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Caesar_091

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 18, 2005
289
12
Italy
Hi all,

will I have boot screen on my 5,1 Mac Pro using an nVidia GeForce GT 120 (Mac Edition) connected to one display (Dell U2312HM) and a PC-reference AMD RX 480 connected to another one (Apple Cinema HD Display 23")?

TIA
 
Hi all,

will I have boot screen on my 5,1 Mac Pro using an nVidia GeForce GT 120 (Mac Edition) connected to one display (Dell U2312HM) and a PC-reference AMD RX 480 connected to another one (Apple Cinema HD Display 23")?

TIA

That's almost my exact set-up (I have an RX470 instead) and yes, you'll get a boot screen on the Dell monitor.
 
Thnaks for the answers guys.

So, in case you need to access to CLI (super user mode, etc etc), boot partition selection and other EFI-related functions is there a"primary" display (video card) the system will recognize? I mean: usually you will see boot progress and other EFI-related stuff only on one display (the Apple display in my case)... how to have the system to show up boot screen on the GT120-connected display? Any idea??
 
It is rather simple. Let's say GT120 and RX 480 are connected to two monitors respectively. Whichever monitor connected to GT120 will display boot screen (i.e. Apple logo and progress bar), and usually at certain point of the running progress bar, RX 480's drivers will be loaded on the other monitor where you then see the screen changes to display OS. At the bottom line, one of the monitor must be connected to GT120 to see the boot screen with Apple logo. Note that even if both are connected to GT120, you don't see the Apple logo on both monitors.
 
It is rather simple. Let's say GT120 and RX 480 are connected to two monitors respectively. Whichever monitor connected to GT120 will display boot screen (i.e. Apple logo and progress bar), and usually at certain point of the running progress bar, RX 480's drivers will be loaded on the other monitor where you then see the screen changes to display OS.

Since usually boot screen is shown only on one display even with my actual config (I'm using an ATI RadeonHD 5870 connected to two display and the second display only shows a gray background): is there a way to chose which graphic card will be the primary one (and will display the boot screen)?
 
OS automatically detects the like of GPU's mac EFI to display the Apple logo. With fancy tweak at pro level, the way you want may be possible but what is the point?

In my past experience with 2x Radeon 5770 (installed in two cMP), One 5770's left miniDP displays boot screen; and the other 5770's right miniDP displays boot screen. Don't ask me why but that's exactly what happened. Need some experts to chime in on this one.

(BTW Caesar_091, how do I add that computer spec underneath the post like you did?)
 
(BTW Caesar_091, how do I add that computer spec underneath the post like you did?)

Click your name on the top right corner and then click signature.
Screen Shot 2017-01-24 at 15.42.26.jpg
 
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OS automatically detects the like of GPU's mac EFI to display the Apple logo. With fancy tweak at pro level, the way you want may be possible but what is the point?

The point is that you may need EFI boot screen (from the GT 120 for example) and you may want the system to identify a specific card as "primary" (the AMD RX 480 in my case) for OpenGL/OpenCL/Metal hardware acceleration on the main display.
 
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This thread has been quite for while. Could you guys get GT120 and RX480 working together? I'm setting up Sapphire Nitro+ RX480 8gb so now I am in the same boat with you. I must say it's not quite a very pleasant trip so far. Booting together into sierra (10.12.3) causes the Mac Pro run all its fans at max speed (literally!) and the 480's both fans stop spinning like standing still although 480 itself is still on power and working. I ran out of guts to keep it going. Did you experience it?
 
This thread has been quite for while. Could you guys get GT120 and RX480 working together? I'm setting up Sapphire Nitro+ RX480 8gb so now I am in the same boat with you. I must say it's not quite a very pleasant trip so far. Booting together into sierra (10.12.3) causes the Mac Pro run all its fans at max speed (literally!) and the 480's both fans stop spinning like standing still although 480 itself is still on power and working. I ran out of guts to keep it going. Did you experience it?

Your fan's "issue" sounds very normal to me (I assume you mean the PCIe and PSU fan spin up more than required). You may try few things including SMC reset, stress the GPU for a few seconds (e.g. by running Luxmark), or custom make your fan profile for these 2 fans (e.g. via MacsFanControl).

Also, that particular RX480 has zero dB cooling. The fan should not spinning when the GPU is under light load.
 
Your fan's "issue" sounds very normal to me (I assume you mean the PCIe and PSU fan spin up more than required). You may try few things including SMC reset, stress the GPU for a few seconds (e.g. by running Luxmark), or custom make your fan profile for these 2 fans (e.g. via MacsFanControl).

Also, that particular RX480 has zero dB cooling. The fan should not spinning when the GPU is under light load.

@h9826790 You are right! I might have overreacted a little lol. Nothing to worry about - all temps seem normal. After careful observation, when RX480 together with GT 120, PCIe and PSU went crazy at full blast like this. SMC reset and GPU stress didn't help. The only way to stabilize the full-blown fan speed is to, without GT 120, do kext edit (as TheITSage suggested) after SIP is enable without Kext in recovery, only then do NVRAM reset with both installed. In that way, SIP is enabled yet kext repair permission is still intact (hopefully Apple won't change it in future), and all good to go!

With GT120 tho, RX 480's performance diminishes about 10% less according to Luxmark. It works fine for day-to-day tasks, but under Luxmark stress mode running, the graphic becomes visually sluggish even on performing a simple task like mission control. Without GT 120, RX 480 rocks at full extent (16 CUs activated). However, with GT 120 attached you can get significant increase of performance from RX 480 by plugging monitor cables over to RX 480 ports after booting the screen with GT 120, but still get less luxmark score than with RX 480 alone.

Sorry to report that the only solution I found was to remove the GT120 :mad::rolleyes:
I never had any "fans issue" here but I have a reference RX480 from Sapphire (not a Nitro).

Yah Sapphire Nitro+ triggers fan issue but not a big deal (See above). Now I got them together working well in window 10 bootcamp as well. Selection of correct drivers for GT 120, specific way to install RX 480 drivers and lots of restart are involved, it's well worth it however.
 
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