There has been a fair amount of confusion about the NVIDIA PC card support since it was last enabled in the 10.7.3 web driver. I'm going to use the term PC card to describe a stock card with no EFI, that is, any old NVIDIA graphics card that you can buy online or from your local computer store.
1) What OS versions will work?
In order to boot with an NVIDIA PC card, you need to have:
- 10.7.4 with the 270.00.00f06 driver installed
- 10.7.5
- 10.8 through 10.8.2
That is, both 10.7.5 and 10.8.* will work with NVIDIA PC cards out-of-the-box.
Note that the Fermi generation cards work with Lion, but in almost all cases the Kepler cards require Mountain Lion. You may find a GK107-based card that boots in 10.7.5, but it is highly recommended that you use Mountain Lion since there appears to be much better driver support in that OS in general.
To be clear, the stock Apple drivers now contain basic support for all currently-shipping cards. This means that you no longer have to swap out the card when doing a Software Update to the next OS version. In all cases, it is recommended that you update to the corresponding NVIDIA web driver, as those drivers tend to have more bug fixes and/or performance improvements than the stock Apple drivers.
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.
NVIDIA has had a good track record of releasing new web drivers for each version of OS as it comes out. Sometimes there is a delay of a few days, but in general a new driver is available quickly. Given that, it is advised you do one of the following:
- Update to the new OS, live with the stock drivers for a few days.
- Wait until the new driver is released by NVIDIA, then update to the new OS.
I usually do the latter, since that allows me to get all the benefits of the web driver in the mean time.
3) Where do I get the latest NVIDIA drivers?
Some people have complained about not being able to find the latest NVIDIA driver for a given OS release, so I'll just list them here for reference.
If you are using a PC card, it is recommended that you always run the latest driver from NVIDIA's site, even if the base OS version allows your card to work out of the box.
4) What about SnowLeopard?
SnowLeopard will never, ever work with PC cards. Period. If you've been holding off updating, perhaps the fact that Mountain Lion works with PC cards will be enough to convince you to update.
No matter what, updating to the latest OS is the only way to get driver updates, and if you care about GPU performance then this alone should be enough motivation to stay current. Apple only supports the latest major OS version.
5) What GPUs will work?
As far as we can tell, basically any card will work, especially with Mountain Lion. The Lion driver appears to work well with the Fermi generation, but the Kepler generation cards only work with Mountain Lion.
Cards that are known to work include:
- GTX 460 (GF104)
- GTX 470 (GF100)
- GTX 480 (GF100) *
- GT 520 (GF119) - 1
- GTX 560 and GTX 560 Ti (GF114) - 1
- GTX 570 (GF110) - 1
- GTX 580 (GF110) * - 1
- GT 640 (GK107)
- GTX 650 (GK107)
- GTX 660 (GK106)
- GTX 660 Ti (GK104)
- GTX 670 (GK104)
- GTX 680 (GK104) - 1
If you can confirm that a particular card works, please post a reply to the thread. I'd like to build up a list of links for each card.
Note that while the GTX 480 and GTX 580 technically work, they have a TDP of 245-250W which is above what the Mac Pro can officially support (225W). If you want to use these cards, you'll probably have to drive them with an external power supply. In general, a card like the GTX 570 would be a better choice, since it has a TDP of 219W.
The rule of thumb is this: if the card has one or more 8-pin power connectors, it might draw too much power and you should check to see what its TDP is. It is generally safer to stick with cards that have one or two 6-pin power connectors. Note that many GTX 680 cards do have both a 6-pin and 8-pin power connectors, though their TDP is down in the 190W range and should work fine.
6) What GPU should I buy?
This is a great question, and depends on your budget and what you'll be using the card for.
- If you care more about gaming and have an unlimited budget, get a GTX 680.
- If you care more about compute (CUDA/OpenCL) and have an unlimited budget, get a GTX 570.
- If you can only afford a mid-rage card, get a GTX 660 Ti or GTX 660.
- If can only afford a low-end card, get a GTX 650.
In general, if you are buying a card now, I would recommend getting a Kepler card and using Mountain Lion. If you really care more about OpenCL or CUDA performance, then the GTX 570 is probably the best choice. Brand of card does not matter, though I personally stick with EVGA in general.
7) Are these cards officially supported?
No, the PC cards are not officially supported, but they do seem to work very well with the most recent drivers.
8) Will the boot screen work?
No, the boot screen requires that the card has an EFI on it, so the screen will stay black until the login window or desktop starts up. This is probably the scariest part of the installation process, since you don't know if the card is working until the system has finished booting.
9) I use Boot Camp a lot. How do I switch OSes without a boot screen?
Many people switch into Boot Camp by holding down the Option key while the system starts. Given that this is part of the boot screen and thus does not work with a PC card (i.e. the screen stays black), you will need to use an alternative method of selecting which OS to use.
You can manually select the boot partition by using the Startup Disk pane in System Preferences under Mac OS X. You can also select "Restart in Mac OS X" using the Boot Camp system tray icon under Windows.
You can also just use a third-party app like
BootChamp as well.
10) How do I install a PC card?
Installing the card is easy. First, you should ensure that you are running a supported OS and/or driver. If you are running on an OS that does not natively support the PC cards, like 10.7.4, you
must install the NVIDIA driver before you install the card. You should install the driver and then reboot to make sure it is working correctly.
Once you have an OS/driver combination that supports the PC cards, simply shut your machine down and plug the card in. You should make sure that you connect power cables to all the plugs on the card.
11) I don't have enough power cables. Where do I get more?
The Mac Pro has a special low-profile connector on the motherboard, so you need a cable like
this or
this. Make sure the cable you get specifically says it is for the Mac Pro, there are many different choices and not all cables will work.
12) What slot should I install the card in?
Many people have reported issues with the PC cards not working well in PCIe slot 1, that is, the slot closest to the CPUs. There's an image on
AnandTech that shows the slot numbers, for reference. As such, you should probably install the card in the other 16-lane slot. For the 2009 and newer models, that means slot 2.
FIXME: Need to figure out what slot this is for the 2006, 2007 and 2008 models.
13) Does CUDA work?
Yes, CUDA should just work. You should update to the latest CUDA driver, of course.
14) Why doesn't my Adobe app detect a CUDA device?
You need to add your card to the list of supported devices. This list is a simple text file.
FIXME: Need to provide more details here.
15) Does OpenCL work?
In general yes, but you might have to jump through a few hoops in some cases. In general, the drivers now have good support for OpenCL for both Fermi and Kepler generation cards. The only major issue right now is the 2GB RAM limitation, which I'll cover next.
16) My GPU has more than 2GB of RAM and OpenCL isn't working. What do I do?
Kudos goes to Netkas and MacVidCards for this, but there is a solution to this particular problem. Be warned: several people have not followed the instructions correctly and caused their system to stop booting.
MacVidCards wrote up detailed instructions in
this post and
this post of
this thread. The fix involves modifying the Apple OpenCL framework binary to remove the check for more than 2GB of RAM.
Some important points to stress, since this is where folks tend to get confused:
- Make a backup copy of the OpenCL framework, and leave it unmodified. This will let you boot up in Safe Mode by holding the Shift key and restoring the original file back to /System/Library/Frameworks in case something goes wrong.
- Check the exact size of the OpenCL framework binary before and after the edits. It should be the same in both cases. If the edited file is larger, that means you inserted the bits instead of replacing them, and this will not work.
It might be nice to get MD5 sums of the original and working edited binaries, so folks can check their work as well.
17) Are the PC cards forced to only use PCIe 1.0?
The PC cards used to be forced to only use PCIe 1.0 (2.5GT/s), but the most recent drivers from NVIDIA for Mountain Lion (
304.00.00f20 for 10.8.1,
304.00.05f02 for 10.8.2) appears to remove this restriction under Mac OS X. The PC cards will still run at PCIe 1.0 speeds under Boot Camp, however.
18) Where has the PC card support been discussed in the past?
There have been several major threads where the PC card support has been discussed in detail, including:
19) I have my new card installed and working, but Cinebench didn't get any faster. What's going on?
Cinebench R11.5 is an old benchmark that is not very efficient. As a result, the application cannot feed enough work to the GPU to keep the GPU busy, and as such you'll see the same FPS score with an 8800 GT as you will with a GTX 680. This is what I would consider a "CPU limited" benchmark, as opposed to a "GPU limited" one like Unigine Heaven.
If you want to test your new card, I would highly recommend a newer benchmark like Unigine Heaven or LuxMark, since those actually stress the GPU enough for it to matter.
On top of that, Cinebench R11.5 is old enough that it no longer reflects CINEMA 4D performance like it was designed to do. CINEMA 4D is now up to R14 from what I can tell.
20) There is corruption in the lower left or upper right corner of the screen. Is my card damaged?
There appears to be a driver bug in the stock Apple drivers that causes corruption like this:
Image
on certain cards like the GTX 570/580 and GTX 670/680. This was fixed in the 10.8.1 web driver, as far as we can tell, so you should make sure you are running the latest version of Mountain Lion with the NVIDIA driver. There is currently no fix for this in Lion.
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CUDA and OpenCL sections are still a work in progress, will update them later today. Hopefully this will help new folks get up and running with a PC card. What's the process for getting a thread made sticky on the forum?
