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

[Mac Hammer Fan]

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.

This is a very useful hint. +1. Thank you very much.
I decided to buy an unflashed GTX 980 instead of a much more expensive flashed card. A legitime MacVidCard would cost me 900 EUR (taxes and shipping included) while I could buy an unflashed card for 580 EUR....
The web driver will run at PCI 2.0 speed in MacOSX in my MacPro 4,1>5,1

 

[Bytehoven]

Congrats You'll love the GPU.

 

[Socket]

BAD NEWS...I have GTX960 and OSX 10.11.2 and webdriver 346.03.04f02...today i tried to insert a transition in a FCPX (10.2.2) and it crashes all the times!
I try to go with OSx Default Drivers, and FCXP doesn't crash! So there is a problem with drivers?!?!
I tried also to downgrade to 346.03.04f01 but no results, it crashes again!

Does it happens only to me???

 

[priitv8]

nVidia webdrivers seem to have their own quirks. Like the yellow frame in Aperture.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/aperture-bug-in-el-captain-nvidia-web-drivers.1924981/

Or may be Apple is using some of their private API-s.

 

[toke lahti]

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.

Would you say that 10.7.5 is the most stable version with FCP?
Just did a little project with my mp3,1 which has 10.11 installed and fcp crashed quite frequently...

 

[Asgorath]

BAD NEWS...I have GTX960 and OSX 10.11.2 and webdriver 346.03.04f02...today i tried to insert a transition in a FCPX (10.2.2) and it crashes all the times!
I try to go with OSx Default Drivers, and FCXP doesn't crash! So there is a problem with drivers?!?!
I tried also to downgrade to 346.03.04f01 but no results, it crashes again!

Does it happens only to me???

This has been fairly widely reported, seems to be a regression with 346.03.03f02 or whichever version fixed the Aperture yellow screen bug. Hopefully we'll get a new driver that fixes this soon.

nVidia webdrivers seem to have their own quirks. Like the yellow frame in Aperture.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/aperture-bug-in-el-captain-nvidia-web-drivers.1924981/

Or may be Apple is using some of their private API-s.

This was a driver bug that has been fixed for quite some time, the last 2-3 releases no longer have this problem.

 

[priitv8]

This was a driver bug that has been fixed for quite some time, the last 2-3 releases no longer have this problem.

I would need to give it another try. One of the fairly recent builds still had the issue (for me) so I gave up and went back to stock drivers.

 

[Bytehoven]

Would you say that 10.7.5 is the most stable version with FCP?
Just did a little project with my mp3,1 which has 10.11 installed and fcp crashed quite frequently...

Personally, I have not been able to get FCPro 7.0.3 to run on anything past 10.7.5 although I have heard others have had better luck. 10.6.8 and 10.7.5 seem to be about the same as far as any issues so I just stayed with 10.7.5. I have thought about giving a fresh install of 10.8.x a try just to be able to use a newer Mac Mini with USB 3.0 but I have not gotten around to it yet. It would involve a fresh install of 10.8 and and FCPro 7 and then migrating everything else. Once I get my Mac Pro upgrade totally completed and ironed out, I will revisit trying to get 10.8.x to run FCPro 7.

As far as 10.11.x.... I don't even run that on my Mac Pro, choosing instead to stay with 10.10.5 until there is a good reason to upgrade... but I hope you have good luck with the latest OS.

 

[Socket]

This has been fairly widely reported, seems to be a regression with 346.03.03f02 or whichever version fixed the Aperture yellow screen bug. Hopefully we'll get a new driver that fixes this soon.



This was a driver bug that has been fixed for quite some time, the last 2-3 releases no longer have this problem.

OSX 10.11.1 and 346.03.03f01 all work fine (except for a yellow band on transitions in fcpx)
OSX 10.11.1 and 346.03.03f02 fcpx crashes when use stabilization or other things
OSX 10.11.2 and 346.03.04f01 fcpx crashes with transitions
OSX 10.11.2 and 346.03.04f02 fcpx crashes with transitions

So you know the problem, it's true? I hope will fix soon
bye

 

[toke lahti]

Personally, I have not been able to get FCPro 7.0.3 to run on anything past 10.7.5 although I have heard others have had better luck. 10.6.8 and 10.7.5 seem to be about the same as far as any issues so I just stayed with 10.7.5. I have thought about giving a fresh install of 10.8.x a try just to be able to use a newer Mac Mini with USB 3.0 but I have not gotten around to it yet. It would involve a fresh install of 10.8 and and FCPro 7 and then migrating everything else. Once I get my Mac Pro upgrade totally completed and ironed out, I will revisit trying to get 10.8.x to run FCPro 7.

As far as 10.11.x.... I don't even run that on my Mac Pro, choosing instead to stay with 10.10.5 until there is a good reason to upgrade... but I hope you have good luck with the latest OS.

Actually, I remembered wrong, my mp has 10.10 (and my mbp has 10.11, but I haven't really used fcp with its current os). What would be "the nicest" way to obtain 10.7 nowadays?
(I jumped from 10.6 to 10.9 back in the days..).

 

[mrjayviper]

which 5xx to 7xx card will work straight out of the box? thanks a lot

 

[Thessman]

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.

There is a third alternative, that I haven't seen mentioned although I confess that I didn't read every one of the 2750+ posts, and that is if you need to install a new OS without an EFI card, then you can install it in an emulator, add the Nvidia web drivers and then copy it over to a HD or SSD or whatever.

 

[FilthyMcNasty]

There is a third alternative, that I haven't seen mentioned although I confess that I didn't read every one of the 2750+ posts, and that is if you need to install a new OS without an EFI card, then you can install it in an emulator, add the Nvidia web drivers and then copy it over to a HD or SSD or whatever.

My brother suggested another alternative - rebuild Apple updates excluding the stock Nvidia drivers.

I don't know how easy this is to do...

 

[Mac Hammer Fan]

I know that most of the users don't like Cinebench, but here is a comparison between my old card ATI Radeon 5870 and my new unflashed Geforce GTX 980. It's really disappointing because my brother in law has an iMac 4.0 Ghz 2014 with a score of 108 fps and Windows users have even better scores. I guess the nVidia webdriver for MacOS can be improved a lot...

And Extension OpenGL Viewer is not better

Neither is GFX Bench

or CompuBench

or Novabench...

According to https://novabench.com/gpuchart.php this is far below the Windows result of the Geforce 980.
Luckily Heaven, Valley, Luxmark, Furmark, Tessmark etc.. give better scores, but even under Parallels 11 Windows 7 I got mixed results. (e.g. Performance Test 8.0 was worse with the Geforce GTX 980)

The latest drivers are installed and my application Wondershare for converting video promised a significant speedup while there was none at all.
http://www.wondershare.com/comparison/video-converter-speedup.html
(copy this link instead of double clicking it, otherwise you'll be sent to somewhere else)

And although Luxmark 3,1 gave better results, there was an error:

When I go in the Finder to "About This Mac" and then to System Report > PCI info, I get this:

I think that I am going to send the GTX 980 card that I bought back and keep my good old Radeon 5870...

 

[Synchro3]

which 5xx to 7xx card will work straight out of the box? thanks a lot

'Straight out of the box' is meaning supported by native OS X drivers?

Some examples:
GTX 560/570/580/680/770 supported natively by OS X 10.8.3 and upwards, not supported is the last generation of GTX 780 and all newer cards.

In general all Nvidia GTX Geforce cards with 'GK' chips (K = Kepler) except GK110B (new GTX 780 chip) are supported, and all cards with 'GF' chips (F = Fermi).

GTX cards with 'GM' chips (M = Maxwell) and the GK110B chip are not supported by OS X, only by Nvidia Web drivers.

Chip details for each GTX card:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_500_series
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_600_series
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_700_series
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_900_series

Power is an other topic: Be aware some cards have 8 pin connectors (external PSU or workaround needed).

 

[Synchro3]

My wish list for 2016:

- GTX Pascal cards and 5K-monitors with DisplayPort 1.3 (only one cable needed)
- Native OS X support for newest Nvidia cards
- Competitive AMD cards
- Qualitative improvement of OS X

 

[howiest]

My wish list for 2016:

- GTX Pascal cards and 5K-monitors with DisplayPort 1.3 (only one cable needed)
- Native OS X support for newest Nvidia cards
- Competitive AMD cards
- Qualitative improvement of OS X

- totally redesigned expandable Mac Pro (yes, I'm a dreamer)

 

[Mac Hammer Fan]

- totally redesigned expandable Mac Pro (yes, I'm a dreamer)

I would like to see that too. Or that they release a Tower Model like the 2009-2012, these were expandable.

 

[Asgorath]

I think that I am going to send the GTX 980 card that I bought back and keep my good old Radeon 5870...

Do you understand what a CPU-limited benchmark is? The cMP is pretty ancient compared with a 2014 iMac. Here are some examples of tests that actually stress the GPU:

http://barefeats.com/tube21.html

I'm running a TITAN X in a Hackintosh with a Core i7-4790K, and it's massively faster than my old 2010 Mac Pro with a GTX 680.

PS - Don't run GFXBench on-screen tests, they are locked to vsync (i.e. stuck at 60 FPS).

 

[Fl0r!an]

I think that I am going to send the GTX 980 card that I bought back and keep my good old Radeon 5870...

Nvidia drivers in OS X have a quite high CPU overhead (compared to AMD), so even old AMD cards (like your 5870) will outperform them in CPU-limited benchmarks like Cinebench.

I wouldn't use any synthetic benchmarks to decide which card to keep. Look at the performance of the games and apps you use daily. The 980 will destroy your 5870 in serious GPGPU apps, but might be slower in CPU-limited games.

Btw, the PCIE error in the System Profiler is perfectly normal when using unflashed cards.

 

[Mac Hammer Fan]

Do you understand what a CPU-limited benchmark is? The cMP is pretty ancient compared with a 2014 iMac.

I'm running a TITAN X in a Hackintosh with a Core i7-4790K, and it's massively faster than my old 2010 Mac Pro with a GTX 680.

PS - Don't run GFXBench on-screen tests, they are locked to vsync (i.e. stuck at 60 FPS).

I have a fast CPU, a 6 core 3,33 Ghz is nearly as fast as a 4 core 4 GHz. However, it seems that this card runs faster on a Hackintosh or a PC than on a Mac.
What I can't accept is that Novabench on a PC runs at 972 fps and that I only get 621 fps.

 

[jblagden]

I would like to see that too. Or that they release a Tower Model like the 2009-2012, these were expandable.

And we don't need a 6-core 3 Ghz CPU or anything like that. All we need is a dual-core 3.6 Ghz processor.

 

[Asgorath]

I have a fast CPU, a 6 core 3,33 Ghz is nearly as fast as a 4 core 4 GHz. However, it seems that this card runs faster on a Hackintosh or a PC than on a Mac.
What I can't accept is that Novabench on a PC runs at 972 fps and that I only get 621 fps.

CPU clock speeds are misleading if that's all you compare. The cMP has a CPU that is based on technology from 2008-2009 (i.e. the Nehalem architecture). It cannot compete with a modern Haswell CPU, even at similar clock speeds. A quick Google search reveals articles like this, for example:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7003/the-haswell-review-intel-core-i74770k-i54560k-tested/6

 

[flehman]

Nvidia drivers in OS X have a quite high CPU overhead (compared to AMD), so even old AMD cards (like your 5870) will outperform them in CPU-limited benchmarks like Cinebench.

I wouldn't use any synthetic benchmarks to decide which card to keep. Look at the performance of the games and apps you use daily. The 980 will destroy your 5870 in serious GPGPU apps, but might be slower in CPU-limited games.

Btw, the PCIE error in the System Profiler is perfectly normal when using unflashed cards.

+1 to this. I am using an unflashed 980 and could not be happier with it. The 980 leaves my old Radeon 6870 for dead. I plan to get it flashed very soon.

Also, thanks for the tip about the PCIE error. I had guessed it had to do with the card being unflashed, but I was going to ask about if since a previous poster brought it up. That answers that.

 

[Thessman]

My brother suggested another alternative - rebuild Apple updates excluding the stock Nvidia drivers.

I don't know how easy this is to do...

If you change the OS build number you need a different version of the Nvidia drivers...