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

[MattsanaX]

No, he meant what he posted. Nvidia released 331.01.01f02 for OS 10.9.2. Here:

http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/74402/en-us

313.01.04f01 is for OS 10.8.5 and is available here:

http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/73627/en-us

Lou

So I guess I'm pretty screwed with my GTX 670... since it says 680 alone under 600 series.

Though I don't have encountered any specific problems while in OS X with the GTX 670 except that I cannot see the boot screen. I thought it would be possible on a GTX 670 while screen is connected to DVI, or am I wrong?

 

[bist]

So I guess I'm pretty screwed with my GTX 670... since it says 680 alone under 600 series.

I just installed the 331.01.01f2 version.

• It's working under Mavericks with an unflashed (PC) GTX 670.
• I'm using two DVI monitors.
• Previous versions were not working (Only one monitor was recognized).

Whatever, if anything is going bad, you can revert to the OSX buildin driver with a reboot and a PRAM reset (alt + command + P + R).

 

[Asgorath]

So I guess I'm pretty screwed with my GTX 670... since it says 680 alone under 600 series.

Though I don't have encountered any specific problems while in OS X with the GTX 670 except that I cannot see the boot screen. I thought it would be possible on a GTX 670 while screen is connected to DVI, or am I wrong?

Does your card have an EFI on it? If not, then no you won't ever see a boot screen. This is covered in the first post of the thread.

 

[MattsanaX]

Okay I'll look further into that EFI.

I just think it's so weird that I have been able to install Windows 7 and OS X like this before but now nothing happens when I hold in the option key during boot up. Usually it remainds black until the installation begins.

 

[GP-SE]

So I guess I'm pretty screwed with my GTX 670... since it says 680 alone under 600 series.

Though I don't have encountered any specific problems while in OS X with the GTX 670 except that I cannot see the boot screen. I thought it would be possible on a GTX 670 while screen is connected to DVI, or am I wrong?

if you have a generic PC version then you won't have boot screens, you need a GTX 670 that has been modified with EFI firmware for boot screens.

 

[mamasboy]

You can always just reset your PRAM to force the default OS X driver to be used (i.e. the one from Apple). You could also just boot in safe mode by holding down the Shift key to get an unaccelerated desktop, and select the default OS X driver from System Preferences. No need to wipe your entire OS installation if the web driver doesn't work for you, that's kind of the whole point of having the web driver not overwrite the stock Apple drivers.

Asgorath: I failed to mention, that while under 10.9.2, I tried the Apple driver and the Nvidia web driver (via system prefs & nvidia driver manager), and it was still dysfunctional as I originally described. Thus, I had to revert back to my earlier OS 10.8.5, as none of the problems were present with Mountain Lion and the same hardware.

I will wait for more maturity with drivers & mavericks or go with gtx680 mac edition.

 

[Darko66]

Appreciate all the comments in this thread and thought I'd share.

I've got an unlashed EVGA GTX 570 2.5GB, running the latest Nvidia web driver (331.01.01f2) in Mavericks 10.9.2 on a Mac Pro 3,1.

The Nvidia driver has eliminated all the errors I was getting with the OS Driver, but with it enabled my second display isn't recognized.

The weird thing is that if I disconnect the second display, the computer hangs at a gray screen on boot up. I tried a bunch of stuff to try and get it to boot, but only thing that works is switching back to the OS X driver or plugging the second display back in.

Anyway, thought if anyone was having a problem booting up with a single display, maybe they could try plugging in a second monitor to see what happens.

 

[nhvzr]

Thanks so much to Asgorath and everyone else who's contributed to making this one of the best threads I've ever seen. I had no idea you could add a non-Mac graphics card to a Mac Pro, and it's changed the way I think about the line.

Inspired by this thread, I bought a cheap 3,1 (2.8 quad 4 GB RAM) to use as a rendering farm to keep wear and tear off the machine I use to edit. My projects are usually 40+ hours of chromakeyed video, so having a dedicated rendering computer with hardware acceleration makes an enormous difference, but I hadn't thought an older MP would be fast enough to make the price worth it. Since I mainly use Premiere (which I understand works best with CUDA acceleration), a used and unflashed GTX 570 2.5GB seemed like the sweet spot for performance and price.

Installation was instantaneous. Haven't upgraded to the NVIDIA drivers yet because of recent concerns in this thread about 10.9.2, but the stock drivers are working well so far. My LuxMark score jumped from 173 to 716, and rendering times in Premiere were sped up by almost exactly a factor of four. I need to do some actual tests, but the machine's rendering times are now certainly competitive with a mid-range 5,1 for a small fraction of the price. And that's with only 4 GB of RAM, so there's an incredibly obvious bottleneck to remove if I ever need another performance boost. So, thanks again to all the contributors to this thread. You've made a real-life difference.

Somewhat surprisingly, setting Premiere to use CUDA hardware acceleration was only slightly faster than setting it to use Open CL. Not sure if that's because I haven't started using the NVIDIA drivers yet or if I'm missing something else.

 

[Agent007pr]

Hi All,

I have a 2009 MP and I'm about to pull the trigger on a EVGA GTX 780 Classified. Anyone heard about issues with fitment?

Thanks

 

[m4v3r1ck]

Perhaps an interesting read?

Source: Nvidia & Open CL support

I am the developer of RealBench so I thought I would chime in.

@Sora: We all know that Nvidia is not interested on OpenCL and their perspective on the matter does not align with everyone else's. That is no news. Also support for OpenCL 1.2 and 2.0 has nothing to do with it. Seriously.

The problem is that Nvidia drivers are not optimized for OpenCL at all (they may be crippling it on purpose as well for all we know..), it's not a matter of API version.

While I as a developer like CUDA very much (Luxmark in RB is even compiled with the CUDA 5.5 SDK while the Luxmark guys use the AMD SDK), inclusion of CUDA on a global benchmark is impossible due to the fact that CUDA is proprietary. CUDA was dismissed as an option in the first 5 minutes of the discussion with ASUS, for this specific reason (I am developing RB for ASUS Republic of Gamers). We can't have a benchmark that measures GPU computing that only runs on Nvidia cards. Period.

So while we do know that Nvidia's vision does not include optimizing drivers for OpenCL (the hardware is fully capable), they will have to do something if they care about what the consumer market thinks in general about the performance of Nvidia cards in regards to GPU computational capabilites. For better or for worse this is what RB is exposing to the public and unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on which side you're looking from) public opinion runs the market.

The bottomline is that until CUDA becomes open or OpenCL drivers become optimized, the performance of the Nvidia cards will suffer in the benchmark. How much that matters to Nvidia remains to be seen as the benchmark gains momentum and the general public discovers GPU acceleration which is still in its infancy.

Nodens

 

[grue]

Asgorath, am I correct in understanding that the only way to get PCIe 2.0 speeds under Windows with a Mac Pro 4,1 is with an EFI-reflashed card, or does that only apply to certain models of card? I'd like to upgrade for a few high-end upcoming games but if I'm gonna have to reflash the card I need to be careful about what I buy, I suppose.


I've got a GTX 570 running unflashed right now but I don't have much hope for its future.

 

[davidrobinson]

OSX Not booting

Hi All

I have a problem with my card, which is an EVGA GTX 760 running in an MP 3,1 (early 2008). Most of the time I run Linux and this work fine with the card. The problem is when I want to use OSX, so I pop the Linux drive out and it should just boot in. Instead it doesn't boot at all, I get a flashing cursor on the top left of the screen and then a message telling me to insert a boot disk and press any key.

At the moment all I can do is swap the old card back in and use OSX like that. Not very good I can tell you.

Thanks in advance.

Dave

 

[Darko66]

Well, I don't know if this helps, but I had a lot of trouble getting mine to boot when I upgraded to Mavericks and installed the GTX 570 card. It still has trouble now and again. It just doesn't seem to want to recognize the system on the boot drive. I replaced the motherboard battery hoping it just wasn't remembering the startup drive, but that didn't seem to help. So, only way I could get it to boot was either zapping the NVRAM (which doesn't always work) or starting up in recovery mode and working my way to the startup disk utility and choosing the drive. I think I also had some success holding down the space bar at startup so that it would present a row of boot drives. Unfortunately, with an unflashed card, you can't see the list, just have to use the arrow keys and hit return and you'll either get the recovery partition or the startup drive.

 

[davidrobinson]

OSX Not Booting

Hi Darko


Thanks for that.

In the end I fixed it by just removing rEFIt from the
drive and it boots fine now. Phew! I thought I was in
for having the swap the cards every time I needed
Photoshop.

 

[m4v3r1ck]

Geforce Titan Z

Here we go again?

Geforce Titan Z

 

[aronidisd]

Hi everyone!

So, I want to buy the EVGA GTX 760 for my Mac Pro 3,1 (2008).

What do I have to take care of?

I see that there are no drivers at the following link: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
Is it going to work anyway? or should I pick a card that has drivers for Mavericks 10.9.2?

The card is this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

Update: I am planning to power the card with a 2x6pin-to-single-8pin cable from the Mac Pro's motherboard and from a 2x4pin-molex-to-6pin cable, one 4pin from the extra drive and one from an external power supply which I used to power IDE hard drives. Am I thinking of something wrong? Will I get the watts that the card needs?

I have the Radeon HD 2600 and the GeForce 8800 GT installed right now. Which one should I keep in there just to get the boot screen with one display connected?

So, what do you thing I can to do get this card working?
Note, that I am using Final Cut Pro X, Cinema 4D, Adobe CC Suite. I am buying this card to also play games on windows.

Hi Darko


Thanks for that.

In the end I fixed it by just removing rEFIt from the
drive and it boots fine now. Phew! I thought I was in
for having the swap the cards every time I needed
Photoshop.

David Robinson is there a way to guide me on how to remove this rEFIt from the drive? And what drivers do you use?

Thanks in advance everybody!

 

[linuxcooldude]

Hi everyone!

So, I want to buy the EVGA GTX 760 for my Mac Pro 3,1 (2008).

What do I have to take care of?

I see that there are no drivers at the following link: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
Is it going to work anyway? or should I pick a card that has drivers for Mavericks 10.9.2?

The card is this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

I have the Radeon HD 2600 and the GeForce 8800 GT installed right now. Which one should I keep in there just to get the boot screen with one display connected?

So, what do you thing I can to do get this card working?
Note, that I am using Final Cut Pro X, Cinema 4D, Adobe CC Suite. I am buying this card to also play games on windows.





David Robinson is there a way to guide me on how to remove this rEFIt from the drive? And what drivers do you use?

Thanks in advance everybody!

Look at the very first post, it is updated regularly when new drivers come out and has links to where you can download.

 

[aronidisd]

Look at the very first post, it is updated regularly when new drivers come out and has links to where you can download.

Thanks, that helped me a lot!

Anything about the power supply options mentioned on my previous reply?

 

[blueshogun96]

Sorry if this has already been answered (I skimmed over everything I could in a short amount of time), but I just bought a fairly cheap 760 GTX (which is actually a rebranded GTX 670). Would I be able to use that in a Mac Pro 1,1 that I've upgraded to Mavericks 10.9.2? Right now, I'm using a stock 8800 GT, which appears to be working okay so far, except my frame rates are choppy.

Shogun.

 

[MacGamver]

Sorry if this has already been answered (I skimmed over everything I could in a short amount of time), but I just bought a fairly cheap 760 GTX (which is actually a rebranded GTX 670). Would I be able to use that in a Mac Pro 1,1 that I've upgraded to Mavericks 10.9.2? Right now, I'm using a stock 8800 GT, which appears to be working okay so far, except my frame rates are choppy.

Shogun.

This is just a wild guess, but if your frame rates are choppy with an 8800, that 760 probably will not perform too well.

 

[emmab2006]

Got a quick question , been looking around for a card , been considering the Sapphire 7950 , But my question is , is it really worth buying an Nvidia card to replace my Genuine Apple 5870 ? ... its primarily used for X Plane i want more VRAM but don't want to pay the ridiculous price of £300 for the 7950.. Has anyone here tried a normal PC Card with X Plane 10 ?

 

[MacGamver]

Got a quick question , been looking around for a card , been considering the Sapphire 7950 , But my question is , is it really worth buying an Nvidia card to replace my Genuine Apple 5870 ? ... its primarily used for X Plane i want more VRAM but don't want to pay the ridiculous price of £300 for the 7950.. Has anyone here tried a normal PC Card with X Plane 10 ?

Yes! It totally is! The 7950 is a good card, and I'd say comparable to an NVidia 680. Should you pay the premium for EFI firmware? Not a chance! As far as that card, you can get a non-mac specific one that should work just fine. I'm not as familiar with ATI/AMD cards as NVidia. Personally as a gamer, I find that more games leverage NVidia's specific technologies more than ATi/AMD's. They are more often optimized to run on NVidia hardware.

I replaced my stock 8800GT with an EVGA GTX650ti SC, and it runs beautifully, both in 10.9.2 and bootcamp Win7. Hope this helps

 

[emmab2006]

Yes! It totally is! The 7950 is a good card, and I'd say comparable to an NVidia 680. Should you pay the premium for EFI firmware? Not a chance! As far as that card, you can get a non-mac specific one that should work just fine. I'm not as familiar with ATI/AMD cards as NVidia. Personally as a gamer, I find that more games leverage NVidia's specific technologies more than ATi/AMD's. They are more often optimized to run on NVidia hardware.

I replaced my stock 8800GT with an EVGA GTX650ti SC, and it runs beautifully, both in 10.9.2 and bootcamp Win7. Hope this helps

Thanks the only issue is if its running at 5.0Gt/s ... and if it works 100% in X Plane , thats my only worry , if i buy it and my x plane settings are awful with a pc card ive lost money you see... so i'm still confused as what to do ...

 

[mackina]

Help

Hi everyone!

I have a problem. I have read the 50 pages, and I still have doubts. I am not sure it is the correct thread, hope you can help.

My mac pro 1.1 2006 xeon 2 x 2.66 5gbRAM (hopefully expand to 8gb or 16gb) with snow leopard 10.6.8 but I still have the geforce 7300 gt 256mb and giving me many problems.

What should I do?

To change the card I will have to upgrade to 10.7 or 10.8 or 10.9?

What graphics card can I install? Make it cheap. Not for games.

I have to buy the card before installing the OS? because is true that the geforce 7300 do not recognize os 10.8 and 10.9?

Some nvidia pc cards with low price? Evga gtx 650 with mavericks is possible? gigabyte or asus gtx 660? gtx 560? asus or evga 570? what to keep in mind to be compatible?

I have seen that amazon sell Sapphire Radeon HD 6570 4GB DDR3 of 84 €. It may work?

It is to work with adobe cs6, final cut, after effects ...

Thanks for all!

 

[mackina]

Please people

What do you think if I follow these steps:

with my mac pro 1.1 2x2,66 10.6.8

- First install 10.7 (for it to work with my nvidia 7300 gt)
- Buy the gtx 570hd. I guess that works with lion (have to install drivers?)
- Insert the new gtx in the second slot and run (I use two cards at once?)
- There will be configured CUDA, OpenCL....?
- I need power cable pcie?

For buy the gtx570 (used), anyone know if "gigabyte" works well?

or better still a gtx570hd evga in ebay?

Or ASUS?

thanks thanks thanks