Known NVIDIA web driver issues/bugs

[Asgorath]

Forking this discussion into a separate thread. Earlier today in the eGPU thread, SCSC posted:

Short lived hype. Until they saw the Nvidia web driver performance was far below Windows, that OpenCL bugs haven't been fixed for two years, and that iBooks show empty pages.

I'd like to understand what bugs actually remain in the latest drivers for the latest OS, so can anyone who knows of an issue please post about it here?

Things we know about so far:

- Performance "far below" Windows is just the typical Apple OpenGL vs DirectX comparison, and has nothing to do with NVIDIA (i.e. NVIDIA's Windows drivers are significantly better than everyone else's and thus the delta is greater).
- iBooks uses Library Validation and thus Apple refuses to load the web driver binaries, though this might be fixed?

There have been numerous OpenCL issues/crashes over the years but all the ones I've seen talked about here have been fixed in the latest drivers.

 

[AidenShaw]

I'd like to understand what bugs actually remain in the latest drivers for the latest OS, so can anyone who knows of an issue please post about it here?

I'm also very interested in this - but solely in the support for CUDA on Apple OSX (both kernel driver and toolkit) for high-end Maxwell and Pascal GTX cards.. No interest in graphics performance or OpenCL or FP64. Looking for headless FP32 and FP16 support.

The current support for eGPUs on T-Bolt 3 is becoming interesting, and the promise of official support in the next release is very interesting.

Also interested in eGPU cabinets that can feed a 300 watt GPU without sounding like a hair dryer.

 

[Asgorath]

For reference, the iBooks stuff is discussed at many different locations, including:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7683640?start=0&tstart=0

Library Validation failed: Rejecting '/System/Library/Extensions/GeForceGLDriverWeb.bundle/Contents/MacOS/GeForceGLD riverWeb' (Team ID: 6KR3T733EC, platform: no) for process 'iBooks(596)' (Team ID: none, platform: yes), reason: mapping process is a platform binary, but mapped file is not

 

[ActionableMango]

I'd like to understand what bugs actually remain in the latest drivers for the latest OS, so can anyone who knows of an issue please post about it here?

Here is what I am aware of:

• https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/750ti-flickering-on-2009-cmp.2047642/
• https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/graphic-glitches-with-10-12-5-and-gtx-1070.2047295/
• https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mac-pro-5-1-kernel-panic-need-help.2047767/
• https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...tches-gtx-1060-glitchy-after-wake-up.2044750/
• https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-glitchy-after-wake-up.2044750/#post-24615509
• https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/geekbench-metal-scores.2040013/page-2#post-24552154
• I can't find the thread now, but IIRC someone was saying that you can't play iTunes DRM'd video content with the Nvidia drivers. Maybe that is related to the iBooks problem, I don't know.

Edit (to add one more):

• https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/geekbench-4-is-out-cpu-and-gpu.1990684/page-3#post-23310867

 

[Asgorath]

Here is what I am aware of:

• https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/750ti-flickering-on-2009-cmp.2047642/
• https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/graphic-glitches-with-10-12-5-and-gtx-1070.2047295/
• https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mac-pro-5-1-kernel-panic-need-help.2047767/
• https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...tches-gtx-1060-glitchy-after-wake-up.2044750/
• https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-glitchy-after-wake-up.2044750/#post-24615509
• https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/geekbench-metal-scores.2040013/page-2#post-24552154
• I can't find the thread now, but IIRC someone was saying that you can't play iTunes DRM'd video content with the Nvidia drivers. Maybe that is related to the iBooks problem, I don't know.

Cool, thanks for the links! Doing a quick scan now.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/750ti-flickering-on-2009-cmp.2047642/ is running 10.11, so not the latest drivers.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/graphic-glitches-with-10-12-5-and-gtx-1070.2047295/ looks like a bad board or other hardware problem, as his 1060 works fine.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mac-pro-5-1-kernel-panic-need-help.2047767/ is a read error panic, which means a hardware problem (i.e. graphics card disappeared from the PCIe bus).

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...tches-gtx-1060-glitchy-after-wake-up.2044750/ looks like a legit issue with the drivers.

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-glitchy-after-wake-up.2044750/#post-24615509 is "need more information", there should be crash logs or other information in the Console app.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/geekbench-metal-scores.2040013/page-2#post-24552154 lists several issues, will review them individually later.

 

[ActionableMango]

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/graphic-glitches-with-10-12-5-and-gtx-1070.2047295/ looks like a bad board or other hardware problem, as his 1060 works fine.

Now that you mention it, that screen shot does look like a classic GPU failure. I went back to the thread to reply, since nobody else has in the mean time.

 

[bitnaut]

I don't think it's failing hardware since the same thing occurs on my Titan X (Maxwell) and Titan GPUs in my Mac 5,1 but only in the Safari or Mail content windows: never anywhere else.

AND it only started happening once I upgraded to 10.12.5 with the NVidia web driver.

 

[Jaho101]

My main problem has been with certain FCP X plugins being very unhappy with the NVIDIA drivers, FilmConvert in particular. But, avoiding those, it's been pretty stable for my 980. I will upgrade to Vega as soon as I can though, I'd rather be using native drivers for FCPX.

 

[irked]

I was having some strange alpha interaction issues with my 980 in El Cap, running the 346.x.x web drivers, but upgrading to Sierra and the 378.x.x series of drivers seems to have fixed all that. Now I can throw around up to 20 layers of ProRes 1080p on a 4k canvas in realtime without dropping frames. The d700s in the trash cans tap out around 14 layers for me.

 

[ActionableMango]

Here's another one: Apple Instruments is transparent like iBooks.

 

[orph]

there used to be a few crashes with nvidia cards that need the web driver with adobe apps.
illustrator crash, but maybe this has been fixed now? https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2140511

iv noticed with some games with the web driver i get crashes/stuttering while with the osx driver i have no problems. (gtx770 i just use the osx driver all the time now)

and i do think it's more than 'OpenGL vs DirectX' as even openGL is faster on windows, it's just that windows is more optimized in general.
tho dont forget apple dose like ATI cards for a lot of it's apps like FCX and what not so nvidia is less optimal.