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

[666sheep]

Yup, I've never heard of any hmdi's limitations in resolution from 1.2 on.

There are 2 I know about: colour depth and drivers support. According to HDMI 1.4 specs it's limited to 1920x1200 when using 48-bit color. IDK whether it's your case, but try to lower color depth to 24/30/36-bit.

 

[Sam67]

This thread has been really interesting.

I wonder if someone can offer some assistance in my circumstances. I have inherited a Mac Pro 3.1 with a non-functioning video card (2600). I want to replace it with something cheap so that I can get it up and running.

I understand using a non-EFI card will forgo me a boot screen, I can live with that.

I was able to upgrade it to 10.8.4 by booting it in target mode on another Mac and re-installing the OS on it's hard drives. When I boot it up it makes all the right noises and clicks and appears to be working ok, apart from no video of course.

The issue is both my easy access to choice of video cards is limited, being in the Middle East. Plus I don't want to spend a great deal, I only intend to use it for web development, not gaming or anything.

The local PC shop sells the following cards:

• GT610 ~ $60
• GT630 ~ $100
• HD 5450 ~ $60
• HD 6450 ~ $70

It also has a few other GTX cards, etc, but they are out of my budget as I'm just trying to get this this up and running on the cheap.

Will any of those cards do the trick, and if so which one would you recommend?

Thanks
Sam

 

[ActionableMango]

Will any of those cards do the trick, and if so which one would you recommend?

What OS is installed?

The problem is, it's newer drivers in ML that enable these cards to work, so unless it already has ML installed, you'll need to borrow a working video card compatible with whatever OS is installed in order to install ML in the first place.

 

[Sam67]

Thanks for replying, i appreciate it.

As mentioned I was able to get it to 10.8.4 via target mode from another Mac (ie I booted a different Mac with the Pro hanging off it as an external drive, and then ran the upgrade on it).

So I can infer from your reply that any of those cards will work? Any of them preferable or are they all pretty much the same? Eg ATI vs nVidia...

 

[666sheep]

Sam67, all listed cards will work. GT630 is the best performer, about twice as fast as 6450.

 

[Macmenace]

If you are stuck with a MacPro1,1 or MacPro2,1 then your options are slightly different, since the Kepler cards don't work in Lion.

• If you have an unlimited budget, get a GTX 570.
• Otherwise, get a GTX 560 or GTX 560 Ti.

My 8800GT died recently. Judging by this thread a GTX 570 is the best (reliable) card I can get with Lion on a 1,1 Mac Pro.

Does anyone recommend a brand (EVGA?) or buying location(Amazon, etc.)?

 

[Photovore]

My 8800GT died recently. Judging by this thread a GTX 570 is the best (reliable) card I can get with Lion on a 1,1 Mac Pro.

Does anyone recommend a brand (EVGA?) or buying location(Amazon, etc.)?

I got a nice used 570 (EVGA 012P31573AR) from ebay for 127.50, blows the 5870 out of the water. But I needed to go to 10.7.5 for the drivers. Will that run on a 1,1?

 

[sailmac]

Evga gtx 660

Have been following this thread with interest and gratitude.

Just installed a vanilla EVGA GTX 660 2GB (02G-P4-2660-KR, 1 x 6-pin) into MP 3,1 running 10.8.4. Runs out-of-the-box with the stock Apple driver 310.40.00.05f01 --- sleep and fans behaving normally. Very quiet.

I think I'm keeping up with the dialogue here, but would appreciate if someone can confirm

a) No point installing nVidia's web driver 313.01.02f01 for OS X because the 3,1 + 660 combo gets no benefit.

b) Currently nobody has offered up a Mac flash ROM for the EVGA GTX 660 --- and don't hold my breath for one!

Thanks

 

[Macmenace]

I got a nice used 570 (EVGA 012P31573AR) from ebay for 127.50, blows the 5870 out of the water. But I needed to go to 10.7.5 for the drivers. Will that run on a 1,1?

That is a really good price. Judging by other posts I bet that card will work.

Does anyone know if any additional cables are needed to power the card?

 

[Photovore]

That is a really good price. Judging by other posts I bet that card will work.

Does anyone know if any additional cables are needed to power the card?

It needs two Apple-style 6-pin power connectors (different from the PC-style connectors, I think), which my used card did not come with, but I just switched over the two that were previously powering the 5870.

[And when I say it blew the 5870 out of the water, I mean that I have an OpenCL kernel that took >40ms to calculate on that $500 Mac Edition 5870. I was hoping to get maybe 2.5 times the performance, i.e. running the kernel in ~16ms. Instead, it's closer to 9x the speed, calculating the same kernel in less than 5ms. Wowie zowie!]

 

[bokdol]

It also has a few other GTX cards, etc, but they are out of my budget as I'm just trying to get this this up and running on the cheap.

Will any of those cards do the trick, and if so which one would you recommend?

Thanks
Sam

so with my expirence on 2 card. first my ati/amd 6770 only got a black screen with 10.8.4 have not changed any kext. (will try later)
next the gtx 560ti black for a few minutes then loaded the desk top. everything ran fine. games were great.

i would try the nvidia cards first. i had the best luck right off the bat with them doing nothing but plugging them in the machine.

 

[Macmenace]

It needs two Apple-style 6-pin power connectors (different from the PC-style connectors, I think), which my used card did not come with, but I just switched over the two that were previously powering the 5870.

[And when I say it blew the 5870 out of the water, I mean that I have an OpenCL kernel that took >40ms to calculate on that $500 Mac Edition 5870. I was hoping to get maybe 2.5 times the performance, i.e. running the kernel in ~16ms. Instead, it's closer to 9x the speed, calculating the same kernel in less than 5ms. Wowie zowie!]

Great, I think I have a few of those cables. Just picked up a EVGA 570 GTX from Amazon. It's good to know you experienced a big speed boost. I'll eagerly await it!

 

[Photovore]

Great, I think I have a few of those cables. Just picked up a EVGA 570 GTX from Amazon. It's good to know you experienced a big speed boost. I'll eagerly await it!

Well, I eagerly await your results!

My task is a custom OpenCL kernel; I got the 570 instead of a 6xx because those are great for games but deliberately crippled to slow performance in OpenCL. For me, the difference was absolutely astounding. But even if you're just running games you should have a very happy experience. Tell us about it please when you know!...

 

[jonszymanski]

10.7.5 on a mac pro 2.1 with gainward gtx 570 'goldern smple'

just to let anyone know that 10.7.5 on a mac pro 2.1 with gainward gtx 570 'goldern smple' works a treat......just updated my drivers from nvidia and all was good! oh and i had to buy another mac 6pin power cable! there is one uk company i found on ebay selling them for about 4 pounds each inc postage

Hello Asgorath,

the GTX 570 works very well, under 10.7.4 and 10.8.1

----------

just fitted my gtx570 and it works........just a note to say thanks to all of the above info, i took the advice i needed and all has gone very well...just had to buy another apple 6 pin power cable off ebay for 4 pounds inc postage, the card i got for 114 pounds off ebay ( new/manufacturer refurbished ) and download the latest drivers and away it goes!

10.7.5 on a mac pro 2.1 with gainward gtx 570 'goldern sample'

 

[Macmenace]

Well, I eagerly await your results!

My task is a custom OpenCL kernel; I got the 570 instead of a 6xx because those are great for games but deliberately crippled to slow performance in OpenCL. For me, the difference was absolutely astounding. But even if you're just running games you should have a very happy experience. Tell us about it please when you know!...

I'll definitely report back! I also picked up 16 gigs of extra RAM.

 

[Sam67]

Sam67, all listed cards will work. GT630 is the best performer, about twice as fast as 6450.

Just to let you know I installed the GT630 and it works a treat, does exactly what I need.

Thanks for all the advice.

 

[donutbagel]

First of all, in case it hasn't been mentioned yet, I can confirm that the (EVGA) NVIDIA GTX 650 Ti Boost works in 10.8.4 on my Mac Pro 3,1 without graphical problems, but there is no boot screen of course.

Is there any way I can change the GPU settings? I can't find any NVIDIA control panel online or on my system. Is there some way to do this in Terminal?

 

[Asgorath]

Is there any way I can change the GPU settings? I can't find any NVIDIA control panel online or on my system. Is there some way to do this in Terminal?

What settings do you want to change?

 

[donutbagel]

What settings do you want to change?

Threaded optimization, texture filtering, and a few other things I've wanted to change in the past per-program but haven't been able to.

 

[Asgorath]

Threaded optimization, texture filtering, and a few other things I've wanted to change in the past per-program but haven't been able to.

The threaded optimization stuff is implemented in Apple's OpenGL framework, not in the NVIDIA driver. Either way, there is no NVIDIA Control Panel for Mac and you can't change these settings outside of the game/app you are running.

Which apps are you interested in altering these settings in? Many games have config files where you can force on/off Apple's threaded optimization (e.g. all the Feral Interactive games).

 

[donutbagel]

The threaded optimization stuff is implemented in Apple's OpenGL framework, not in the NVIDIA driver. Either way, there is no NVIDIA Control Panel for Mac and you can't change these settings outside of the game/app you are running.

Which apps are you interested in altering these settings in? Many games have config files where you can force on/off Apple's threaded optimization (e.g. all the Feral Interactive games).

Oh, ok. Minecraft, the one game having significant issues with the new GPU, needs something to be changed because it's running at a low framerate but using less than half of the GPU's power, and there's no CPU or RAM bottleneck.

Now that I think about it, it's not a big issue. I didn't get this GPU for gaming, but I was looking forward to one of my favorite games running faster, not slower than on my ATI HD2600.

 

[dxyz]

Fwiw 3,1 gtx 660

I am only interested in OpenCL so don't have display connected to card.
Just plug and play with EVGA 660GTX:

Device: 1
Name: GeForce GTX 660
Vendor: NVIDIA
Available: Yes
Compute Units: 5
Clock Frequency: 1110 mHz
Global Memory: 2048 mb
Max Allocateable Memory: 512 mb
Local Memory: 49152 bytes
Max Constant Memory: 65536 bytes

Max WORK_GROUP_SIZE: 1024

Extensions: cl_APPLE_SetMemObjectDestructor cl_APPLE_ContextLoggingFunctions cl_APPLE_clut cl_APPLE_query_kernel_names cl_APPLE_gl_sharing cl_khr_gl_event cl_khr_byte_addressable_store cl_khr_global_int32_base_atomics cl_khr_global_int32_extended_atomics cl_khr_local_int32_base_atomics cl_khr_local_int32_extended_atomics cl_APPLE_fp64_basic_ops cl_khr_fp64 cl_khr_3d_image_writes
Version: OpenCL 1.1
Created a dispatch queue using the GeForce GTX 660

I also have a HD7950 but no cl_khr_fp64.

10.8.4

 

[Asgorath]

and there's no CPU or RAM bottleneck.

Are you sure about that? What's your CPU utilization at? OS X will spread processes across all cores to even things out, so if you have 4 cores running at 25% the game may very well be limited in a single thread.

 

[donutbagel]

Are you sure about that? What's your CPU utilization at? OS X will spread processes across all cores to even things out, so if you have 4 cores running at 25% the game may very well be limited in a single thread.

The game's process uses 70%-90% according to Activity Monitor (so maybe around 10% per core), so it's not maxing it out, but the main indication is that my computer played it a little faster when it had the old GPU in it. When I changed nothing but the GPU, it slowed down. I can't find the site, but someone was having a similar problem on a different GTX and supposedly "solved" it by installing so many mods in the game that the GPU "noticed" the game and gave it the power.

 

[krisosha]

Just to clarify, if you have two os's on your mac pro with no boot screns, rather then booting into the os and switching like that, there's nothing stoping you from doing it blind right?

I mean hold apple key for 15 seconds after startup, wait 5 seconds, push right arrow, push enter?