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GK110B and OpenCl = headache? NO !!! SOLVED COMPLETELY !!!!

M

MacVidCards

Suspended
Original poster
Nov 17, 2008
6,096
1,056
Hollywood, CA
So, need to get this out there but I don't have compete knowledge yet.

There is a growing body of evidence that new spin off variant of GK110 chip is having issues with 10.9 and OpenCl.

This is from a guy who JUST had me do first GK110B EFI.

The GK110B is supposed to be 780Ti but Nvidia is using it in Titan and regular 780 as well.

There is a thread at Netkas but it was Hackintoshers and it is tough to tell when their problems are the faking of EFI issues or consistent with Mac Pro.

"Celedral" brought me a 780 to mod last weekend and card seemed fine during testing but I just stressed with OpenGl.

He has been trying to use it in new RCX that allows processing Red 4K files using GPU instead of CPU.

Here is what he wrote me:

...was running RCX (latest beta) and it crashes every time I click on "system" in the preferences. tried it on previous builds as well with no luck

I'm running 10.9

Maybe you might have a solution for this? I couldn't find much info on reducer, but people claim it's working 100% with a titan and 10.9.

And in another thread here:

I'll be testing that GTX 780 SC (GK110B) later tonight with OpenCL. I got this card specifically to edit r3d footage, but having no OpenCL on RC-X is such a bummer at the moment.

I hear people are having issues with preview since it's using OpenCL. I noticed this when i previewed a video and it comes up as a incompatible file with 0kb.

I don't know enough to actually use the program but I was able to open up and find that System panel.

Shows a regular 780 getting there just fine.

I will be offering to temporarily trade him so that I can have a "b" card for further testing.

Anyhow, anyone getting a PC Titan or 780 that shows as "b" in ROM or GPU-Z is welcome to see if their OpenCl is working in 10.9 and post here.
 

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Doc, what's in that ointment? I'm changing each day & feel more like a fly - wings ->

MacVidCards said:
... .
Click to expand...
appetite and all.

And ODE to Jeff Goldblum and Vincent Price: BUZ, BUZZ, BUZZZ, BUZZZZ. That darn fly is getting louder and peskier.

The early GTX Titan (w/ 1x Kepler GK110-400-A1) has 2688 CUDA cores enabled and 224 TMUS. GTX 780 Ti (and newer GTX Titans) w/ 1x Kepler GK110-425-B1 has, at least in the case of the 780 Ti, 2880 CUDA cores enabled and, at least in the case of the 780 Ti, 240 TMUS. What role does this play in OCL operation and performance and how was this difference achieved [e.g., were the additional cores/TMUS always there (but just dormant) or are they recent additions]? Also, what's the memory bandwidth of the newer Titans with the 1x Kepler GK110-425-B1? Do the newer Titans with the 1x Kepler GK110-425-B1 have 240 or 224 TMUS? Is it your opinion that the newer Titans with w/ 1x Kepler GK110-425-B1 are cards currently still in transition to become what is the fabled "Titan Ultra." That is a card with everything that the GTX 780 Ti has (including 2880 active CUDA cores and 15 rather than 14 active SMXs, plus the 12 gig frame buffer and the number of active FP64s as the new Telsa K40 Atlas?

P.S. Are hiccups a common symptom while one meta-morphes into a fly?
 
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I can confirm that my 780SC rev.B will not support OpenCL throughout the OS/Program. It crashes instantly when trying to access any use of OpenCL.
 
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Yeah, this is a real drag. It means I need to stop buying new cards and only flash used ones.

We can hope that a web driver will come out soon and fix issue in 10.9. In a perfect world they would also update 10.8.5 driver to enable OpenCl and the Ti card, but I'm not going to be waiting by my (cable) modem for that.

Interesting question about new chip and WHY OpenCl got broken. Perhaps the additional clusters are all enabled in silicon and then disabled via software? Would be great because then there would be a way to turn them on in Titan/780. This would change getting a 110B into a blessing instead of the curse it is currently.
 
MacVidCards said:
Yeah, this is a real drag. It means I need to stop buying new cards and only flash used ones.

We can hope that a web driver will come out soon and fix issue in 10.9. In a perfect world they would also update 10.8.5 driver to enable OpenCl and the Ti card, but I'm not going to be waiting by my (cable) modem for that.

Interesting question about new chip and WHY OpenCl got broken. Perhaps the additional clusters are all enabled in silicon and then disabled via software? Would be great because then there would be a way to turn them on in Titan/780. This would change getting a 110B into a blessing instead of the curse it is currently.
Click to expand...


Someone might wonder if it's not Apple breaking OpenCL on them, in sly attempt to get people to look towards AMD, and possibly the new Mac Pro as an OpenCL powerhouse.
 
N19h7m4r3 said:
Someone might wonder if it's not Apple breaking OpenCL on them, in sly attempt to get people to look towards AMD, and possibly the new Mac Pro as an OpenCL powerhouse.
Click to expand...

I doubt it. The device id of these cards hasn't changed so Apple would have no way to have pre-built an issue into the OS to catch these cards.

It is some architecture change that NVIDIA made in manufacturing base GPU chip. I have a string feeling that NVIDIA will release a web driver fix in next couple of weeks.
 
It was a tongue in cheek comment. :p

We'll see if NV get that web driver out, they're rather behind at the moment on that.
 
dotsfilmes said:
This problem means that any new 780/Titan, even if not flashed (in PC mode), won't work?
Click to expand...

None of the current Mac OS X drivers support the GK110B cards. Therefore, they won't work whether flashed or not.

dotsfilmes said:
Or that it can't be flashed?
Click to expand...

It's possible to flash GK110B cards with EFI firmware but, without any acceleration, it will be pretty useless.

dotsfilmes said:
Is this a issue only in 10.9?
Click to expand...

None of the current drivers for any version of Mac OS X have working drivers for the GK110B.
 
pastrychef said:
None of the current Mac OS X drivers support the GK110B cards. Therefore, they won't work whether flashed or not.



It's possible to flash GK110B cards with EFI firmware but, without any acceleration, it will be pretty useless.



None of the current drivers for any version of Mac OS X have working drivers for the GK110B.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply!

Is there a way to know what chip it is before buying the card?

This changes everything now, right? The 780/Titan are not the indicated anymore for best performance/power for the MacPro, since it's not guaranteed to work.
 
dotsfilmes said:
Thanks for the reply!

Is there a way to know what chip it is before buying the card?

This changes everything now, right? The 780/Titan are not the indicated anymore for best performance/power for the MacPro, since it's not guaranteed to work.
Click to expand...

I do not know of any way to identify whether they use the GK110 or GK110B.
 
Just got my GK 110B to a Reg. GK110 swap from MVC. Was a really nice gesture of him to lend me the card until things get sorted out. Everything seems to be working fine, especially RedCine X now churns through 4k footage like hot butter.

Thanks MVC, hopefully I can return the card to you soon.
 
It is good to see that people are working on this problem. I've been considering getting my old school Titan (bought it when they first came out). But I am now having second thoughts. I was under the impression that double precision would work under windows and Open CL would work fine. Should I get it flashed or wait until the dust settles?
 
Executor said:
It is good to see that people are working on this problem. I've been considering getting my old school Titan (bought it when they first came out). But I am now having second thoughts. I was under the impression that double precision would work under windows and Open CL would work fine. Should I get it flashed or wait until the dust settles?
Click to expand...

Titans purchased when they were first released are likely GK110A and probably do not suffer from the OCL issue on Macs with Mavericks.
 
Just a clarification for those that have these cards or are looking at them: OpenGL works great, as does CUDA. It's just OpenCL that is currently borked and crasharific.

Oh, and there is now confirmation that Screenflow crashes on attempting to publish to remote site with an OpenCL crash. So that's one more app that has issues with OpenCL.

Games work great. Unfortunately the OS is another story. At least I can port over Snow Leopard's Preview and get working image viewing that way. I intended to do so anyway since Apple so thoughtfully removed the Hand tool in Preview after Lion, and I use that very frequently when viewing zoomed PDFs.

Note to Apple: Most people don't use your crappy Magic Mouse and instead use a real mouse to game with.
 
Posting an update for this issue:

Going forward all 780 and Titan series cards will be using the GK110B GPU in new stock. This means that only unsold "old" stock and used cards can be (note the can there) GK110A. All newer cards made after the old stock of GK110A GPUs were used up are GK110B, and all 780 Ti series cards are GK110B based.

So until Apple or nVidia comes out with an updated driver that supports the GK110B, stick with the 770 or below.
 
I'm trying to find a way to boot with two cards - a GTX570 and my 780 'B' version.

I'm hoping the 570 can handle display output and the Open CL stuff, with the 780 dedicated only to CUDA tasks in Octane Render and DaVinci Resolve.

No luck yet, I get black screens on boot. It is a hackintosh system though so I'm asking around some other forums to see if I can get it going. May help some people if they have another card lying around then hopefully we can get the best of both worlds.
 
DJenkins said:
I'm trying to find a way to boot with two cards - a GTX570 and my 780 'B' version.

I'm hoping the 570 can handle display output and the Open CL stuff, with the 780 dedicated only to CUDA tasks in Octane Render and DaVinci Resolve.

No luck yet, I get black screens on boot. It is a hackintosh system though so I'm asking around some other forums to see if I can get it going. May help some people if they have another card lying around then hopefully we can get the best of both worlds.
Click to expand...

Getting black screens on boot isn't unusual if the GTX cards haven't had the EFI firmware mod. Its the case with all of my systems with my GTX cards when I'm running Mavericks. The problem with the GK110B in my systems (of various types), is that even if you have a card in there without the GK110B and use only that card for display purposes, when you're running Mavericks if there's a card in there with the GK110B certain apps that call OCL will still crash. The pro is, I guess, that it's leveraging the OCL abilities of all of my cards; but the con is the crash so I'm not getting the best of both worlds.
 
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Tutor said:
Getting black screens on boot isn't unusual if the GTX cards haven't had the EFI firmware mod. Its the case with all of my systems with my GTX cards when I'm running Mavericks. The problem with the GK110B in my systems (of various types), is that even if you have a card in there without the GK110B and use only that card for display purposes, when you're running Mavericks if there's a card in there with the GK110B certain apps that call OCL will still crash. The pro is, I guess, that it's leveraging the OCL abilities of all of my cards; but the con is the crash so I'm not getting the best of both worlds.
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Hi Tutor, I meant my screen goes to black and never enters the OS.
There's probably a combo of boot flags I need to use with Chameleon but none of the ones I use with each card on its own have worked so far.

Guess it wrecks my idea anyway if any 'B' card installed - whether driving displays or not - will crash :(
 
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