Bootscreen, Nvidia G-Sync

[Jurikay]

Hello everyone!

 

Long time lurker, first time poster here.

 

First of all, big thanks to each and everyone here for providing and advancing solutions, sharing knowledge and making it possible to have a f**king solid, reliable and all around working hackintosh!

Just by reading through threads i was able to get a completely satisfying setup: Working sleep, audio, pm, usb3, handoff/continuity, imessage, you name it.

 

Unfortunately recently I came across a new and rather unique problem:

A couple of weeks ago I bought a new monitor, equipped with Nvidias G-Sync. To my knowledge this was only available on windows and perfectly acceptable because i use windows for games anyways and macOS primarily for work related stuff.

Installing the release version of Sierra and the newest web drivers however shows a G-Sync tab in the Nvidia preference pane. But here begin the problems.

If i tick the G-Sync box and (re)start the computer, the screen goes to black after the first boot stage (which for a brief period of time is expected behaviour in many configurations with nvidia cards i guess) but after that the monitor shows a no connected inputs message.

 

These are a couple of ways i found out to still successfully boot Sierra: 

• disable nvidia drivers completely (nv_disable=1, which leads to completely choppy graphics and an unusable system, with my 780ti at least)
• set to default os x driver in the nvidia preference pane (which leads to slightly reduced performance and no g-sync)
• Shutting off the monitor before (re)starting and only turning it on again after the os is booted up. (this is also the only way for me to enable G-Sync on mac os, indicated by red monitor led)

Note: Only deactivating G-Sync but keeping Nvidias alternate drivers still results in the monitor going black.

 

For os x 10.11, I used this guide to fix the second stage bootlogo showing up correctly. This in combination with the new monitor caused similar behaviour in 10.11. Not every but every other restart the screen stayed black. Removing these changes from clover config fixed this problem for 10.11.

Note: G-Sync seems to be only available in 10.12 even with latest drivers in 10.11.

 

in Sierra with default os drivers, the bootlogo and progress bar show up correctly anyways but the black screen, which forces a reset if i forgot to turn off the monitor beforehand is becoming a real annoyance.

 

Not using nvidias alternate drivers and losing performance is also not an option in the long run.

 

Things I have already tried:

• having an additional display connected
• changing the initial display output in bios.
• booting verbose, without cache (booting in safe mode works obviously because nvidia drivers do not load)
• (re)applying the guide from this topic.
• completely reinstalling nvidia drivers on windows and macOS side. (nvidia drivers and G-Sync setting on windows seem to have a slight impact on all this but i might be wrong..)
• modifying AppleGraphicsDevicePolicy.kext's info.plist for iMac 14,2 similar to AGDPfix.app

the automatic login settings in os x might also have an impact on this (at least on 10.11)

 

I probably missed one or two things but either way i am pretty much out of ideas now. I could try another SMBIOS but with imessage working so well and iMac 14,2 being the best fit for my hardware this seems like unnecessary effort.

Moreover, maybe because Sierra is still pretty new and G-Sync support for macOS is pretty new, i should give nvidia and apple more time. An update in a couple of weeks might fix this. But I think this is quite optimistic.

 

I also don't want to completely rule out that this is my monitors fault. I really hope it is not because i bought it well over a month ago so if anyone has a similar but completely working setup, please let me know!

 

Any suggestions on what i could try next are very welcome!

 

 

If console or ioreg output, my dsdt, clover cfg or anything else might be of use for someone, please also let me know.

 

Sorry for the long post and thanks for reading it!!

 

Some more info:

Bootloader: Clover (updated very recently)

SMBIOS: iMac 14,2

OsxAptioFix2 driver

DSDT patched with Pjalm's fixes for this board.

 

Relevant hardware:

i7-4770k, GA-Z87-UD7-TH, Asus GTX 780ti, Asus PG279Q connected via DP

[UNOE]

I don't have a answer to your issue.  Your the only person I can find that as even tried Gsync with OSX.

[cnrd]

Same monitor, have a problem that may be related.

 

Do you happen to have CSM Support disabled (Z87 should support full UEFI chain)?

 

If you do have CSM Support disabled, please try enabling it, that fixes a similar problem where I will get black screen with multiple monitors connected.

[Jurikay]

Interesting. Yes, i have disabled CSM Support. With CSM enabled the bios logo and clover screen are displayed in a very low resolution.

 

I will definitely try if this will enable G-Sync functionality with the monitor connected.

 

At the moment i have my TV connected via hdmi, the monitor via displayport, enabled the nvidia web driver but disabled G-Sync. This leads to a normal boot process without black screen.

[steff89]

I am using the acer XB270HU G-Sync monitor together with a Gigabyte GTX 970 Gaming G1 graphics card. I do not have the issues you are describing. I can activate G-sync at the control panel and the monitor also indicates that G-Sync is active.

 

The strange part is, that I see a lot of screen tearing with enabled G-Sync wich is not present with deactivates G-Sync. I have the feeling that the G-Sync implementation in the OSX is not really functional at the moment. I ask the Nvidia support about this issue and they replied that G-Sync is only supported on Windows 

 

Greetings,

Steffen

[Jurikay]

Hah, funny answer from nvidia support.

 

I also have the feeling that the macOS implementation is more like a proof of concept than anything else. When i enable G-Sync with no running applications and without moving the mouse, the frame rate drops to around 16 fps. This also causes unwanted behavior. The blue background of the insanelymac forums starts to flicker heavily for example. On windows the frame rate never falls below the set value (60, 120, 144) when not in a 3d application with a lower frame rate.