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

[tonymacx86]

Thanks to everyone here for making this P55 community so full of energy and moving quickly forward!

 

I wrote up a post today describing SpeedStep and what it can do for users, and added Core i5 750 and Core i7 860 SpeedStep information in my .dsl code editing guide.

 

Advanced DSDT Fixes: Enable Native Intel SpeedStep on P55 Motherboards

http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2009/12/adv...tel-native.html

[dorkiaa]

I have also experienced a temperature drop using Tony's DSDT. thank you!

 

However, I couldn't get sleep to work. Is there anything else I need to enable besides dropping the DSDT in the appropriate location?

[tonymacx86]

I have also experienced a temperature drop using Tony's DSDT. thank you!

 

However, I couldn't get sleep to work. Is there anything else I need to enable besides dropping the DSDT in the appropriate location?

 

Make sure you remove NullCPUPowerManagement kext and IOACHIBlockStorageInjector.kext. I think that'll do it.

 

Also make sure you check all of the checkboxes in Energy Saver!

[LucaM]

I can actually boot my system without a DSDT, but without one my CMOS gets cleared on reboot. Here's a summary of how I set up my system (vaguely following Tony's guide for using a retail DVD).

 

* Use Disk Utility to copy Snow Leopard DVD to hard drive image

* Restore image onto 8GB USB stick

* Copy boot, DSDT.aml, /Extra folder (from Tony's site) onto USB stick root

* Run Chameleon (PC-EFI) on the USB stick

* Grab the Snow Leopard 10.6.2 combo updater from Apple's site

* Extract it using UNPKG and use Terminal to copy just mach_kernel to the USB stick (I didn't have luck with the Qoopx kernel he provided)

* Set BIOS as Tony recommends, boot using USB memory stick with parameters "BUSRATIO=21 CPUS=1"

* Format/partition hard drive

* Install OSX

* When it completes, but before it restarts, quickly enter Terminal

* Copy boot, DSDT.aml, mach_kernel, /Extra to hard drive

* Turn off computer manually

* Restart with USB stick in drive, tell Chameleon to boot from hard drive

* Once OSX loads, install Chameleon, use the kext utility to install the Realtek kext, NVEnabler (regular and 64), and VoodooHDA. Somewhere on the net I found a version of VoodooHDA that works with my P55-UD4P's 889a card. It's about 512kb, twice the size of the current (0.2.2?) version

* Before you reboot, also run the 10.6.2 combo updater. You should then be able to boot from the hard drive without the USB stick.

 

I'm still limited to the two blue SATA ports, and entering the BIOS takes a lot longer with the F5 BIOS, but it could be worse.

 

Great summary of the install procedure. Identical to what I ended up following, minus the fact that I can't boot without a DSDT file for some reason.

 

I extracted the DSDT file in Windows 7 directly from the F5 bios file using the utility I pointed to in the previous post and patched the DSDT file following tonymac's guide. Everything works, including all the SATA ports (sound still uses VoodooHDA, I have not had time to move to AppleHDA yet).

 

I have also noticed that it takes significantly longer to enter the BIOS setup screen after updating to F5.

 

Try my DSDT.aml file and see if that sorts out the SATA port issue for you as well.

[HerbM]

I've been cobbling together my i7-860. I need to decide on a motherboard. Now that the UD3R is on par with the UD2, that's the direction I'm leaning.

 

BUT I really want the P55A version. Here is my logic on the compatibility:

 

Best case: It works just like the P55-UD3R with the SATA 3 & USB 3.0 working like it should.

 

Probable case: The board works, but the SATA 3 & USB 3.0 do not.

 

Worst case: The board is different enough that the hack for the P55-UD3R don't work.

 

Or I get the P55-UD3R and add the SATA & USB 3 later via a card.

 

Any thoughts?

 

I'd like to go ahead and buy something. I already have the i7-860, RC 690 case, power supply (arriving today) and a H50 water cooler (on the way)

[rekursor]

../..

iStat display's only the CPU and my two HDD temps. Is it possible to have the GPU temp also? (GTX 275)

 

Finally, sorry for all the questions, any recommendations for a silent CPU cooler (I have the stock Intel but I find it to be pretty high pitched), as well as a Fan controller. I currently have the Zalman MFC1 but there's no 4pin connector (CPU cooler). Should I just leave that on auto and stick with this controller or go with one that supports a 4pin connector? (Was looking at the Zalman MFC3).

I'm afraid iStat does not do that yet, only cpu and sata drives which is nice already.

For the CPU Cooler, I bought a Zalman CNP10X and wow, my cpu temp is about 27 degC ...

It is extremely silent when you install the (provided) fan speed control pot.

I bought a fanless graphics card that exceeds my needs (making music and software) so my hackintosh is just S-I-L-E-N-T as a goldfish :censored2:

[YoYelloW]

...

 

* Once OSX loads, install Chameleon, use the kext utility to install the Realtek kext, NVEnabler (regular and 64), and VoodooHDA. Somewhere on the net I found a version of VoodooHDA that works with my P55-UD4P's 889a card. It's about 512kb, twice the size of the current (0.2.2?) version

 

 

any chance u can share this one with us?

[rekursor]

I can actually boot my system without a DSDT, but without one my CMOS gets cleared on reboot. Here's a summary of how I set up my system (vaguely following Tony's guide for using a retail DVD).

../..

* Set BIOS as Tony recommends, boot using USB memory stick with parameters "BUSRATIO=21 CPUS=1"

Be Careful here: for i5 the busratio is 20 (20x133Mhz=2.66Ghz), for i7 the busratio is 21 (21x133Mhz=2.8Ghz)

[tonymacx86]

Be Careful here: for i5 the busratio is 20 (20x133Mhz=2.66Ghz), for i7 the busratio is 21 (21x133Mhz=2.8Ghz)

 

Hey rekursor-

 

Would you mind if I added your DSDT to this database? Thanks!

 

DSDT Database for P55 Motherboards

http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2009/12/dsd...therboards.html

 

If anyone else has a DSDT extracted for any P55 board, I'm trying to collect them and post em here in one place. Let me know by PM. Thanks in advance!

[Janus Kirin]

any chance u can share this one with us?

 

Once I get home and repair my broken machine (hard drive S.M.A.R.T.'ed out on me) I'll upload it here.

[rekursor]

Would you mind if I added your DSDT to this database? Thanks!

No problem, I'll also let you know if some more complete version will appear, so that we can update this for our community, amazing work tony, I love your blog !

[profdre]

Finally I have a fully functional Hackintosh Pro!!!!!!!

 

Using Koalala's DSDT patcher I was able to extract the DSDT from the F5 BIOS of the GA-P55-UD4P board and patch it following all the advice in this thread to enable built in USB, SATA ports (both Gigabyte and P55 FINALLY!!!!!), sleep, and speedstepping (I think but my Geekbench score is still a bit low, so maybe not yet).

 

I get a 32bit Geekbench score of 7670 with i7 860, 8GB of 1333 DDR3 memory, and 1T WD Caviar Black drives (I have a 21x multiplier set in BIOS and Turbo Boost feature Enabled [instead of Auto, but it makes no difference]).

 

I am still using VoodooHDA for sound but the next step will be to try and get AppleHDA working (I have already replaced the AZAL instances in DSDT).

 

I am attaching the patched DSDT file for my motherboard and the Geekbench report.

 

EDIT: A few additional observations:

 

- Geekbench score bumped up to 8400 by connecting the hard drives to the Intel P55 SATA ports instead of Gigabyte ports. Memory performance is still the bottleneck ... I wouldn't have guessed that.

 

- Speedstep works: I checked in 32bit mode with the tools posted in this thread and the CPU clock bounces around between 1.2GHZ and 2.94GHz depending on CPU load. I haven't seen it go above 3GHz during a Geekbench run, it looks like several cores are active at all times.

 

- The hard drives appear as external with an orange icon if they are connected to the Gigabyte port, while they appear with the standard gray HDD icon if they are connected to the P55 SATA ports.

 

LucaM, you're a genius! I was searching for weeks for a solution to the not working Intel S-ATA ports. Finally you got it working This is so great, finally I can connect both hard drives plus my optical S-ATA drive. As you wrote, my Geekbench Score bumped up a bit, too, I get 7677 points (64 bit) and 7400 points (64 bit) when using the Gigabyte ports. Now as I have read access to my Win drive, can anybody recommend me a good NTFS driver for OS X with write support?

 

Just a few questions concerning your extracting process: You did not flash your BIOS, right? And I have not exact the same mobo like you, I have the one without the P with one Gigabit LAN port less and another audio chip, bust sound continues to work with your DSDT ...now my questions: I should have another graphics card, does that matter? Can I get my card working just by modifying (extracting from BIOS?) the DSDT? What about the different CPU, I use an i5, is that important?

 

And I don't understand this "speedstepping (I think but my Geekbench score is still a bit low, so maybe not yet)."

When Speedstepping is enabled, your Geekbench score will be a bit lower, because the CPU then takes a bit more time to increase the clock frequency...when speedstepping is disabled, your CPU always runs at full speed but also consumes more power...so speedstepping won't increase performance (it decreases performance by a small margin), just economy...

 

And just one suggestion for you and everybody else: when you're using the Gigabyte ports and want your hard drives shown as internal, just use the IOAHCIBlockStorageInjector.kext !

[dorkiaa]

Make sure you remove NullCPUPowerManagement kext and IOACHIBlockStorageInjector.kext. I think that'll do it.

 

Also make sure you check all of the checkboxes in Energy Saver!

After a year with a limping Leopard laptop, I'm a bit overwhelmed by this completely functioning iHack

 

The help I received on this very topic has been quite crucial to my success. Thank you all

[LucaM]

LucaM, you're a genius! I was searching for weeks for a solution to the not working Intel S-ATA ports. Finally you got it working This is so great, finally I can connect both hard drives plus my optical S-ATA drive. As you wrote, my Geekbench Score bumped up a bit, too, I get 7677 points (64 bit) and 7400 points (64 bit) when using the Gigabyte ports. Now as I have read access to my Win drive, can anybody recommend me a good NTFS driver for OS X with write support?

 

Just a few questions concerning your extracting process: You did not flash your BIOS, right? And I have not exact the same mobo like you, I have the one without the P with one Gigabit LAN port less and another audio chip, bust sound continues to work with your DSDT ...now my questions: I should have another graphics card, does that matter? Can I get my card working just by modifying (extracting from BIOS?) the DSDT? What about the different CPU, I use an i5, is that important?

 

And I don't understand this "speedstepping (I think but my Geekbench score is still a bit low, so maybe not yet)."

When Speedstepping is enabled, your Geekbench score will be a bit lower, because the CPU then takes a bit more time to increase the clock frequency...when speedstepping is disabled, your CPU always runs at full speed but also consumes more power...so speedstepping won't increase performance (it decreases performance by a small margin), just economy...

 

And just one suggestion for you and everybody else: when you're using the Gigabyte ports and want your hard drives shown as internal, just use the IOAHCIBlockStorageInjector.kext !

 

Glad it worked out for you as well! The amount of energy and enthusiasm on this thread has been really contagious and I am glad I was able to add a tiny little step to the leaps forward by tonymacx86, Bansaku, rekursor, netkas, and others.

 

You are correct, I did not flash the BIOS. I used Koalala's DSTD tool I referenced in post #798 in Windows 7 to extract the DSTD.dsl file from the BIOS for the GA-P55-UG4D motherboard downloaded directly from Gigabyte's website (version F5). This utility can patch the BIOS directly but that's very not recommended because it can brick the motherboard. Instead, you can download the BIOS file, unzip it, and run the utlity on it to extract the DSTD information.

 

You are also correct about speedstepping and Geekbench. I was being imprecise: I meant that Turboboost improves the Geekbench score (CPU is running at 2.93GHZ most of the time during the Geekbench run, instead of 2.8GHz).

 

I have now connected one of the Gigabyte ports to a front eSATA connector on the Antec P183 box and so if I do use it, it will be on an external drive. But thanks for the tip! I guess that explains why the drive icons used to be gray before the latest changes.

[jhenley01]

Hey guys, first of all great work with the sleep fix, I now have sleep enabled! My question is can anybody confirm that sleep works with the timer set? For example I can put my system to sleep manually and it works fine but when I set the system to sleep after a certain amount of time it only turns off the monitor, even gave me a kernel panic once. Just wondering if everyone is having this issue or if it's just me.

 

Speedstep seems to be working great even without adding the i5 code but my Geekbench score went from over 10,000 before the DSDT change and dropped to 4,000 after. Went into the BIOS and killed all overclocking and it jumped to 7,000 so there is something in the new DSDT that does not like overclocking. After some testing I was able to clock it back up to around 2.96GHz which gives me a score of around 8500 but as soon as I clock it to anything past 3.0GHz my score drops to around 3500. Weird.

 

Edit: After replacing NullCPUPowerManagement.kext in extra/extensions performance returns to normal but of course sleep stops working again...

[YoYelloW]

just dropping by to say that everything is working atm, applied the speedstep fix and system running like sunshine everything else works. will be checking into 32bit to see how speedstep is acting

 

edit, well seems to be workign perfect, cpu is nicely downgraded in idle towards 1.5ghz, then when encoding a movie, itll get to 2.98 or ~104% its normal speed

[dtessier]

just dropping by to say that everything is working atm, applied the speedstep fix and system running like sunshine everything else works. will be checking into 32bit to see how speedstep is acting

 

edit, well seems to be workign perfect, cpu is nicely downgraded in idle towards 1.5ghz, then when encoding a movie, itll get to 2.98 or ~104% its normal speed

 

I've just tried the tonymacx86's new fixed DSDT, and speedstep seems to work perfect (at least in 32-bit mode, I can't check in 64-bit as MSR Tools doesn't work). I've seen the speed drop down as far as 1.2 GHz (43.3%), and go as high as 3.1 GHz (111%). According to this article at Anandtech, it can go as high as 3.46GHz.

 

Here are a few things I have observed:

• On my UD2, I do not need to put the speedstep data in the DSDT; it's already in the SSDT.
  
• Sleep works perfect in 32-bit, but in 64-bit it locks up on wakeup I get the "Please hold the power button to shut down" screen.
  
• As mentioned above, MSR Tools only works in 32-bit. Is there another tool I can use to monitor speedstep? If not, maybe I can try and find the source for MSR, and port it myself.
  
• When going to sleep once, I had left MSR Tools running. Upon wakeup, MSR Tools used up 100% CPU on one core, and I could not quit it or kill it using Activity Monitor. Actually, trying to kill it locked up the entire system. So it is probably not a good idea to leave MSR Tools running when going to sleep.
  

 

Also, a quick question for Bansaku and/or rekursor. I have seen in some of your posts that you use MacPro 4,1 as the model. Is there any advantage to using that, as opposed to iMac 11,1? I'm just asking because the iMac uses the same chipset (P55) and CPUs (i5 750, i7 860)

[Janus Kirin]

any chance u can share this one with us?

 

Here's the kext I use. Hope it works for you.

VoodooHDA.zip

[rekursor]

Also, a quick question for Bansaku and/or rekursor. I have seen in some of your posts that you use MacPro 4,1 as the model. Is there any advantage to using that, as opposed to iMac 11,1? I'm just asking because the iMac uses the same chipset (P55) and CPUs (i5 750, i7 860)

Good question:

Ideally, we would have the original imacs 11,1 i5 and i7 dsdt+ssdts+smc config, then we could 'clone' most of the computer info and could get an even nicer imac i5/i7, but we don't have them yet.

On the other hand, the MacPro configuration seems to be a better choice/match for our machines because it is the closest match from our hardware (imacs have built-in irda, bluetooth, camera, mic that most PCs don't have).

[tasc]

Make sure you remove NullCPUPowerManagement kext and IOACHIBlockStorageInjector.kext. I think that'll do it.

 

Also make sure you check all of the checkboxes in Energy Saver!

 

Tonymac, thanks for posting your DSDT for the UD2! I've got it up and running and everything looks good except that sleep doesn't work for me either (tested both 32 and 64bit kernels). When I try to sleep from the apple menu, the computer does go to sleep but when it wakes up it just reboots. I'm running the newest F5 bios so I'm not sure if that could have anything to do with it. My video card is a Geforce 8800gts, which is recognized without any additional kexts.

 

I don't really care about sleep, but wanted to post my experiences in case others are troubleshooting as well.

 

Also, when I flashed to the F5 bios, my multiplier was reset to a low value and I had to crank it back up to 21x (i7 860). I was looking at the turbo frequencies available, and it looks like the max multiplier is 22x - which maxes the processor out at only 2.93GHz in all of the "turbo" modes.

[tonymacx86]

Tonymac, thanks for posting your DSDT for the UD2! I've got it up and running and everything looks good except that sleep doesn't work for me either (tested both 32 and 64bit kernels). When I try to sleep from the apple menu, the computer does go to sleep but when it wakes up it just reboots. I'm running the newest F5 bios so I'm not sure if that could have anything to do with it. My video card is a Geforce 8800gts, which is recognized without any additional kexts.

 

I don't really care about sleep, but wanted to post my experiences in case others are troubleshooting as well.

 

Also, when I flashed to the F5 bios, my multiplier was reset to a low value and I had to crank it back up to 21x (i7 860). I was looking at the turbo frequencies available, and it looks like the max multiplier is 22x - which maxes the processor out at only 2.93GHz in all of the "turbo" modes.

 

Wonder why sleep isn't working for you- did you make sure to check all of the boxes in Energy Saver?

[tasc]

Wonder why sleep isn't working for you- did you make sure to check all of the boxes in Energy Saver?

 

Tony, that was it! I just checked all the boxes in energy saver and it sleeps and wakes up as expected now. I find it a bit strange that checking those boxes fixes the reboot problem, but indeed it does! Thanks again for all your help.

[tintin220]

Is there anyone by chance using the Asrock P55 Pro? I've extracted the DSDT file but it looks nothing like the others imo and I'm really lost....

 

Sleep and Speedstep (and I guess all the other niceties like internal SATA) are the only thing I still have unfixed on my system.

[capdog]

Hey everyone, my system is running great, thanks for all the hard work!

 

Does anyone else with a GA-P55M-UD2 notice a bit of crackling/hissing sound (through the sound card) when moving windows, scrolling, etc?

[kalamaris]

I have the same (cosmetic) problem for my UD3R only it has 4 unknown ports; 2 back eSATA and the 2 internal RAID, both are JMicron (Gigabyte). I have a dummy kext that will report them as JMicron, however, it will override my DSDT and name the Intel ports JMicron as well. Unlike my previous Gigabyte boards where I can disable the un-used SATA ports, the new P55 chipset well, kinda incorporates the SATA on a PCI bus so disabling the ports in the BIOS will cause a KP at boot. Oh well, considering the great accomplishments we pioneers of the P55 chipset have achieved on this MSG board, I can sleep well at night knowing there is only a small cosmetic fix left to be done.....that is with the exception of Speedstep.

 

I found a solution for the Unknown SATA2 ports in System Profiler, by editing the Info.plist of AppleAHCIPort.Kext

I replaced this

	
	GenericAHCI

		CFBundeIdentifier
		com.apple.driver.AppleAHCIPort
		Chipset Name
		AHCI Standard Controller
		IOClass
		AppleAHCI
		IOPCIClassMatch
		0x01060100&0xffffff00
		IOProbeScore
		800
		IOProviderClass
		IOPCIDevice
		Vendor Name
		Unknown

with this

		Gigabyte SATA2

		CFBundeIdentifier
		com.apple.driver.AppleAHCIPort
		Chipset Name
		JMB363 AHCI
		IOClass
		AppleAHCI
		IOPCIClassMatch
		0x01060100&0xffffff00
		IOProbeScore
		800
		IOProviderClass
		IOPCIDevice
		Vendor Name
		Gigabyte

and the 2 Gigabyte ports regognized as "Gigabyte JMB363 AHCI"

 

Here's the modified Info.plist of AppleAHCIPort.kext (version 2.0.1)

Doesn't work if you still have IOAHCIBlockStorageInjector.kext in E/E EDIT: I messed up kexts when I tested it. It actually works with or without IOAHCIBlockStorageInjector.

Info.plist.zip