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

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Asgorath said:
barefeats.com has good benchmarks, for example:

http://barefeats.com/gtx980ti.html

The major difference right now is that all the most recent NVIDIA cards like the 980 Ti or TITAN X pretty much work out-of-the-box (assuming you have the web drivers installed), but the latest AMD ones do not.
Click to expand...
Flashing AMD card is no problem.
One graph about openCL speed doesn't tell much.
What I'm looking for is comparison with creativeSuiteCC2015 with ATI5870 vs. nVidia680. These are in <€300 range.
Or would it be worth to burn €500 for nVidia980, how much faster would it be?
 
toke lahti said:
Flashing AMD card is no problem.
One graph about openCL speed doesn't tell much.
What I'm looking for is comparison with creativeSuiteCC2015 with ATI5870 vs. nVidia680. These are in <€300 range.
Or would it be worth to burn €500 for nVidia980, how much faster would it be?
Click to expand...

AFAIK nobody has the R9 Fury X working under OS X, flashed or otherwise, while the TITAN X works fine. There are plenty of other benchmarks on that site, I just picked a recent example. Those two cards you mentioned are quite old at this point, but there might be relevant data in an older review on Barefeats.
 
I guess my choice will br 980, 780 or maybe 950, which is launched today.
Oooor 970!
Still I haven't found a single test with cc15 premiere for bang-for-a-buck...
 
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Duane Dibbley said:
The default drivers have worked for my GTX 660 on OS 10.10.4 and 10.10.5. Maybe Apple actually fixed something?
Click to expand...

Taken from post #1 of this thread:

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 and beyond
That is, all versions from 10.7.5 and beyond (including 10.8.*, 10.9.* and 10.10.*) 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.



Only people running Maxwell based video cards need the Nvidia web drivers.
 
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Duane Dibbley said:
Except that the default drivers no longer worked after 10.10.2 with Security Update 2015-002: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-will-purposely-break-nvidia-drivers.1853748/

Now the default drivers work again.
Click to expand...

Did you read the thread? They are talking about the update breaking the Nvidia web drivers. This has been true long before 10.10.2. The default drivers were never broken.

Taken from post #1 of this thread:

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.
These can be found by searching for Quadro 4000 or GeForce GTX 680 drivers on NVIDIA's site, you won't find anything if you search for a GTX 570 or GTX 980 for example since those cards are not officially supported. 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.
 
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pastrychef said:
Did you read the thread? They are talking about the update breaking the Nvidia web drivers. This has been true long before 10.10.2. The default drivers were never broken.
Click to expand...
That was not my experience. Those updates broke the default drivers, so that only the web drivers worked, but then it took alternate methods (screen sharing, swapping out an old graphics card, etc.) to install the web drivers. Here's where we started discussing it in this thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-graphics-cards.1440150/page-79#post-20812444

We don't need to rehash all that though. My point is that the default drivers are working again for my card, and possibly others.
 
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pastrychef said:
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.
These can be found by searching for Quadro 4000 or GeForce GTX 680 drivers on NVIDIA's site, you won't find anything if you search for a GTX 570 or GTX 980 for example since those cards are not officially supported. 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.
Click to expand...

The list above is outdated, better use this: http://www.macvidcards.com/which-driver-should-i-install-for-my-new-gpu.html But even this list is not yet up to date, newest drivers for Mountain Lion and Mavericks in #2404.

You can also search for Quadro K5000 to get the drivers:

K5000 A.png

K5000 B.png
 
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Synchro3 said:
The list above is outdated, better use this: http://www.macvidcards.com/which-driver-should-i-install-for-my-new-gpu.html But even this list is not yet up to date, newest drivers for Mountain Lion and Mavericks in #2404.

You can also search for Quadro K5000 to get the drivers:
Click to expand...

Once you have the NVIDIA Driver Manager installed, you should just use the auto-update feature to get the latest driver for your OS. I'm not really going to maintain a full list of all the security update drivers, the OP describes how you can find the latest copy by searching on the NVIDIA site anyway. My list is mostly for convenience for folks who don't yet have the NVIDIA Driver Manager installed.
 
Hi All,

I have a Mac Pro 3,1 with a GTX 570 HD stock PC card. With the default OS X driver, both dual DVI ports as well as the display port work just fine. When I switch to the latest web driver, I only can get one monitor to work. I read somewhere that if I use the display port, that will work, so I got an active display port to DVI adapter. Again, works great with the default OS X driver, but the web driver only shows one monitor. I have never been able to get the web drivers to work.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks!
 
WARNING - El Cap PB5 and Nvidia Web Driver 346.03.01b06 are incompatible. When updating to PB5 if the Web Driver is left turned on, upon restart after update, you will go into a recurring bootloop. Before PB5 install, turn off the Web Driver and install PB5 and use Apple's Default Driver, if your card works with the Default Driver. My GTX 780 does. Otherwise stay with PB4.

Lou
 
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pastrychef said:
This is the first time I'm hearing about any version of Yosemite not working with a Kepler based card other than the GTX 780 Ti and Titan X.
Click to expand...

My GTX 650 hasn't been working with Yosemite stock drivers since 10.10.1. I have, however, discovered a way to update the OS without re-installing the Apple GPU: Safe Boot.

I've posted earlier about my struggles with this card. The nVidia beta driver wasn't working, nor nv_disable (that's probably only useful for Maxwell, I suspect).

What does get me to a desktop with stock drivers is adding "-x" to the boot-args ahead of the OS X update.
I can then apply the web driver, remove the "-x", and restart into a fully accelerated desktop.

It seems that most Kepler cards are fine without the web driver, but mine is not of those. Not in Yosemite. I'm just happy to have found a simple method to get the OS updates done.
 
Hi, I just installed a non-EFI Titan X in my Mac Pro (5,1).

I understand the instructions for updating the OS, but how could I do a clean install?
 
If you have a Mac Pro with a non-EFI card running current web drivers under 10.10.4, and you want to upgrade to 10.10.5, what is the procedure? If you try to install the 10.10.5 web driver, it says you don't have the required OS, but if you upgrade to 10.10.5, you get a black screen and can't see to update the webdrivers.

I thought web drivers after 10.10.4 would not do a OS version check?
 
Is there a neat list somewhere about what ROMs to flash to what cards?
I've had unflashed gtx670 over a year now and I'm getting gtx970 to my friend and thinking about flashing both of them to have nice boot screens.
Are there multiple options for ROMs?
Eg. I have a same MSI's 670 that is in MacVidCards pictures. Do all video ports fully function also after the flash? Different ROMs for different setup of ports?
 
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