Dell Precision 470 / 670 workstation - Snow Leopard/Lion/Mountain Lion/Mavericks/Yosemite

[Hervé]

A few points on graphics glitches experienced in Yosemite on this system with the GeForce 9800GT:

• even though Bronya's 10.10 RC2.1 sorts out corruption of desktop icons, it causes very buggy behaviour of Safari and it does not support Duran Keeleys's fixes for AppStore issue (no contents display in app). Same goes with RC3. As such, it's better to revert to Bronya RC1 and apply Duran's AppStore + LaunchPad fixes Edit 11Mar2015: Obsolete now
• use attached patched IOGraphicsFamily kext to avoid final boot screen graphics corruption

In all cases, rebuild cache before reboot:
sudo chmod -R 755 /S/L/E
sudo chown -R 0:0 /S/L/E
sudo touch /S/L/E
sudo kextcache -Boot -U /
 
Bronya_10.10_RC1.zip
 
IOGraphicsFamily.kext.zip
 

[Hervé]

Finally updated to 10.10.1, replacing the vanilla IOPCIFamily kext again by axmanA's kext and the (reinstated) vanilla kernel by Bronya's. Graphics glitches and related applications bugs still present of course, no change of kernel for the time being.

 

[Hervé]

Bronya released a new rc4 version of his 10.9.5 AMD kernel. It works perfectly on the Precision 670. The little graphics corruption of desktop filenames is gone, taking screenshots works perfectly and editing screenshots in Preview no longer corrupts picture or screws up colours.

 

Also installed latest Security Update 2015-002 which, again, reinstates vanilla kernel so replacement by Bronya's 10.9.5 version is required before reboot.

 

Overall performance is excellent and system very responsive; no lag at all. To me, the man is nearing perfection! 

 

 

Bronya_10.9.5_rc4_kernel.zip

[Hervé]

And he's done it again for Yosemite! I'm still running 10.10.1 and my above screenshots must have been noticed as slightly corrupt... That's because I was running Bronya's 10.10 rc2.1 with which there were graphics glitches and screenshots + editing in Preview was not 100% operational.

 

With Bronya's latest 14.0.0 rc7 kernel, all those graphics defects are fixed. Attached pictures speak for themselves, they're a true illustration of what I get on screen.

 

 

 

Bronya_10.10-10.10.1_rc7_kernel.zip

[Hervé]

And up to Yosemite 10.10.2 using that same rc7 kernel from Bronya. Apple have not published the source code of 10.10.2 kernel (Darwin 14.1.0) yet, so we're still on 10.10/10.10.1 AMD kernel (Darwin 14.0.0).

 

I updated through AppStore, then manually replaced the vanilla kernel and rebuild cache from Mavericks to be able to reboot into 10.10.2. Everything appears to work perfectly.

 

 

NB: Apple Security Update 2015-002 reinstates the vanilla kernel; the kernel replacement process (including cache rebuild) must therefore be repeated after this update.

 

[Hervé]

And up to 10.10.3, still using Bronya's 14.0.0 RC7 kernel. In order to safely reboot into Yosemite, I had to:

• reinstate AxmanA's or ToraChiyo's IOPCIFamily kext (fix for boot-to-white-screen issue with my GeForce 9800GT)
• replace pthread kext by ToraChiYo's rewritten 10.10.2's version (vanilla version gave me systematic KP)
• re-binpatch IOGraphicsFamily kext (to fix final stage bootscreen graphics glitches)

 

 

ToraChiYo_IOPCIFamily.kext.zip ToraChiYo_pthread.kext.zip IOGraphicsFamily.kext.zip

[Hervé]

Safe to proceed with 10.10.3 Supplemental Update too.

[Hervé]

Updated Ok to 10.10.4, using exact same kexts replacement as for 10.10.3 and same AMD kernel from Bronya.

 

[Hervé]

Bronya having released a few 10.10.5 AMD kernels for some time now, I finally decided to give them a try on the old lady. I've tested RC1, RC2 and RC3 and all work perfectly... as usual! Again, IOPCIFamily kext replacement is required to avoid white screen issue with the nVidia GeForce 9800GT. No replacement of pthread kext required.

 

 

Works as well after Security update 2015-006.

 

However, I must admit that system performance is quite poor and laggy. Can't say it's a surprise on a 10yr+ old system...

 

[Hervé]

Just fitted one of those in the PCIe x8 (operates at x4 max) slot. Great cheap PCIe add-on card for this older SATA-I/PCIe 1.0 workstation. PCIe x4 may be a must for maximum/SATA-III performance.

 

Made some quick performance comparisons with the BlackMagic app in Mav 10.9.5 and Yos 10.10.5:

 

SSD off the integrated ICH5 SATA-I (150MB/s) non-AHCI controller (no Trim)

• Read: 132MB/s
• Write: 127MB/s

 

SSD off the PCIe x1 (v1.0, i.e. 250MB/s) Marvell SATA-III (600MB/s) AHCI controller (Trim enabled)

• Read: 215MB/s
• Write: 145MB/s

 

Looking forward to try out a PCIe x4 controller now.