Resolved Gainward Phantom GTX 670 under 10.8.3, mixed results...

[cal6n]

I've recently bought a Gainward Phantom GTX 670 to replace the Apple branded HD 5870 in my Mac Pro 3.33 hex. Overall, it's a significant upgrade, as shown by the attached Heaven results. It's also quieter than the 5870, both at idle and under load.

The card's twin fans exhaust through the top surface of the housing and so I have removed the upper 2 PCI blanking plates, allowing the airflow from the PCI fan carry the warm air out the back of the machine. This strategy seems to work and everything seems to be running well with one exception. Unfortunately it's a show-stopper as far as I'm concerned and that's Civ 5: Gods and Kings.

When I try to start or load a game, windowed or fullscreen, the game almost always quits unexpectedly before the map loads. Even on the rare occasion that the map does load, there are graphical glitches, for example I have seen the hex grid appear as thick white lines.

Has anyone else had problems running Civ with PC NVidia cards? I'm hoping that updated drivers will be released soon and that this issue will be resolved. In the meantime, it's back to the 5870 for now.

 

[ActionableMango]

Having read the other GPU threads, you aren't the only one with Nvidia graphical glitches on 10.8.3.

For those with a non-Apple Nvidia card, I'd stay on 10.8.2 until there are newer drivers. (A bit too late for you unless you can roll back to an older backup.)

 

[cal6n]

I considered rolling back to 10.8.2 but the 5870 has acceptable performance. I can wait for the web drivers from NVidia. Hopefully it won't be too long.

 

[ActionableMango]

More people complaining about it here.

 

[cal6n]

I saw no crashes, kernel panics or any other instability. Only the unexpected quits with Civ 5...

Perhaps I should've tried the DVD player. That's renowned for being awkward with dodgy graphics drivers.

 

[cal6n]

Update: DVD player is fine and Civ 5 is happy to run at somewhat reduced graphics settings. I guess I can live with that for now.

*edit* I spoke too soon. The quits are back.

*edit 2* Looks like the problem isn't confined to the GTX 670. The same quits, with similar crash logs, are (and have been) happening with the 5870 since 10.8.3. With the 5870 they were relatively rare, probably because I wasn't trying to max-out the graphics settings. It looks like I'll have to stick with the 5870 and raise a ticket with Aspyr.

 

[cal6n]

Update 2a: After working with Aspyr support, the unexpected quits in Civ 5 G&K using the HD 5870 seem to be a thing of the past. I had a VGA splitter connected via an adapter to the DVI port. It was usually unpowered except when required to drive a projector for watching movies. Since disconnecting this the game has run flawlessly.

Update 2b: I tried the same trick with the NVidia card but it didn't help. However, after trashing the com.aspyr.civ5xp.steam.plist from the ~/Library/Preferences folder and allowing the game to create a new one, my GTX 670 is also behaving itself.