NEW Intel P55 Mobos & Core i7 860 / i5 750 CPU LGA1156

[Jared Kipe]

You must use the boot file from Tony's blog and replace the one from EmpireEFI. D/L any app that lets you reveal hidden files so you can see the hidden boot file in the root directory of the HD. Trash that boot file, replace with Tony's and make invisible again. You'll be good to go and may notice that certain apps will no longer crash, or in the case of anything A/V related will no longer play too fast (and the crash lol).

 

Odd that the EmpireEFI disk specially built for i5/i7 (P55) didn't include the modified boot file already.

 

Using that my Clock is fixed.

 

However! With NullCPUPowerManagement.kext I get a geekbench of 6322 after 2 runs.

and only 3497 w/o Null... after 2 runs.

 

CPU temp stays pretty constant at ~40-50ºC with my zalman CNPS10X Quiet tuned all the way down.

 

I'm not overclocking (yet), and I have TurboBoost enabled in bios.

EDIT: Scores are with 32bit geekbench with vanilla 10.6.2 kernel i386

[Eyecube]

Man i've installed SL 6 times this past week :s

My external hard-drive i used to put a clean restore partition as well as back-up is broken and all my files get corrupted, so no more boot and all :s

Finally managed a clean install with W7 and SL on the same drive.

I've tried Geekbench but I get nearly 1k less. Could Bansaku or Rekuror (UDR3) post your latest DSDT? I'm currently using the last posted here from Bansaku if i'm not mistaken but it was before the talk of speedstepping and all. I'm assuming there's a more updated one now

 

Thank you in advance.

[Jared Kipe]

Strike that, things were set to "auto" for Turbo boost and speedstep. Enabling them has droped CPU temps 10ºC and brought my Geekbench score down to ~2900 in both arch=i386 and arch=x86_64

 

In MSRTools (and arch=i386) I only get 1.2GHz and it never moves. I've tried relaunching MSRTools during a geekbench run hoping that it wouldn't refresh itself, but its always 1.2GHz.

 

Also, my DDR3 1600 is showing as 1333 MHz in Geekbench. In BIOS it shows the same thing, but is set to profile 1 and says it should be 1600. So thats confusing. F5 bios also tries to put the cpu ratio to 17 and FSB to like 160 or something for some unknown reason. But I seem to have gotten it to stay at 20 and 133.

 

EDIT: I've turned off the XMP so my ram is truely 1333MHz now, hoping that it was trying to force an OC of the CPU or something that would keep my Speedstep messed up. It still doesn't seem to work. Very odd.

 

EDIT2: I put back in NullCPU and got up to 6400 or so in geekbench (32kernel, 32geekbench) with my XMP profile off.

My temperature is now ~30-40ºC (maybe I was wrong the first time or it was setting all AdvancedCPU stuff to Enabled in BIOS) and MSRTools says my actual CPU speed is 2.8GHz (which means Turboboost is on all the time)

[Rocco18]

Strike that, things were set to "auto" for Turbo boost and speedstep. Enabling them has droped CPU temps 10ºC and brought my Geekbench score down to ~2900 in both arch=i386 and arch=x86_64

 

In MSRTools (and arch=i386) I only get 1.2GHz and it never moves. I've tried relaunching MSRTools during a geekbench run hoping that it wouldn't refresh itself, but its always 1.2GHz.

 

Also, my DDR3 1600 is showing as 1333 MHz in Geekbench. In BIOS it shows the same thing, but is set to profile 1 and says it should be 1600. So thats confusing. F5 bios also tries to put the cpu ratio to 17 and FSB to like 160 or something for some unknown reason. But I seem to have gotten it to stay at 20 and 133.

Hey Tonymac, my Report

i have got a P55-UD3, i5-Core and ATI_4850.

I tried your iso-file, but it doenst work for me, it looks the same then before, garbled Display after a while,

i think exact at this point where is switching into graphic-Mode to selection your language.

any Idea....?

 

herman the german

[tonymacx86]

Hey Tonymac, my Report

i have got a P55-UD3, i5-Core and ATI_4850.

I tried your iso-file, but it doenst work for me, it looks the same then before, garbled Display after a while,

i think exact at this point where is switching into graphic-Mode to selection your language.

any Idea....?

 

herman the german

 

Apparently there's an issue using ATI 48xx cards with Snow Leopard Chameleon Boot CDs- specifically DVI ports. Could you try booting with -x and seeing if you can get to the installer? Thanks!

 

Edit: I could probably just add that to com.apple.boot.plist if that works. Crossing my fingers.

[grncdr]

Yep, the kexts in that post both in S/L/E and the DSDT listed for the UD4P on Tony's blog (this is why the link was to the specific post)

Was this using the Post by Treky?

[Rocco18]

Apparently there's an issue using ATI 48xx cards with Snow Leopard Chameleon Boot CDs- specifically DVI ports. Could you try booting with -x and seeing if you can get to the installer? Thanks!

 

Edit: I could probably just add that to com.apple.boot.plist if that works. Crossing my fingers.

Hey Tonymac,

yes it works, with boot_Option -x.

I just made an complete Install, after Combo-Update 10.6.2, i have to change my ID for the 4850-Card, in the ATI4800Controller.kext, now i have an clean System with QE/CI, nice, but a bit laborious

 

cheers Herman the German

[tonymacx86]

Hey Tonymac,

yes it works, with boot_Option -x.

I just made an complete Install, after Combo-Update 10.6.2, i have to change my ID for the 4850-Card, in the ATI4800Controller.kext, now i have an clean System with QE/CI, nice, but a bit laborious

 

cheers Herman the German

 

Hey Herman the German- thank you very much! I'm assuming you used the ATI CD right? Could you test the default boot CD so I know how to edit the guide?

[cart16]

I am planning on building a P55-UD2 hack and was wondering if anybody knows if the Gigabyte Geforce 9400 is fully supported, specifically the HDMI output?

[arynjon]

Thanks! I'll try it later.

 

I got sleep working. It was easy - just needed to change the BIOS to S3 sleep.

 

One other note... The DSDT Tony has for the MSI P55-GD65 has an NVidia GeForce 8800GT video card listed in it. The information wasn't causing any issues that I could tell, but the information in system profiler was wrong as well as the memory available to the card. So, I used DSDTSE to remove that bit of code and recompiled a DSDT without that info. Now my 9500GT shows up correctly using the Graphics enabler in PC-EFI.

 

If anyone is interested in the 'video clean' DSDT, let me know and I can post it.

 

Thanks to all!

[profdre]

By popular demand...use it wisely

QE_CI_Exotic_patch_10.6.2.pkg.zip

[tonymacx86]

I got sleep working. It was easy - just needed to change the BIOS to S3 sleep.

 

One other note... The DSDT Tony has for the MSI P55-GD65 has an NVidia GeForce 8800GT video card listed in it. The information wasn't causing any issues that I could tell, but the information in system profiler was wrong as well as the memory available to the card. So, I used DSDTSE to remove that bit of code and recompiled a DSDT without that info. Now my 9500GT shows up correctly using the Graphics enabler in PC-EFI.

 

If anyone is interested in the 'video clean' DSDT, let me know and I can post it.

 

Thanks to all!

 

Could you post it here so I can change the default one on the site- thanks!

[wlp5]

Hey Herman the German- thank you very much! I'm assuming you used the ATI CD right? Could you test the default boot CD so I know how to edit the guide?

 

Tony,

 

I tried both the generic iso and the ati/ud2 one. Both fail to show the welcome screen on my ud2/4850 using the dvi cable. Both succeed to show the screen with the -x option. I'm assuming the rest of the installation would go smoothly but as far as the garbled screen issue, it seems that -x works on both cds for me. Unfortunately I don't have time right now to complete the installation, I'll do it tomorrow.

 

Let me know if you 'd like me to try it out with a vga cable (got one).

 

What is that -x option anyway ? It seems to be loading tons of drivers.

[tonymacx86]

Tony,

 

I tried both the generic iso and the ati/ud2 one. Both fail to show the welcome screen on my ud2/4850 using the dvi cable. Both succeed to show the screen with the -x option. I'm assuming the rest of the installation would go smoothly but as far as the garbled screen issue, it seems that -x works on both cds for me. Unfortunately I don't have time right now to complete the installation, I'll do it tomorrow.

 

Let me know if you 'd like me to try it out with a vga cable (got one).

 

What is that -x option anyway ? It seems to be loading tons of drivers.

 

That's great news- I'm glad that the default one works with both ATI and nVidia cards. Thanks for the tests! The -x option starts the computer in safe mode- the same as if you hold the shift key on a real Mac while starting it. There's a really good outline of what happens here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1564

[Bansaku]

Interesting really, I changed my dsdt to reflect all the sata ports in the profile/ioreg and I had to stick for now with the compatible device id (8126) that we all have in our dsdt.

But the true one (3b22) *is* recognized on 10C2234 imac11,1, so I guess we just have to wait and see what new enhancements we can add in 10.6.3.

I bet we can fix the cpu info and more in the dsdt

 

Stop it, you are getting me all excited!

 

 

Man i've installed SL 6 times this past week :s

My external hard-drive i used to put a clean restore partition as well as back-up is broken and all my files get corrupted, so no more boot and all :s

Finally managed a clean install with W7 and SL on the same drive.

I've tried Geekbench but I get nearly 1k less. Could Bansaku or Rekuror (UDR3) post your latest DSDT? I'm currently using the last posted here from Bansaku if i'm not mistaken but it was before the talk of speedstepping and all. I'm assuming there's a more updated one now

 

Thank you in advance.

 

Go to Tonymac's blog and check out this DSDT section (should still be on the front page). The DSDT for UD3R there is the final, no speedstep, version. Until probably 10.6.3 we will not have any accurate SS info therefore it is blank. If you are feeling industrious you could manually add the i7 SS fix from Tony's DSDTfix. Or, try using my posted MacPro4,1 option a page or 2 back and see if that helps. Just make sure you set you Macmodel as MacPro4,1 in smbios.plist (manually or use Lizard) as well.

[Rocco18]

Tony,

 

I tried both the generic iso and the ati/ud2 one. Both fail to show the welcome screen on my ud2/4850 using the dvi cable. Both succeed to show the screen with the -x option. I'm assuming the rest of the installation would go smoothly but as far as the garbled screen issue, it seems that -x works on both cds for me. Unfortunately I don't have time right now to complete the installation, I'll do it tomorrow.

 

Let me know if you 'd like me to try it out with a vga cable (got one).

 

What is that -x option anyway ? It seems to be loading tons of drivers.

Hey

it`s the same like me, the "normal" CD works with -x, also the "ATI"-CD works with -x,

but i have to write the ID (9442) into ATI4800Controller.kext, in any case .....

 

i go to sleep now(2:00 at Night in Munich)

[Bansaku]

Odd that the EmpireEFI disk specially built for i5/i7 (P55) didn't include the modified boot file already.

 

Using that my Clock is fixed.

 

However! With NullCPUPowerManagement.kext I get a geekbench of 6322 after 2 runs.

and only 3497 w/o Null... after 2 runs.

 

CPU temp stays pretty constant at ~40-50ºC with my zalman CNPS10X Quiet tuned all the way down.

 

I'm not overclocking (yet), and I have TurboBoost enabled in bios.

EDIT: Scores are with 32bit geekbench with vanilla 10.6.2 kernel i386

 

 

The fact that EmpireEFI has no modified boot file yet is why I have not used it. Also, the modified boot fixes not just the clock, but the system; the dock was hyper fast and any movie (DVD, DivX, even YouTube) and audio file was like 1.5x the speed. So anyway, are you using one of the DSDT posted on Tony's blog or did you use them as a guide? Perhaps the problem resides there. With only the CMOS reset fix in my DSDT and using the Qoopz kernel in 10.6.1 (and NULLCPUPM.kext) I steadily got around 8600 in Geekbench(32).

 

Edit: It was 10.5.8 with Qoopz 9.8 Kernel I got 8600 in. In SL 10.6.1 I was using -force64 and working on getting things like audio and graphics working. I never did try Geekbench out until 10.6.2, which was very shortly after I built my i7 system. Before I was using a Phenom II x4 and honestly, was still getting better 32-bit Geekbench scores. TBH, in 64-bit in 10.5.8 my best Geekbench score was 8917 on that bad boy.

 

Yes, I read this speedstep thread too, but thought it would not apply to our new p55 mobos.

Because we do have speedstep by hardware, but maybe having speedstep by software could be interesting too so we should experiment (did you post your patched macpro4,1 plist file ?).

Something interesting I found in a recent MacPro4,1 profile is that it does not display CPUPLIMIT in the profile but does declare a new GPUPLIMIT field ... would it mean that it now controls the Graphics card speed in a speedstep-like fashion (?)

 

I did not post anything except the links to the pages. I wanted people to read before they tried this method because you are right, it is not meant for P55 systems. But my cpu is running fine, great in fact. I will post the plist file. Keep in mind 2 requirements must be met. First, set your MacModel to MacPro4,1. Second, HPET fixes must be in your DSDT. Oh, and remove NullCPUPM. As for the GPU SS, that may be the reason why my 4870HD's fan throttles up now and again, like after wake or doing something that tasks the GPU in any way. Before I did the MacPro4,1 fix (trick) my GPU fan would be pretty low while playing WoW. Since the fix, GPU fan varies from normal to full-tilt. Overall, performance increased slightly.

 

 

 

 

 

Hey guys, I've been following this threat, and I am thinking about building a P55 i7 build. I just had some very basic questions to ask:

1. In Tony's blog (http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/), it talks about the 'retail' disc. Is this the $29 upgrade disc for SL?

2. With the new Chameleon boot cd and retail disc installation method outlined on Tony's website, if the retail disc is 10.6.0 is there any need to use the modified kernel, or does it work vanilla kernel with the new boot cd?

3. Some MB with USB3 are coming out. Has anyone got a GB P55A-UD3R working?

Cheers

 

 

Yes, the retail disc is the $30 upgrade. They call it an upgrade because that's all SL is (refined features) but it's the real deal.

P55 systems do not support the kernel in 10.6.0 or 10.6.1, you need the Qoopz kernel. Only 10.6.2 (and assuming any after) are P55 capable of using the Vanilla kernel.

USB3 eh? I do not know if anyone has tried the P55A-UD3R. TBH I didn't know there were boards with USB 3.0 shipping yet. (and I bet the P55A is like $10 more than the non-USB 3.0....that depresses me. )

 

 

Question for you good folk; Has anyone got timed auto-sleep to work? All I get is screen sleep. If I want sleep I have to enable from Apple menu.

MacPro4_1.plist.zip

[Jared Kipe]

The fact that EmpireEFI has no modified boot file yet is why I have not used it. Also, the modified boot fixes not just the clock, but the system; the dock was hyper fast and any movie (DVD, DivX, even YouTube) and audio file was like 1.5x the speed. So anyway, are you using one of the DSDT posted on Tony's blog or did you use them as a guide? Perhaps the problem resides there. With only the CMOS reset fix in my DSDT and using the Qoopz kernel in 10.6.1 (and NULLCPUPM.kext) I steadily got around 8600 in Geekbench(32).

 

Edit: It was 10.5.8 with Qoopz 9.8 Kernel I got 8600 in. In SL 10.6.1 I was using -force64 and working on getting things like audio and graphics working. I never did try Geekbench out until 10.6.2, which was very shortly after I built my i7 system. Before I was using a Phenom II x4 and honestly, was still getting better 32-bit Geekbench scores. TBH, in 64-bit in 10.5.8 my best Geekbench score was 8917 on that bad boy.

I'm using the DSDT.aml from tonymac's blog "list", I assume I don't have to "patch" it, that it came "prepatched".

 

Otherwise, I'm running vanilla kernel from 10.6.2, /S/L/E has the AppleHDA from 10.6.1 (via tonymac) and an ethernet kext thats working fine in both x86_64 and i386.

In / I have tonymac's boot file (my clock is fine now), and in /E I have tonymac's DSDT.aml file I talked about earlier and a simple com.apple.Boot.plist. /E/E has fakesmc2.5, JMicronATA, LegacyHDA_ALC888B(via tonymac), OpenHaltRestart, PlatformUUID and NullCPUPowerManagement.kext if I want the system to be normal speed.

 

Tonymac, could you let me know what your "advanced CPU features" looks like in BIOS?

 

 

Another small oddity, my .mac/iChat encryption says that it's invalid or something. I hope there is not a problem with me requesting and using iPhone dev certificates...

 

EDIT: At FSB=160 (for getting my RAM at 1600MHz) multiplier set to 21 CPU@3.36GHz... in 64bit kernel and 64Geekbench I get 8993 Obviously with NullCPU...

[Bansaku]

EDIT: At FSB=160 (for getting my RAM at 1600MHz) multiplier set to 21 CPU@3.36GHz... in 64bit kernel and 64Geekbench I get 8993 Obviously with NullCPU...

 

Ah yes, I remember now. Let me ask you this, do you care about speed (and the loss of sleep) or do you want to get your system as vanilla as possible? Overclocking is great and all (having my RAM at 2000MHz vs 1600MHz was nice) but using the DSDT from Tony's blog will get you {censored} Geekbench (and overall performance of the OS) if you are overclocking. This is due to the HPET fix. If you use only the CMOS reset and USB/SATA fix in your DSDT, and obviously using NullCPUPM.kext, you should get around 10 000 easy. However, from my experience using Handbrake to stress CPU (it will use ALL available CPU power to compress the video) all I see is temps reaching 80'c and a pitiful 2 minutes off the total compression time. Sure, gaming is faster as well, but PS3s are only $299 now.

 

 

Edit: 2 minutes equals about 14%

Edit 2: You can probably get rid of PlatformUUID.kext now (please correct me if I am wrong people), and I recommend EvOreboot.kext to OpenHaltRestart.kext, just because it's community based rather than Psystar {censored}.

Edit 3: What's the native speed of your RAM?

[tonymacx86]

Edit 2: You can probably get rid of PlatformUUID.kext now (please correct me if I am wrong people),

 

Removing this kext makes Time Machine and SuperDuper! not work on my system. I think there's a plist edit, but I just leave it in there for now- seems to work.

[rekursor]

../.. Has anyone got timed auto-sleep to work? All I get is screen sleep. If I want sleep I have to enable from Apple menu.

You should get and try the latest osxrestart.kext 1.5 from MasterChief some reported that it fixed their timed sleep if I remember well ...

If that doesn't work, there is an app called RIP that is supposed to do the same kind of fix.

Finally, some reported they had no problem using a fakesmc/openhaltrestart/legacyhda combination.

So 3 alternatives to investigate, good luck ...

[Jared Kipe]

Ah yes, I remember now. Let me ask you this, do you care about speed (and the loss of sleep) or do you want to get your system as vanilla as possible? Overclocking is great and all (having my RAM at 2000MHz vs 1600MHz was nice) but using the DSDT from Tony's blog will get you {censored} Geekbench (and overall performance of the OS) if you are overclocking. This is due to the HPET fix. If you use only the CMOS reset and USB/SATA fix in your DSDT, and obviously using NullCPUPM.kext, you should get around 10 000 easy. However, from my experience using Handbrake to stress CPU (it will use ALL available CPU power to compress the video) all I see is temps reaching 80'c and a pitiful 2 minutes off the total compression time. Sure, gaming is faster as well, but PS3s are only $299 now.

 

 

Edit: 2 minutes equals about 14%

Edit 2: You can probably get rid of PlatformUUID.kext now (please correct me if I am wrong people), and I recommend EvOreboot.kext to OpenHaltRestart.kext, just because it's community based rather than Psystar {censored}.

Edit 3: What's the native speed of your RAM?

 

I get that overclocking and NOT using NullCPUPowerManagement do not mix. My earlier scores that are crappy and my cpu speed fixed at 1.2GHz is WITHOUT overclocking.

 

I'm using OpenHaltRestart simply because it was installed by EmpireEFI by default.

 

 

My native RAM speed is 1600MHz, and it appears the only way to get it to run at that speed is to use FSB=160 because the highest SPD multiplier is 10, so 10x133(normal) = 1333MHz, which is not what I paid for damn it! lol

I'd be ok at normal speed, or a very slight OC if SpeedStep was working right! But according to MSR Tools, my CPU speed never goes over 1.2GHz, and belive me, it is much slower in just normal stuff like a couple of Safari windows open.

[arynjon]

Could you post it here so I can change the default one on the site- thanks!

 

Here's the 'Graphic Card Free' DSDT.aml for the MSI P55-GD65.

 

Keep up the great work everyone!

DSDT.aml.zip

[Bansaku]

I get that overclocking and NOT using NullCPUPowerManagement do not mix. My earlier scores that are crappy and my cpu speed fixed at 1.2GHz is WITHOUT overclocking.

 

I'm using OpenHaltRestart simply because it was installed by EmpireEFI by default.

 

 

My native RAM speed is 1600MHz, and it appears the only way to get it to run at that speed is to use FSB=160 because the highest SPD multiplier is 10, so 10x133(normal) = 1333MHz, which is not what I paid for damn it! lol

I'd be ok at normal speed, or a very slight OC if SpeedStep was working right! But according to MSR Tools, my CPU speed never goes over 1.2GHz, and belive me, it is much slower in just normal stuff like a couple of Safari windows open.

 

 

Very odd, according to Gigabyte's own website the you should be good to go up to 2200MHz+ (OC'd I do realize that). I don't see why you do not have the 12x option. Can other users of GA-P55-UD2 boards confirm/report their findings with RAM speed? Perhaps you need to update your BIOS. I had to on my 780 chipset AMD system to get my memory to run at 1066MHz. I feel you pain. I paid good money for my OCZ Reaper DDR2 and I wanted to smash things when I couldn't get the advertised speed. As well, understand why you are overclocking. I read to many OCing forums and people have some crazy OC concepts (some I have tried myself). I see your frustration.

 

 

You should get and try the latest osxrestart.kext 1.5 from MasterChief some reported that it fixed their timed sleep if I remember well ...

If that doesn't work, there is an app called RIP that is supposed to do the same kind of fix.

Finally, some reported they had no problem using a fakesmc/openhaltrestart/legacyhda combination.

So 3 alternatives to investigate, good luck ...

 

I was thinking of that actually. I should give that a try. I did try an earlier build of his and it was no good. Time to revisit.

 

Removing this kext makes Time Machine and SuperDuper! not work on my system. I think there's a plist edit, but I just leave it in there for now- seems to work.

 

How does Time Machine not work for you? I mean does it fail to B/U properly or with errors or just cannot get past even the pref pane? I took PlatformUUID out and time machine works ok for me. I have not tried SuperDuper!, I prefer my own crazy yet efficient methods for System recovery.

[rekursor]

../.. Keep in mind 2 requirements must be met. First, set your MacModel to MacPro4,1. Second, HPET fixes must be in your DSDT. Oh, and remove NullCPUPM ../..

Well, I tested your plist file and even used your posted dsdt file to be sure I would not miss something, I also used a macpro4,1 smbios.plist file and the results are bad (40% of what I can get without your patch in 64bits and 32 bits modes).

Something might be different in your config., it might not only be a question of dsdt and macpro4,1 config and nullcpm removal ...

Of course I run a native applepowermanagement with turbo detection and doesn't have any disabler ...