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MP All Models Turn a "new" Sapphire RX580 PULSE into the "Mac Edition" card
- Thread starter h9826790
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Youtube on Chrome/Brave is still taking tons of CPU power, does that imply HW acceleration is not fully working there?Parallel decoding / encoding test also done.
I open 4 FFmpeg section to re-encode four 1080P videos simultaneously.
3 of them use both hardware decode and hardware encode.
The remaining one use software decode but hardware encode.
It seems there is no limit on how many parallel sections can be open. The final limitation is just the hardware resources.
Up to this point, it's 100% GPU limiting, but no more CPU single thread performance bottleneck observed.
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[doublepost=1556900768][/doublepost]Smooth playback 8k VP9 youtube video (zero frame drop) also achieved now on this 10 years old cMP in macOS
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VP9 is completely another stuff as per Hendrik94 pointed out. I don't know how much it's working, or how the usage looks like on iMac Pro etc.
But if you turn OFF hardware accel and play the same video again, then you will know the difference. Now, at least, we can play it smoothly no matter how much hardware accel is actually working.
If you have Windows, you may try that and see how's the CPU / GPU usage looks like and report back. Then we may know more about if "full GPU hardware accel" really exist or not with this hardware config.
chrome://gpu/ and you will see what works and what not if you run Chrome
Interesting. brave://gpu/ also works
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Just did some study, confirmed that up to Radeon VII (UVD 7.2) can only do partial hardware VP9 decoding. Still need lots of assistant from the CPU, but still provide much better performance than zero GPU hardware decode.
Full hardware VP9 support on exist in VCN 1.0 or later.
So, this is actually hardware limitation, not software problem. We already get what we can get.
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Further test shows only DRM streaming has problem, not really playback. A fully downloaded iTunes movie can be played flawlessly with hardware accel enabled.
This is indeed eye-opening. Thanks.
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Thanks you guys for those bleeding edge info. This is the first time I heard about this Brave browser thing. Do really treasure the breath of talents in this high quality community.
No since this is just NVRAM if something goes wrong just do a Restet on Start an everything is as it was before
The macOS itself is unmodified (not even a single plist file have been edited).
The firmware itself is clean (I just dump it and check, seems no abnormal corruption)
We just add two extra kext which seems very safe to use. Lilu and WEG are widely use in the Hackintosh community, and we also use Lilu to enable HDMI audio on cMP before Apple gave that to us. So, I personally believe that they are safe to use in macOS.
On top of that, we just add a boot argument in NVRAM via terminal. The Mac and macOS support this function natively.
So, in worst case, the extra kext may stop the OS to function properly. However, the Hackintosh group already shows us that they won't. These two are really the very very basic kext that most Hackintosh need to use.
Or the extra boot argument causing the OS has some abnormal behaviour. But again, the argument is purely for WhateverGreen, and the Hackintosh groups shows no problem of that. And in the last 24 hours, I tested many different combination of boot argument, my cMP shows zero abnormal behaviour so far.
Last but not least, as Hendrik94 pointed out, you can always use NVRAM reset to clear the boot argument. And once you reset the NVRAM, SIP will be automatically re-enable, which also means Lilu and WEG will be automatically disabled on the next boot. So, at this point, everything will back to the vanilla state. You are running the cMP and macOS in the 100% native way (and you can remove the extra kext if you want).
This is really the least damaging, and safest way I can think of to enable GPU acceleration at this moment.
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Very nice find. 96 = 32 + 64. So 32 for replacing the board ID and 64 for enabling FairPlay 1.0. Make sense. But although this may work for streaming in iTunes, Netflix on Safari remains ever more elusive...
I hope when this is all figured out, you decide to make a comprehensive guide in a new wiki thread. It would be a great goto for after doing a new install. Thanks for the info.
I look forward to seeing a complete tutorial and perhaps a solution for HEVC / DRM. No logical reason Apple won’t just do this. Perhaps after a specific thread just about this discovery, everyone can push Apple to follow. Not likely they would do that for us, but no harm in high-volume-nagging them.
It works for my wife
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I still have the original instruction in my quote. Everything else is deleted.
Do NOT use Clover. It may corrupt the cMP’s firmware.
Better to follow the exact steps that inside startergo’s post’s quote.
If you have Chrome / Brave browser, that will tell you the hardware acceleration state (please refer to post #456).
Command "sudo kextcache -update-volume /" doesn't work for me, it says:
/ locked; waiting for lock.
Lock acquired; proceeding.
Warning: /AppleInternal/Library/Extensions: No such file or directory
After it i entered "sudo nvram boot-args="shikigva=60 shiki-id=Mac-7BA5B2D9E42DDD94"", rebooted but nothing changed. Videoproc still shows nothing, Video Acceleration Information in chrome://gpu/ is blank.
Did i miss something?
I tested beta 5, still works.
Don't worry about that terminal return, that's not the problem.
You missed "step 5"
Thanks, it worked.
I put Plugins folder with WhateverGreen INSIDE Contents folder.
I entered all Terminal commands again (there were several "kext with invalid signatured" messages)
After reboot H264 HW works, but not HEVC
Hmm, after the patch Photos app starts freezing the whole system till force reboot. Check it for yourself.
I think that it is something about HEVC decode, which Photos app use to show media, imported from iOS devices.
There is a similar problem on Hackintosh
https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/335941-solved-photos-freezing-mojave-with-rx-580/
They suggest to use Lilu plugin kext NOVPAjpeg, i don’t know is it possible in our case.
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/photos-app-freezes-the-whole-system.267412/
" If you enable the on-board graphics(iGPU), Photos app will function correctly. I have faced the exact same problem."
I wonder, can we keep HW acceleration and Photos working together?
I think that it is something about HEVC decode, which Photos app use to show media, imported from iOS devices.
There is a similar problem on Hackintosh
https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/335941-solved-photos-freezing-mojave-with-rx-580/
They suggest to use Lilu plugin kext NOVPAjpeg, i don’t know is it possible in our case.
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/photos-app-freezes-the-whole-system.267412/
" If you enable the on-board graphics(iGPU), Photos app will function correctly. I have faced the exact same problem."
I wonder, can we keep HW acceleration and Photos working together?
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