Question to all: is your graphics completely working in Yosemite?

[naquaada]

Hello,

 

I have a problem with my graphics, and after some guys also made this test, they noticed that their system isn't working completely, too.

 

My machines are two Gigabyte Z77 boards and one H61 board, with two i7 3770S and one i7 3770K. Everything is working except the graphics accelerators of the Intel HD4000 and my Sapphire Radeon HD6870. In Snow Leopard the HD6870 is fully supported.

 

So, what's the problem? Seems like nothing, I have QE/CI, Rotation, Dual-Monitor, even the HiDPI-Mode works. The problem ist invisible for the most users today. I'm an OSx86-User since Mid 2006, and my AMD Opteron 185 system is working unmodified since 2008 with Leopard 10.5.8. So I'm using the benchmark programs we used these times, and it is Xbench. Today it seems outdated, and the most users seem to prefer GPU-intensive graphics benchmarks like Heaven or Valley. But these results are not useful for daily working with the OS, and this is the problem with Yosemite. Xbench provides some very easy graphic tests, Text and User Elements. These are important.

 

Here are some results:

 

Yosemite 10.0.4 beta, Radeon HD6870: Text 350.19, GUI 68.14

Leopard 10.5.8, Radeon HD2600XT: Text 608.31, GUI 222.66

Snow Leopard 10.6.8, Radeon HD6870: Text 1259.64, GUI 752.31

 

Xbench isn't too accurate, so I let it run about three or four times. The results are impressive: The 6870 on my Snow Leopard installation (on the same i7) is fully supported and has power as hell, even the good ol' HD2600XT is much better. On Yosemite the 6870 has no HW acceleration, while experimenting with drivers and Clover settings the best GUI value was about 80, the lowest about 17. You'll notice the speed difference if you work with the OS, every clicked button or so will flicker a bit. If you have a compatible system, try to install Snow Leopard on an USB stick to test the speed difference. The Intel HD4000 has about the same results as the Radeon HD6870, although the cards are very different. That's because on both systems the Apple software renderer will be used.

 

So, that's on my system, without activated GPU. But now it'll be weird: Two friends from another forum also have ATI cards, with active GPU. But they have partially lower Xbench scores than me:

 

Radeon HD5750: Text 747.18, GUI 35.16

Radeon HD7970: Text 291.82, GUI 68.29

 

So what is this? The HD5750 has the highest Text speed, but the lowest GUI speed? We found no answer. We analyzed the loaded kexts. On my system was AppleGraphicsControl.kext was not loaded, but I modified it and it is now loaded. Still no change.

 

AMD6000Controller.kext

AMDFramebuffer.kext

AMDRadeonX3000.kext

AMDSupport.kext

AppleGraphicsControl.kext
AppleGraphicsDeviceControl.kext
AppleGraphicsDevicePolicy.kext *
AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext
AppleMGPUPowerControl.kext *
AppleMuxControl.kext
ApplePolicyControl.kext *

 

The kexts with the * are not loaded, but they are not so important because they are mainly interesting for Multi-GPU-Macs. I also experimented with dfferent framebuffers in Clover, the HD6870 should be Duckweed, but is recognized as Barts (exactly: AMD Radeon Barts XT Prototype). Different entries in Clover and modified kexts resulted in Xbench speed changes, GUI from 80 to 17. Actually I have no extra graphics card entries in Clover Configurator, I had the feeling they made everything worse. Depending on the driver and Clover setting changes I also got various card names:

 

AMD Radeon HD 6xxx 1024 MB

AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series 1024 MB

AMD Radeon HD 6870 1024 MB

AMD Radeon HD 6870 7 MB

 

The last one halso had no QE/CI and was creepy slow. I got that on the HD4000 too, with 5 MB VRAM. By the way, the graphics ID of my Intel HD4000 is nowhere listed: 0x01620009, on all three systems. And all have different video port layouts :-P The Radeon HD6870 has five ports:

 

- 1x DVI-I

- 1x DVI-D

- 1x HDMI

- 2x Mini-DisplayPort

 

The DVI-I output isn't working at all, I'm using DVI-D and HDMI.

 

What else is there. I always get the output

 

** GPU Hardware VM is disabled (multispace: disabled, page table updates with DMA: disabled)

 

at boot. On a fresh system with iTunes 12 installed, I got on the systems with the Intel HD4000 this additional message:

 

DRMStatus : iTunes/Apple Store Content Access Problem. Content playback may be disabled on this computer. You can continue using this machine, but you should contact an Apple support representative. Error code: 8877652.

 

But this problem is known. Since I'm using iTunes 10.7 again, I don't get this message again. My Yosemite system is really 'back to the roots', not only the looks is like Leopard, I also reactived older programs to work on Yosemite. If you need some hints to create a Yosemite like this you can contact me. Because I prefer a classic OS X style, I also disabled all unneccessary animations on my system. So there can't be a delay caused by graphical effects.

 

So, what could we do, since it seems that it's not my problem? First, we should get more Xbench results of different hardware, also from real Macs. Maybe anyone is interested to write a benchmark tool which is testing mainly 2D functions. But it should work on older OS X versions, too, and probably have an mode for non-QE/CI systems, too. On a Snow Leopard system on my Intel HD4000 I have no QE/CI of course, but I got a GUI speed of over 550.

 

Important is it to remove all unneccessary drivers, at least graphics drivers. Intel HD graphic drivers are loaded, even if the internal graphics card is disabled. Best create a folder S/L/Extensions (disabled) for this, best with folders for subversions. Drivers are really weird: Because they were working fine, I put all ATI*-kexts from Snow Leopard in Yosemite - it worked. Ok, no QE/CI, but it worked. After this I tried the AMD*-kexts from 10.9.5 - The system crashed. Snow Leopard is also only booting with the 10.8.0 kernel, neither 10.6.3 nor 10.6.8 are working. 10.8.5 isn't working anymore, too. Sigh.

 

Here are some links to tools which are useful for testing: Xbench, Graphics Tools of Xcode, Plasma Pong. Well, Plasma Pong may not be a benchmark program, but at least it's fun ;-) On Yosemite I got 60 fps at 1600x1200, on Snow Leopard more than 180. Quartz Debug of the graphics tools is important, and it has some hidden functions. You can activate them this way:

 

defaults write com.apple.QuartzDebug QuartzDebugPrivateInterface -boolean YES

 

and deactivate them like this:

 

defaults delete com.apple.QuartzDebug QuartzDebugPrivateInterface

 

The OpenGL Driver Monitor is a fast way to check if your GPU is working - if yes, you get some moving graphs, otherwise nothing is displayed.

Here are some links to threads with graphic problems.

 

Intel HD4000 slow GUI, Radeon HD6870 slow GUI, Radeon HD6870 not working, AMD Radeon HD7970 driver problems

 

The forum is German. Three threads are from me, I had too open so may because there was never found a solution, then the thrads fell asleep. We also got too less data to compare, and especcially not 2D data. So it could seem that it is just a problem of mine, but it isn't, even people with active graphics accelerators have slow GUI speeds.

 

And sorry for the big poll, but I want to check out as many information as possible. I hope still some forum members take the time test their systems and answer it, at least it may lead to a deeper check in Yosemite's graphic control. And a faster GUI and text output would be helpful for everyone, because this is what we need every day.

 

Greets from naquaada.

[Allan]

Everything works here:

 

Intel HD 4000 - HDMI audio/video - Full QE/CI

 

[naquaada]

Yes, I also have QE/CI and so on, everything looks fine. But is your hardware accelerator on? What are your Xbench Text/GUI scores? What do you have for bootloader settings, and which Intel device ID?

That is the problem, the people are just watching for QE/CI and think their system is working. But what is under the hood? Is every graphic component working, and what about 2D results? It's not possible to notice this just by QE/CI. There are some tests neccessary to fihd out if the hardware GPU is working, and even this doesn't mean that your system will have full 2D performance. I wasn't writing such a long thread just for fun, I want to know about more information of the graphics in Yosemite. Maybe it is a global Yosemite problem, but nobody has noticed it yet.

 

 

There are also often infos about the 'Beam Sync' function of OS X, which can be auto, enabled or diabled. It should sync the graphics card to the monitor, resulting in a fixed value in normal working modes. Is this why I get 60 fps in Plasma Pong, while Snow Leopard brings 180 fps? In both Yosemite and Snow Leopard Beam Sync is disabled. Modifying the Beam Sync status (on/off) changed nothing, it still is disabled. Maybe this function is a relict from CRT monitors - They had an electron beam to display images, and it would make sense to copule the graphic creation to it. But TFT's are working in a complete different way, so perhaps the Beam Sync function has no effect on them.

 

 

On internal Intel GPU's it is possible that multiple drivers are loaded - check for this during boot or in the console. Remove all unneccessary drivers. If isn't - always boot in kext-dev-mode=1 to find out which drivers are loaded and which not. I've heard that Clover doesn't require kext-dev-mode anymore, but I'm still using it.

[Allan]

But is your hardware accelerator on? What are your Xbench Text/GUI scores? What do you have for bootloader settings, and which Intel device ID?

 

I can't send the information that you want now, because i'm my job. But when i get home, i will send here.

[Slice]

I will be more helpful if we may speak about Mavericks 10.9.5 as I still not installed Yosemite. I just not need it.

So, what's the problem? Seems like nothing, I have QE/CI, Rotation, Dual-Monitor, even the HiDPI-Mode works. The problem ist invisible for the most users today. I'm an OSx86-User since Mid 2006, and my AMD Opteron 185 system is working unmodified since 2008 with Leopard 10.5.8. So I'm using the benchmark programs we used these times, and it is Xbench. Today it seems outdated, and the most users seem to prefer GPU-intensive graphics benchmarks like Heaven or Valley. But these results are not useful for daily working with the OS, and this is the problem with Yosemite. Xbench provides some very easy graphic tests, Text and User Elements. These are important.

 

Here are some results:

 

Yosemite 10.0.4 beta, Radeon HD6870: Text 350.19, GUI 68.14

Leopard 10.5.8, Radeon HD2600XT: Text 608.31, GUI 222.66

Snow Leopard 10.6.8, Radeon HD6870: Text 1259.64, GUI 752.31

 

Xbench isn't too accurate, so I let it run about three or four times. The results are impressive: The 6870 on my Snow Leopard installation (on the same i7) is fully supported and has power as hell, even the good ol' HD2600XT is much better. On Yosemite the 6870 has no HW acceleration, while experimenting with drivers and Clover settings the best GUI value was about 80, the lowest about 17. You'll notice the speed difference if you work with the OS, every clicked button or so will flicker a bit. If you have a compatible system, try to install Snow Leopard on an USB stick to test the speed difference. The Intel HD4000 has about the same results as the Radeon HD6870, although the cards are very different. That's because on both systems the Apple software renderer will be used.

Xbench is very old application and seems wrong for modern hardware.

So, that's on my system, without activated GPU. But now it'll be weird: Two friends from another forum also have ATI cards, with active GPU. But they have partially lower Xbench scores than me:

 

Radeon HD5750: Text 747.18, GUI 35.16

Radeon HD7970: Text 291.82, GUI 68.29

 

I also experimented with dfferent framebuffers in Clover, the HD6870 should be Duckweed, but is recognized as Barts (exactly: AMD Radeon Barts XT Prototype). Different entries in Clover and modified kexts resulted in Xbench speed changes, GUI from 80 to 17. Actually I have no extra graphics card entries in Clover Configurator, I had the feeling they made everything worse. Depending on the driver and Clover setting changes I also got various card names:

 

AMD Radeon HD 6xxx 1024 MB

AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series 1024 MB

AMD Radeon HD 6870 1024 MB

AMD Radeon HD 6870 7 MB

First means AMD framebuffer is not loaded

Second is good but DeviceID is not. What is your deviceID?

Third is good.

Forth means drives can't load VideoBios and so there will be no Acceleration.

 

Duckweed is a framebuffer name while BartsXT is a chip family name.

The last one halso had no QE/CI and was creepy slow. I got that on the HD4000 too, with 5 MB VRAM. By the way, the graphics ID of my Intel HD4000 is nowhere listed: 0x01620009, on all three systems. And all have different video port layouts :-P The Radeon HD6870 has five ports:

 

- 1x DVI-I

- 1x DVI-D

- 1x HDMI

- 2x Mini-DisplayPort

 

The DVI-I output isn't working at all, I'm using DVI-D and HDMI.

Agree

 

Take application "OpenGL Extension Viewer" and test in Snow and in Yosemite.

You may see how the card is detected by systems.

You may also compare speed as the application has benchmarking.

[naquaada]

Thanks for the reply. I'll answer in numeric order because I don't like quotes.

 

1. The system which is still my main system is Leopard 10.5.8 unmodified since 2008. So I surely won't install again an older version, just because the GUI is a bit slower.

 

2. Xbench is old, that's true. And not too accurate. And it compares to a PowerPC G5. But it is well programmed, only the Thread dest doesn't work in Yosemite. Various newer and more common programs were not working there. But just for testing 2D graphics, it is enough. If you know a better program for 2D graphics testing, which also works in 10.5 and 10.6, tell me.

 

3. These are really interesting information, thanks! I never found an explanation about the various card information displayed. And the difference between BartsXT and Duckweed is also clear now. I also thought, Barts/BartsXT and Duckweed were the same, and there was a probable driver conflict. My device ID is 0x6738 and apperas in AMDX3000Controller.kext and AMD6000Controller.kext. So, for Clover the entry must be Duckweed.

 

4. In Yosemite I have tested it, all graphs are dead, the Apple software renderer is used. I don't know about Snow Leopard, I don't know if this version of OpenGL Extensions Viewer is working in Snow Leopard. The Xbench Text/GUI benchmarks are actually in Yosemite 350.19 / 68.14 and 1259.64 / 752.31 in Snow Leopard. So, Yosemit is a *little bit* slower ;-)

[Slice]

Take into attention that Yosemite is 64bit system while Xbench is 32bit application. Leopard is 32bit as well.

2D graphics managed by ***GA.plugin. It is not a kext and not loaded as other kexts. But it works at runtime.

I see in my SLE that ATIRadeonX2000GA.plugin present.

But for modern AMD* there are no such plugin. It seems the technology was dropped - this is an answer to your topic question.

System 10.7.5 has the plugin ATIRadeonX3000GA

[naquaada]

Tzat's interesting, I'll checkbmore about this.

[Slice]

I think that all problems once we solved SMbios and DSDT ones is how to send power to IGPU.

Apple has codified  hardware so to install & use its OS  we have to use FAKE.SMC.KEXT. In some cases i think that this kext enable us to install and use OS but disables something.

Interested kext to me are AGPM, AGC, CPU management and fake itself.

I tried everything but no Rotation and no full QE/CI, but everything works well, obviously not dvd player.

I can play also you tube SD and HD videos downloaded and on line, my own videos, CS6 totally but no FinalcutX (??), Lancher App is fast and blu ray disks with external BD drive  and i don't know why mu IGPU is declared unsupported?

With dedicated kext in every version of every os i can use two monitors with VGA or HDMI.

You asked in wrong place. Choose a topic about integrated Intel graphics closer to your.

[naquaada]

Actually I have built another system with Leopard 10.5.8 and an Radeon HD2600XT, and it's amazing as ever: Up to 2560x1600 unstretched on my Full-HD-TV! But it also works pretty well in Mavericks: After the typical grey-screen-with-cursor I renamed ATIRadeonX2000.kext. Now I have full resolution, mode change, but no QE/CI and OpenGL. So I need from somwhere a patched version of ATIRadeonX2000.kext for Mavericks.

[joe75]

no support for anything under 4xx0 after 10.5 in hacks..

 

for ati graphics someone should have already said there is NO way to have "complete" working graphics since the drivers are proprietary.

[Mac Boy]

Hey naquaada, I've also noticed this slow performance!

Even though QE/CI seems to be on, it is NOT fully accelerated. For example an 8400GS on 10.5.8 and 10.6.8 has really fast benchmarks, but on 10.9.3 and 10.10.5 it is slower. I thought it was an nvidia problem, but an ati hd5450 also has the same problems.

Is there any solution?