin.tom.tj.zip

Yeah, this is the same shiki-id that the Mac Pro users are using over on the MacRumours thread. That's the line that gives me h264 but not h265, so for whatever reason it appears it's not quite equivalent to booting with iMacPro 1.1. Yes, I have this issue as well, and have been using -rad24 for a long time. Well, I say 'issue' - I have never 100% confirmed that it causes any problems, besides listing the displays as 30bit in System Report. I have tested with and without it, and the only thing that appears to change is the info in System Report. But I leave it in in case it's doing some good that I can't immediately see; it certainly doesn't seem to be doing any harm. I started all my Vega 64 testing on 10.14.5, and at one point was dual booting between a 10.14.5 and .6 install to check for differences. I couldn't find any, so I eventually upgraded my main install to .6 yesterday. I have a backup from a couple of months ago that would still be on 10.14.5 so I theoretically have the ability to test stuff on 10.14.5 again if it proves necessary. But all my testing so far has shown no difference for me between those two versions - everything that worked on 10.14.5 also worked on .6, and likewise everything that was broken on one was also broken identically on the other. Although I only tried the shikigva line today, so I haven't tested that method on .5.

[ref]duece[/ref], I do not have that motherboard. I have a Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R. The BIOS will be from 2010 or so, the last time it was officially updated. There are some third-party BIOS updates for the Gigabyte X58 motherboard line, which update SATA firmware and also provide the latest CPU microcode, with Spectre/Meltdown mitigation. I've not installed one, because TBH I don't really want my system to get even slower with the spectre fixes. There's no mention of any GPU-related fixes in these unofficial BIOS', and I'm not really sure how the BIOS could affect a dedicated GPU anyway in a legacy boot system? The GPU works fine in Windows of course, so it's not a general issue. Only with macOS. By the way, earlier today I tried the shikigva=96 line you mentioned - booting with an MP 5.1 SMBIOS - and that I saw for the first time yesterday in the MacRumours thread. That does indeed enable some HW accel. Specifically, it enables h264 encode and decode, but not h265. That's according to VideoProc, the software I use to check the encoding status (it's just a GUI wrapper to ffmpeg I think). This does make me wonder if there's another shiki-id value that could be used to enable h265 as well. I don't know if I will necessarily need h265 any time soon, but it's nice to have it anyway. So for now I will stick with iMacPro 1.1, as this gives me h264 plus h265 encode without needing the shikivga line, and it also seems to solve my 4K@60 issue; when I booted with MP5.1 to test shikivga, my 4K monitor went back to 2048x1080 as I was experiencing before. However this boot did tell me one more thing: that even with MP 5.1, it seems that I can boot with 1 monitor connected and get a working picture. I thought that iMacPro 1.1 enabled that, but it seems like I never tested booting in MP 5.1 with only a monitor connected to DP1. It was just luck that the first time I tried iMacPro 1.1 I happened to use only that port, for the first time! So to summarise: With MP51 + shikigva=96 line, I can get boot with 1 monitor connected, then sleep & wake to get all. I get h264 HW accel, but not h265. But my 4K monitor won't reliably connect at 4K@60hz With iMacPro 1.1, the boot + sleep/wake is the same. I get both h264 and h265 HW accel. And the 4K monitor is reliable at 4K@60. But I have found a new problem: it seems like my h264 HW encode is not reliable I was trying a media export in Premiere Pro, using HW accel on h264. It ran fine for about 5 minutes, then suddenly the screen froze. I could still move the mouse pointer, but nothing was updating. Logging in with SSH showed errors like this: 2019-09-18 12:33:05.543 F kernel[0:9bc2] (IOAcceleratorFamily2) void IOAccelFenceMachine::fence_timeout(IOTimerEventSource *): AMDRadeonAccelerator prodding blockFenceInterrupt 2019-09-18 12:33:05.558 F kernel[0:8f66] (IOAcceleratorFamily2) virtual IOReturn IOAccelEventMachine2::waitForStamp(int32_t, stamp_t, stamp_t *): a graphics error occurred, exitting.. I rebooted and tried again, with the same result. I am currently booted into Windows to try the same encode in Premiere Pro, to rule out it being a problem with my GPU itself (which I bought used). If it works fine there, then the next thing I will try is MP51 + shikivga, just in case that makes any difference. Of course it was too good to be true to think that everything might just be working OK now...

[ref]MaLd0n[/ref], OK thanks a lot. I have attached my RunMe ZIP. Note: I have added one extra log file to the ZIP: KernelLog.BootWithMultiMonitorConnected.txt. This log file shows kernel log messages when I boot the system with more than one monitor connected. It shows many errors about GPU hanging/crashing. Reminder of my remaining issue: X58 system with Gigabyte RX Vega 64 GPU, using iMacPro 1.1 SMBIOS: If I boot with only one monitor connected to DP1 port, everything is fine. No errors, systems runs perfect. But if I boot with any other monitor cable connected, I get no picture on any monitor, many errors in Console logs (shown in KernelLog.BootWithMultiMonitorConnected.txt), and I cannot put the system to sleep. System has to be rebooted at this point. If I boot with just one monitor connected, then put system to sleep, then wake, then other GPU ports work and I can connect the rest of my monitors. So question/issue is: any fix I can make that lets me boot with all monitors connected, and does not need sleep & wake to get GPU to work fully? Thanks very much again for all your help. Send me Marvin.tom.tj.zip

Thanks a lot @mald0n. I am trying to run RunMe now. Unfortunately it seems to be getting stuck: Generating system info, this may take a while. Saving IOReg... IOREG dump failed. Retrying Increased delay x2 for IOREG dump. This will take a while...(33 sec) IOREG dump failed. Retrying Increased delay x2 for IOREG dump. This will take a while...(33 sec) IOREG dump failed. Retrying Increased delay x2 for IOREG dump. This will take a while...(33 sec) IOREG dump failed. Retrying Increased delay x2 for IOREG dump. This will take a while...(33 sec) IOREG dump failed. Retrying Increased delay x2 for IOREG dump. This will take a while...(33 sec) IOREG dump failed. Retrying Increased delay x2 for IOREG dump. This will take a while...(33 sec) It is repeating that over and over, in an endless loop. I can see IOReg appearing on screen then disappearing 30 seconds later. I also got a prompt about "RunMe wants permission to control System Events", and I said Yes to that. Screenshot of Security & Privacy for RunMe What should I do? I need to go to bed in a minute but I will try and get the logs to you when I am up in ~8 hours. Thanks again for all your help so far.

To answer one of my own questions: I have done further research and discovered that HW encode/decode is impossible on my 7970 Ghz / R9 280X. I found a long Macrumours thread where real Mac Pro users are getting h264/h265 encode/decode working (using Lilu and WhateverGreen haha!), and they have tried multiple 79XX cards and cannot get the HW h264 to work with them. They believe that Apple simply haven't written support for it into the drivers for these older cards. It appears the earliest card that can support h264 is the Polaris line, eg RX 400 series and above. I will probably just have to boot my second system into Windows when I need to do video work on it. Or maybe I will buy a cheap, used RX 560 or something. The last issue I have remaining is whether there is any way to boot my X58 with Vega 64 with more than one monitor connected. dueca you are right that real Mac Pros can do this without all these issues. There are even people using Clover on a real MP to boot into MP's legacy CSM mode so as to be able to see boot screens. Which makes me think that maybe there is a solution out there that can work even on my legacy boot X58 system. But what that solution is, I have no idea, and literally tens of hours of testing and research has got me nowhere. In the meantime I am very happy with using iMacPro 1.1, the first positive change I've had in my setup in a long time. Having HW encode/decode is awesome, and getting a picture on one monitor from boot is a lot better than the zero monitors that I got with the 'proper' MP 5.1 SMBIOS. Worst case if I can't progress beyond this point, at least now I have a usable system with a boot-up procedure that only takes a couple of minutes.

I thought the same. It never occurred to me to try iMacPro 1.1 on this old system. In fact I had already tried some other SMBIOS a while ago, when trying to resolve issues with my R9 280X which was the GPU I had in this system until I bought the Vega 64 the other day. I tried MP 6.1, some Mac Minis, and some early iMacs. But it just did not occur to me to try a system as late as iMac Pro 1.1. I am not an expert like Mald0n, but the impression I get is that the SMBIOS does not matter in the way we think it might. Certain functions will be controlled/manipulated by the SMBIOS, but it does not have a major effect like altering which drivers are loaded. It seems like any the OS will always load the appropriate kexts for the hardware found. However there may be certain kexts that behave differently depending on SMBIOS. Anyway I can confirm that iMacPro 1.1 definitely improved this for me significantly on my X58. It's not perfect, but I am very happy to have HW encode/decode, and being able to see a picture on one monitor at boot is a lot better than going in completely blind, even though I still need to sleep & wake before I can use all the screens. I would definitely recommend trying it and seeing how it goes. What I do with these sort of tests is boot from a USB stick on which I setup the new config. Then if anything goes wrong, I can just remove the stick and boot from SSD to revert the config. Also be aware, if you didn't already know, that changing the SMBIOS may change your MAC address, and thus reset any static IP config you have and/or cause you to get a new IP from DHCP. At least it did for me. Though it's possible I could have avoided this by preserving the MAC address. I just used Clover Configurator to generate a new SMBIOS config, which I think changes the MAC address at the same time. This confused me a lot the first time I tried changing SMBIOS, at a time when I was getting no pictures on any monitor - I was trying to access the system by SSH to remotely put it to sleep (sudo pmset sleepnow), and when I first booted with MP 6.1 SMBIOS, I couldn't SSH in, so I thought changing the SMBIOS had caused the system to crash. Later I realised the system was up the whole time, just my statically assigned IP was no longer in use. Secondly, if you are signed in to iCloud with an Apple account, you will get signed out and be asked to sign in again, and it will think you're on a new Mac. When I logged in to my normal user account on iMacPro 1.1 I needed to re-sign in to iCloud, which required sending a security code to another logged-in account. If you're worried by all this, then another thing I can recommend is getting some back up software and backing up to a second drive. I have a spare SSD of roughly the same size as my main one. I use the backup app Superduper! to do backups now and then from main to second. This means that at any time I can choose to boot from the other drive (eg using a Clover USB stick), and then I can try changes like this firstly on the second drive. I often do that when I'm about to install a macOS update, so I can check if it breaks anything before I apply it to my main drive. Good luck! Apart from that, I have noticed no differences at all so far from changing SMBIOS - well, except for things working better on the X58!

@Mald0n THANK YOU! I have searched for days for help on this and in one sentence you move me so much further forward! My X58 system is now a lot better. Not perfect, but much more workable than before. So, this is what has changed on my X58 system as a result of setting iMacPro 1.1: HW encode/decode works, both h264 and h265. Playing a 4K video in VLC now uses 15% CPU instead of 500%! If I boot with only one monitor connected, to port DP1, then that monitor gets a picture, and the system works perfectly. No errors, no slowdown, perfect. However I need to use multiple monitors (I have 5 in total: 3 DP, 2 HDMI->DVI). I still cannot boot with these other monitors connected. If any other monitor is plugged in when I boot, then I will have same issue as before: black screen on all monitors, many errors in Console (including GPU hang), and cannot sleep. In this situation, only option is to reboot. So, to get my system working I must follow this procedure: Boot with only one monitor connected When system has booted, put it to Sleep When it shuts down, then connect the other 4 monitor cables, and wake Now I get a picture on all 5 monitors, and everything works fine [*]This isn't ideal, but it's still a lot better than before. Before I could not get a picture on any screen, so I was going in blind - I had to do the sleep by SSHing from another computer. Now I can see what I am doing, and eg it is much easier to apply upgrades because as long as only one monitor is connected, everything is perfect without the need to sleep & wake So thank you again, already this is way better - especially having HW encode/decode! Unfortunately, going to iMacPro 1.1 has made no difference on my second system: H77 with AMD R9 280X. I still need to sleep & wake to get a picture on all monitors, and there is no HW h264 encode/decode. It seems that switching to iMacPro 1.1 has made no difference in this second system (before it was on iMac 14,2) If you have any further ideas I could try, either to get HW encode/decode on the H77, or further ideas for resolving the need to sleep & wake on both X58 and H77 systems, I would be super grateful. But thanks already for your great help, I am so much happier now than I was before! Donation sent

Hi all I have two Hacks: One: X58, Xeon X5670, legacy boot (Clover R4945), AMD RX Vega 64 8GB GPU (Gigabyte OC model). No iGPU. MacPro 5.1 SMBIOS. Two: H77, i5-3550, UEFI boot (Clover R4945), AMD 7970Ghz / R9 280X 3GB GPU. No active iGPU (it's Intel 2500, not supported). iMac 14.2 SMBIOS. Both are running macOS 10.14.6. On both these systems I have problems with AMD graphics: On both systems: from boot, I get black screen on most or all GPU ports. Console log is full of errors, in particular "CRITICAL ERROR : VBLANK interrupt has not been generated in time!", and Activity Monitor shows 100% CPU on kernel. To resolve these issues, I must sleep & wake. After first sleep, I get a picture on all monitors. On RX Vega 64 on X58, this problem is even worse: I get black screen on all monitors, and trying to sleep the system will cause it to hang. The only way I can sleep is by booting with no monitors connected to any GPU port. With this done, there are no Console errors, and I can put the system to sleep, then wake it, then I will have a picture on all monitors. [*]On both systems: I have no HW h264/h265 encode/decode. This is shown by apps such as Video Converter Pro and MacX Video Converter Pro. Also, playing a 4K video in eg VLC will show very high CPU usage (300-500%) [*]On X58 with RX Vega 64 only: my 4K monitor sometimes won't connect at 4K@60hz. I am using Displayport 1.2 cable, and in Windows 10 it's fine, and also was fine on my older R9 280X GPU. But with Vega 64 in macOS, sometimes it connects at 4K@60, sometimes it's 4K@30, and sometimes it's 2840x1080 @ 60. I don't yet know what causes it to sometimes work, sometimes not. Today it took me literally 2 hours of rebooting to get it to come up in 4K@60hz. On the X58 system I am using WEG 1.3.2 and have InjectATI set in Clover; I need both of these, otherwise I did not get full performance from the Vega 64 in Geekbench (without WEG+InjectATI: 148k Geekbench 4 Compute score; with WEG+InjectATI: 205k GB4 Compute.) I run WEG with -raddvi and -rad24 settings. On H77 system I am also using WEG 1.3.2, but i don't know if this is changing anything; I get same issues with and without WEG. I have tested with every possible combination of graphical settings I know about - WEG on/off; InjectATI on/off; every possible WEG option; Clover Framebuffer patching; and more. Nothing I have ever tried can resolve any of these issues. I am sorry for posting so many issues here, but I have spent literally many days trying to solve these problems, and have got nowhere. I have posted many times on InsanelyMac forum, but no-one seems able to help. Right now I have a workaround for problem #1, ie I can sleep & wake to get all monitors working. It is quite annoying and slow on the X58/Vega 64 system, because I must boot without any monitors connected, but it does work. And problem #3 (4K@60) only happens sometimes, and once I have it fixed I can simply not turn off the PC to avoid it happening again. So the one problem I have no workaround/solution for is #2 - missing HW encode/decode. I know other AMD users have working HW encode/decode, but I don't know why it doesn't work for me. If anyone has any ideas for any of these issues, I would be so grateful. I have spent so much time testing/debugging/researching, with no luck. Thanks in advance.