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Frequently Asked Questions About NVIDIA PC (non-EFI) Graphics Cards

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power%20cable.jpg

Is this power cable that comes with the card compatible with the Mac Pro? I guess the card should have 4 power connectors then.

If I install a new version of Macosx, I would connect my display to the 2nd videocard in slot2: a GT 120.
Or do I have to remove the GTX 980 every time i do an upgrade/update?
Could you post the Cinebench results R15?
http://http.maxon.net/pub/benchmarks/CINEBENCH_R15.zip

Thanks a lot. I appreciate your help very much.
 
Mac Hammer Fan said:
power%20cable.jpg

Is this power cable that comes with the card compatible with the Mac Pro? I guess the card should have 4 power connectors then.

If I install a new version of Macosx, I would connect my display to the 2nd videocard in slot2: a GT 120.
Or do I have to remove the GTX 980 every time i do an upgrade/update?
Could you post the Cinebench results R15?
http://http.maxon.net/pub/benchmarks/CINEBENCH_R15.zip

Thanks a lot. I appreciate your help very much.
Click to expand...

The cables that come with the card generally don't work because the cMP logic board connectors are mini 6-pins, so if you don't already have 2 of them for this card you would need to get them. The cables I linked work with the EVGA card.

If you use the card non-flashed, you have to keep an EFI card (i.e. GT120) on standby in order to upgrade your OS and the nVidia web drivers, then you can reinstall the 980. There are multiple posts earlier in this thread that review the best practices/procedures to follow.
 
Mac Hammer Fan said:
I was going to install a Zotac GTX 980 in my Mac Pro until I found this card, cooler and more silent.
http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-...8&qid=1450008894&sr=8-1&keywords=GTX+980+EVGA
Is it possible to install this card in slot 1 in a Mac Pro 5,1? I am worried about the 6 pin connectors.
Other slots have a GT120, an USB3-esata and an Accelsior SSD installed.
I can't install this card in slot 2 since in this case I loose slot 3.
Please help.
Click to expand...

I've been using a GTX 980 with two six pin power connectors for quite a while now and you really shouldn't be concerned. This card is extremely power efficient. I think it uses even less power than my old GTX 680.

I have my card plugged in to PCI-e slot 1 and never had a problem. Keeping a GT 120 around for the boot screen is a good idea.

As flehman stated, you should purchase the kind of power cables that connect to the Mac Pro logic board. It will make life much simpler.
 
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Mac Hammer Fan said:
How many fps did you get with all other applications closed?
Click to expand...
I didn't have any open. It's just that the Nvidia web drivers are not optimised for Maxwell. Officially they only support up to Kepler, so often the older cards will beat the new ones at OpenGL. Barefeats tests show this happen in other GL tests where the 980 either loses against or matches a Kepler card.

http://barefeats.com/gtx980ti.html

http://barefeats.com/gtx980.html

In OpenCL/CUDA it's another story because the newer cards have more compute units and cores.
 
SoyCapitanSoyCapitan said:
Last time I checked the Cinebench benchmark was slower on OSX with GTX980 than the 680.
Click to expand...

I get between 95-100 FPS with my Core i7-4790K + TITAN X, and OpenGL Driver Monitor shows my GPU is only running at about 50% utilization. Looks like it's completely CPU limited, just like earlier versions. Not really surprising given how small the rendering is.
 
Asgorath said:
I get between 95-100 FPS with my Core i7-4790K + TITAN X, and OpenGL Driver Monitor shows my GPU is only running at about 50% utilization. Looks like it's completely CPU limited, just like earlier versions. Not really surprising given how small the rendering is.
Click to expand...
Exactly. As shown here, the GPU score is perfectly proportional to my CPU clock speed when overclocking my trusty i5-750.
Cinebench is completely meaningless as GPU benchmark.
 
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pastrychef said:
I've been using a GTX 980 with two six pin power connectors for quite a while now and you really shouldn't be concerned. This card is extremely power efficient. I think it uses even less power than my old GTX 680.

I have my card plugged in to PCI-e slot 1 and never had a problem. Keeping a GT 120 around for the boot screen is a good idea.

As flehman stated, you should purchase the kind of power cables that connect to the Mac Pro logic board. It will make life much simpler.
Click to expand...

I just purchased a flashed GTX 680. Moving from a Radeon 6870 to the GTX 680 should put a big smile on my face. It just shipped today, so another week or so.

Due to the exchange rate, I paid a lot. I figure my wife will start talking to me again in a week or so. ;)
 
dmylrea said:
I'm having an issue with my new non-EFI GTX 970 4GB card. I've got the latest nVidia webdrivers, and fully updated OS X Yosemite.

The problem is, on a cold boot, the system always does a panic during boot, and then boots successfully.
Even though my screens are black, I can tell that's what's happening because the monitors wake up, but stay black, the lights on my wired mouse come on, then the monitors go off, the mouse goes off, and then repeat, except it boots normally. I can also hear the mechanical hard drives being accessed twice, once during the initial startup, and then again during the 2nd.

Once I log in, it says the system crashed and offers to send a report.

This behavior happens 100% of the time on a cold boot, but never on a warm boot.

Ideas?
Click to expand...

Hi same prob here - looks like it loads the default OSX driver - then loops, then eventually (2+mins later) finally loads the Nvidia driver with the 'restarted because of an error' report.

I'm on latest 349.02.03f04 10.10.5 GTX970 Yosemite drivers on a mac pro 2006 1.1

Did you/anyone ever solve this so it boots straight into Nvidia driver?

EDIT: Ah haa - I ran:
sudo nvram boot-args="nvda_drv=1"
in Terminal and now no Kernel panic!
Loads before Bootchamp now by look of it too - cos that icon loads after Nvidia one in menu bar, so that sudu must change order eh.
 
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MP3,1 will stay at PCIE 1.1 speed even with Web Drivers. So it's partly true ;)

Doesn't matter for most games/apps though.
 
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I recently finished my project of putting two powerhungry GPUs in one Mac Pro. Mine is now housing a GTX Titan Black and an ATI Radeon 5870 using only the builtin PSU. Feel free to watch the building process:
Regards i0sen :)
 
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Been lurking on here for some time.

Finally go frustrated enough to post.

I have a Mac Pro 1.1. I have been able to successfully install 10.10.5 and now 10.11.2 using a MacBook Pro 2009 by over writing the EFI files (I don't know what those files are but they are magical).

I am trying to get this 1.1 to be of use. I was having the kernel panic issue where the machine restarts every 2 seconds (exaggerating) but on this last install it seems to be stable. I have not loaded any additional apps from the app store nor downloaded any additional software. Just but in iCloud and google credentials and it seems to be pretty stable.

Here is my next question:

I am currently using the stock ATI x1900 GPU and have tried two different PNY Graphics cards (GT610 and 730). Profiler recognizes them, the Nvidia control panel does as well, but I when I connect a via or DVI cable to them, I get now output.

When the machine was kp'ing every 2 seconds, I was able to use the PNY graphics card so I don't know what has changed.

I have tried multiple combinations of the two cards, including leaving the 1900 card in place and still get no output. this includes connecting via the VGA port on the 610 and the DVI (with a DVI VGA adapter). The monitor that I am using only has a VGA port.

Any thoughts?
 
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flehman said:
If you use the card non-flashed, you have to keep an EFI card (i.e. GT120) on standby in order to upgrade your OS and the nVidia web drivers, then you can reinstall the 980. There are multiple posts earlier in this thread that review the best practices/procedures to follow.
Click to expand...

A successful alternative is screen sharing if you have a 2nd Mac available to network to the Mac Pro with the non-EFI GPU. We did this using a MacMini we keep online set up with 10.7.5 for legacy FCPro 7.0.3 projects. We used that Mac Mini to screen share when we installed a non-EFI 980 Ti and we were able to see the MacPro desktop and turn on the nVIDIA drivers from the MacPro System Preference Pane, restart and we've been good to go and running without a hitch ever since.

I would note, you can not run a Hardware Test DVD without an EFI friendly card, so we will be keeping something around to use if that's ever needed.
 
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Simple questions, I hope....I'm currently mulling over GPU upgrade options and their various pros and cons. If I install an unflashed card (if I go down that route, most likely a GTX 970), how much slower will it be under Windows 8.1/10 than a flashed one? The Mac is likely to spend 95% of its time in OS X (at least once I've got the 8.1 install working properly, for the umpteenth time...Boot Camp installer causing kernel security check failure, grumble grumble...) but if there's not that much of a speed boost at 1920x1200/2560x1440 I'd rather buy a newer/higher spec card (and possibly a GT120 for boot screen) for less money. One of MVC's cards would be nearly £500 ($750) including import duties. Those con artists at Create Pro want £400, but I'd rather give MVC the $ and credit for his & others' hard work plus HM Revenue and Customs the VAT than give those dubious gentlemen a penny.
Also, mentioning the GT 120.... No drivers in the nVidia package any more. I'd only have one monitor, and only attach it to the 120 for boot screen & OS X tasks (OS updates, driver updates etc). If the card's just sitting there in Windows with nothing attached would it cause issues with the nVidia drivers?
 
pastrychef said:
An unflashed card will run at PCI-e 1.1 speeds in Bootcamp. The Nvidia web drivers allow them to run at PCI-e 2 speeds in OS X.

The following article can give you an indication of the differences you can expect to see with PCI-e 1.1 vs 2.0:

http://www.logicalincrements.com/articles/i7-3770k-vs-i7-3820/
Click to expand...
Thanks. Difference about 5%, if that. Also found this http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/pci-express-scaling-game-performance-analysis-review,1.html which comes up with very similar figures, testing with GTX980s. Sounds like saving some serious money is in order!
 
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