Set up Catalina as headless (to use intel and discrete RX 480 GPU)? How on earth?

bhuether · August 22, 2021

Hi,

I have Gigabyte Z170x UD5, Skylake i6700 CPU, RX 480 GPU. I have RX480 connected to display, in BIOS have initial display set to PCIe 1, and have iGPU set to Enabled. My goal is to have headless setup so that Quick Sync will work, so that in programs like Final Cut Pro both GPUs can be used for computation.

When I first set up the system, I used Clover and the SMBIOS at that time was 14.3. I then used Clover Configurator to change to iMac 17.1. I didn't reinstall Catalina, simply updated config.plist.

I am still doing everything via USB and on the Catalina drive I don't have CLOVER folder yet.

I have Lilu and Whatevergreen kexts in Kexts/Other.

I don't see any sign that things are working correctly. In Activity Monitor under Energy tab, I don't see the "Requires High Perf GPU" col and as I understand that means only one GPU is being used.

Also in System Properties under graphics I only see my RX 480.

Now in hackintool I see the intel 530 iGPU listed.

In any case, trying to figure out how to get Quick Sync properly working so that FCP can use both GPUs.

Any thoughts? Do I need to reinstall Catalina with correct SMBIOS from the get go? Or is that not an issue? Anything obvious that I am doing wrong?

thanks!