Upgrade from Clover to OC-Hiccups

Hey guys,

I finally decided to jump ship from Clover to OpenCore this weekend using the Vanilla guide. Since I was upgrading from High Sierra to Catalina, I did a clean install (wiped drives) instead of a Clover conversion.

My build:

CPU: Intel 4th Gen i5-4670K Haswell GPU: Intel HD 4600 iGPU + GeForce GTX 760 dGPU RAM: Crucial Ballistic Sport XT 2x8GB (16GB) 1866MHz DDR3 Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z87X-D3H Audio Codec: Realtek ALC892 Ethernet Card: Intel GbE LAN I127-V Wifi/BT Card: Broadcom BCM94360CD BIOS revision: F9 

Firstly, I was able to learn a lot more about what makes a Hackintosh work with OpenCore which I didn't learn with the much simpler Clover setup.

However, I did run into some issues that I previously did not have with Clover:

1) How do I know/How can I test if my iGPU is working properly in headless mode?

I am running my displays through the dGPU and want the iGPU as headless. I have no idea how to confirm if the iGPU is working properly since I didn't have the luxury of having the iGPU enabled on Clover (lack of know-how prevented me from enabling it in BIOS as I wasn't able to boot with it on). I have searched the Subreddit and found suggestions to use VideoProc and Intel Power Gadget, which I have and I'm uncertain if what I see confirms that it is working or not.

In VideoProc, I get this

The settings only list the GTX 760 GPU, and only H.264 working, no HEVC.

And Intel Power Gadget shows this

The iGPU core is just a flatline at 1.20 and doesn't change at all, while the iGPU Req is a flatline at 0 (Only time it's moved is when using VideoProc to check)

2) Is it necessary to define AAPL,ig-platform-id=04001204 in the config.plist?

This might be a dumb question, but I was wondering if I needed to have this in the config.plist since the above results from VideoProc and Intel Power Gadget are the same with and without the property (Rebooted machine between changes). I was thinking that because the Intel 4600 HD is natively supported, it was not required.

3) Is it recommended to use CPUFriend or not?

The Dortania OpenCore Post-Install Guide goes through the process of setting up CPUFriend, but not much else. Going to the Github page of CPUFriend it says:

"In most cases the native CPU power management data from ACPI_SMC_PlatformPlugin or X86PlatformPlugin work out of the box. Do NOT use CPUFriend for data customization until one knows clearly what power management data really is."

Using an LFM value of 800mHz from here I created a CPUFriendDataProvider.kext. Something to note is: with CPUFriend, Intel Power Gadget shows a Core Min of 0.9, whereas without it: it is 0.7. (I'm not too sure of the importance of these values either.

4) BIOS Issue: I can no longer boot into my BIOS, I only get a black screen with a flashing cursor. I can flash my BIOS Firmware via USB + Q-Flash and enter BIOS right after, but once Opencore is loaded, and I restart the system to try to load BIOS, it goes back to the black screen. This was never an issue with Clover. I'm not sure what the cause of this is. I was thinking something Nvram/CMOS related? I tried looking for a solution and it looks like other people have encountered this, but with no real solution.

5) I made a USBMap for my build but one issue is that upon trying to connect a USB 3 External HDD to any of the USB3 ports, it isn't recognized (it powers up but won't show even in Disk Utility). However connecting it to a USB2 only port, it is recognized. Doing the same with a USB3 Thumbdrive connects it to the appropriate connector (tested in USBMap Tool), with the exception of one of the 6 USB3 ports. This was not an issue on Clover (though I never made a USB map for Clover either)

Edit: Formatting