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HOW TO: INSTALL RADEON RX 480 GPU IN MACOS SIERRA
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How to: Install Radeon RX 480 GPU in macOS

Sierra
09.30.2016

In a sea of new graphics cardsthe Radeon RX 480 currently gives the best value for performance. After years of
falling behind, AMD aims to win back market share with the introduction of its Polaris GPU lineup. The Polaris 10
GPUs include the RX 470, RX 480 and another high-end card that has yet to be announced. Luckily for us Mac Pro

tower owners, macOS 10.12 Sierra brought support for these new AMD graphics cards.

Since macOS 10.12 Developer Beta 2, there have been references and drivers for Polaris 10 (Ellesmere personality)
and Polaris 11 (Bafn personality). In particular, AMDRadeonX4000.kext contains supporting PCI IDs for Polaris 11
GPUs (0x67EF1002, 0x67FF1002, 0x67XX1002). Thanks to early reports from Netkas (http://netkas.org/?p=1440),
you can spoof the personality of a Polaris 10 GPU to make it work under macOS. The PCI ID for both RX 470 and
RX 480 is 67DF so adding 0x67DF1002 to AMDRadeonX4000.kext enables full acceleration for these cards.

INSTALL AMD RADEON RX 480 GPU IN TOWER MAC PRO WITH A 6-PIN PCIE POWER CABLE.

When 10.12.1 Beta was released on September 21st, I discovered a new AMDRadeonX4100.kext le. This new

kext solely contains support for Polaris GPUs. Its possible Apple is ramping up development for updated Macs
which will use one of these AMD graphics cards. Alongside the new kext, the drivers were also improved. The

Radeon RX 480 now runs stably and is functional with the exception of the usual missing boot screen for non-EFI

GPUs.

Without further ado, lets get your RX 480 working with macOS in either a tower Mac Pro or an eGPU build for
Macs with Thunderbolt ports (https://www.theitsage.com/thunderbolt-egpu-beeng-skinny-macs/).

RX 480 macOS Sierra How-to

1. We need to disable SIP (System Integrity Protection) in order to modify system les. Enter Recovery Mode by

holding Command and R keys at Boot. Open Terminal under Utilities on the top menu and type the following:
 csrutil disable
reboot.

2. Without any modications, your Mac Pro should be able to boot to the Desktop successfully with aRadeonRX
480. All visuals will be slow or lagging due to no acceleration. To enable full acceleration and Metal support, we

need to add the RX 480s PCI ID toAMDRadeonX4100.kext. Locate this le in /System/Library/Extensions then

right click and choose Show package content (AMDRadeonX4000.kext for 10.12).

3. Drag the info.plist onto the Desktop in order to edit. Open the copy of info.plist on your Desktop in TextEdit then

locate the string with PCI IDs. Add 0x67DF1002 as shown below. Drag and drop this edited plist back into

AMDRadeonX4100.kext.
4. Download and run Kext Utility (http://cvad-mac.narod.ru/index/0-4) to repair kext permissions. Restart your Mac

Pro when done and you should have full acceleration.

5. About this Mac will show the graphics card name as AMD R9 XXX. In order to show AMD RX 480, you can edit
the controller le inside/System/Library/Extensions/AMD9500Controller.kext/contents/MacOS. Download and open

this controller lein iHex (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ihex-hex-editor/id909566003?mt=12). Do a text search

for XXX then change it to your GPU name.

6. eGPU setup will need the help of Goalques automated-egpu script (https://github.com/goalque/automate-
eGPU).This script automates Nvidia and AMD eGPU setup on OS X.

Good luck and have fun!

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