HOW TO HACKINTOSH AMD GRAPHICS CARDS IN SIERRA 10.12.6+

It’s super easy now to get AMD graphic cards working on  macOS Sierra 10.12.6 and later only requiring a few baby steps. This guide should work for most if not all AMD Polaris Graphic Cards.

Right now I’m running an AMD Sapphire 560 Pulse 2GB in Sierra 10.12.6. Sleep and wake work reliably with this card with no weird restarts yet. Also I don’t have to use a helper iGPU/secondary GPU to get it working. This is because of the support brought for Radeon Pro cards beginning with Sierra 10.12.6 as part of the new mac releases.

A problem before the Sierra 10.12.6 update was the number of steps one had to go through to get AMD card’s working with the right framebuffers, which could be quite confusing for a beginner, while also being restricted to what cards and manfucaturer you could use. In addition, you had to use a second graphics card for hardware acceleration, but that is no more.

AMD VS. NVIDIA

It’s amazing that support is now available for AMD graphic cards  for hackintosher’s as we now we won’t have to rely on Nvidia for their web drivers with native mac support for AMD hardware. Some people have problems with Nvidia cards working in applications like the Adobe suite where the program would just crash on them. I’ve also found the sleep/wake is perfectly reliable with AMD cards while Nvidia can be spotty when paired with certain motherboards.

This shouldn’t be an issue with the natively supported AMD cards which will arguably run better and more reliably as their Nvidia counterparts because macOS favors AMD hardware. You can expect applications like Final Cut Pro X to render faster for an equally performing/priced Nvidia Card if you make the switch over to AMD.

I’ll teach you how to do it with a couple easy steps.

HOW TO DO IT:

In order to get AMD GPU support on a PC you of course first need to install macOS or update an existing hack to High Sierra 10.13 / Sierra 10.12.6. If you need a guide to fresh install macOS check out the guide

If you rather stick with Sierra over the newer High Sierra then Sierra 10.12.6 is a requirement for its Radeon Pro support.

AMD HACKINTOSH STEPS:

Once done updating to macOS 10.12.6 or later you can follow the steps below.

Note:

If you are using anything higher than a 1080p display you will to use Display Port for your output to display at 60hz. If you’re display doesn’t have a Display Port input you can use an adapter: Best Hackintosh 4k HDMI to Display Port (DP) adapter

STEP 1. MOUNT EFI PARTITION

1. Download Clover Configurator
2. Open Clover Configurator
3. Select Mount EFI under TOOLS
4. Click Mount Partition for Install macOS….
5. Click Open Partition (This is your EFI Folder)

STEP 2. VERIFY EMUVARIABLEUEFI-64.EFI

Some motherboards such as those by Gigabyte and ASROCK will require EmuVariableUefi-64.efi for NVRAM detection, without it you wont get hardware acceleration on your AMD card.

• Verify file EmuVariableUefi-64.efi exits in location /Volumes/EFI/EFI/CLOVER/drivers64UEFI of your mounted partition.

If it’s not there add EmuVariableUefi-64.efi:

1. Open Clover Configurator
2. Mount your EFI Partition
3. Open config.plist using Clover Configurator
4. Click Install Drivers on left column of Clover Configurator
5. Click EmuVariableUefi in bottom left box.
6. Verify EmuVariableUefi-64.efi exists in /Volumes/EFI/EFI/Clover/Drivers64UEFI/

STEP 3. ENABLING AMD CARDS

1. Download latest release version of Lilu.kext
2. Download latest release version of WhateverGreen.kext
3. Unzip both RELEASE.zip downloads
4. Copy Lilu.kext and WhateverGreen.kext from their respective RELEASE folders
5. Place them in EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other of your mounted EFI partition

STEP 4. BIOS SETTINGS

1. Restart your computer
2. Enter BIOS
3. Verify that integrated graphics is disabled (if you can disable it)
4. Verify that GPU is set to PEG/PCIe priority (This is super important as leaving it on Auto will cause performance issues)
5. Save & Exit
6. Boot your hackintosh

I noticed that booting and sleeping the AMD card is a little slower than my GTX card, becoming much more noticable in High Sierra but to me it’s worth it as AMD is what’s optimized to run on macOS and weird issues with Nvidia Web Drivers are nonexistent running with Radeon.

STEP 5. (OPTIONAL) COMPATIBILITY WITH KABY LAKE AND COFFEE LAKE

If you have a Coffee Lake or Kaby Lake Processor and use graphic intensive programs like FCPX or play games on macOS the ig-platform-id should be set to prevent crashing and optomize performance when using a dedicated graphics card.

1. Open config.plist in Clover Configurator
2. Click Graphics on the left-side Column
3. Type 0x59120003 in the ig-platform-id box
4. Save config.plist

STEP 7. (OPTIONAL) FREEZE PREVENTION

If you own an RX 560 like me running High Sierra without this fix may cause your hackintosh to have slow screen waking times and your mouse to freeze at random times while using it. To make this fix work you have to be using WhateverGreen.kext version 1.1.3 or later Here’s how to make that go away:

Add the boot flag -rad4200 in the Custom Flags textbox

1. Verify WhateverGreen.kext is the latest release in your kext folder /EFI/Clover/kexts/Other
2. Open config.plist in Clover Configurator
3. Click Boot on the left-side Column
4. Locate the Custom Flags textbox under Arguments
5. Save Config.plist

Make sure to restart your Hackintosh to apply these settings.

STEP 8. (OPTIONAL) HVEC SUPPORT

If you plan on using video editing software like Final Cut Pro you will need HVEC support. To get HVEC support you need a CPU that supports it i.e. Haswell/Sky Lake/Kaby Lake/Coffee Lake.

You will also need to follow this additional guide as some of the settings you set here need to be changed to enable the iGPU alongside the AMD graphics card as well as more settings.