No Monitor Output - Sapphire Pulse RX550

[RB13]

Any help appreciated. Bought a Sapphire Pulse RX550. On OS 10.13.6 on a 4,1 flashed to 5,1 mac pro. Looked like the fan was moving but no monitor output. I contacted Sapphire but they bought me back to the official mac page for metal compatible GPU's (for OS10.14) so not really helpful. I thought this should be at least compatible with the OS installed. I tried the DVI output to my monitor and HDMI to a normal TV but no output at all. Am I missing something obvious! Don't need a big GPU as I'm not a gamer etc.

 

[tsialex]

Any help appreciated. Bought a Sapphire Pulse RX550. On OS 10.13.6 on a 4,1 flashed to 5,1 mac pro. Looked like the fan was moving but no monitor output. I contacted Sapphire but they bought me back to the official mac page for metal compatible GPU's (for OS10.14) so not really helpful. I thought this should be at least compatible with the OS installed. I tried the DVI output to my monitor and HDMI to a normal TV but no output at all. Am I missing something obvious! Don't need a big GPU as I'm not a gamer etc.

RX 550 was never supported with macOS.

The official/real GPU for RX 450/550 video cards is the AMD Lexa and Apple never supported this GPU PCIe IDs with the Apple AMD drivers.

Early on there was RX 450/550 made from Baffin rejected/low binned GPU processors that didn't had enough working CUs to be used as a RX 460/560 video card, since the Baffin GPU is a fully supported GPU by the Apple drivers and several models of Macs have it, these RX 450/550 made from Baffin GPUs work with macOS since it's the same PCIe ID as the fully supported RX 460/560.

Again, only a RX 450/550 that were made with these Baffin GPU processors that were not good enough to be used as a RX 460/560 and were put to use as RX 450/550 video cards work with macOS. Since then, the yield of the improved productive process is considerably better and there are no more not good enough Baffin parts and all RX 450/550 video cards on the market nowadays are made with the incompatible with macOS Lexa GPUs.

Maybe you can be lucky enough to find a NOS RX 450/550 made of Baffin processor, but it's a lottery.

 

[tsialex]

RX 450/550 made from Baffin/Polaris21 low-binned processors that work with macOS have the following PCIe ID:

1002:67FF

RX 450/550 made from Lexa processors and that not work with MacOS have the following PCIe ID:

1002:699F

This image from a thread of hackintoshbrasil.com about working RX 450/550 models makes it easy to identify a working one from a non-working with GPU-Z:

 

[Erehy Dobon]

tsialex's explanation makes sense.

A few months ago I bought a $65 Sapphire Pulse RX 550 2GB card specifically for use in a Windows PC. All of the PC info utilities (HWiNFO, GPU-Z, maybe CPU-Z) report my card as a Lexa device.

The RX 550 is unrecognized in macOS when installed in my Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Box 550 and connected to a Mac.

That doesn't bother me since I have a Pulse RX 580 to use with my Mac mini 2018 in the eGPU. I bought the RX 550 specifically for a PC (it works great). I wanted a low power GPU for this specific Windows PC build, something better than Intel integrated graphics but not power hungry.

Buying a Baffin RX 550 likely means buying a used card. Currently GPUs are insanely expensive (my MSRP $499 reference GeForce 2070 SUPER is going for a grand on Amazon).

I've seen a few RX 550s for sale in the past couple of months but they are all $150+ which is insane. It appears that AMD has stopped production of the Lexa silicon so the pricing won't get any better.

For giggles, I have put the Sapphire Pulse RX 550 4GB card in my Amazon wishlist but it is pretty clear that the device is no longer being manufactured. Heck, I haven't seen the 2GB model for sale at a reasonable price in the past few months.

 

[sash11]

Device-id = FF671020 change in OC is able to boot Lexa based RX550 in Hackintosh.

 

[REYNE]

Does this mean that the Lexa based product would work in a normal Mac also?

If so, how does the above transcript translate into text that would go into an opencore config.plist ?

Cheers.

 

[tsialex]

Does this mean that the Lexa based product would work in a normal Mac also?

If so, how does the above transcript translate into text that would go into an opencore config.plist ?

Cheers.

LEXA GPUs are not supported by macOS AMD drivers. You can make macOS think that it's a Baffin GPU with OpenCore, but this don't make it really supported and several apps don't work or KP.