XFX R9 280X Black Edition,z87x-ud7-th with i7-4770k CPU Sierra Freeze and reboot.

[AceMcLoven]

Back for an update. So I was able to finally get into High Sierra after black screen and trying different things with clover. I switched to the backup bios on my GPU and was able to get in into high Sierra. I'm in my desktop and run geek bench again and scores are off.  So now I can boot and see everything just fine but my system is still not running the way it should. Any thoughts? 

 

Also my card is showing as 7970.

 

[ammoune78]

With the same settings in the config plist i made for you and SSDT like above, I've this on About This Mac:

 

 

[AceMcLoven]

I'm a little confused on your last message. Could you explain  a little more? Sorry I'm a still grasping my head around all this. 

[Cyberdevs]

7 hours ago, ammoune78 said:

 

 It worked hhh, but it's so slow, i mean booting up to login screen, it take too much time, going from losing screen to the Finder takes too much time, loading the things and settings take too much time and also clicking on app it will to. So here are screenshots from About this Mac and SSDT patch working with:

 

Looking here, from the Name it says ATY,AMD,RadeonFramebuffer hhhh, is it the defaults one or because of the unknown framebuffer that have to be used for?

Well, The timing can be reduces with a kext cache cleanup I guess but not that much, you can also add the correct framebuffer to your SSDT/DSDT and see if that changes the boot up time or not.

And yes the "ATY,AMD,RadeonFramebuffer" is the default AMD Framebuffer which is being used while the macOS can not recognize the correct framebuffer for an AMD GPU.

[Cyberdevs]

2 hours ago, ammoune78 said:

With the same settings in the config plist i made for you and SSDT like above, I've this on About This Mac:

How's your GeekBench results in comparison to his?

Do you use any patches for the kernel in KernelToPatch section under the Kernel and Kext Patches?

[ammoune78]

Here's 

Metal score

 

 

OpenCL score

 

 

Geekbench score

 

 

This score was done by using Hamachi, Inject ATI and using SSDT patch like the screenshot posted before and using Load VBIOS from ROM folder of clover

[AceMcLoven]

Wow those scores are so much better than mine. Hmmmm... what rom are you using in your clover folder? 

 

I did message power color yesterday to see if they can send me the most current updated rom for my GPU. Hopefully that works. 

[ammoune78]

But i have to note that IGPU is disabled from BIOS!

 

No i don't use any kernel patch in KernelToPatch from config.

 

The Original ROM from SAPPHIRE TechSupport! If you contacted PowerColor support, for sure they will send you the latest ROM, maybe they will ask you for Serial S/N, P/N and other things

 

 and here's my card disassembled now, i'll just stick it up and assemble it, hoping that artifacts issue will be fixed:

 

 

I think this is not the original thermal paste!

Edited April 27, 2018 by ammoune78

[Cyberdevs]

30 minutes ago, AceMcLoven said:

Wow those scores are so much better than mine. Hmmmm... what rom are you using in your clover folder? 

 

I did message power color yesterday to see if they can send me the most current updated rom for my GPU. Hopefully that works. 

 

The difference in Geekbench scores can be only because of the GPU and the ROM, and besides isn't your GPU XFX? or is it PowerColor?

 

9 minutes ago, ammoune78 said:

But i have to note that IGPU is disabled from BIOS!

 

No i don't use any kernel patch in KernelToPatch from config.

 

 and here's my card disassembled now, i'll just stick it up and assemble it, hoping that artifacts issue will be fixed:

 

I think this is not the original thermal paste!

 

Oh Boy! What scene! I hope they glitches get better, don't forget to clean up those blades and the heatsink itself.

Edited April 27, 2018 by Cyberdevs

[Cyberdevs]

@ammoune78 Send us some photos after the clean up as well

[ammoune78]

18 minutes ago, Cyberdevs said:

@ammoune78 Send us some photos after the clean up as well

 

Surely dude!

 

I don't know if this is normal, but i've seen some things like oil in the PCB and in VRAM, i'll upload photos for that right now after going to market to take some gasoline for components, just to clean it better!

[AceMcLoven]

I did have a XFX card but since I couldn't get that one to work I bought the power color because it was a working card for a mac pro. 

[Cyberdevs]

10 minutes ago, AceMcLoven said:

I did have a XFX card but since I couldn't get that one to work I bought the power color because it was a working card for a mac pro. 

Which EFI folder you are currently using? Mine or ammoune78's or the one you already had before?

[ammoune78]

@CyberdevsHere are the Oil things:

 

 

I'll begin cleaning right now  , i forgot, can you tell me where i can add thermal paste beside GPU Chip?

Edited April 27, 2018 by ammoune78

[Cyberdevs]

6 minutes ago, ammoune78 said:

@CyberdevsHere are the Oil things:

 

I'll begin cleaning right now  

Those Oils can be from the manufacturing process, that can be simply the soldering oil residue.

Be careful with the gasoline it might damage the chipsets, don't apply any liquid directly to the board, just use the cleaning cloth and moist it with the alcohol and then gently clean the areas that you want.

 

Hope all goes well and when you re-assemble the GPU it works better than before. 

Edited April 27, 2018 by Cyberdevs

[ammoune78]

Here are photos for before cleaning the Chip and left on by mistake some of the thermal paste and after cleaning, with others and last result:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I just want to go home, and test it, some of suspense hhhh, and by the way thanks Cyberdevs for your comments that pushed me to do it, really thanks Man 

[Cyberdevs]

WOW, SO clean! Looks like a brand new  Thanks for the photos man! 

How does it perform after the cleaning?

[ammoune78]

I'll go right know testing it  or  , but to be more honest i would prefer 

[Cyberdevs]

Let's hope that it is working and the performance is improved and you'll be happy  

[ammoune78]

Worked, and the geekbench is a little bit tricky, a did one test for CPU, Metal and OpenCL GPU. I've got a score not better than the previous one in CPU and OpenCL, did another test and got a score better than the first one, hhhh  ! But I guess if i  delete the cache and nvram reset, then I'll have better one maybe, here's the scores:

 

 

 

 

 

Now I'm gonna stress it with games to see if that real problem has gone or not 

[Cyberdevs]

6 minutes ago, ammoune78 said:

Worked, and the geekbench is a little bit tricky, a did one test for CPU, Metal and OpenCL GPU. I've got a score not better than the previous one in CPU and OpenCL, did another test and got a score better than the first one, hhhh  ! But I guess if i  delete the cache and nvram reset, then I'll have better one maybe, here's the scores:

 

Now I'm gonna stress it with games to see if that real problem has gone or not 

Congrats 

Cleaning the peripherals won't necessarily increase the performance, although it will help them perform better and cooler and then when a device is performing cooler it will increase the stability and longevity

I hope in the stress test the artifacts are gone

Edited April 28, 2018 by Cyberdevs

[ammoune78]

2 hours ago, Cyberdevs said:

Congrats 

Cleaning the peripherals won't necessarily increase the performance, although it will help them perform better and cooler and then when a device is performing cooler it will increase the stability and longevity

I hope in the stress test the artifacts are gone

Yep, Yes, Well, Super, good, nice, fine, great, fantastic, fantastical, awesome, brilliant, wonderful, grand, terrific, marvelous

 

They are gone, i've been playing for two hours some games, and not all that i have like (Project Cars, Just Cause III and PES 2018), and no one appeared. I already know that ROTTR can do some artifacts if 15 mn or 30 mn of playing, but Just Cause do them both at 5 mn,  whatever the first time after booting the windows directly or after playing some other games, but i played Just cause III for about 1 hour, no artifacts, no slowness, the card is in total calm, i didn't heard Fans and it was not hot, in contrary of before, it was hot, did a big noise will playing as you can hear it, slowness and the PC come too hot. It's a total huge difference, and now i'm happy, because now it's my big deal that card and for only 86$.

 

I'll try another test, or i simply will play all games that i have to see if it's definitely indisputable, just to be comfortable. 

 

Thanks again Cyberdevs

[Cyberdevs]

That’s wonderful! and your welcome

From what I saw in the photos you sent before the cleanup the bad performance was expected because the heatsink and the fan blades were so dirty and clogged up with dust and other stuf which could impact the air flow and heat couldn’t be transfered efficiently. 

Now you have a brand new GPU and I know that the R9 280X is a very powerful card!

Enjoy!

[AceMcLoven]

so I'm currently using my EFI folder. I tried frame buffer Hamachi with inject ATI, used whatevergreen and lilu kext and still low scores. I also tried with nothing enable with graphics or any text just using it straight and it lets me in but still something is not running correctly because scores are still low. 

 

This is a tonymac post but should this guide help me? https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/radeon-compatibility-guide-ati-amd-graphics-cards.171291/

[ammoune78]

Primary thing is, Tonymacx86 isn't appreciated here at insanelymac and definitely

 

Two choices are there:

 

1- If you don't want to click on something in config.plist and be happy with native support, you should have whatevergreen in kext folder, and a patched DSDT/SSDT as well.

 

2- Now if you want to select some things in config.plist, keep Lillu and remove whatevergreen, click on Inject ATI, write down the framebuffer you want use in FB Name and use patched DSDT/SSDT.

 

* Advanced and entousiast users can do that and play with Kext patching to get that thing they want for ports and etc....

 

Yes should not use the moded ROM, because it is definitely not for PC's, it's only for real Mac's, you should already know that, just play with the Techpowerup ROM until you get the Original one from PowerColor support.

 

Too much kexts in system and Kext folder of clover will make confusion for macOS and it will not be suitable as you tough, remove any kext that's not used at all, use only FakeSMC with it's plugins, Lillu, AppleALC, EthernetKext AppleIntelEXXXXX, intelgraphicsfixup and that's it. You should be fine like that, also rename GFX0 to IGPU and PEGP to GFX0 and other things, they are important.

 

I think the better think that you can do to understand what i say, you should download a dump of iMac14,2 and look into it's iOREG and in it's ACPI tables to know that, just to be familiar, for me it's the best thing that you can do now, so you'll know what to do in every hack. This will allows you to know what users are doing to help others, because it's not magical, it's only about knowledge and nothing special until complex system hardware components hack!

 

In other words, your hack should be similar to the Mac hardware that you're playing for better performances and for comfortable ans stable system