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

[mac65]

NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT works

I just installed a plain 9600 GT into my MacPro3,1 running Yosemite 10.10.3.

Important detail: When I had installed the NVIDIA "web" driver first (WebDriver-346.01.02f01.pkg), it did NOT work (Mac kept rebooting, never getting to the login dialog or to the desktop). Once I uninstalled the drivers, leaving only the original OSX drivers installed, it worked.

The card provides no video during boot, of course, due to the lack of EFI support from this card. (Does anyone know if there is a patch to add EFI support for the card?)

In the end I left the original ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT installed along with the 9600 GT (2600 in slot 1, 9600 in slot 2). That way, with two monitors, I can have one card drive one monitor so that I can see the boot process, whereas the other card will then be used on my main monitor and for graphics-intensive tasks (3D games, for instance).

The performance of the 9600 is only slightly better than the ATI's, though. Cinebench by Maxon rates the GeForce at 25fps and the ATI at 22fps. However, when I ran the "Heaven" benchmark from Unigine, it made a bigger difference - the first scene went about 8-10 fps on the GeForce but only at 2-3 on the ATI. I guess that's because of the large memory buffer on the GeForce (1GB vs. 256MB on the ATI).

The main reason for me to install the GeForce was that the ATI did get rather loud when driving two monitors (the noise coming from the fan running at rather high speed). Now, even with two cards installed, the noise is down with both fans rather low in speed.

I had trouble finding a fitting power cable for the extra power connector on the GeForce card. I ended up taking a standard PC connector cable apart on the board connector's end, removing all 6 pins, crushing the female pins to make them tighter and then connecting them individually into the 6 mail pins on the board's power connector.

 

[Synchro3]

I had trouble finding a fitting power cable for the extra power connector on the GeForce card. I ended up taking a standard PC connector cable apart on the board connector's end, removing all 6 pins, crushing the female pins to make them tighter and then connecting them individually into the 6 mail pins on the board's power connector.

Could you post a photo of the cable connected to the board?

I think you should use these cables: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mini-6-pin-...011?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item234326497b

 

[MacVidCards]

The card provides no video during boot, of course, due to the lack of EFI support from this card. (Does anyone know if there is a patch to add EFI support for the card?)

.

There is a way to write an EFI for such a card as it is closely related to 8800GT and GT120. More than 90% likelihood that you would need a new EEPROM soldered on to the board to do so.

Also, i do believe that we are still the only ones who actually figure such things out, everyone else does a "copy & paste" approach. Sadly, I doubt that having us do it would be a cost effective route, there are much better cards to be had for the money.

 

[m4v3r1ck]

Thanks

In the end I left the original ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT installed along with the 9600 GT (2600 in slot 1, 9600 in slot 2). That way, with two monitors, I can have one card drive one monitor so that I can see the boot process, whereas the other card will then be used on my main monitor and for graphics-intensive tasks (3D games, for instance).

Thanks for your feedback. Glad to know that my ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT will still work in 10.10.3 as I DO NEED my bootscreens.

My config:

Slot#1 GTX-670-FTW-4GB
Slot#2 ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT

Cheers

 

[mac65]

The performance of the 9600 is only slightly better than the ATI's, though. Cinebench by Maxon rates the GeForce at 25fps and the ATI at 22fps.

I did that test wrong. To properly test a card's performance with Cinebench, one must make the monitor the main monitor, i.e. it must be the one with the menu bar - it's not enough to just move the app's window to the monitor you want to test.

With that, I found that the ATI 2600 only gets about 9 fps while the GeForce 9600 still gets 25 fps.

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Could you post a photo of the cable connected to the board?

Attached. It was some standard PC(?) cable that had the same connectors on both ends, one female, one male. One end fitted into the GeForce's card, but the other did not fit onto the Mac's board. So I removed the female pins from the connector and tried to put them one by one onto the motherboard's connector male pins. But the females were too wide, to I used pliers to reduce their diameter. Eventually they'd stick fast to the pins, and the result is shown in the picture. I also put some tape between the left and the right row to prevent a power shortage.

I think you should use these cables: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mini-6-pin-...011?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item234326497b

I did the installation on a sunday and I could not wait.

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Glad to know that my ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT will still work in 10.10.3

Why shouldn't it? It's an official Apple card, why should they stop supporting their own hardware that they sold to you?

 

[Angelus]

Running GTX 760 as primary GPU and HD 4870 for backup

I asked this question in another thread but it hasn't gained traction.

With the recent 10.10.3 update my Mac Pro 2009 with GTX 760 lost video out to my monitor. This was postulated to be due to native drivers not supporting the card and sure enough when I replaced it with my old Apple stock HD 4870, my display worked again. Following this I installed the latest Nvidia Web driver, swapped out the 4870 for the 760 and all is well in the world again.

My GTX 760 is powered by two six pin plugs (so is the HD 4870).

To avoid swapping the cards out in future, can I leave the GTX 760 in Slot 1 (with the six pin plugs attached) and the HD 4870 in Slot 2 without additional power cables? I will use the 760 as my primary GPU and and the HD 4870 would not even be connected to a monitor. Come 10.10.4 I would swap over the six pin plugs to the 4870, run the update and install new drivers again before reverting to the GTX 760. Is this safe for the backboard or would the 4870 sitting in the PCI slot without sufficient power fry it?

 

[m4v3r1ck]

Why shouldn't it? It's an official Apple card, why should they stop supporting their own hardware that they sold to you?

Because with the OSX 10.10.x updates nowerdays you never know what to expect! So just plain asking here on MR makes totally sense!

Cheers

 

[MacGamver]

Because with the OSX 10.10.x updates nowerdays you never know what to expect! So just plain asking here on MR makes totally sense!

Cheers

Agreed! That's why I did not install yet; Can anyone confirm whether the stock 10.10.3 NVidia driver will work with a GTX650ti, or do I have to replug the old 8800 to do the update, then the webdriver? I'd rather not bother with that route...

 

[omegat3]

Agreed! That's why I did not install yet; Can anyone confirm whether the stock 10.10.3 NVidia driver will work with a GTX650ti, or do I have to replug the old 8800 to do the update, then the webdriver? I'd rather not bother with that route...

660ti did not work with the stock drivers. Had to update the web drivers via screen sharing, which went fine.

 

[MacGamver]

660ti did not work with the stock drivers. Had to update the web drivers via screen sharing, which went fine.

Oh now what the hell!?!!? Is there any sensible reason for this? Is Apple not building working NVidia drivers into their OS anymore, and just plain decided not to tell us?

Or is the problem that specific families no longer are included in Apple's driver?

 

[makaveli559m]

I have a problem with Yosemite that I never did with Mountain Lion or Mavericks, I have 2 GTX 650 video cards after installing Yosemite I can only boot with one video card. Does anyone know of a fix?

 

[MacGamver]

I have a problem with Yosemite that I never did with Mountain Lion or Mavericks, I have 2 GTX 650 video cards after installing Yosemite I can only boot with one video card. Does anyone know of a fix?

Hmm... which one, Slot one or two? Were you able to boot with the stock Apple driver in 10.10.3?

 

[makaveli559m]

Hmm... which one, Slot one or two? Were you able to boot with the stock Apple driver in 10.10.3?

Only able to boot Yosemite with one GTX video card Slot one, I tried every other slot for the second one and doesn't boot with both. Yes even with stock driver. Kind of disappointed my only option if no fix is to put back Mavericks.

 

[pixxelpusher]

Was hoping someone can help me out. Just got a Gainward GTX 770 4GB and it's working great under boot camp Win 7 but not so good under OS X 10.10.2.
Luxmark Sala score for Win 7 is around 1200 but under OS X it's about half that at around 700.
I've tried with cuda drivers installed and Nvidia web drivers, but no difference.
Also the Heaven benchmark confirms the poor performance I'm getting under OS X.
So how can I fix this to get the same performance I'm seeing under boot camp?

 

[romanboy]

Was hoping someone can help me out. Just got a Gainward GTX 770 4GB and it's working great under boot camp Win 7 but not so good under OS X 10.10.2.
Luxmark Sala score for Win 7 is around 1200 but under OS X it's about half that at around 700.
I've tried with cuda drivers installed and Nvidia web drivers, but no difference.
Also the Heaven benchmark confirms the poor performance I'm getting under OS X.
So how can I fix this to get the same performance I'm seeing under boot camp?

Did you run Heaven in Widows using OpenGL? By default it uses DirectX. Also, what mac are you using?

 

[pixxelpusher]

Did you run Heaven in Widows using OpenGL? By default it uses DirectX. Also, what mac are you using?

I used DirectX under Windows bootcamp. It's a dual cpu mac pro 2006 upgraded to 2007 cpu's.
Feels like it's at half speed on the mac side, any other drivers / tweeks I should be running?

 

[MacGamver]

I asked this question in another thread but it hasn't gained traction.

With the recent 10.10.3 update my Mac Pro 2009 with GTX 760 lost video out to my monitor. This was postulated to be due to native drivers not supporting the card and sure enough when I replaced it with my old Apple stock HD 4870, my display worked again. Following this I installed the latest Nvidia Web driver, swapped out the 4870 for the 760 and all is well in the world again.

My GTX 760 is powered by two six pin plugs (so is the HD 4870).

To avoid swapping the cards out in future, can I leave the GTX 760 in Slot 1 (with the six pin plugs attached) and the HD 4870 in Slot 2 without additional power cables? I will use the 760 as my primary GPU and and the HD 4870 would not even be connected to a monitor. Come 10.10.4 I would swap over the six pin plugs to the 4870, run the update and install new drivers again before reverting to the GTX 760. Is this safe for the backboard or would the 4870 sitting in the PCI slot without sufficient power fry it?

So I'm still unsure about updating; then I noticed this bolded text... I have my old 8800GT sitting in the top PCIe slot with nothing plugged in, and no power cord to it. Is this harmful?

 

[Angelus]

So I'm still unsure about updating; then I noticed this bolded text... I have my old 8800GT sitting in the top PCIe slot with nothing plugged in, and no power cord to it. Is this harmful?

Yeah that's what I'd like to know too. It'd be much simpler if I could leave the 4870 in there and just swap out power cords at update time.

 

[MacGamver]

Yeah that's what I'd like to know too. It'd be much simpler if I could leave the 4870 in there and just swap out power cords at update time.

Well, I updated, and as expected no boot from the stock drivers. I swapped the 6-pin cable and updated the webdriver then I was fine. I'd like to know I'm not risking damage to my system by doing this....

 

[Angelus]

Well, I updated, and as expected no boot from the stock drivers. I swapped the 6-pin cable and updated the webdriver then I was fine. I'd like to know I'm not risking damage to my system by doing this....

Can anyone offer clarity on this as I'm in the same boat? Is it just a stupid question and am I overthinking the matter?

 

[MacVidCards]

http://us.download.nvidia.com/Mac/Quadro_Certified/346.01.02f02/WebDriver-346.01.02f02.pkg

For the "Supplemental Update" build 14D136

 

[pixxelpusher]

Was hoping someone can help me out. Just got a Gainward GTX 770 4GB and it's working great under boot camp Win 7 but not so good under OS X 10.10.2.
Luxmark Sala score for Win 7 is around 1200 but under OS X it's about half that at around 700.
I've tried with cuda drivers installed and Nvidia web drivers, but no difference.
Also the Heaven benchmark confirms the poor performance I'm getting under OS X.
So how can I fix this to get the same performance I'm seeing under boot camp?

Can anyone offer anymore insight into this? Is it just that the drivers on the mac side are so bad?

 

[MacVidCards]

Can anyone offer anymore insight into this? Is it just that the drivers on the mac side are so bad?

You are asking a question from 1989

Try running Valley in Windows using OpenGl instead of DirectX

It is what it is, Apple lost the GPU wars when Clinton was president.

Nice GUI or horsepower, your call.

And leaving a card in the slot with only part of the power system connected is a VERY BAD IDEA

 

[pixxelpusher]

You are asking a question from 1989

Try running Valley in Windows using OpenGl instead of DirectX

Thanks for the reply, but not sure what 1989 is referencing?
I was going to try and do more benchmarks tomorrow so I'll see then.
Also, DirectX is working great under Windows (what nearly all games use), it's the mac side that's the prob?

What's your experience with the 770 card? Does a GPU score of 700 in LuxMark sound right for the Mac OS?

 

[snipper]

Fyi

I'm kinda new to the whole PC-card thing so I didn't dare updating from 10.10.1 to 10.10.2 with my recently acquired MSI Twin FrozrIII nVidia GTX660 2GB.

Couldn't find / didn't understand if this was supposed to be solved with 10.10.3 so I just did the upgrade to 10.10.3 since I had the old 8800 GT still laying around as a backup.

I just wanted to let you know 10.10.3 works fine with the standard drivers on an nVidia GTX 660. You can update the CUDA web driver after starting up.