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Comment by rubatuga | Hacker News Reader

I'm not quite sure why they say q35 chipset has bugs, I'm currently running Mojave without bugs on a q35 configuration. Also, they're making questionable choices regarding keyboard and mouse configuration. What you should really be doing is passing through a complete USB3 controller (either from the Chipset or from an external USB3 pcie card), with a mouse and keyboard attached to it. Finally, I would recommend using an AMD RX500 series card, which has native support in macOS, and absolutely no extra Clover flags required (10.13.6 and up).

Also, the guide assumes a lot from the reader (someone who already knows how to do PCIe passthrough in qemu).

I wrote a guide here that explains everything I wrote above, and actually starts from the basics:

https://github.com/yoonsikp/macos-kvm-pci-passthrough

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This is something I've considered for some time now. I have a beefy skylake Xeon with plenty of ECC-ram and VT-d, I'm considering letting it replace my Mac Pro at home using a VT-d passthrough for GPU. Basically I prefer macOS as my desktop OS but running KVM in the bottom or similar hypervisor would be so neat (I'd prefer illumos but that feels like a nogo for these usecases).

Do you know how a GTX780 would behave in macOS with VT-d, one was gifted to me from a friend and colleuge and if it's usable for this I'd like to use it (I have no real need for a beefy GPU as long as I can run a couple of high resolution monitors). If not which is the cheapest (and least powerconsuming) GPU you'd recommend?

Haven't been in the Hackintosh scene for a good 8 years so things seems to have changed quite a bit since then.

I know my 750ti worked without needing drivers in macOS, but I think it needed some fiddling with clover. 780 might not work out of box, but I think it will work the web nvidia drivers.

Oh I see. Would you recommend against using a KVM+VT-d macOS install as primary desktop/workstation?

I'd probably put passthrough on USB and use a USB-dac for audio and add some decent bluetooth hardware for handoff, keyboard, mouse/touchpad, etc. I'd really like to have zvols underneat passed to the macOS-machine, I suppose I would have to use a HFS-sparseimage or similar for primary OS disk, but it would be nice to mount the zvols directly via OpenZFS for additional partitions. I would love to leverage LZ4 for document storage etc.

I can confirm that the GTX780 works. You will need to install the nvidia web drivers after macOS installation. Tried even using it with tensorflow.

Regarding your first question: I have tried virtualized and bare metal macOS (hackintosh) and I would recommend not virtualizing it if it's gonna be your primary workstation. Currently my main workstation is a hackintosh after trying first using it in a VM.

Virtualizing works, but under a VM there are several minor annoyances here and there that might drive you crazy (most of them are UI related, some app crashes, etc.). It would be perfect for example for a xcode build server. thought. YMMV!

You could virtualize it and use it as your main. I have not noticed any issues compared to a bare metal install, at least on High Sierra.

With GPU pass through, pretty much performs the same too... I've maybe seen a 5% performance hit at most after running some benchmarks. I also passed through an NVMe drive directly to the VM which avoids having to use an emulated storage controller.

I were considering that as well but it would be very nice to run the entire system from a ZVOL for snapshots, LZ4, dataintegrity, etc. Considering maybe using a passthrough block-device only for os and use attached ZVOLs for userdata. Would be cool to be able to z-send user data to a remote backup as well.

Passing a full controller isn't always an option, some controllers don't like being passed and/or suffer from reset bugs and not all machines even have enough controllers. And of course, if you pass a full controller, you can't use your keyboard/mouse on the host until you shut down the VM.

I’ve tried two different platforms, and the integrated USB controllers worked even after multiple reattachments. But you’re right, you lose the ability to shut down the host, unless you unplug the keyboard and plug it into a USB port that hasn’t been passed to the VM. Still, this wasn’t a problem for me since I wrote a script that would ssh into the host from the VM and start the shutdown sequence.

Or you just configure your power button to shut down the computer.

The main userbase of https://passthroughpo.st are Linux users first, thus need access to the host as well. While passing a full controller would indeed be the most reliable way (if your controller doesn't have reset bugs and if you have enough controllers available), it isn't always the most practical way.

Are there a list of supported AMD cards somewhere?

Check the section "Supported eGPU configurations" on this page: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208544

This should also apply to internal GPUs.

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