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Speedstar

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 10, 2008
116
37
I am not an engineer, nor programmer but a possible scenario for Mac Pro GPU support in 10.14 could be a
PCI/Passthrough solution of MAC-EFI/GraphicsCard to second GPU/Metal/supportedDevice port output (without Mac Efi), maybe AMD Vega only which are officially supported in eGPU configurations in HighSierra.

The Fermi-card support would be necessary for the recovery partition (with its WindowManager) and firmware updates only, after boot only the metal device attached to working monitor would work and
the legacy Fermi Quadro 4000 or gt120 would be disabled. (look background Links)

Except gtx680 which will be supported, because of compatible architecture found in iMacs 2012

background Links:
https://passthroughpo.st/explaining-csm-efifboff-setting-boot-gpu-manually/
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF
https://www.evonide.com/non-root-gpu-passthrough-setup/
https://bufferoverflow.io/gpu-passthrough/

In the end because of VT/d Xeon technology MacPro would act like Mac Book with attached eGPU
in the Thread unsupported Macs people are asking why is that supported but not 2009 hardware.
well all Graphic Units build in 2012 support UEFI for win8 which is necessary for pass through GPU output
technology which will be developed for MacPro 4.1/5.1 could be used for upcoming Mac Pro7.1
THIS IS THE ONLY REASON APPLE WOULD INVEST SO MUCH TO SUPPORT EFI-boot-passthrough.
In future Macs they could use Efi-firmware on build in AMD-GPU on
Intelchips and passthrough to any GPU in PCI-Slots.(as long as the are AMD Vega supported now with eGPU)

I personally would hope to boot with legacy Card in slot 3 and use Metal-Devices in Slots 1,2
Possible Scenario could be to boot with Monster Ati HD5x but then switch to second GPU with Metal too.
In the kext the only reason would be supporting Open-GL for RecoveryPartition WindowSystem ONLY

With GPU-port-output-PassThrough any swiching of monitor cables is obsolete which will definitely not be an option for Mac Pro Users.

In this scenario any out of the box legacy-GPU have partial support and Vega Cards work like in eGPU finally connected to Monitors.

I personally wish to see Nvidia web drivers especially Maxwell,Pascal build in in Mojave but according to Apples Development in last years it is dreaming and not business.
 
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