Give me one reason for choosing Nvidia GTX for Hackintosh

[RandomTech]

Hello people of Hackintosh, its very interesting to me to discuss with open minded people so no any fanboy-ism is accepted under any shape or form, why would you use a Nvidia GTX for your Hackintosh? just an open discussion and if you have something to say it would be much appreciated to talk through your own experience with both AMD and Nvidia GPUs, the goal from this is just to share our knowledge and experience to help each other and the community in general. (please don't relay on rumors and fanboy-sim, just facts and Hackintosh).

 

As I started using Hackintosh for fun it turned out that I'm using it now for daily standard tasks (I mean anything except gaming), the reason is because my Hackintosh performs well in terms of stability and I can say it runs for me even more stable than Windows 10 OS on my windows hardware machine.

 

I started from Yosemite 10.10.5 with a GTX 970 and was a happy nerd back then seeing a Mackintosh OS desktop on my monitor with (everything) working like screen resolution, audio and those basic stuff, after 6 months I upgraded the GPU to GTX 980Ti and continued using my Hackintosh for like another one year.

 

The only thing I cannot forget is how Nvidia Webdriver bad was, giving me a huge amount of problems and compatibility which in some cases an App wouldn't even open (iBooks as I remember and even a Folder window sometimes was white without any content), in addition to that the bootlegs needed to boot the system before and after installing the web driver, not upgrading my system until a stable Nvidia driver would be released, my GTX GPUs were totally ignored and useless for some major Apple macOS apps like FCPX, Motion, Compressor and etc..

 

At this point I thought about trying an AMD card so I started with a cheap HD 7970 as for me was a hit and miss thing, honestly I was shocked with how HD 7970 was performing against my GTX 980Ti, OpenCL scores on any benchmark was close and sometimes higher scored by 100EUR card against 700EUR card (Note: OpenCL is important for macOS that's why is worth to mention), FCPX and all apps could utilize the GPU making video exporting blazing fast and fun, no Apps compatibility issues so all Apps were opening as expected, no waiting for Webdriver anymore no bootflags, of course as you all guessed I did the switch to AMD GPU with me buying RX 480 and then upgrading to RX Vega 64 which Im using now, its almost 2 years of glorious with those AMD GPUs and I don't remember any issue I had except some miner things which could be solved easily, of course stability, compatibility and fast performance were always there.

 

Lets don't talk about gaming on Windows because Radeon cards are no exception when it come to gaming, RX 580 is equal or better than GTX 1060, Vega 56 equal or better than GTX 1070, Vega 64 equal to GTX 1080 and all can achieve 60 fps easy Ultra settings 1080p or 1440p and AMD free-sync enabled as a gamer you'd never wish something better.

 

Please share your experience and knowledge so I or anyone else using AMD GPU might be wrong somewhere and can get any kind of new information from you.

 

Edit: Sorry for my English skills but you still can get the point.

Edited December 17, 2018 by RandomTech

[RandomTech]

Thanks for asking, as I mentioned above my Nvidia GTX 970/980Ti cards were never stable in terms of functionality from basic stuff to the most demanding, the only thing I remember that Heaven Benchmark OpenGL ran stable but still those GPUs had glitches in some games, I did game only for testing.

 

I do really a lot of graphical testes on my system in things which I even don't use, I also wanted to know if that rumor about CUDA and Adobe was right but after my tests on Adobe Premier I saw no difference in performance between GTX 970 and GTX 980Ti or HD 7970 (anyone is free to test them of course if he got those hardware and Adobe Premier).

just a small information about Adobe Premier I see a lot of Pro people on internet switching to DaVinci Resolve because it's offering more than what Adobe Premier offers.

 

in addition to other problems mentioned above (writing for web drivers, bootflags, macOS apps won't even open, glitches and etc..) I tried to switch to AMD GPU and since then all problems are literally gone.

 

This is an example for my Desktop on Sierra 12.6 and GTX 980Ti, stable macOS version and stable also latest Nvidia web driver and CUDA driver installed.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 17, 2018 by RandomTech

[RandomTech]

I wish even myself to be wrong because I really don’t like to be limited to any brand, at least in this case I would have more selection of cards to choose from not only AMD, but trust me I did everything possible to solve those issues with GTX cards back then but had no chance. Most of time they worked fine but for no reason they gave me those kind of issues in between and for no reason, from Yosemite10.10.5 to all El Capitan versions to Sierra 10.12.3-4, then switched to AMD.

 I also still see in forums here and there people having different problems with Nvidia and macOS but I pass them away because are not my concern anymore.

 

Maybe on real macs are different as I understand from your experience, in my Hackintoshes HD7970 works like a real mac card, RX 480 too, only RX Vega has fan control issue which is very easy to solve anyway and the fix was found from very early Vega days. (My own fix for that is that I have it in Waterblock, so no fans are involved there).

 

Those open windows are System Preferences, a Finder folder and Opera, but that happened to any other app too.

 

 I will consider about what said anyway because for me it’s very good to know, please if you have any more information to add ill be glad to receive.

[RandomTech]

13 hours ago, millusions said:

interesting read.  are you saying AMD cards work better in OSX?

Thank you, yes after my own long time experiences I see a big different and will with respect suggest any Hackintosh user to use any AMD card which Apple already supports officially, especially those RX cards which supports all new technology goodies like Metal, H265 video exporting and everything new.

[RandomTech]

6 hours ago, millusions said:

think about it bro.

 

this is my list again: GT 610 2GB, GT 550ti, GTX 660, GTX 660ti, GTX 760, GTX 770, GTX 780ti, 980ti.

 

and you're basing your conclusion on one card

I thought about it twice and I'm thinking about it last two years, as I'm welling to use a Hackintosh based on Apple macOs I will definitely follow Apple path and their choice of hardware, not to follow my heart as there is no other way around 

I cannot develop a cool OS as Apple does and as we all know Apple is very specific company where it come to hardware and software so all I can do is to follow them and run my Hackintosh based on their choices.

 

As Apple now likes Intel CPUs and AMD GPUs I will be more than happy to include those components in my system in case I want to run Apple macOS and Apple software, if things change then I will change too, easy 

 

This is not only about hardware, its even about software which Apple develops and make them take benefits from particular hardware they pick by themselves, that's why when I searched last years why FCPX is superior to other software including Adobe, I found the easy question which is, Apple have no big selection of hardware to mess with so its very easy to them to optimize their software and hardware and make them 100% compatible, very logic answer.

 

On the other hand, I do like to use Hackintosh to have the chance to run Apple specific software which I cannot have on Windows, let say if the Adobe and GTX cards is a fact I will not even think of using Hackintosh as Adobe runs on Windows too and GTX cards run even better in Windows than they do on Hackintosh, so why would I put myself in the Hackintosh headache?

 

Plus, there is something I don't understand, Nvidia people say Vega has issues on Hackintosh and by issue they mean the fan speed, all we Hackintosh community know that fixes being very easy as early days of Vega, nothing new.

First fix: just modify the vanilla 10000 AMD kext and put it in EFI folder, (We all Hackintosh people know that EFI folder very well, otherwise we couldn't have our Hackintoshes up and running anyway), so with this we have fixed the fan issue permanently with no fear of any macOS version future updates.

Second fix: Just put the Vega card in a Waterblock without modify any kext, and the issue is gone also permanently.

 

Nvidia guys don't address as issue that GTX9xx, GTX1xxx not being even supported by Apple acOS, they have the time and offer to install a 3rd party driver which installs a lot of non vanilla scripts and kexts just to get to the desktop properly, after all that any Apple software won't get any benefit of that GTX card, in addition the fear of any macOS update and then the patient again till new 3rd party driver releases, all these are not issues for Nvidia guys? 

 

btw, my problems were with GTX 970 and GTX 980Ti from Yosemite till Sierra that's why I don't think it was Opera app problem as you said because it has to do more with graphics not Opera itself, those problems were already there even without Opera and happened every now and then, but I don't know how I was lucky to find those old screenshots and post them here.

(My conclusion is based on my experience with GTX 970 and GTX 980Ti for about 1,5 year. Then AMD HD 7950, AMD R9 280X, AMD HD 7970, AMD RX 480, AMD RX Vega 64). So I don't know what else had to do to have a conclusion 

I can give you videos on my YT channel of me running some of those cards if you don't believe me.

 

Last but not least, installing a non supported GTX card for me is the same as installing an AMD CPU for Hackintosh, it can run but we all know it's better to avoid it.

Even the supported GTX cards wouldn't help us on macOS as we know Apple software are based only on OpenCL nothing on CUDA orang Nvidia technology, so me following Apple I'm not picking any GTX card for now 

 

I might write a lot with not correct grammar  but I still hope you understand me, I hope that because I need an open conversation with people with logic, far from any kind of hate or fanboy-ism as we said. We all are one community and we have the rights to learn and help each other by sharing our experiences, thoughts and suggestions.

 

Cheers mate

Robert