macOS 15 Sequoia on Unsupported Macs Thread

[MacinMan]

Well I was going based on the 2015 15" MacBook Pro which has an R9 M370X which is also GCN, neither of these AMD GPUs have decode support and Safari is limited to 1080p h264 (AVC) here on native Monterey.

I don't really know what else to say at this point.

Oh, it's OK, I wasn't seeking answers, was just wanting to provide info and feedback that might help the developers improve performance.

 

[internetzel]

Well I was going based on the 2015 15" MacBook Pro which has an R9 M370X which is also GCN, neither of these AMD GPUs have decode support and Safari is limited to 1080p h264 (AVC) here on native Monterey.

I don't really know what else to say at this point.

If you compare the specs of both graphics cores (R9 M370X, R9 M395) then you'll notice that the M395 is GCN3.0 while the M370X is GCN1.0.
GCN3.0 is much closer to the Polaris core which is GCN4.0, which includes video decoding support.

 

[Neon Ball]

If you compare the specs of both graphics cores (R9 M370X, R9 M395) then you'll notice that the M395 is GCN3.0 while the M370X is GCN1.0.
GCN3.0 is much closer to the Polaris core which is GCN4.0, which includes video decoding support.

They still don't have VP9 decoding in them even when they're newer, it was added in Video Core Next 1.0 with Raven and Picasso (Vega mobile/"GCN 5.0"), then Navi 1x (RX 5000) for desktops with VCN 2.0.

These GPUs would only be capable of AVC on YouTube since YouTube doesn't do HEVC. AVC is limited to 1080p (YouTube's limitation) and Safari usually only chooses a codec that the GPU is capable of decoding, it usually doesn't do software decode. Macinman is however clearly having VP9 decode going there, this is why I find the situation weird.

 

[deeveedee]

I'm posting this just to clarify the need for OCLP modifications for Sequoia post-install patches on platforms that require non-metal NVidia patches (maybe other platforms) ...

I just re-applied post-install patches to Sequoia 15.6.1 on my MBP6,2 with OCLP 2.4.0 Release (not modified). Non-metal NVidia root patches were applied with KDK 24F74 (15.5) WITHOUT having to modify OCLP.

When attempting to patch Sequoia 15.7 Beta on my MBP6,2, OCLP 2.4.0 Release fails with "KDK download failed: No KDKs found ..."

Note that this OCLP modification for Sequoia 15.7 is necessary only because Apple has not published an updated KDK for Sequoia at the time of this post. The OCLP modification will no longer be necessary after Apple publishes the new Sequoia KDK.

EDIT: Credit to hvds for this OCLP modification here.

 

[internetzel]

They still don't have VP9 decoding in them even when they're newer, it was added in Video Core Next 1.0 with Raven and Picasso (Vega mobile/"GCN 5.0"), then Navi 1x (RX 5000) for desktops with VCN 2.0.

These GPUs would only be capable of AVC on YouTube since YouTube doesn't do HEVC. AVC is limited to 1080p (YouTube's limitation) and Safari usually only chooses a codec that the GPU is capable of decoding, it usually doesn't do software decode. Macinman is however clearly having VP9 decode going there, this is why I find the situation weird.

So I tested the same video on my iMac late 2009 with Core i5-750 CPU and RX480 upgrade GPU on Sonoma and Safari 26 - I'm getting the "4K" version as well, with VP9 codec.
From to the CPU and GPU load statistics I get the impression that it's doing the decoding in software (as Polaris doesn't have VP9 decoding in hardware yet, only HVEC).
And no matter which resolution I choose, it's always using the VP9 decoder - that video might be VP9 exclusively?