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Vega Frontier Edition on High Sierra

jnolla

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Mike Ranger
Mike Ranger
Posted
Posted
7 hours ago, douirc said:

This mean 10.14.1 supports Vega 64 OOTB?  No more playing with PowerTables?

All Vega Cards work OOB (with WhateverGreen and Lilu), problem is more the FanNoise.

10.14.1 did not change anything for me.

PowerTables to work but not totally perfect.

What is interesting is that the best way to keep the fans under control is the play an mp4 file and pause it   (leave QT open in background).

That way the fans work as they should.

So I think the most solid way to control the Fan Speeds would be to have some kind of background process unsing the GPU in a non stessful way (similar like the paused QT video) and therefore preventing the fan getting out of control.

Thanks, Mike

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Mike Ranger
Mike Ranger
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Posted (edited)
3 hours ago, CMMChris said:

Updated PPT Generator. More settings and issue fixed, got something wrong in the initial version.

vega64-mac-pp_table-gen.xlsx

Good job..... I have a similar one just for the Fan-Table tweaking for the Vega56.

As a matter of fact, most of the FanTable settings seem not to have any affect under OSX.

 

Edited by Mike Ranger
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douirc
douirc
Posted
Posted
7 hours ago, CMMChris said:

Updated PPT Generator. More settings and issue fixed, got something wrong in the initial version.

vega64-mac-pp_table-gen.xlsx

Hi CMMChris, was doing more research and wanted to compare the powertable from win10 vs table in your XLS.  Not sure if this is the same table in your VegaTab_64.kext but the results are very similar.  Wanted to get your feedback.

Screen Shot 2018-10-31 at 3.18.25 PM.png

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CMMChris
CMMChris
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Posted (edited)

Another new version. This time with more markup and notes with some thoughts. Feel free to share the stuff, possibilities and behavior you encountered when playing around with it. What I figured out so far: Most Vega cards use Min and Max Fan Speed to control their fan. MacOS on the other hand uses the Throttling RPM value as the Max Fan speed and Accoustic Limit for the Min Fan for some reason. Since both are set to a high value on most cards, fans will go full blast on macOS. The only way to control maximum fan speed is changing the Throttling RPM Value, which is a really bad thing. Dunno what Apple did there, but it's finest bullcrap. (FILE DELETED, NEW VERSION HERE!)

 

 

Can anyone else confirm a smoother UI experience on Mojave with a Powerplay Table generated by this? For me it makes a noticeable difference compared to VGTab.

 

@douirc PP_Tables can look different depending on the card. The one inside my generator is extracted from my V64 Gaming OC BIOS.

Edited by CMMChris
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Mike Ranger
Mike Ranger
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Posted (edited)

Hi Chris.... similar observations. For some reason, the drivers ignore most of the fan table info that would further control fan speeds.

My hunch is that since discrete Vega cards are used only for Egpu, the drivers are for that reason not optimised at all in terms of fan control / noise.

For the iMac Pro Vegas, Apple does use a different fan control method, since the Vega is directly implemented on the Mainbord and so they use their proprietary cooling system.

I wonder how the Vega 64 would behave in a EGpu Setup through TB3.

 

So my interpretation: accoustic limit is a desirable nominal speed, its the rpm that will be established after heavy load.

min and max fan have no effect on fan speed control, they just help calculate percentage of fan speed for display reasons.

 

 

 

Regards, Michael

Edited by Mike Ranger
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surfinchina
surfinchina
Posted
Posted

It'll be interesting to see if a new Mac Pro with no igpu and probably shipping with the Vega will impact on the OS and the functionality of the drivers.

The smbios 6,1 is still the best in some ways because of the lack of integrated GPU, but a refresh of this with a new Mac Pro release will def be welcome to the hackintosh community...

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Mike Ranger
Mike Ranger
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Posted
4 hours ago, surfinchina said:

It'll be interesting to see if a new Mac Pro with no igpu and probably shipping with the Vega will impact on the OS and the functionality of the drivers.

The smbios 6,1 is still the best in some ways because of the lack of integrated GPU, but a refresh of this with a new Mac Pro release will def be welcome to the hackintosh community...

Curious.... does your card spin up after heavy load as well?

The easiest way to reproduce this is Luxmark benchmark.

Again....my biggest interest at the moment is Fan-Control.

Regards, Michael

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Pval2
Pval2
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Posted (edited)
14 hours ago, CMMChris said:

 PP_Tables can look different depending on the card. The one inside my generator is extracted from my V64 Gaming OC BIOS.

 

Hey Chris, 

 

I'm trying to modify the PP_Table of a liquid cooled Vega64, but the table is shorter and has different header, as far as I can see. How can I change your excel file to accommodate this?

VGTab seems to generate the same length (shorter) as  hellm's linked files.

 

Thanks!

 

PS. I inspected my PP_Table, extracted from my original bios, it's also shorter. offset 37254 : 669 bytes long

Edited by Pval2
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CMMChris
CMMChris
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Posted (edited)

Another new version of my Excel generator with ready to copy output to place inside the .plist files. (FILE DELETED, NEW VERSION HERE!)

 

 

@Mike Ranger It's normal. Does the same on my card on Windows when controlling it with a PPT instead of Wattman.

@Pval2 Try using the PPT generated by my Excel generator. Might still work. If it doesn't, you need to reverse engineer the PPT of your card and create your own generator for it.

 

Edited by CMMChris
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Mike Ranger
Mike Ranger
Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, CMMChris said:

Another new version of my Excel generator with ready to copy output to place inside the .plist files.

 

@Mike Ranger It's normal. Does the same on my card on Windows when controlling it with a PPT instead of Wattman.

@Pval2 Try using the PPT generated by my Excel generator. Might still work. If it doesn't, you need to reverse engineer the PPT of your card and create your own generator for it.

vega64-mac-pp_table-gen-V1.0.xlsx.zip

 

Thanks again for your work.

 

I think since Apple claims to officially support Vega descrete GPUs, we should not have to use PPT in the first place.

And yet.... there are some funky things going on even with the PPTs in place..... why do the fans spin down with PPTs once you start a h.265 video in Quicktime?

This action seems to overrule even the PPTs to some degree.

I really wonder if this is all related to non standard bios files being different from reference design cards bios. In the end, the PPT is just one portion of the bios.

In the end....PPTs for the time being are certainly acceptable but certainly not what a decent driver could achieve.

 

Regards, Mike

 

 

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CMMChris
CMMChris
Posted
Posted

You don't need a PPT for the cards officially supported by Apple. Dunno what's different with them. Would be interesting to extract a PPT from their VGA BIOS.

 

Regarding the H.265: Can't confirm that on my card. Fans stay up if they are spinning while starting a video. Strange.

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Mike Ranger
Mike Ranger
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Posted
15 minutes ago, CMMChris said:

You don't need a PPT for the cards officially supported by Apple. Dunno what's different with them. Would be interesting to extract a PPT from their VGA BIOS.

 

Regarding the H.265: Can't confirm that on my card. Fans stay up if they are spinning while starting a video. Strange.

I will post a sample video later.... when playing it in QT, Fan will go back to nominal (idle) speed quicker.

 

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Pval2
Pval2
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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, CMMChris said:

You don't need a PPT for the cards officially supported by Apple. Dunno what's different with them. Would be interesting to extract a PPT from their VGA BIOS.

 

You can simply get the BIOS with ioreg:  

ioreg -l -n display@0 -r | grep ATY,bin_image

Might be at another display (@0 / @1 / etc), but you get the idea. From looking at mine, the PPT starts at offset 37254. 

The PP_PhmSoftPowerPlayTable, if you're using one is there as well, as is a PP_PhmSoftWTTable?

 

I've adapted your excel-sheet, I can confirm my Accoustic Limit (RPM) is set to 1500, which is exactly the rpm I'm seeing in ioreg. And Throttling (RPM) is set to 2300. 

I have seen another issue though, my fan RPM drops under load, by up to 33%, tested with Luxmark, Furmark, etc. Only when I quit; remove the load, will the fan RPM rise again, even above 1500 RPM, until the card is cool again. I have a bug report open with Apple, but they haven't told me anything yet.

 

Monitor fanspeed / other PerformanceStatistics:  

# Grab the column headers from ioreg's output: 
ioreg -l -n display@0 -r |grep \"PerformanceStatistics\" | cut -d '{' -f 2 | tr '|' ',' | tr -d '}' | tr ',' '\n'|grep 'Temp\|Fan\|%\|(W)\|Hz'|cut -d\" -f2|tr '\n' ',' && printf '\n'

# Grab the values every second: 
while true
do 
    ioreg -l -n display@0 -r |grep \"PerformanceStatistics\" | cut -d '{' -f 2 | tr '|' ',' | tr -d '}' | tr ',' '\n'|grep 'Temp\|Fan\|%\|(W)\|Hz'|cut -d\" -f3|tr -d '='|tr '\n' ',' && printf '\n'
    sleep 1
done

 

Edited by Pval2
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surfinchina
surfinchina
Posted
Posted
11 hours ago, Mike Ranger said:

Curious.... does your card spin up after heavy load as well?

The easiest way to reproduce this is Luxmark benchmark.

Again....my biggest interest at the moment is Fan-Control.

Regards, Michael

I've got an EK block on my card, so get no spin up.

And just for the record, it's a Vega FE and works OOB on HS and Mojave - excepting I need the fixup kext to allow for 2 monitors on DP.

What I was inferring with the original post is that Apple hasn't yet optimised the drivers for use without igpu because at the moment there isn't such an Apple machine. When there is such a machine (the new Mac Pro), they will make changes.

I noticed this back in the day when I had an X58 on SMBIOS 6,1 and after that an X99 and finally my current X299.

This might all only be great news for those of us without igpu on our motherboards.

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Beav
Beav
Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, CMMChris said:

Uh? The iMac Pro doesn't have an IGPU. I am currently using my machine without IGPU on iMacPro1,1 SMBIOS, works fine. Gives a slight performance boost compared to the iMac18,3 SMBIOS.

Would be interesting to see someone do a 10-core Xeon-W build based on that SMBIOS, a true iMac Pro hackmac attempt. 

 

Back to the topic at hand: If I'm able to choose a new card specifically for Mojave, I assume I should go with the XFX Vega 64 or an FE since they won't require PPT tweaking? 

 

A used 16GB FE looks temping!

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Beav
Beav
Posted
Posted
5 minutes ago, Tony Arnold said:

 

Plenty of us already have! Do a search for KPG's X299 guide here on the forums.

Thanks Tony. Just realized my past posts here were all from early 2006, can't believe I've been running hacks for that long. :)

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surfinchina
surfinchina
Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, CMMChris said:

Uh? The iMac Pro doesn't have an IGPU. I am currently using my machine without IGPU on iMacPro1,1 SMBIOS, works fine. Gives a slight performance boost compared to the iMac18,3 SMBIOS.

Yes true, but the root cause of the fan issues (in my opinion) is that it's not using a discrete GPU as such, and uses a propriety cooling system with small and high speed fans. 

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