Bad GTX 650Ti Performance in MacPro3,1; Do I need to flash it?

[AlecZ]

A while ago, I put a new EVGA Nvidia GTX 650Ti BOOST 1GB in my MacPro3,1 so I could run Lion and later. I didn't flash it for EFI, but it worked anyway, and I didn't care about having the boot screen. The ATI 2600XT my Mac originally had was a decent card, but for some reason, it was nearly unusable with Lion.

The GTX worked fine with Lion+, but I tried some graphics-intensive things on it, and it wasn't that much faster. My brother's weaker MacPro1,1 with some older Apple-branded (i.e. EFI flashed) ATI card runs games much better than my Mac does. Now, my new GPU is primarily so I can use my computer for work (Xcode requires 10.10), but I occasionally play Counter-Strike: GO and would like it to perform like it should! Finder animations also lag sometimes, but that might just be Finder being Finder.

BUT my card seems to run great when I boot into Windows (which I can't do anymore, but I'll reinstall Win7 later maybe just to test again). So I'm thinking that flashing it for EFI would help. Everywhere I've seen, people say it doesn't help besides adding a boot screen, but I'm doubting that now. Any thoughts?

 

[MacVidCards]

Go ahead, knock yourself out.

AFAIK, there has been exactly 1 @ 650 Ti Boost flashed successfully for Mac. It is actually in a post production facility quite near you. But nobody else writes them, the wannabes pretend they know how yet somehow never create anything new.

Anyhow, tough card, all EFI can give you speed wise is PCIE 2.0 if you don't have already. 750Ti much faster card.

 

[Fl0r!an]

The GTX 650Ti isn't that fast, and with the Kepler drivers being quite crappy for at least some games it's no surprise that something like CS:GO performs badly.

EFI-Flashing won't change anything, PCIE 2.0 doesn't matter for a card in this performance class. Normally I'd recommend a HD 7000 series card, but I think the MP 3,1 still has the performance issues with this card.
Did you try the latest Nvidia Web Drivers?

 

[karsten]

head on over to evga.com and go to their b-stock section. they have 750 ti for under $100

 

[Asgorath]

My suggestions:

1) Grab the new 346.02.02f03 web driver, since people are reporting significant performance improvements with it.

2) Post some specific results so we can compare and make sure your card is working as expected.

My understanding is that there's some issues with CS:GO and certain maps just run like crap.

 

[AlecZ]

Alright, thanks. I do have the latest Nvidia Web Driver installed, but I've noticed that it's causing Safari to crash frequently, so I might disable it. Besides, it doesn't seem to work any better. Currently, I'm trying to revive my Mac Pro because it stopped booting after I set up Boot Camp (-_-) and then I'll do some specific tests.

Anyway, sounds like flashing the card is beyond my capability, or at least not worth it.

 

[Asgorath]

Alright, thanks. I do have the latest Nvidia Web Driver installed, but I've noticed that it's causing Safari to crash frequently, so I might disable it. Besides, it doesn't seem to work any better. Currently, I'm trying to revive my Mac Pro because it stopped booting after I set up Boot Camp (-_-) and then I'll do some specific tests.

Anyway, sounds like flashing the card is beyond my capability, or at least not worth it.

Make sure you have f03 not f02, as f03 seems to have fixed the crash issues.

 

[AlecZ]

Make sure you have f03 not f02, as f03 seems to have fixed the crash issues.

I don't remember what I installed, but it was only a few days ago that I installed it from the Nvidia driver manager preference pane. I've since then reinstalled OS X since Boot Camp somehow messed up my boot partition. I'll try f03.