Hello, all!

 

So, long story short, I have been using a Dell T7610 (dual E5 v2) as my primary workstation with a Win10 and a macOS VMs so I can easily swap between.  I decided I wanted to get some newer CPUs, so I bought a Dell T7910 (dual E5 v4) and planned to swap the two graphics cards (one Nvidia 980ti, one Radeon Vega64) into the newer T7910 machine once everything was set up.

 

I decided to try and keep things simple I would start with fresh versions of both the Windows 10 & macOS VMs.  I got both the new VMs working on the new machine with older video cards (again, one nvidia, one radeon (an RX 570)), and after swapping the newer graphics cards from the T7610 into the T7910, setting up Win 10 with its Nvidia 980ti card went swimmingly, but the macOS with the Vega64 transition has been a no-go. The Radeon Vega worked fine running macOS in the older T7610, and in the newer T7910 macOS works great with a Radeon RX 580.

 

When I put the Vega64 into the T7910, it acts very strangely - details below, but first what I've done.

 

I've dumped the video bios and use it, even though the vega64 is the 2ndary video card.

I've tried two different PCI-E slots on CPU1 (and even a CPU2 slot) with no change in behaviour.

I've tried using the Vega 64 within Windows 10 & Linux VMs with similar bad behaviours, but, not always, which is weird.

 

I don't see the Tiano Core logo indicating its starting - what seems to be going on is that the Vega 64 does not want to display graphics until the the VM is completely up, which makes me suspect the vbios, but it behaves the same both with and without me supplying one.

What is weird is that it will sometimes work (with Win10 or Linux), and sometimes the VM completely fails to boot.  It never works with macos.  It really doesn't seem to work well when it is the only/primary card in the system - VM's never boot when it isn't the 2ndary card.

 

Does anyone have any suggestions on what I might do?  Any one seen anything like this?

Thanks!

 

(ps. I moved this from the VM forum to here because there was no response there, and this seems to be more of a compatibility problem with the Dell and the Radeon, rather than something specific to the VMs - I apologize if that isn't appropriate!)

Edited January 25, 20215 yr by IronRooster

I did finally figure out what I need to do to get it to work reliably.

 

It is very ugly and hacky and makes me think twice about doing it long term, but it is reliable for now.

 

There are two big things:

 

1) I have to completely power the physical machine off to get it to work.  Nothing short of a complete power off works - I am assuming this is to do with the reset not working nicely on AMD cards.

 

2) I cannot have my 4K monitor plugged in on VM bootup, otherwise it fails to boot! (I have a secondary 1080p monitor that I leave plugged in)

 

I have my machine type set to be a q35 5.1, and used OpenCore from SpaceInvaderOne's macinabox.

I read the ROM from the card and have specified that.

I also set up the graphics card and the audio part together like this:

 

    <hostdev mode='subsystem' type='pci' managed='yes'>
      <driver name='vfio'/>
      <source>
        <address domain='0x0000' bus='0x08' slot='0x00' function='0x0'/>
      </source>
      <alias name='hostdev0'/>
      <rom file='/mnt/user/roms/msi-vega64.rom'/>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x01' slot='0x00' function='0x0' multifunction='on'/>
    </hostdev>
    <hostdev mode='subsystem' type='pci' managed='yes'>
      <driver name='vfio'/>
      <source>
        <address domain='0x0000' bus='0x08' slot='0x00' function='0x1'/>
      </source>
      <alias name='hostdev1'/>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x01' slot='0x00' function='0x1'/>
    </hostdev>

 

 

Hope this helps anyone else struggling with Vega cards!