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Dual nVidia GPU system fails

anewman143

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anewman143
anewman143
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Will definitely read the first two - the second talks about yosemite, not sierra, but it is at least a good starting point. Left a post/message on nickwoodhams site - will see what happens there. He consistently recommends having only 1 video card...which follows my experience. If I use only one, the system works fine. I just don't want to have to keep plugging in/out my 2nd video card power cables so I can run both on the Windows 10 side for gaming...

 

Getting a bit discouraged - but REALLY appreciate all of your ideas and suggestions...gotta be an answer out there. It's so strange that you are running a 2 GPU setup without a problem and I can't get it working.

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moriarty
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Hi everyone... I haven't posted in years on this site, but this thread is of special interest to me. I'm going to relay something I have experienced, and maybe something I say may trigger some thought in someone elses' head. 

 

I bought a Nvidia 1080 GTX the first day they came out. Like everyone else with this card, I expected that it would work with OSX with a coming driver. As we all know now, this may never happen.

 

So, my previous (two back) hackintosh (I've built ten or so since 2006) had two SLI Nvidia 770s in it. With the current one, I have been trying to work around having the GTX 1080 installed in the primary PCIe slot with one of the 770s in a secondary - I'd like to be able to boot the Hackintosh side of things with both the GTX 1080 and the 770 installed, and have the 1080 be skipped over by the Nvidia driver at boot. I too, like the OP, want to be able to boot Windows for gaming without having to go into the BIOS and change settings. Booting in this manner with the current NVIDIA driver gives me a somewhat working 1080 - The resolution is set to 1920x1080 without any Clover edits/hacks or other changes to force a VESA mode, and no hardware acceleration of any type but the screen tearing is diminished somewhat.

 

I think the issue in my case is that the NVIDIA driver latches on to the first card it sees (detects) and uses the info to either configure any other cards or to determine if to skip. This is pure speculation on my part, but putting the 770 in the lower numbered (PCIe Slot 0) slot and the 1080 in a higher one (PCIe Slot 2) at a lower speed caused this to work. For obvious reasons, I'd like the 1080 to be in the lower, 16x speed slot.

 

So, here's my two cents on this - in the previous Hackintosh, the two 770s worked perfectly (three monitors, two on one card, one on the second card) with SLI cable between the two but no rendering speed increase (as SLI is not supported by OSX) and I suspect that it was because the two PCIx slots they were plugged into both would be set to 8x speed. In my current hackintosh with the 1080 and one of the 770s, the cards are dropped to 4x - I guess I am trying to say is that I suspect that for all cards to work, they should be at the same transfer rate. With the Gaming 7 series, this should not be a problem - I have a socket 1150 Gaming 7 which was the board I used in this case. I also noticed that when the cards are set at the 4x, they seem to need more power than usual. (I have two Corsair 750w power supplies installed on the current machine, connected via one of those drop in daughter cards.

 

1. Are the speeds of the cards across the PCIe interface the same? 

2. Is the onboard Intel card disabled?

3. Have you tried flashing the card bios (using the manufacturers current version) ?

4. Have you verified the power being sent to both cards is adequate? (My older machine would not boot unless the dual power supplies were installed, and each 770 was connected to its own due to the draw being so high for each card)

 

Like I said before, these are my experiences, and they may not make complete sense ;) I am at work at the moment, and keep getting distracted (imagine that!), so my post is probably not the most logical or coherent. Maybe something above will trigger something in someone else that may help.

 

Current Hackintosh Build (this is a cheap one): Gigabyte H81M-H Socket 1150 motherboard, 16 GB Ram at DDR3 speed across two DIMMs (they are paired), EVGA Nvidia 1080 GTX, Nvidia 770 (currently installed, but disabled, using onboard Intel 4600 video at the moment and USB video card device for additional monitor), multiple hard drives (2 SSDs, 1 SATA 3, 1 Blu-Ray Burner)

 

 

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anewman143
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Hi everyone... I haven't posted in years on this site, but this thread is of special interest to me. I'm going to relay something I have experienced, and maybe something I say may trigger some thought in someone elses' head. 

 

I bought a Nvidia 1080 GTX the first day they came out. Like everyone else with this card, I expected that it would work with OSX with a coming driver. As we all know now, this may never happen.

 

So, my previous (two back) hackintosh (I've built ten or so since 2006) had two SLI Nvidia 770s in it. With the current one, I have been trying to work around having the GTX 1080 installed in the primary PCIe slot with one of the 770s in a secondary - I'd like to be able to boot the Hackintosh side of things with both the GTX 1080 and the 770 installed, and have the 1080 be skipped over by the Nvidia driver at boot. I too, like the OP, want to be able to boot Windows for gaming without having to go into the BIOS and change settings. Booting in this manner with the current NVIDIA driver gives me a somewhat working 1080 - The resolution is set to 1920x1080 without any Clover edits/hacks or other changes to force a VESA mode, and no hardware acceleration of any type but the screen tearing is diminished somewhat.

 

I think the issue in my case is that the NVIDIA driver latches on to the first card it sees (detects) and uses the info to either configure any other cards or to determine if to skip. This is pure speculation on my part, but putting the 770 in the lower numbered (PCIe Slot 0) slot and the 1080 in a higher one (PCIe Slot 2) at a lower speed caused this to work. For obvious reasons, I'd like the 1080 to be in the lower, 16x speed slot.

 

So, here's my two cents on this - in the previous Hackintosh, the two 770s worked perfectly (three monitors, two on one card, one on the second card) with SLI cable between the two but no rendering speed increase (as SLI is not supported by OSX) and I suspect that it was because the two PCIx slots they were plugged into both would be set to 8x speed. In my current hackintosh with the 1080 and one of the 770s, the cards are dropped to 4x - I guess I am trying to say is that I suspect that for all cards to work, they should be at the same transfer rate. With the Gaming 7 series, this should not be a problem - I have a socket 1150 Gaming 7 which was the board I used in this case. I also noticed that when the cards are set at the 4x, they seem to need more power than usual. (I have two Corsair 750w power supplies installed on the current machine, connected via one of those drop in daughter cards.

 

1. Are the speeds of the cards across the PCIe interface the same? 

2. Is the onboard Intel card disabled?

3. Have you tried flashing the card bios (using the manufacturers current version) ?

4. Have you verified the power being sent to both cards is adequate? (My older machine would not boot unless the dual power supplies were installed, and each 770 was connected to its own due to the draw being so high for each card)

 

Like I said before, these are my experiences, and they may not make complete sense ;) I am at work at the moment, and keep getting distracted (imagine that!), so my post is probably not the most logical or coherent. Maybe something above will trigger something in someone else that may help.

 

Current Hackintosh Build (this is a cheap one): Gigabyte H81M-H Socket 1150 motherboard, 16 GB Ram at DDR3 speed across two DIMMs (they are paired), EVGA Nvidia 1080 GTX, Nvidia 770 (currently installed, but disabled, using onboard Intel 4600 video at the moment and USB video card device for additional monitor), multiple hard drives (2 SSDs, 1 SATA 3, 1 Blu-Ray Burner)

 

I really appreciate your response - and while our systems and design are a little different, there are similarities of course. I'm using 2 of the same video card (980 Ti)- whether or not that makes a difference...who knows. There is someone here who uses the same two video cards and has it working...I don't. I have not disabled the onboard Intel video (not sure how to do that). Nor do I know how to flash the BIOS of the video cards...will have to investigate that as well. I have a 1000W Corsair power supply, so not having the power to support both cards is not the issue either.

 

Again - I REALLY appreciate your help in this. It appears, at least on the surface, that having the second card in place and powered (regardless of whether or not it is bridged in SLI) causes all sorts of memory allocation issues in Sierra. That seems to be the core of the issue. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
anewman143
anewman143
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I would try what Nick suggested, and you colud also check if there is a bios upgrade for your motherboard.

 

Nick's suggestions:

 

https://nickwoodhams.com/x99-hackintosh-osxaptiofixdrv-allocaterelocblock-error-update/amp/

So now it gets MORE interesting! Instead of trying to boot from my install USB drive, I tried to boot from my Sierra install using the -v boot flag. The boot got MUCH further along before freezing that the USB drive did! Attached is the screen shot of where the fail happens...not sure what to do next. Note: My boot SSD has not had the EFI partition modified at all - the original Aptio file is present. 

post-1940925-0-15094300-1484958570_thumb.jpg

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bbeepp
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So now it gets MORE interesting! Instead of trying to boot from my install USB drive, I tried to boot from my Sierra install using the -v boot flag. The boot got MUCH further along before freezing that the USB drive did! Attached is the screen shot of where the fail happens...not sure what to do next. Note: My boot SSD has not had the EFI partition modified at all - the original Aptio file is present. 

This could be an issue – a Serial Port.... if you have it enabled in bios disable it.

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anewman143
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This could be an issue – a Serial Port.... if you have it enabled in bios disable it.

You are correct - when I did a BIOS update (and then subsequent "down date") that setting was restored to factory which was enabled. I disabled it (along with a few other "standard" hackintosh BIOS settings) and was able to boot with just ONE GPU installed. The system runs INCREDIBLY slowly, however...not sure why yet. Clicking a menu item or dock item can take up to a minute to get an app to launch or menu item to pull down...

 

Ideas? 

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anewman143
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No idea. Maybe you could try booting without any GPU installed on your motherboard, just only with Intel integrated GPU to see the difference.

Well here is some terrific news! In consultation with Nick Woodhams, (and after several hours of hair-pulling) we got it working! I still have to boot using my USB stick, but can then run OS X from my SSD and all is well with BOTH GPU's installed! (of course, OS X doesn't recognize the 2nd...but that's OK since I wanted it in place for when I boot into Win 10 for gaming).

 

Nick is a wizard!

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  • 4 weeks later...
0000-1248
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Well here is some terrific news! In consultation with Nick Woodhams, (and after several hours of hair-pulling) we got it working! I still have to boot using my USB stick, but can then run OS X from my SSD and all is well with BOTH GPU's installed! (of course, OS X doesn't recognize the 2nd...but that's OK since I wanted it in place for when I boot into Win 10 for gaming).

 

Nick is a wizard!

If you have to boot from your USB stick then copy the config.plist, kexts folder and the drivers folder over to a new Clover Installation on your actual SSD.

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anewman143
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If you have to boot from your USB stick then copy the config.plist, kexts folder and the drivers folder over to a new Clover Installation on your actual SSD.

I agree - that should totally work...but I have to admit some anxiety about any more tweaks...I should say that I boot from the USB stick and then run MacOS from my SSD - yes...one extra step...but so damn tickled that it works finally, that I'm more than a bit tense about making changes :)

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I agree - that should totally work...but I have to admit some anxiety about any more tweaks...I should say that I boot from the USB stick and then run MacOS from my SSD - yes...one extra step...but so damn tickled that it works finally, that I'm more than a bit tense about making changes :)

Don't worry about it, we won't modify any files on the USB, we're just copying them over to your SSD to work with a new Clover installation. If it doesn't work you can just continue to boot from the USB, no harm done. But if it works, it works.

 

Best regards,

 

- Matt

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anewman143
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Don't worry about it, we won't modify any files on the USB, we're just copying them over to your SSD to work with a new Clover installation. If it doesn't work you can just continue to boot from the USB, no harm done. But if it works, it works.

 

Best regards,

 

- Matt

So basically copying the guts of the EMI partition of my boot USB to the EMI partition of my Sierra SSD...right? 

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Yeah, so just copy the config.plist, drivers and kext folders over. However, don't just copy the entire EFI folder, you must install Clover with the installer app first, then copy these specific files.

Make sure to copy all the folders that have drivers in it over, as it could be one of these that lets your system boot.

Good luck,

 

- Matt

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anewman143
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Yeah, so just copy the config.plist, drivers and kext folders over. However, don't just copy the entire EFI folder, you must install Clover with the installer app first, then copy these specific files.

Make sure to copy all the folders that have drivers in it over, as it could be one of these that lets your system boot.

Good luck,

 

- Matt

I already have clover installed on my Sierra SSD, so is there any reason I can't just copy the EFI folder from my boot USB stick to the Sierra SSD?

The guy I worked with seemed to think that was perfectly ok to do...but I'm ALWAYS happy to hear a second opinion!

u can try NvidiaSingle=Yes?

attachicon.gifDaNiEl 2017-03-05 às 21.54.14.png

Inject only first one

See above - got the system working and booting just fine with both GPU's in place and powered. Now just working out booting directly from the SSD with Sierra instead of my boot USB stick...but think I have that one solved too...stay tuned and thanks for the idea!

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0000-1248
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Yeah, it should be fine. What I was trying to avoid was conflicts between different versions, but based on how close together your installations were, you should be ok.

 

Give it a go as soon as you can and let me know what happens.

 

Good luck,

 

- Matt

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