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

[Killerbob]

Can anyone on 10.8.3 with a non EFI GTX card test, whether the card is running on 2.5 or 5 GiB/s? You can check with Cuda-Z (http://cuda-z.sourceforge.net).

On 10.8.2 the Apple driver runs on 2.5 GiB/s, while the NVIDIA driver, although having lower version number, runs on 5 GiB/s.

In CUDA-Z my GTX680 (eVGA SC) runs at:

Host to Device: Pinned - 2900MiB/s - Pageable - 2345MiB/s
Device to Host: Pinned - 3175MiB/s - Pageable - 2300MiB/s

That is on 10.8.3, with the 65f03 driver.

/Bo

 

[etc]

Can anyone on 10.8.3 with a non EFI GTX card test, whether the card is running on 2.5 or 5 GiB/s? You can check with Cuda-Z (http://cuda-z.sourceforge.net).

GTX 690:

GPU 0:
Host to Device: Pinned - 2923MiB/s - Pageable - 2071MiB/s
Device to Host: Pinned - 3175MiB/s - Pageable - 1650MiB/s

GPU 1:
Host to Device: Pinned - 2924MiB/s - Pageable - 2055MiB/s
Device to Host: Pinned - 3148MiB/s - Pageable - 1636MiB/s

 

[dpny]

Can anyone on 10.8.3 with a non EFI GTX card test, whether the card is running on 2.5 or 5 GiB/s? You can check with Cuda-Z (http://cuda-z.sourceforge.net).

On 10.8.2 the Apple driver runs on 2.5 GiB/s, while the NVIDIA driver, although having lower version number, runs on 5 GiB/s.

Mac Pro 5,1, EVGA 670 SC, 10.8.3:

Host to device pinned: 5572 MiB/s. Pageable: 5148 MIB/s
Device to hoist pinned: 6183 MIB/s. Pagable: 4947 MiB/s

 

[Killerbob]

Why the difference between MP3,1 and MP5,1?

I know that PCIe is "only" ver. 2.0 in the MP3,1, and even that only in slots 1 and 2, but I have my GTX680 in slot 2, so it should be 5GB/s.

 

[skippermonkey]

Help!

I just upgraded to OS X 10.8.3 plus the new CUDA 5.0.45 driver, but it's killed CUDA in Adobe After EFfects, even though it can see the card, a GTX 570. It was working nicely before; what's happened?

Octane Render works fine, as does Turbulence FD. I'm hoping Adobe might catch it and update AE...

 

[m4v3r1ck]

Why the difference between MP3,1 and MP5,1?

I know that PCIe is "only" ver. 2.0 in the MP3,1, and even that only in slots 1 and 2, but I have my GTX680 in slot 2, so it should be 5GB/s.

Hi,

New to the in-depth info of the GPU-Z / CUDA-Z info panels.

Perhaps a very silly question, where in the Cuda-Z 0.6.163 application can I find the outcome for 2.5 or 5 GB/s

I have 'the same' setup in my MP 3.1:

#1 EVGA GTX-670-FTW-4GB -> PCIe-1.1x16@x16-1.1
Memory Copy
Host Pinned to Device: 2841.9 MiB/s
Host Pageable to Device: 1268.76 MiB/s
Device to Host Pinned: 3107.35 MiB/s
Device to Host Pageable: 1542.81 MiB/s
Device to Device: 72.4964 GiB/s

#2 Nvidia GeForce GT 8800 Mac -> PCIe-2.0x16@x16-2.0
Memory Copy
Host Pinned to Device: 2059.53 MiB/s
Host Pageable to Device: 1350.6 MiB/s
Device to Host Pinned: 2165.07 MiB/s
Device to Host Pageable: 1429.26 MiB/s
Device to Device: 16.8818 GiB/s

I choose slot #1 because of the 'double' width of the GTX, will swapping have any effect on the performance of both cards?

Thanks for reading.

 

[dpny]

Why the difference between MP3,1 and MP5,1?

I know that PCIe is "only" ver. 2.0 in the MP3,1, and even that only in slots 1 and 2, but I have my GTX680 in slot 2, so it should be 5GB/s.

I have no idea. Just compared specs between 3,1 and 5,1 and couldn't find a meaningful difference.

 

[Killerbob]

Running CUDA-Z 0.6.163 in OSX, there is a tab for Performance, where the "Memory Copy" numbers are listed.

 

[dpny]

The only difference I can think of is that my 670 is on slot 1. It's also the only card in the machine.

 

[m4v3r1ck]

Running CUDA-Z 0.6.163 in OSX, there is a tab for Performance, where the "Memory Copy" numbers are listed.

Thank you!

Performance Information
-----------------------
Memory Copy
Host Pinned to Device: 2888.17 MiB/s
Host Pageable to Device: 2146.03 MiB/s
Device to Host Pinned: 3158.24 MiB/s
Device to Host Pageable: 2232.08 MiB/s
Device to Device: 69.2929 GiB/s
GPU Core Performance
Single-precision Float: 1815.58 Gflop/s
Double-precision Float: 131.445 Gflop/s
32-bit Integer: 522.731 Giop/s
24-bit Integer: 522.835 Giop/s

 

[mamasboy]

I just upgraded to OS X 10.8.3 plus the new CUDA 5.0.45 driver, but it's killed CUDA in Adobe After EFfects, even though it can see the card, a GTX 570. It was working nicely before; what's happened?

Octane Render works fine, as does Turbulence FD. I'm hoping Adobe might catch it and update AE...

Steve, did you manually edit the "contents" of AE/PP? Below is how we hacked it before - you may have to do it again after the update... I wouldn't know yet - I'm always purposely late to update the OS.

Check this out for assist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=N8nUuHzxv-U

Good luck,
Lonnie

 

[skippermonkey]

Steve, did you manually edit the "contents" of AE/PP? Below is how we hacked it before - you may have to do it again after the update... I wouldn't know yet - I'm always purposely late to update the OS.

Good luck,
Lonnie

I did it to get the GTX running and the text file is unchanged, with the 570 still listed (plus AE 'sees' it). I might try downgrading the CUDA driver see if that gets it working again. Weird that other apps see the card just fine - all I get with AE is a black window with no extruded text/layers.

[EDIT] No change. Looks I will have to wait for an AE update... crap.

 

[chaosbunny]

Thanks to this thread - and a failing fan in my ATI 5870 - I bought a Point of View GTX 670 last friday at a local store. Everything works as advertised, it runs without any problems under Mac OS 10.8.2 with the gpu & cuda drivers from the nvidia site.

A big thank you to Asgorath and all the people providing information like this so noobs like me can safely upgrade their Mac Pros.

 

[transonic]

Failed OpenCL activation on GTX470 on 10.8.3

Hi,
I tried to activate OPENCL on my GTX470 through MacVidcards, I followed these instructions for 2pluGB OpenCL on MountainLion, couldn't find it elsewhere and had the boot up screen spin forever on my MacPro. Tried everything to rescue back, couldn't even boot on SAFEMODE so I went on to install a prior image of my drive.
Here is the link,
http://netkas.org/?p=1161
I patched as it says through a Hex Program and I did this after upgrading to 10.8.3.
As I said I couldn't even log back in. I even Targeted the MacPro and put the old OpenCL file back in place but no luck..It completely destroyed the OS.
Do you know how to enable this properly under 10.8.3 , I've read a few times that it should automatically but even CUDA requires a edits for Premiere and After Effects.
Thanks.

 

[Killerbob]

It looks like MP3,1 users are experiencing a "step-down" to PCIe speeds of 2.5GB/s after the 10.8.3 update. Can anyone else confirm this?

If it is a general issue, should we still expect NVIDEA to come out with the new driver, which may fix the problem? Who do we punk for this?

Also, what happens if I install the older NVIDEA drivers in 10.8.3, has anyone tried this?

 

[Asgorath]

It looks like MP3,1 users are experiencing a "step-down" to PCIe speeds of 2.5GB/s after the 10.8.3 update. Can anyone else confirm this?

If it is a general issue, should we still expect NVIDEA to come out with the new driver, which may fix the problem? Who do we punk for this?

Also, what happens if I install the older NVIDEA drivers in 10.8.3, has anyone tried this?

Please re-read the first post in this thread.

2) A new OS update from Apple just came out. What do I do?

As mentioned above, all stock OS drivers from Apple will now make stock NVIDIA PC cards work.

If you have installed a web driver from NVIDIA, it is likely that the OS update from Apple will overwrite them. Now that the stock drivers from Apple will still let your card function, this is not a deal breaker. You should NOT attempt to make drivers from one OS release work with a new OS release in general, since the drivers are closely tied to the frameworks that shipped with the version of the OS that the driver was intended for. Trying to force the 10.8.1 web driver to work with 10.8.2, for example, is just asking for trouble and will probably make your machine no longer boot to the desktop.

Be patient, a new NVIDIA driver will come soon enough.

 

[Killerbob]

Hi Asgorath,

I did read the whole thread, and it still looks to me like the latest driver from Apple actually caused a step back for MP3,1 users. Interesting enough it didn't affect MP5,1 users...

With the 304.00.05f02 drivers I believe most of us experienced PCIe ver. 2.0 speeds, but this has now changed, due to the new and (supposedly) new improved 304.10.65f03 drivers - at least on MP3,1s, hence I just wonder if NVIDEA are working on new drivers, or this is what we get?

 

[Asgorath]

Hi Asgorath,

I did read the whole thread, and it still looks to me like the latest driver from Apple actually caused a step back for MP3,1 users. Interesting enough it didn't affect MP5,1 users...

With the 304.00.05f02 drivers I believe most of us experienced PCIe ver. 2.0 speeds, but this has now changed, due to the new and (supposedly) new improved 304.10.65f03 drivers - at least on MP3,1s, hence I just wonder if NVIDEA are working on new drivers, or this is what we get?

Right, I'm talking specifically about your question regarding installing the 10.8.2 NVIDIA driver on top of 10.8.3. If you do this, you will almost certainly cause your machine to stop booting to the desktop. In other words, highly recommended that you don't even bother trying, since mismatches between the 10.8.3 frameworks and 10.8.2 drivers will guarantee that it won't work.

It's a safe bet that NVIDIA will release a new web driver for 10.8.3 soon. Based on recent history, this will almost certainly restore your PCIe 2.0 speeds on systems that support it. Even if the stock Apple driver doesn't include this particular fix, there's no reason to expect that NVIDIA will remove it from their drivers.

 

[flowrider]

^^^^My MP3,1 with a Gigabyte GTX570 with MacVidCards EFI supports PCIe ver. 2.0 speeds under OS 10.8.3

Lou

 

[MacVidCards]

I can confirm that PCIE speeds in 3,1 go back to 2.5 GTS on 3,1 machines using non-EFI cards with stock drivers in 10.8.3. Our EFI cards are NOT affected. NVIDIA will have a better driver out shortly to fix this. Be patient.

 

[Landak]

10.8.3 and the GTX 660

I've been following what you've all been saying with some interest -- you seem like a most knowledgable bunch!

I've just bought a GTX 660 (specifically this) for my Mac Pro 3,1 (with a stock 8800GT in it at the moment). It's due to arrive in a few days, and I'm wondering whether or not to upgrade to 10.8.3 in the mean time. As there are conflicting reports about the 660 and sleep crashes -- and sleep is something that's important to me (!) -- I'm going to delay.

Do any of you have any comments on the 660 and 10.8.3? I note that on the front page of this topic it's not on the "known good" page, but it is recommended, and on previous versions of the front page it has been suggested.

I've got the extra 6 pin power lead, the NVidia drivers installed, and shall therefore let you know for certain how it gets on when it arrives!

 

[bjar]

I've been following what you've all been saying with some interest -- you seem like a most knowledgable bunch!

I've just bought a GTX 660 (specifically this) for my Mac Pro 3,1 (with a stock 8800GT in it at the moment). It's due to arrive in a few days, and I'm wondering whether or not to upgrade to 10.8.3 in the mean time. As there are conflicting reports about the 660 and sleep crashes -- and sleep is something that's important to me (!) -- I'm going to delay.

Do any of you have any comments on the 660 and 10.8.3? I note that on the front page of this topic it's not on the "known good" page, but it is recommended, and on previous versions of the front page it has been suggested.

I've got the extra 6 pin power lead, the NVidia drivers installed, and shall therefore let you know for certain how it gets on when it arrives!

I have an EVGA 660 on a 3,1 running 10.8.3. I just updated today. No issue so far. I cannot comment on the issue others have brought up about the PCI speed. I ran cuda-z and got the same results as the other guy above but I don't know what they were before the update. I can say that my unigine benchmark score has not changed. I have no issue with sleep that I know of. I have noticed that it takes a while to restart and sometimes gets hung up but I have not troubleshooted this and I'm not sure it is due to the graphics card. When the updated nvidia drivers are available maybe it will run a little better but I don't really see a difference between 10.8.3 and 10.8.2. Hope this helps.

This is my CUDA-Z info if you are interested.

CUDA-Z Report
=============
Version: 0.6.163 http://cuda-z.sf.net/
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.8.3 12D78
Driver Version: 8.10.44 304.10.65f03
Driver Dll Version: 5.0
Runtime Dll Version: 4.20

Core Information
----------------
Name: GeForce GTX 660
Compute Capability: 3.0
Clock Rate: 1124 MHz
PCI Location: 0:2:0
Multiprocessors: 5 (960 Cores)
Therds Per Multiproc.: 2048
Warp Size: 32
Regs Per Block: 65536
Threads Per Block: 1024
Threads Dimensions: 1024 x 1024 x 64
Grid Dimensions: 2147483647 x 65535 x 65535
Watchdog Enabled: Yes
Integrated GPU: No
Concurrent Kernels: Yes
Compute Mode: Default

Memory Information
------------------
Total Global: 2047.81 MiB
Bus Width: 192 bits
Clock Rate: 3004 MHz
Error Correction: No
L2 Cache Size: 48 KiB
Shared Per Block: 48 KiB
Pitch: 2048 MiB
Total Constant: 64 KiB
Texture Alignment: 512 B
Texture 1D Size: 65536
Texture 2D Size: 65536 x 65536
Texture 3D Size: 4096 x 4096 x 4096
GPU Overlap: Yes
Map Host Memory: Yes
Unified Addressing: No
Async Engine: Yes, Unidirectional

Performance Information
-----------------------
Memory Copy
Host Pinned to Device: 2926.18 MiB/s
Host Pageable to Device: 2398.9 MiB/s
Device to Host Pinned: 3179.18 MiB/s
Device to Host Pageable: 2377.81 MiB/s
Device to Device: 46.9479 GiB/s
GPU Core Performance
Single-precision Float: 1161.87 Gflop/s
Double-precision Float: 85.029 Gflop/s
32-bit Integer: 368.964 Giop/s
24-bit Integer: 367.91 Giop/s

 

[Genghis Khan]

I've been following what you've all been saying with some interest -- you seem like a most knowledgable bunch!

I've just bought a GTX 660 (specifically this) for my Mac Pro 3,1 (with a stock 8800GT in it at the moment). It's due to arrive in a few days, and I'm wondering whether or not to upgrade to 10.8.3 in the mean time. As there are conflicting reports about the 660 and sleep crashes -- and sleep is something that's important to me (!) -- I'm going to delay.

Do any of you have any comments on the 660 and 10.8.3? I note that on the front page of this topic it's not on the "known good" page, but it is recommended, and on previous versions of the front page it has been suggested.

I've got the extra 6 pin power lead, the NVidia drivers installed, and shall therefore let you know for certain how it gets on when it arrives!

I've got an EVGA 660 SC in my 3,1 and it wouldn't start from sleep (so I've disabled sleep, but let the screens go off).

Haven't upgraded to 10.8.3 yet, waiting for the NVidia drivers

 

[Cecco]

Did the update to 10.8.3 and can confirm as well, that on my MacPro4,1 flashed to 5,1 speeds stay at 5 GiB/s.

I've found as well, that Luxmark Benchmarks give slightly lower results with the Apple 10.8.3 driver:

10.8.2 NVIDIA driver:
Luxball: 8539
Sala: 1186
Room: 626

10.8.3 Apple driver:
Luxball: 8335
Sala: 1159
Room: 612

Difference it always about 2.2%. Nothing you will notice in real world usage.

Today I've had one unpleasant experience since the update. On a cold boot both of my monitors stayed black. By power cycling one of them, both came back to life. So not a deal breaker but I never had this with the NVIDIA 10.8.2 drivers.

I'll try the NVIDIA drivers as soon as they will be released.

 

[Asgorath]

Yeah, I'm running 10.8.3 on a MacPro5,1 with a GTX 680 using the stock Apple drivers, and I'm definitely seeing PCIe 2.0 speeds.