No 2D acceleration in macOS/hackintosh

[Anonymous]

Hi guys. I'm running Autocad 2020 trial here on a freshly installed hackintosh which runs macOS Mojave 10.14.4. The CPU is Ryzen 2700X and the GPU is Vega64. Every other app works fine, including SketchUp: I get full GPU acceleration as expected. However in Autocad 2D wireframes are extremely slow to redraw. Whenever I zoom in/out I get visibly slow redraw times, not even close to the performance of even a 3-year old macbook with an iGPU. Which tells me that somehow Autocad doesn't want to use this Vega's acceleration. I'm trying to understand how to mitigate this and force it to use acceleration. Naturally I've already tried each and every GRAPHICSCONFIG option and various files, including some basic sample demo drawings - screen performance is consistently very slow and sluggish.

Here's my tuner log in case someone can make any sense of it:

Card Name
Driver Version
Tuning Date
Virtual Device OGL
Feature Mode -3
Feature Mode Available -3
Config Level -3
Hardware Available 1
Hardware Recommended 1
Hardware Enabled 1
Hardware ID 8
Certification Status 5
Hardware Feature Level 1
Software Feature Level 1
ACAD_FullShadows 1 1 1
ACAD_PerPixelLighting 1 1 1
ACAD_WhipArc 0 0 0
ACAD_LineSmoothing 1 1 1
ACAD_TextureCompression 1 0 0
ACAD_AdvancedMaterial 1 1 1
ACAD_GlowHighlighting 1 1 1

[maxim_k]

Welcome to Autodesk Forums!

Hi @Anonymous

Do you have "2D Wireframe" Visual Style active in the test drawings?
What if you will set LINESMOOTHING System Variable to OFF instead of ON (default value)?

[Anonymous]

Hi. Yeah, I have tried enabling and disabling LINESMOOTHING with the net result that it feels a tad snappier with it set to OFF, but nothing major, redrawing lag still persists.

The effect is especially apparent when there are progressively more objects in view (i.e. when zooming out).

I have 2D Wireframe enabled, other modes are even more sluggish.

[maxim_k]

If you at on Hackintosh, do you use native drivers for Vega64 card? Or some special kext?

[Anonymous]

It's supported natively by Apple, no drivers were needed or installed. Acceleration is definitely enabled in SketchUp as well as in games. Opening the same file in SketchUp I get full acceleration (at least if we consider the zooming in/out part), on par with what I get in Windows. It's Autocad graphics performance that is markedly different.

Since I've tried a lot of things already, my pet theory at the moment is that Autocad relies on GPU's Device ID string to decide whether or not full acceleration should be enabled. My Vega probably has a different ID from what is found in hi-end iMac Pros, for example, even though the GPU family is the same, so that's one thing that could prevent Autocad from enabling acceleration profiles. That's only a theory though and I don't know how to test it out. I could perhaps fake Device ID to match a known Mac GPU, but that's going to take a lot of digging around. Wish I could get a debug log somehow.

[maxim_k]

>>>>my pet theory at the moment is that Autocad relies on GPU's Device ID
>>>>string to decide whether or not full acceleration should be enabled
I'm not sure about that.

I think that AutoCAD developers are on the way of changing AutoCAD for Mac graphics engine due to the fact that Apple moves from OpenGL to Metal. You can see, that there is no more "Activate OpenGL Profile" option in AutoCAD preferences in 2020 version.

Do you have a lot of text (dimension) objects in your drawings?
If yes, try to set DTTEXT sys var to 0 (zero). Do you see any difference?

Interestingly, I also have problems with graphics performance in AutoCAD on Mojave on my Mac (MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013) with NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M graphics card), but disabling LINESMOOTHING greatly improves zoom operations.

[Anonymous]

Does SketchUp use Metal? Not a whole lot of text in the drawings, DTTEXT doesn't make any noticeable difference.

Don't know about 2013 Macbooks, but 2015, I believe it was that year, Macbook display those files just fine. Have you tried installing Windows on that Macbook of yours?

LINESMOOTHING does improve the situation somewhat, but given the vast amount of power that Vega 64 possesses  (and Ryzen 2700X is a beast as well) I wouldn't call the performance appropriate. And it quickly degrades when zooming out into complex drawings anyway, so that's a stopgap solution at best.

There's definitely something not right with acceleration on a Mac, need to find a way around it as I'm not holding my breath for Autocad migrating to Metal in the near future. FWIW, I've tried running Autocad 2016 trial in High Sierra on the same hardware - zero changes compared to Mojave. Maybe someone from Autodesk can chime in and share the sacred knowledge of how acceleration works (or doesn't) on Macs? There's a list of certified GPUs for instance but it got last updated in 2016.

[maxim_k]

>>>>Does SketchUp use Metal?
Don't know.

>>>>Have you tried installing Windows on that Macbook of yours?
Yes, AutoCAD 2020 and earlier versions run just fine inside Windows 10 Parallels virtual machine, although I have not tried Bootcamp.

>>>>>but given the vast amount of power that Vega 64 possesses
Did you have an opportunity to run AutoCAD on real Mac with Vega 64 graphics card (iMac Pro)? Any, even very productive, graphic card means nothing without good software that controls it.
I'm sure that there could be some incompatibility between graphics card software (Apple side) and AutoCAD for Mac graphics engine (Autodesk side).

>>>>>Maybe someone from Autodesk can chime in and share the sacred knowledge of how acceleration works (or doesn't) on Macs?
I think - no, they will not share this information.

BTW if I disable dedicated NVIDIA Graphics card and MacBook uses integrated Iris Pro, the performance is very good, the same as with LINESMOOTHIG turned off with NVIDIA Graphics card.

[Anonymous]

That is interesting, regarding how it behaves when you switch to Iris Pro.

I haven't tried the app on iMac Pro yet, but I have tested in on a 2018 MacBook Pro, runs just fine there.

I can't imagine it being even remotely slow on an iMac Pro, there'd be a huge outcry from people who paid lots of money for that hardware and cannot use it just because someone forgot to enable acceleration for their Vegas.

I can't run virtualization software on this hack, unfortunately, because that software needs legacy Intel instructions not present on Zen architecture. Only VirtualBox works but it's useless since it barely handles 2D acceleration let alone anything complex.

I'll try to spoof Device ID numbers and see if that makes any difference.

Oh by the way, Vega64 is not the only GPU I've tried in this build, I've also swapped it for RX470 that I had lying around, and again, there was no perceivable difference.

[maxim_k]

Could be so that the problem is in AMD processor?

[Anonymous]

It could very well be, given reports of sporadic lack of GPU acceleration in various apps on Ryzens specifically, but that was with RX series I believe, not Vega. I don't have access to Intel hardware to test it on, unfortunately.

Speaking of the Tuner Log - does anyone know how to read it?

[maxim_k]

Tuner Log option appeared only in 2020 version, there is no such option in -GRAPHICSCONFIG command in earlier versions of AutoCAD for Mac.
I get the same Tuner log on my side as yours and I think that this feature is not implemented completely.

I also have found this:
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/learn-explore/caas/simplecontent/content/autocad-hard...
Look at the topic #6.

[Anonymous]

So you get the same Tuner Log on a Mac? Interesting. I didn't capture it when I asked a friend to test things out for me on a Macbook.

Topic #6 doesn't say much. I certainly didn't have the install blocked and the list of certified hardware that I could find on the support website ends at year 2016. Nothing recent.

[Anonymous]

I'm going to revive this oldie just in case someone stumbles on this problem. So the problem essentially only affects Hackintoshes running on AMD CPUs such as Ryzen. The problem lies in incomplete CPU support in various subsystems, and here specifically OpenGL framework is affected. It is specifically tuned to Intel instructions and while it does work under AMD, the performance is severely degraded. There seems to be no way currently to simply patch in the improvements and it is anecdotally reported that the whole framework would have to probably be rewritten to be useful under those CPUs - i.e. it's not going to happen.

Second, Metal framework is unaffected by this. So the only hope for AMD/Hackintosh users is for Autodesk to rewrite the entire engine in Metal. Will that happen at all and when is of course everyone's guess. When using Fusion 11 (the latest version usable under AMD), Autocad runs acceptably well due to Fusion translating DirectX calls to Metal and not OpenGL.

So if anyone has any insights on Metal plans for Autodesk, would be great if you share.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Just a heads up for anyone interested, GPU performance issue that I complained about has now been fixed in a new commit for a set of AMD kernel patches for macos. Everything is as smooth now as it should be, OOB without any tuning.

https://github.com/AMD-OSX/AMD_Vanilla/blob/experimental-opencore/17h/patches.plist#L1300-L1334