MP 7,1 Mac Pro 7.1 3rd party GPUs?

[Henry Jones]

Hi,
Just trying to figure something out that isn't clear from all the articles and forum posts on the 2019 Mac Pro - is it still the case that off the shelf GPUs will result in a black boot screen unless "mac flashed" like the situation we've had for a while with the 5.1 Mac Pro?

I'm aware that there are no NVidia drivers for Catalina, I have a 5.1 myself with no boot screen, but what's the situation with say a current high spec AMD gpu, is it the case that you need to buy Apple's own upgrades or can you install a PC gpu like a Sapphire 580 and get a boot screen?

 

[awkward_eagle]

Any 3rd party card supported for use as an eGPU works with the startup screen on a Mac Pro when used ineternally.

Use an external graphics processor with your Mac - Apple Support

Learn how to access additional graphics performance by connecting to an external graphics processor.

support.apple.com

Some cards will give you a series of pink blocks above the apple logo just before loading the login screen, but other than that they work fine. My experience has been with the WX 9100 and Vega FE.

 

[Ludacrisvp]

Some cards will give you a series of pink blocks above the apple logo just before loading the login screen, but other than that they work fine. My experience has been with the WX 9100 and Vega FE.

WhateverGreen and Lilu should resolve that pink block issue which *can* cause a panic during boot.
The issue is there is a VRAM test that writes data into the framebuffer, which creates the pink blocks and can panic the system (frequently seen during verbose boot). Whatevergreen skips the test which prevents this framebuffer corruption.

 

[awkward_eagle]

WhateverGreen and Lilu should resolve that pink block issue which *can* cause a panic during boot.
The issue is there is a VRAM test that writes data into the framebuffer, which creates the pink blocks and can panic the system (frequently seen during verbose boot). Whatevergreen skips the test which prevents this framebuffer corruption.

Are WhateverGreen and Lilu kexts? Haven't had any experience with kexts outside of hackintosh builds.

 

[flowrider]

Hi,
Just trying to figure something out that isn't clear from all the articles and forum posts on the 2019 Mac Pro - is it still the case that off the shelf GPUs will result in a black boot screen unless "mac flashed" like the situation we've had for a while with the 5.1 Mac Pro?

No - A GPU flash is not necessary to enable a boot screen in the NcMP 7,1. The boot screen is in the UEFI on the NcMP. I am running an RX 5700 XT with the 580X removed.

See this thread - Read the whole thing:

Boot screen on 7.1 with aftermarket GPU

I'm wondering..... Lets say you buy a 7.1 with a RX580 GPU and you remove that gpu and repalce it with a Vega 64 or a Radeon VII, will there be boot screens???? Presumably the boot rom on a 7.1 supports the latest protocols so we won't have missing boot screens like we do with the 5.1. Or is...

forums.macrumors.com

Lou

 

[Ludacrisvp]

Are WhateverGreen and Lilu kexts? Haven't had any experience with kexts outside of hackintosh builds.

Correct, they are kexts.
Whatevergreen relies on Lilu to function, so you must have both.

Releases · acidanthera/WhateverGreen

Various patches necessary for certain ATI/AMD/Intel/Nvidia GPUs - acidanthera/WhateverGreen

github.com

Specific fix is this from version 1.3.1 (included in current releases as well):

• Disable VRAM testing on AMD GPUs on 10.14.4+ (based on vladie's patch)

Releases · acidanthera/Lilu

Arbitrary kext and process patching on macOS. Contribute to acidanthera/Lilu development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[bcomer]

I removed the 580X and tried the Sapphire 5700 and MSI 5700XT and both have the boot screen.
I did find the MSI 5700XT to be very noisy. The Sapphire 5700 is very quiet at idle and very reasonable under use.