Hackintosh with OSX 10.9 Mavericks, Z77 Motherboard and Two Radeon Cards

Hackintosh with OSX 10.9 Mavericks, Z77 Motherboard and Two Radeon HD 5770


Yeah! I have now a real Hackintosh system with OS X 10.9 Mavericks. I just followed tonymacx86’s excellent guide (Install OS X Mavericks on Any Supported Intel-based PC) and that’s all… To tell the truth, if you don’t have the right hardware, you won’t be able to start the installation of OS X.

From my MacBook Pro, I downloaded the 5GB-dmg file of OS X 10.9 and I created a bootable USB drive using UniBeast (one of the tonymacx86′ softwares). That was the easy part. Next step: the hardware.

The first configuration I tested included an ASUS Sabertooth Z77 motherboard + Sandy Bridge Core i5 2400 + Radeon HD 5770. Apparently, OS X does not appreciate this system because it was impossible to launch the installation from the USB drive. The Chimera boot screen was properly displayed but whatever the option I entered, the installer didn’t want to go further.

Hackintosh, Chimera boot screen
The Chimera boot screen

I tested -x, GraphicsEnabler=Yes or No, PCIRootUID=1 or 0, nothing to do. By the way, just press the DOWN arrow key at the Chimera boot screen to open the boot option menu and then type -x to open the boot option command line.

I tested a second motherboard, still from ASUS: the P8Z77-V. I managed to run the installer on the P8Z77-V with the following boot options: -x GraphicsEnabler=No

Hackintosh, the Chimera boot options
The Chimera boot options

After few minutes, the OS X installation screen finally appeared:

Hackintosh, OS X installation
OS X installation


I completed the OS X 10.9 installation and Mavericks told me “Hello”:

Hackintosh, OS X 10.9 desktop
OS X 10.9 Mavericks desktop

For OS X, this hackintosh is a Mac Pro Early 2008:

Hackintosh, OS X 10.9 Mavericks desktop
hackintosh = Mac Pro

The hackintosh configration is not yet over but I couldn’t resist to launch an OpenGL 4 test with GpuTest 0.6.0:

Hackintosh, OS X 10.9, GpuTest OpenGL 4 demo
GpuTest OpenGL 4 demo

To complete the installation of the hackintosh, you have to launch MultiBeast (still from tonymacx86):

Hackintosh, OS X 10.9, MultiBeast
MultiBeast

MultiBeast allows to configure some drivers (audio, network, etc) and most important, it will make the hard disc bootable.




Here the detailed hardware specifications of my OSX 10.9 hackintosh:
– motherboard: ASUS P8Z77-V
– CPU: Intel Core i7 3770K @3.5GHZ
– RAM: 8GB DDR3 Corsair
– videocard: MSI Radeon HD 5770 Hawk

This hardware is hackintosh compliant!

Hackintosh, OS X 10.9, ASUS P8Z77-V + Radeon HD 5770
Hackintosh, OS X 10.9, ASUS P8Z77-V + Radeon HD 5770
GpuTest, FurMark test

Hackintosh, OS X 10.9, ASUS P8Z77-V + Radeon HD 5770, GLSL Hacker + GpuTest
Hackintosh, OS X 10.9, ASUS P8Z77-V + Radeon HD 5770, GLSL Hacker + GpuTest

The nice thing is that this hackintosh system allows me to plug two Radeon HD 5770 cards. Now I can update GLSL Hacker to correctly support virtual screens and multi-GPU systems…

Hackintosh with OSX 10.9 Mavericks, Z77 Motherboard and Two Radeon HD 5770

The last thing I need to to is to buy a real Mac keyboard and a touchpad because the usual PC mouse and keyboard lack of some OSX features…



Update (2013.11.04): I replaced the second Radeon HD 5770 by a GeForce GTX 580. I can now test my 3D code on both AMD and NVIDIA hardware at the same time. Cool! I also added a Mac keyboard.

Hackintosh GeForce GTX 580 + Radeon HD 5770
Hackintosh GeForce GTX 580 + Radeon HD 5770

Hackintosh GeForce GTX 580 + Radeon HD 5770, Unigine heaven + GLSL Hacker
Hackintosh GeForce GTX 580 + Radeon HD 5770, Unigine heaven + GLSL Hacker


14 thoughts on “Hackintosh with OSX 10.9 Mavericks, Z77 Motherboard and Two Radeon Cards”

  1. Enrico

    Can you run Furmark with that setup?
    I have a Hackintosh with a Radeon 7970 and OS X 10.9 and when starting Furmark it just crashes. All the other demos in the GPUTest-package work fine though as well as some Steam-games (haven’t had a chance to use this box extensively)

  2. JeGX Post Author

    @Enrico: yes FurMark runs perfectly on that system (there is a picture in the article with FurMark).
    I’ll try to test the hackintosh with a HD 7970 and maybe I’ll be able to reproduce the crash and fix it.

  3. /Marc

    Great, I just got the same rig this last month and I was wondering if it was OSX compatible! Awesome now I got no excuse to try this. Thanks.

  4. John Smith

    Have you ‘Apple’ logo sticked somewhere at your system? Otherwise that’s illegal 😛

  5. Enrico

    @JeGX: Could you also try Unigine Valley?
    The benchmark just starts with a black window and shows the FPS counter in a corner and then exits after 2 seconds…

  6. Promilus

    @John Smith – no it ain’t. It’s use outside of EULA but that one doesn’t make it illegal. If you manage to get one of those DELL OEM Windows installation DVDs and install it on non-dell PC you do have genuine Windows (and as such police can’t take any action against you), although your license is invalid 😉

  7. Promilus

    Illegal = in violation of law. Law is enforced by Country (and it’s institutions) and all ppl are subjects of it. EULA is just an agreement between parties. Breaching an agreement isn’t something illegal per se but may still result in a lawsuit (but the other party have to fill it, not the police, not someone outside of the company)It’s not policemen’s job to seek out agreement breaches. They seek only law violations.

  8. JeGX Post Author

    @Enrico: I just tested Unigine Heaven as well as some GLSL Hacker demos on the updated hackintosh (Radeon HD 5770 + GeForce GTX 580) and everything works fine. I think there is a driver issue (at AMD level) with the HD 7970. Do you have the possibility to test with another Radeon (HD 5000 series)? It’s not the first time I receive feedbacks like yours about the HD 7970 in a hackintosh setup.

  9. coldar

    just a curiosity, usually hackintosh have a lower performance compared to a normal mac osx machine on the high end 3D/motion/audio work?
    thanks a lot

  10. Ramanathan

    I want to know, OSX 10.9 Mavericks is possible to install in Core2Duo System

  11. tony057

    Hello what setting you used in MultiBeast? For your graphics card?

  12. francesco

    Nice hackintosh!

    What tools do you use for 3d programing? I’m so curious… 🙂

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