EVGA X58 bios changes

[banini_jeque]

Hey everybody, this is my first post!

I don't know if we're allowed to mention anything about hackintoshes on here, so if we're not, please let me know, as this post, and my whole reason for joining actually regards hackintoshes. I didn't notice anything in the rules.

More specifically, I have an EVGA X58 SLI3 motherboard that I have almost completely successfully hackintoshed, with one problem, that I can't get the native cpu power management driver to load without a kernel panic.

You need more background to really get a picture of whats going on.

Okay, so, if you have a Gigabyte, Intel, ASUS, or maybe some other maker's X58 chipset board, you can get the native power management driver to load in Mac OS X. All it takes are the right bios settings, and a couple of dsdt table overrides.

If you have an EVGA X58 series motherboard that's about a year old, it is also possible, but you have to use the bios version for your board that was the last version before version 44, when they changed their naming convention. So for example, if you have the EVGA X58 SLI, you can use bios version SZ2Z, and if you do the right bios settings and dsdt overrides, you can load the native pm drivers in OS X. If you have the EVGA X58 SLI LE, you can use version S71H, etc. As soon as you update to version 44 or anything newer, you will get a kernel panic even if you're using the same settings and overrides you used with SZ2Z. I've studied this for months now and these are the observations that I have made.

So, clearly something was changed in version 44 that is causing this. It appears to be a problem unique to Mac OS X, as from what I've seen, Windows users can run pm on these boards with no problems. EVGA's listed changes are support for 32nm i7s, a new "Turbo Performance" option (which is separate from the Turbo Mode of the CPU), and a fix for running your ram at 1866Mhz.

Out of the three, I would suspect the "Turbo Performance" option, and indeed if you look at EVGA's forums there is some talk of it causing various issues early on, especially for 45nm chips, which is what I have (i7 950). However, that might not be what the problem is. I've tried booting with it disabled and with it enabled and it makes no difference.

What I want to do, and what I'm hoping to learn how to do by posting on here, is to be able to open up bios versions SZ2Z and 44, and see exactly what the changes are. I don't necessarily need to modify a bios, but I'm hoping that a proper study of the changes between those two versions will reveal an additional dsdt override that could be made, or something like that.

And just so you know I'm not that stupid, I know I can't and shouldn't use either of these bioses on my board since it's a slightly different model. I can only use version 77, but since I still have the same problem, and 44 is where it seems to have started, these are the ones I think need to be examined to solve the problem.

Here's the links to the two versions if anyone wants to have a look:
SZ2Z
44

[1234s282]

Unfortunately the DSDT mods are the only things we used to do for hackintoshes , but none of these seemed to be succesful and we stopped

Im not sure how to solve your problems but perhaps another member may , i also suggest the Insanely Mac forums for hackintosh related enquiries as they have a team of dedicated people

Admin

[banini_jeque]

Yeah I've been all over insanelymac and stuff. That's how I've sort of learned the issue is isolated at least to a change between the two bioses, but I guess if it's compiled code like a routine somewhere it would be hard to tell. I've actually built a few hackintoshes successfully, so I have a fair level of experience, but this board seems like it needs some next level mods to make it work. I did an acpidump in linux, and then I guess you can run a bunch of synthetic tests on the dump for errors and stuff, so maybe something will turn up.