watchthelight labs

Working report for the MT7925 set on a second AM5 desktop board. #3

closed
oliverchu 2026-10-23

Working report for the MT7925 set on a second AM5 desktop board.

Hardware

  • Card: AMD RZ717 (MediaTek MT7925, Filogic 360)
    • Wi-Fi PCI: 14C3:0717
    • Bluetooth USB: 0E8D:0717
  • Board: COLORFUL BATTLE-AX B850M-PLUS S WIFI7 (AM5 desktop, M.2 E-key slot)
  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
  • GPU: NVIDIA RTX 5090 D v2 (NullMoth driver 2.5.3, unrelated to this report)
  • Bluetooth is on the internal USB bus (XHC2)

Software

  • macOS 26.7.1, build 25G241, Darwin 25.6.0 (xnu-12377.161.15.700.19~2)
  • OpenCore DBG-109-2026-10-21 (installed by the NullMoth "1401" installer)
  • MtkWlan 0.12.1 + MtkWlanNative 0.4.13 (bundle), MtkBt 0.2.4, LegionBtFix 0.2.0
  • BlueToolFixup 2.7.3, Lilu 1.7.3
  • boot-args: mtkfe=native mtknativeif=1 (appended to the existing args)

Wi-Fi results

The Wi-Fi port came up as en1 with the native front end: the menu-bar icon,
the Wi-Fi pane in System Settings, macOS-driven scans and joins, saved network,
auto-join at boot, DHCP and a real default route. No client app, no command line.

The network here is WPA/WPA2 Personal — the case the README lists as untested
("WPA2-PSK through the Wi-Fi menu is untested on air"). It joined from the menu
and got a lease.

wdutil info while associated:
PHY Mode : 11ac
Tx Rate : 866.0 Mbps
MCS Index : 9
NSS : 2
Guard Interval : 400
Channel : 5g44/80
RSSI : -66 dBm

Data path counters (ioreg, MtkWlanNative), no drops:
MtkNativeRx : rx 10313 delivered 10313 dropped 0 ringfull 0 oversize 0 peak 74
MtkNativeTx : tx 7833 dropped 0 stalled 0 completed 7833 pending 0

Bluetooth results

MtkBt 0.2.4 + BlueToolFixup 2.7.3 + LegionBtFix 0.2.0: the controller came up and
bluetoothd drives it. (No AirPods on hand to test the A2DP clock fix.)

Two things worth a line in INSTALL.md

  1. OpenCore's NVRAM > Add does not overwrite a boot-args that already exists.
    My first reboot silently kept the old boot-args: the OpenCore log says
    OCVAR: Setting NVRAM ... - ignored, exists. Without the two flags the card
    stayed on the Ethernet front end and MtkWlanNative sat at
    MtkNativeLast = "ctl:controller only (no interface requested)", so there was
    no Wi-Fi port at all and the Wi-Fi switch could not be turned on.
    A "Reset NVRAM" entry from the picker wrote the new boot-args and it worked
    immediately. Others will hit this — a sentence in INSTALL.md would save them
    a reboot and some confusion.

  2. The stale service could not be removed: after the card had been an Ethernet
    port, the service kept the name "Ethernet 2" and networksetup -removenetworkservice refused with "You cannot remove Ethernet 2 because
    there aren't any other network services on Wi-Fi."
    networksetup -renamenetworkservice "Ethernet 2" "Wi-Fi" fixed the name with
    no interruption to the link. Worth adding to the README paragraph that already
    mentions removing the service.

Report archive from tools/mtk-report.sh is attached (MAC addresses and SSIDs
redacted). Thank you for the drivers — onboard Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on an AM5
desktop with no card swap is a big deal here.

watchthelight 2026-10-23

I really love that you opened an issue to report this, I'll make sure to credit you. Logs are great, looks good, let me know if you have performance or stability issues.

oliverchu 2026-10-23

Thanks

watchthelight 2026-10-23

I went through the logs. Yours is the first WPA2-PSK join on air with the native front end, so the README doesn't call it untested anymore and you're in the credits: a3c444a

Both of your notes went into the install section. For boot-args it now says to list boot-args under NVRAM > Delete (or reset NVRAM once), since Add won't replace a value that's already there. Your log shows that well: the first two boots came up on the Ethernet front end and only the 04:19 one went native.

About the "Ethernet 2" service: the rename fixed the name, but your report was taken after it and System Information still says "Network Service Inactive" while you're connected, so it looks like macOS kept the old Ethernet record. The link doesn't seem to care. It does mean the README advice to remove the service could never have worked, because networksetup won't remove the only service on the Wi-Fi port. If you want to try it, this should give you a clean one (I haven't tested it yet):

networksetup -createnetworkservice "Wi-Fi 2" Wi-Fi
networksetup -removenetworkservice "Ethernet 2"

Then see if System Information shows the status right.

Your report also caught two bugs on my side. System Information says "MtkWlanNative 0.4.11" because I forgot to bump the version string in 0.4.12 and 0.4.13 (the kext really is 0.4.13). And mtk-report.sh missed your router's MAC in the route table, the IPv6 addresses and the host name. Both are fixed for the next build, and the copy of your logs in our research repo has those removed: https://github.com/watchthelight-labs/research/tree/main/logs/oliverchu/colorful-battle-ax-b850m-plus-s-wifi7/2026-10-24-mt7925-hackintosh-wifi-native-3-mtk-report

oliverchu 2026-10-23

side

Thanks a lot for your amazing work on the MT7925 native Wi-Fi driver, I really appreciate it!
Meanwhile, could you help delete my full original log, and please don't keep any private copy that has my SSID, router MAC and IPv6 data for privacy concerns.

watchthelight 2026-10-23

Yes, the copy of your logs in our research repo has those removed and I don't save logs locally, I keep them on GitHub

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