Navi 3x support

[bubxd]

macOS Version

Sequoia

What is your CPU's model?

AMD Ryzen 7 8700G

What is your GPU's model?

AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT

Please describe the feature in detail.

Long ahh shot but i seriously want NootRX to have Navi 3x support.
I'll wait until the end of the universe for this.

What alternatives have you tried, if any?

Nothing

[bubxd]

bubxd assigned VisualEhrmanntraut now

Wow that sounds aggresive

[metacollin]

What's the point of NootRX having Navi 3x support? macOS does not support Navi 3x and there are no macOS drivers available for these cards. So the best possible result would be using them without acceleration in VESA mode. While this technically works, itrenders macOS all but unusable due to lack of any graphics acceleration even for the GUI.

It would be a huge waste of time for NootRX to add Navi 3x support.

I'll wait until the end of the universe for this.

why? You can experience this level of terrible performance with any GPU right now, just reboot in safe mode (which disables graphic acceleration).

NootRX adding support for Navi 3x won't somehow magically cause Apple to write macOS drivers for these cards. NootRX just enables certain GPUs that already have support in macOS to work in a hackintosh. That's all it does, and all it ever will do.

[VisualEhrmanntraut]

What's the point of NootRX having Navi 3x support? macOS does not support Navi 3x and there are no macOS drivers available for these cards. So the best possible result would be using them without acceleration in VESA mode. While this technically works, itrenders macOS all but unusable due to lack of any graphics acceleration even for the GUI.

It would be a huge waste of time for NootRX to add Navi 3x support.

I'll wait until the end of the universe for this.

why? You can experience this level of terrible performance with any GPU right now, just reboot in safe mode (which disables graphic acceleration).

NootRX adding support for Navi 3x won't somehow magically cause Apple to write macOS drivers for these cards. NootRX just enables certain GPUs that already have support in macOS to work in a hackintosh. That's all it does, and all it ever will do.

Technically incorrect, as NootRX is not like WhateverGreen; for instance, Navi 22 is not supported without gluing in missing logic and firmware.
Additionally, RDNA3/4 is a derivative of RDNA 2 with different firmware, display hardware, and additional instructions.
Technically speaking, it is possible to fully support (excluding Raytracing) RDNA 3, and maybe even RDNA 4 with a whole lot more work. But at the end of the day, what would the benefit be, since x86 macOS is going fully EOL in around 3 years?

[simonpm]

Great point re: EOL.
Curious, you said: "Technically speaking, it is possible to fully support (excluding Raytracing) RDNA 3, and maybe even RDNA 4 with a whole lot more work". Your work with Navi21/22 suggests Apple’s AMD stack has more flexibility than many assume. One thing I wonder about for RDNA4 is how much of the difficulty comes from the GPU itself versus Apple’s assumptions in AMDRadeonX6000 — for example DCN4, PSP14, and newer firmware interfaces. Do you think those would be blockers, or mostly additional adaptation work?

[VisualEhrmanntraut]

I'm not sure what your question entails. If it answers your question, for RDNA 4 the work is a matter of changes to the Hardware Abstraction Library (AMDRadeon*HWLibs.kext), the framebuffer (AMDRadeonX6000Framebuffer.kext), and the userspace bundle (the Metal and OpenGL implementations, AMDRadeon*MTLDriver.bundle/AMDRadeon*GLDriver.bundle) mainly due to differences with AddrLib (GPU address/size/format/etc calculation Library). I'm not sure if the latter would also (largely as opposed to minimally) affect RDNA3.

[metacollin]

What's the point of NootRX having Navi 3x support? macOS does not support Navi 3x and there are no macOS drivers available for these cards. So the best possible result would be using them without acceleration in VESA mode. While this technically works, itrenders macOS all but unusable due to lack of any graphics acceleration even for the GUI.
It would be a huge waste of time for NootRX to add Navi 3x support.

I'll wait until the end of the universe for this.

why? You can experience this level of terrible performance with any GPU right now, just reboot in safe mode (which disables graphic acceleration).
NootRX adding support for Navi 3x won't somehow magically cause Apple to write macOS drivers for these cards. NootRX just enables certain GPUs that already have support in macOS to work in a hackintosh. That's all it does, and all it ever will do.

Technically incorrect, as NootRX is not like WhateverGreen; for instance, Navi 22 is not supported without gluing in missing logic and firmware. Additionally, RDNA3/4 is a derivative of RDNA 2 with different firmware, display hardware, and additional instructions. Technically speaking, it is possible to fully support (excluding Raytracing) RDNA 3, and maybe even RDNA 4 with a whole lot more work. But at the end of the day, what would the benefit be, since x86 macOS is going fully EOL in around 3 years?

I misspoke, when I said already have support in macOS, I meant driver support. Navi 22 still relies entirely on Apple's own driver, NootRX is, as you said, doing some firmware injection but this works because Navi 22 is interfaced at the hardware level the same as other Navi 2x chipsets supported by the Apple driver. NootRX just gets the driver talking to the card and uploads the same AMD firmware as widely available in other platform drivers, but that's all.

My point is that there is no such driver for Navi 3x for NootRX to get talking to the hardware, and the existing drivers aren't able to. Apple may have architected their AMD drivers such that one kext handles several generations of one chipset, but they still have to add support for each generation. Navi 22 works because the apple driver supports Navi 2x.

[metacollin]

I'm not sure what your question entails. If it answers your question, for RDNA 4 the work is a matter of changes to the Hardware Abstraction Library (AMDRadeon*HWLibs.kext), the framebuffer (AMDRadeonX6000Framebuffer.kext), and the userspace bundle (the Metal and OpenGL implementations, AMDRadeon*MTLDriver.bundle/AMDRadeon*GLDriver.bundle) mainly due to differences with AddrLib (GPU address/size/format/etc calculation Library). I'm not sure if the latter would also (largely as opposed to minimally) affect RDNA3.

The biggest issue is that the Apple graphic drivers, like the AMD HAL kexts, AMD framebuffers kexts ( like AMDRadeonX6000Framebuffer.kext) and the AMD Metal and OpenGL kexts are not open source. So when you talk about changes to these, you're talking about making direct binary/assembly patches to the binaries by reverse engineering how they work from the assembly, as there is no code available one might make changes to and then recompile. This isn't impossible, but it's also totally unrealistic to expect one person unpaid, let alone a team of people working full time, to do do this. A lot of hackintoshers have spent a lot of time looking at the assembly for those kexts and some stuff remains totally opaque without access to the source (which importantly provides variable names. Assembly is just registers. The intent of anything is lost, as computers don't care about our names for memory addresses etc.)

Thats what I'm getting at. The moment you need to make changes to those kexts, the plan is, for all intents and purposes, dead in the water.

That said, if Apple were ever to open source these kexts, it would be relatively straight forward to simply adapt the linux driver source code to fit into the macOS Driver SDKs. Hell, if someone sends me the source code to those kexts, I'll do it myself :p

[VisualEhrmanntraut]

All known/obvious information. It all boils down to what you said here:

This isn't impossible, but it's also totally unrealistic to expect one person unpaid, let alone a team of people working full time, to do do this.

But there's no team (anymore, for a long time now :(), it's just me, heh.

[VisualEhrmanntraut]

That said, if Apple were ever to open source these kexts

They will never :(