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GA-EP45-DS4 - No Hack Install First Time. 10.6.1


Badger77
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OK so I have been looking into compatible boards and an easy way to give this my first go then realised my main gaming / home PC actually had a board worth trying so no need to buy new kit. (I want to setup a Hackintosh as a spare mutli boot machine).

 

I wanted to used Adam Pash / Onetrack - Easy No hack method as he did on his EP45-UD3P.

 

http://lifehacker.com/5360150/install-snow...acking-required

 

So I used my macbook (with 10.6.1) to create a 8GB USB drive. Copied image to it. Ran it's magic which puts the extra folder on your buidl.

 

Changed bios settings, booted from USB - Installed. Restarted

 

DONE - That was it - no panics, no problems.

 

All set to run in 64bit btw.

 

Now I still had everything hooked up for my day to day machine

 

EP45-DS4

Core 2 Duo E8500 (3.16ghz) Wolfdale

XFX GTX 260

Generic DVD, LG Blu Ray Internal

Logitech Z5500 connected to XFI Gamer PCI

 

So booted up.

 

LAN WORKS from the MB - Software update - Installed rebooted no problem.

 

Now I don't think the GTX 260 is performing very well so downloaded Xbench and Geekbench

 

XBench 1.3 - Poor scores on random drive seek and OpenCL (Other scores cpu etc ok) - 92.03 !!!

 

Geekbench running in 32bit mode (not 64) only 2601

 

So any ideas on the apparent poor performance. Any other ways of testing and making sure all is ok.

 

Oh btw - Sound worked from onboard and my LG Blu Ray worked as a DVD reader etc.

 

So my first ever Hackintosh done in under 2 hours with no messing around. Big thanks to the maker of the guide Adam Pash and of course Onetrack who put the script together to do the install.

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Anyone know any reliable GPU tests I can run to see if it is performing correctly.

System Profile shows it as 512MB not the 896MB it is. Do I need to change a file. The Lifehacker guide used a 9800GT 512MB so is that the issue ??

 

Ran Geekbench on the PC runnign XP and got 3738 compared to 2601 on the OS X version.

 

Thanks

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By using the lifehacker guide, you're using his DSDT.aml and kexts for his system - so currently your system thinks it has a 9800GTX 512mb rather than your actual card.

 

You're much better off creating your own DSDT file, and putting the EFI strings for your GTX260 in your com.apple.Boot.plist file

 

 

 

I used this guide to build my system, took a little while but now runs like a dream

 

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=181903

 

And this thread contains how I got my GTX 260 to be correctly recognised

 

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php...p;#entry1287502

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By using the lifehacker guide, you're using his DSDT.aml and kexts for his system - so currently your system thinks it has a 9800GTX 512mb rather than your actual card.

 

You're much better off creating your own DSDT file, and putting the EFI strings for your GTX260 in your com.apple.Boot.plist file

 

 

 

I used this guide to build my system, took a little while but now runs like a dream

 

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=181903

 

And this thread contains how I got my GTX 260 to be correctly recognised

 

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php...p;#entry1287502

 

Yes correct it does have the 9800. Regardless the device path id is correct on output and the hardware ID matches.

 

I ran the commands as per the infinite mac post -Very good BTW.

http://www.infinitemac.com/f19/guide-gefor...4057/#post34607

 

Booted up still all works but same details. Not a biggie - i'll leave it as I am migrating the hardware and keeping the 260 to go in my new X58 setup :) - I'll buy another nvidia maybe a 9800 for the OS X intel.

 

Here are details fyi from profiler but main problem is disk performance.

Chipset Model: NVIDIA Graphics Engine

Type: GPU

Bus: PCIe

Slot: PCI Slot 1

PCIe Lane Width: x16

VRAM (Total): 512 MB

Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)

Device ID: 0x05e2

Revision ID: 0x00a1

ROM Revision: NVIDIA Graphics Engine DSDT

Displays:

SyncMaster:

Resolution: 1680 x 1050 @ 60 Hz

Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)

Main Display: Yes

Mirror: Off

Online: Yes

Rotation: Supported

Display Connector:

Status: No Display Connected

 

 

Now All this works very well - Not one crash yet. I have a game I use thats graphic and processor intensive and launched it in OS X. Very Very slow loading then once in game I'm getting 5 - 15 fps when normally I would get 60 - 100. BTW - all desktop and mac apps running pretty well, Desktop etc feels really slick and fast - Could it be a 32/64 bit problem.

 

My Xbench scores on the disk seem very very poor. Any ideas as to the SATA setup ? - Anything I can do. It is set as 3GB sata (i.e no jumper on drive).

 

Results 54.76

System Info

Xbench Version 1.3

System Version 10.6.1 (10B504)

Physical RAM 4096 MB

Model MacPro3,1

Drive Type MAXTOR STM3250820AS

Disk Test 54.76

Sequential 128.14

Uncached Write 133.81 82.16 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 131.02 74.13 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 102.55 30.01 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 157.28 79.05 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random 34.82

Uncached Write 11.89 1.26 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 78.78 25.22 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 89.88 0.64 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 143.63 26.65 MB/sec [256K blocks]

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Weird! I followed those instructions to extract my own efi string, inserted it in my com.apple.Boot.plist file and now have the following:

 

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260:

 

Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260

Type: GPU

Bus: PCIe

PCIe Lane Width: x16

VRAM (Total): 896 MB

Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)

Device ID: 0x05e2

Revision ID: 0x00a1

ROM Revision: 3172a

Displays:

DELL 2007WFP:

Resolution: 1680 x 1050 @ 60 Hz

Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)

Main Display: Yes

Mirror: Off

Online: Yes

Rotation: Supported

Display Connector:

Status: No Display Connected

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Weird! I followed those instructions to extract my own efi string, inserted it in my com.apple.Boot.plist file and now have the following:

 

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260:

 

Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260

Type: GPU

Bus: PCIe

PCIe Lane Width: x16

VRAM (Total): 896 MB

Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)

Device ID: 0x05e2

Revision ID: 0x00a1

ROM Revision: 3172a

Displays:

DELL 2007WFP:

Resolution: 1680 x 1050 @ 60 Hz

Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)

Main Display: Yes

Mirror: Off

Online: Yes

Rotation: Supported

Display Connector:

Status: No Display Connected

 

Yeah no problems as I'll move the GTX out anyway. I need to resolve my slow disk access before this is usable.

 

I think I will try booting up in 32 bit mode and see what happens and possibly try 1.5gb mode rather than 3gb.

 

I'm now happy in understanding the boot plist and the extras folder etc - so getting there.

Compiling a DSDT file however I really don't knwo about. I saw that program in the link that takes you though it but it's a question of how does it know what my mobo is - how do I put a file in there etc.

 

I'll get to grips with it but maybe some newer easier tools will be out by the time I do :P

 

This project really is to assess if I can install multiple OS's on a PC that are usable as a backup server and client. It won't be used day to day but I need to get it working properly performance wise.

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Well it was a bit of a longshot I know but 32 bit and limiting drive to 1.5 gbs made no real difference.

 

Sequential speeds were down as expected and random were nearly the same with lower overall score.

 

Running my test game showed pretty much the same horrible performance 5 -15 fps.

 

It's odd that everything works (lan sound everything.), Not one problem or crash, desktop and safari etc all seem really quick but anything else takes forever and I'm sure it has somethign to do with the disk. Booting up seems an ok speed also.

 

Could it be to do with the compiled build for a slightly different board. Now I found a compiled DSDT for my board here but with a 8800GT card so I guess that would still cause problems but at least the drive issue may be fixed.

 

http://www.efixusers.com/showthread.php?t=109

 

OK I'll try this and report back later as I can just drop this in rather than rebuild.

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Ok I know updates must be tedious for some but I've sort of fixed my performance issues and this type of thread may help others in the future. If it helps anyone it's worth it.

 

So as per last post I found a complied DS4P.

 

Booted up moved his DSDT.aml, extensions folder and smbios into my extras folder but left my boot.apple.com and extensions.m file.

 

Rebooted - no problems. Ran Xbench and yes the random figures on disk scored low still BUT.

My score increased from 92 - 155 and this is consistent.

 

Ran Geekbench and score has now increased from 2700 or 2900 to 4591. My XP on this hardware 32 bit scores 3780

 

SO - it looked like things were getting there. Launched my test game and initial fps that was 5 - 15 was now 30 +

 

Some graphical issues but his DSDT was for a 8800GTX :)

 

It looks like I may have a winner. Now to learn a bit more and next up is an attempt to put 10.6 server on here.

(I have original disks for everything so will try and get a few OS's on here and report back)

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  • 3 weeks later...

how exactly did you make your sound card to work? i've been trying for two whole weeks, tried out 24 different kexts, made 37 DSDT file changes with no luck. OS recognizes sound (at least in About Your Mac - More Info - Audio has Device ID 0x1458A102 and bunch of text afterward, in System Preferences i have different output modes but none of them gives any sound)

 

can you share your audio-realted kexts and DSDT?

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how exactly did you make your sound card to work? i've been trying for two whole weeks, tried out 24 different kexts, made 37 DSDT file changes with no luck. OS recognizes sound (at least in About Your Mac - More Info - Audio has Device ID 0x1458A102 and bunch of text afterward, in System Preferences i have different output modes but none of them gives any sound)

 

can you share your audio-realted kexts and DSDT?

 

Hi David. Sorry I just used the onboard sound not the xfi card. The sound just worked right off the bat.

 

I also found a DSDT for my exact board DS4 f9 bios. All good and setup a gtx260 using a version of EFI studio that had the 260 in it. Ran Cinebench with score of 7000.

 

Now swapped to a 9800 and that black screens on me - lol.

 

Sorry can't be more helpful but I just installed and it worked. Maybe try a different dsdt / file package.

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