Mojave/Win 10: dual GPU / dual boot problem

[blue_macaco]

Hi,

After a long journey I managed to get my upgraded MacPro 4,1 to 5,1 to run Windows 10 and Mojave 10.14.4. which are installed on partitions on the same SSD, so I'm trying to dual boot. With the RX590 there is no bootscreen, but the mac will boot into Mojave. Now the thing is I've messed up bootcamp somehow, so I can't select to boot Windows in the startup disk settings. That's why I put my old mac-compatible NVIDIA Quadro 4000 back in as well, to get the boot screen. It gets power via SATA to 6pin from one of the disk drive SATA cables. Like this I can select to boot into win10 and it works fine. But if I select to boot into Mojave, it gets stuck at the progress bar, most the time around half full or 3/4 full. Mojave will boot even with just the Quadro 4000 in, but there are graphic glitches.

Has anyone had this problem before? I've tried a lot of things before, switching PCIe slots, reseting SMC or PR RAM, disk repair and so on. It actually boots successfully in safe mode, but there are graphic glitches as well. I can't think of a solution other than deleting everything and clean install again from scratch, so hopefully selecting Windows as a startup drive will work again.

Any suggestions are most appreciated!

 

[startergo]

But if I select to boot into Mojave, it gets stuck at the progress bar, most the time around half full or 3/4 full. Mojave will boot even with just the Quadro 4000 in, but there are graphic glitches.

You lost me completely with this statement. Is it stuck or is it booting in Mojave? If it is booting what is the issue?

 

[crjackson2134]

You need to pull the NVIDIA card if you want to run Mojave. Mojave doesn’t like the dual card setup you have. It’s a known issue.

 

[blue_macaco]

Thanks for your replies. @startergo sorry about the confusing statement. It gets stuck at the progress bar with both the Quadro 4000 and RX590 installed. With only the Quadro 4000 it boots fine, and with only the RX590 it also boots fine. The problem is that I need the bootscreen.

@crjackson2134 Thanks for the hint, I didn't know that. Is the problem with the specific cards I use, or doesn't Mojave like dual GPU setups in general? Would it be the same with High Sierra?
[doublepost=1556825824][/doublepost]Sorry I’ve lost track a bit of what I already tried and I remember now that I tried it with High Sierra before and there was a problem with the RX 590. It booted, but the colours were all weird and glitchy. Guess it doesn’t support the RX 590.

 

[crjackson2134]

@crjackson2134 Thanks for the hint, I didn't know that. Is the problem with the specific cards I use, or doesn't Mojave like dual GPU setups in general? Would it be the same with High Sierra?

Dual GPUs is not something I do or have ever done on my Mac, so trying to be factual about this should come from someone who has dealt with it. I may be wrong, but it's MY IMPRESSION it doesn't like dual GPU setups in general, BUT there are and have been some exceptions. For example, it obviously works with nMP 6,1 since that's the only way it comes, but consider that only 1 of the GPUs can be used as a display output (AFAIK).

Once again, someone with more knowledge should jump in here and lay it out for you. I know to not mess with it, but I don't really know the underlying causes.

 

[startergo]

I had no problems with dual card booting up until Mojave. I thought the problem was that Mojave does not like my GT-120. I think I booted 2 GT-640in Mojave but I am not 100 percent sure.

 

[blue_macaco]

Thanks for your feeback @crjackson2134 and @startergo. I haven't tried dual GPU myself before, I only added a second one to have a bootscreen. I was a bit afraid that it would be too much for the old Mac Pro. In fact, when I once connected the SATA to 6pin cable to one of the hard disk SATA connectors it started smelling burnt and the mac shut down. So I used the SATA cables from the DVD drives which I took out. Both GPUs seem to get enough power like that.

As for Mojave not liking dual GPUs I can say that it boots fine in safe mode with both the RX590 and Quadro 4000 in. In this case I have my regular display connected to the RX590 and a Wacom Cintiq 12WX to the Q4000. Both displays show Mojave, but like I mentioned before, there are some graphic glitches.

On another note, I have a flashed GTX680 (4GB) as well, which I bought before I found out about the RX580/90 so I wanted to sell it again. But that one seems to be the best bet so far. Works on all systems: El Cap, High Sierra, Mojave, Win 7 and 10, even Snow Leopard (with some minor graphic bugs) and I get the boot screen.

I found this useful guide by macrumors forum member h9826790 and will try this once I have enough will power to get at it again. Will post the outcome, eventually. Thanks for your help so far, really appreciate it!

 

[blue_macaco]

(edit: tried to post the link to the guide but it doesn't seem to work)

 

[Reindeer_Games]

Any suggestions are most appreciated!

Sorry for the late reply-but I am able to boot a flashed GTX770/RX580 in Mojave with no graphical glitches at all (but no video from RX580). I'm not running them together regularly though unless in Windows for Physx/CUDA-the Polaris does pretty well in macOS running solo.

 

[blue_macaco]

Hi @Reindeer_Games, thanks for your reply! When you run both cards together, how do you get them to fit in and get the power supply for both? Just wondering... in my case I used one PCIe slot for a USB 3.1 card and another one for an NVMe, so if I used two GPUs I could only have either USB 3.1 or an NVMe SSD. The Quadro 4000 uses only one slot and needs only a 6pin that I connected via SATA of the DVD drives. RX580 uses two slots, but I read somewhere that if you scratch off the plastic piece at the bottom (where slot 1 card would sit on), you can actually stack another card in slot 2. So I guess you're using all your PCIe slots for both cards then, right?

Anyway, I'm just being curious. Thanks to some help I got in another really useful thread of this forum, I managed to solve (most) of my problems for now. I've been wanting to post the outcome in this thread anyway, in case someone gets here with the same question. So this is what I did: in the thread mentioned above, there are instructions on how you can get Bootcamp in Windows to show you the other Systems on your mac. Like that, I'm able to restart in Mojave, when I'm logged into Windows 10. In Mojave I select Windows (or Bootcamp) as a startup drive in the system settings, if I want to start in Windows 10. This way, there is no need for a bootscreen, hence no need for dual GPU (I just needed it for the bootscreen). I've also reinstalled my systems on seperate hard disks, so I'm not dual booting (having Win/OSX on the same drive on different partitions) anymore. But I reckon, this would also work now. I've also noticed that I did an EFI install of windows 10, which can mess around with your system. So I did a reinstall of Windows 10 in legacy mode via a DVD that I burnt from an image.

 

[Reindeer_Games]

Well like I said, I'm mostly only using dual in Windows for the compute features anymore and recent updates to my favorite sim have improved in macOS run on the RX580; I've been booting Windows less and less since my better card performs better under macOS environment (for that sim which runs horrible in Windows on the RX). Something of catch 22 since I do favor Green Team chipsets but the RX580 is holding its own overall and the compatibility is improving across the board.

My tested setup:

So I found something interesting-and fun, metal acceleration on both a GTX770 and RX580 in both Mojave 10.14.3 and Win10-just no display in Mojave.
View attachment 826569

But from re-reading yours posts-it might be that my experiences may be limited to the GTX GK104's; just a suspicion.