[APP] automate-eGPU.kext by Goalque (AMD only)  

I've tried this automate-eGPU.kext successfully with RX 460, RX 560, and R9 285 on both Thunderbolt 2 and Thunderbolt 3 Macs. The nice improvement over the automate-eGPU.sh script is ease of installation and because the kext is now located in /Library/Extentions/ it may survive macOS system upgrade. When I upgraded macOS from 10.13 to 10.13 Supplemental Update, automate-eGPU.kext remained functional.

Combined with the officially supported GPUs, we now have 25 AMD graphics cards to use as plug-and-play external graphics in macOS High Sierra. If you have one of the cards listed, please give this a try and post your feedback whether this works for you.

Posted by: theitsage

I've tried this automate-eGPU.kext successfully with RX 460, RX 560, and R9 285 on both Thunderbolt 2 and Thunderbolt 3 Macs. The nice improvement over the automate-eGPU.sh script is ease of installation and because the kext is now located in /Library/Extentions/ it may survive macOS system upgrade. When I upgraded macOS from 10.13 to 10.13 Supplemental Update, automate-eGPU.kext remained functional.

Combined with the officially supported GPUs, we now have 25 AMD graphics cards to use as plug-and-play external graphics in macOS High Sierra. If you have one of the cards listed, please give this a try and post your feedback whether this works for you.

Nvidia-based Macbook is still incompatible with AMD-eGPU in high sierra 10.13 official...

@ goalque

IF you have beta or untested workarounds, I can help to test them.

Nice work! The installer however seems to have the same issues as those I experienced with mine. The output of the preinstall script is plainly ignored: While the installer seems to be supposed to check for connected enclosures and GPUs it does not fail without those being connected.

I could not yet find any way to make the installer respect its scripts, as I had special OS checks as well as TB1/TB2/TB3 checks, SIP and NVIDIA Web-Driver checks included with non of them working.

Going to try this tonight with my 15" MBP with 750m and with another 13" MBP with iGPU.

@theitsage 

Quick question: after installing is it then ok to re-enable SIP?

Thanks for posting, I'll try this tonight with my 560 on TB2.

Posted by: Rastafabi

Nice work! The installer however seems to have the same issues as those I experienced with mine. The output of the preinstall script is plainly ignored: While the installer seems to be supposed to check for connected enclosures and GPUs it does not fail without those being connected.

I could not yet find any way to make the installer respect its scripts, as I had special OS checks as well as TB1/TB2/TB3 checks, SIP and NVIDIA Web-Driver checks included with non of them working.

Can you elaborate? I've tried running the installer without an eGPU connected and saw the error message and the installer failed. I also tried running the installer with an Nvidia eGPU and encountered error which resulted in a failed installation.

Posted by: Mattlechops

@theitsage 

Quick question: after installing is it then ok to re-enable SIP?

Thanks for posting, I'll try this tonight with my 560 on TB2.

I have not tried this yet. Can you give it a shot and let us know whether re-enable SIP is a possibility?

Posted by: Rastafabi

Nice work! The installer however seems to have the same issues as those I experienced with mine. The output of the preinstall script is plainly ignored: While the installer seems to be supposed to check for connected enclosures and GPUs it does not fail without those being connected.

Should note that only on tb3-devices or iGPU-devices, at current no for nGPU-devices.

Hi !

Only for knowledge.... Mine XFX AMD Radeon 270X EDJR doesn't work.... There is a way to do some flah in this graphic card ?

Is the kext code not available (open-source) on Github? I am quite interested to see what's going on inside the kext.

I guess its sort of understandable when people/companies like Bizon are around...

Posted by: theitsage

Can you elaborate?

I'd be glad to do so!

I've tried running the installer without an eGPU connected and saw the error message and the installer failed. I also tried running the installer with an Nvidia eGPU and encountered error which resulted in a failed installation.

That is strange. In my case the installer just executes uninterrupted without having an eGPU connected. Might this be due to having an dGPU interfering with the PCI IDs? I'll pm you for some installer script that might be useful.

I posted this in the news thread where Goalque posted the beta software before seeing this dedicated thread. Reposting here since the information is relevant. 

-------

@goalque

I’ve tried your beta install with an MSI 7850 and unfortunately no luck. When I plug in the Akito (latest firmware), I see the prompt asking for me to log out to enable the GPU. When I do so, the system will briefly log into my desktop and it looks to be working but when when I drag the window to the secondary display, the system hangs. Have you seen this issue before?

Also, I don’t have a Firepro W7000 but I do have a W8000. Will support for this card come eventually?

@mac_editor: this is actually a codeless kext, only basic init and start routines implemented as IOPCIDevice. Just take a look at /Library/Extensions/.

@Rastafabi: Yep, strange. I return -1 if the preinstall validation fails, you should see an error message.

@krak3nn: I noticed and replied:
https://egpu.io/forums/news/macos-high-sierra-official-external-gpu/paged/3/#post-21684

What is your Mac? I forgot to mention that TB3 Macs (or at least 2016 13" non-touch) + R9/HD series refuse to work with this workaround, except the new RX series cards. You need a TB2 Mac.

As soon as you plug in an eGPU monitor, it goes all black or the system freezes. The system freeze is also likely if you try to run any GPGPU. As if Apple has blocked this in the firmware level. I recall that a 2016 13" w/ touch bar was one of those rare machines that worked in Sierra & automate-eGPU.sh (oddly required an USB-C device plugged in).

New device ids are easy to add, but I don't know if they work.

Posted by: theitsage

I have not tried this yet. Can you give it a shot and let us know whether re-enable SIP is a possibility?

 Works like a charm! Many thanks to @itsage and @goalque

Re-enabling the SIP doesn't effect the eGPU - still works great.

Thanks goalque!!!

Posted by: goalque

@mac_editor: this is actually a codeless kext, only basic init and start routines implemented as IOPCIDevice. Just take a look at /Library/Extensions/.

@Rastafabi: Yep, strange. I return -1 if the preinstall validation fails, you should see an error message.

@krak3nn: I noticed and replied:
https://egpu.io/forums/news/macos-high-sierra-official-external-gpu/paged/3/#post-21684

What is your Mac? I forgot to mention that TB3 Macs (or at least 2016 13" non-touch) + R9/HD series refuse to work with this workaround, except the new RX series cards. You need a TB2 Mac.

As soon as you plug in an eGPU monitor, it goes all black or the system freezes. The system freeze is also likely if you try to run any GPGPU. As if Apple has blocked this in the firmware level. I recall that a 2016 13" w/ touch bar was one of those rare machines that worked in Sierra & automate-eGPU.sh (oddly required an USB-C device plugged in).

New device ids are easy to add, but I don't know if they work.

Hey Goalque,

I am using the latest 15" MacBook Pro with Touch bar with High Sierra.

When I plug in the egpu, the system is still responsive. It only freezes when I log out to enable it. I saw your other posts about VBIOS support issues with XFX and it's possible that my MSI 7850 is having the same problem.

I'm willing to be your guinea pig for W8000 if you're interested in adding it.

ooi, why is the 580 not listed when it's supported in the Apple VR devkit?

Posted by: kurbeco

ooi, why is the 580 not listed when it's supported in the Apple VR devkit?

Because it's already supported by Apple 🙂

ah, that makes sense 😀

So the 580 will 'just work' ?

Yes, and so do other cards with the same device id 0x67DF (RX 470, RX 480, RX 570). Of course, not all TB2 Macs are compatible as @tbl777 noted.

I recommend Sapphire reference cards. The RX 580 Pulse 8GB is the only card that displays the exact video card name under Hardware -> Graphics/Displays.

Just for fun, I was playing around with your Info.plist. I'm new to this so I have a question.

Using 0x67981002 (7970x/280x) as example, the device id is not only in the IOPCIMATCH for it's respective GPU family, in this case "AMDTahiti" but calling additional kexts in wrangler and controller 1 but device 0x67901002 (7970) is only in "AMDTahiti". In your experience, how do you know what the GPU dependancies are?

Thanks for putting effort into this utility.

Impressive utility! Thanks for your work on this! For my setup I have an MSI 7850, Akitio Node, and 2013 Early MBP 15”. I upgraded to macOS 10.13 this week and ran your utility (after disabling SIP, of course). Unfortunately, upon logging out and back in, only a black screen displays on 1 of my 3 monitors. The laptop screen is also displaying a black screen. Unplugging eGPU displays the login screen successfully. 

I ran the uninstalled for the previous script I was using (from this site) for macOS 10.12.6. 

As a test, I dropped an MSI 390 into my Node. Same black screen. I tried an Asus and powercolor 380 for fun and received the same result as well. I realize the 380 is not supported, but I’m just sharing my tests with you.

I borrowed a friends TB3 Dell and upgraded the Nodes firmware to be latest (June 2017).

Do you have any idea what I can try next? Thanks in advance!

Posted by: ENickRyan

Impressive utility! Thanks for your work on this! For my setup I have an MSI 7850, Akitio Node, and 2013 Early MBP 15”. I upgraded to macOS 10.13 this week and ran your utility (after disabling SIP, of course). Unfortunately, upon logging out and back in, only a black screen displays on 1 of my 3 monitors. The laptop screen is also displaying a black screen. Unplugging eGPU displays the login screen successfully. 

I ran the uninstalled for the previous script I was using (from this site) for macOS 10.12.6. 

As a test, I dropped an MSI 390 into my Node. Same black screen. I tried an Asus and powercolor 380 for fun and received the same result as well. I realize the 380 is not supported, but I’m just sharing my tests with you.

I borrowed a friends TB3 Dell and upgraded the Nodes firmware to be latest (June 2017).

Do you have any idea what I can try next? Thanks in advance!

IF your 2013-early Macbook is a Nvidia-based Macbook, there is not any support for AMD-eGPU under high sierra at current, whatever you do.

Thanks! That explains it. I was previously understanding that I could not drop an Nvidia-based card into the eGPU enclosure. I didn’t realize the dGPU (GT650M) mattered too. 

To confirm, I would encounter the same problem even if I bought an RX 480?

Posted by: ENickRyan

Thanks! That explains it. I was previously understanding that I could not drop an Nvidia-based card into the eGPU enclosure. I didn’t realize the dGPU (GT650M) mattered too. 

To confirm, I would encounter the same problem even if I bought an RX 480?

yes, as long as you have Nvidia-based Macbook such as gt650m or gt750m under high sierra 10.13, you have nothing to do with Nvidia-eGPU or AMD-eGPU.

Maybe here has a compromised workaround posted by mac_editor

https://egpu.io/forums/mac-setup/nvidia-workaround-for-high-sierra-egpu-acceleration/#post-17121

I wondered if disabling dGPU could be a workaround. Thanks for sharing. I’ll try it and report back with the result!

Same result as before sadly. Oh well, I’ll use my DisplayLink dock for now to drive my screens and check back here periodically to see if eGPU is resurrected.

Running macOS 10.13 with AMD Radeon Pro WX7100 in a Sonnet eGFX breakaway Box fails.

"Your eGPU [0x67c41002] is not supported."

Anyway support for this card could be added?

Posted by: mgarito

Running macOS 10.13 with AMD Radeon Pro WX7100 in a Sonnet eGFX breakaway Box fails.

"Your eGPU [0x67c41002] is not supported."

Anyway support for this card could be added?

Possibly. I can build a new installer in the next few days.

Thanks in advance!

@mgarito

My build environment is on macOS 10.13.1 beta so I wouldn't want to risk breaking the current functionality.

Please try the following commands:

1) Append device id:

match_entry="IOKitPersonalities:AtiGpuWrangler:IOPCIMatch"; match_entry2="IOKitPersonalities:Controller:IOPCIMatch"; match="$(/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print :"$match_entry /System/Library/Extensions/AMD9500Controller.kext/Contents/Info.plist) 0x67C41002"; match_entry_set="Set :"${match_entry}" "${match}; match_entry_set2="Set :"${match_entry2}" "${match}; sudo /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "$match_entry_set" /System/Library/Extensions/AMD9500Controller.kext/Contents/Info.plist; sudo /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "$match_entry_set2" /System/Library/Extensions/AMD9500Controller.kext/Contents/Info.plist

2) Rebuild caches (assuming that you've the pkg on the desktop):

pkgutil --expand ~/Desktop/automate-eGPU-BETA-v010.pkg /tmp/expanded.pkg; cd /tmp/expanded.pkg/automate-eGPU.pkg/Scripts; chmod +x postinstall; sudo ./postinstall

(don't run them twice)

And restart. No clue if this works but that's my best guess 🙂

And still have the error: Your eGPU [0x67df1002] is not supported.

@beshkenadze you have an AMD GPU [0x67df1002] that's natively supported by macOS 10.13 High Sierra. You do not need this workaround and therefore saw that message when running this installer.

Great to see that you are still at it @goalque! I thought that, after supporting eGPUs natively we would not have to hack around issues anymore. Guess we still need your skills 😀

Understood, but for hot-pluggable usage still need to logout?

Any news about this project?