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New flashed GTX570 - Slow CoreAnimation/OpenGL Performance

K

kreispendl

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 8, 2011
18
1
hi!
i would really appreciate help here.
i bought a gtx570 from macvidcards (flashed) and everything kind of works.. kind of. that is i have a boot screen and i can work.. however - core animations are really slow.. really jittery performance - fare worse than my 8800 GT, OpenGL performance (according to Cinebench 11.5) is about the same as my 8800 GT. i can also not really see a difference in CS6 performance and OpenCL doesn't seem to work at all.

i did a fresh lion install (with my 8800 installed), then intalled the nvidia drivers (270 6f for 10.7.4) rebooted - shut down the computer - exchanged the card. rebooted then installed CUDA drivers.

as far as i have read in other threads this should do.. but id doesn't seem to.
any suggestions? i'm not an expert on graphics cards/drivers..
do i have to edit any os x files in order to enable stuff? ;)

thanks a lot
gernot

(PS. i tried to contact macvidcards via e-bay, but he hasn't responded in days.. think he's on holiday... so i turn to you ;) )
 
FWIW CineBench is not a useful benchmark these days, it is completely CPU limited and thus not a good indication of GPU performance.
 
OpenCl has to be turned "on" via instructions in the main thread on these cards.

Cinebench in meaningless at this point, it is 100% CPU bound.

An 8800GT scores within 2 fps of a GTX580. COMPLETELY MEANINGLESS.

Try Uningine, GLView or CUDA-Z

For CS6 you need to add the name of card to "supported cards" list and ray tracing list if you want to ray trace.
 
MacVidCards said:
OpenCl has to be turned "on" via instructions in the main thread on these cards.

Cinebench in meaningless at this point, it is 100% CPU bound.

An 8800GT scores within 2 fps of a GTX580. COMPLETELY MEANINGLESS.

Try Uningine, GLView or CUDA-Z

For CS6 you need to add the name of card to "supported cards" list and ray tracing list if you want to ray trace.
Click to expand...

thanks for the info.
enabled cuda in aftereffects and it's fast..
however - openGl performance is different.. "only" getting scores of below 1000 in unigine heaven 3.

when i google for comparable systems they score way higher..
also - my core animations are really slow (like when changing desktops or unfolding the app folder in my dock etc..)

any ideas?
thanks a lot
g.

Heaven Benchmark v3.0 Basic

FPS: 38.7
Scores: 975
Min FPS: 19.9
Max FPS: 62.2

Hardware

Binary:
MacOS 64bit GCC 4.2.1 Release Mar 7 2012
Operating system: Darwin 11.4.0 x86_64
CPU model: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5462 @ 2.80GHz
CPU flags: 2793MHz MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 SSE41 HTT
GPU model: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 2560Mb

Settings

Render: opengl
Mode: 1920x1080 windowed
Shaders: medium
Textures: high
Filter: trilinear
Anisotropy: 4x
Occlusion: enabled
Refraction: enabled
Volumetric: enabled
Tessellation:disabled
 
Asgorath said:
Try running it in fullscreen mode perhaps?
Click to expand...

i did - same results.. or very close. did a restart - no other programs open, fullscreen - points.

the only difference i can tell to other benchmark results is that i use a 2,5 gb version of th 570, not the 1,3 gb...
could that make a difference with the drivers etc?

also the few games i have aren't very fast. civilization 5 is nearly as unplayable as with my 8800gt. i know.. not a good example ;)
diabolo 3 still doesn't run on highest settings.. which seems odd..

is it a driver issue? should i shut up and hope for mountain lion? is there anything i could do? or is my performance all i can ever expect?
after all - cuda performance seems to work as it should.. just that that's what i need the least ;)
more of a photoshop/illustrator guy here.. and some gaming.. so it's really open gl performance i need..

thanks
g.
 
Something is definitely wrong with the card or drivers if you can't even run D3 on max settings at 1920x1080. I can run D3 at 2560x1600 with highest settings and I have a weaker card (HD5870).
 
Yeah, something is very wrong. I have a GTX 560 Ti and can run Diablo 3 at max settings at 2560x1600. Civ 5 runs really smoothly as well.

Maybe try moving the AGPM kext (i.e move it out of /S/L/E) to see if that helps? Kind of sounds like the card is stuck in a lower power state, which shouldn't be happening of course.
 
If Mountain Lion GM fully support GTX570, means I just plug-in my GTX570 and will get inside the finder, then install the Nvidia driver and cuda later time??
 
patlee88 said:
If Mountain Lion GM fully support GTX570, means I just plug-in my GTX570 and will get inside the finder, then install the Nvidia driver and cuda later time??
Click to expand...

Correct. There might be additional improvements in the driver from NVIDIA if/when it gets released, but you can just plug in the card and it'll boot up in Mountain Lion.
 
Asgorath said:
Maybe try moving the AGPM kext (i.e move it out of /S/L/E) to see if that helps? Kind of sounds like the card is stuck in a lower power state, which shouldn't be happening of course.
Click to expand...

i'm afraid i don't quite know what to do/how to do it..
where do i find the agpm.kext?
bey moving it, you mean move it out of the folder where it's in to see if that changes anything?.. sorry.. not very good with these things ;)
that's why i ordered from MacVidCards.. so i don't have to do these things...
 
ok - found the kext file. looked into the info.plist file and found something curious.. there's no entry for a MacPro3,1.. only 4,1 and 5,1.. as that normal?
should i add one myself?
found this post (http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=266036)
would this be a good idea?

i only remember MacVidCards writing, that it's not necessary to edit any kext files..

any ideas on that?
thanks
g.
 
3,1 doesn't use AGPM

removing it won't do anything

can you compare your old card in benchmarks to 570?

it is possible that issues are with CPU or RAM

GPU can only speed up things where it is bottleneck
 
thanks for the answer... that clarifies that ;)

well.. it's a mac pro 3.1 2x2,8 GHz Xeon, 16 Gb 800 MHz FB-DIMM...

not the fastest Bus/Ram speeds - i know.. but they really shouldn't be such a bottleneck for the graphics card?
 
Here is a thought.

I have a customer who was having serious issues with CUDA on his 570.

I was unable to recreate his problem on my 5,1.

He just sent me this email:

"Hello I finally found out why I couldn't use cuda it was because by default osx 10.7.4 runs 32bit kernel on mac pros 3.1 and adobe suite needs 64bit to run cuda"

Be sure that systems you compare to are in fact running OSX. I have gotten many emails from people who run CInebench and think their 570 is stuck in low gear because other Cinebench scores on crappy GTX285m cards get double the scores. The issue is that those are windows systems and the CInebench app is too old, at least OSX version.

You need to compare Apples to Apples, literally.
 
And Cinebench is a CPU benchmark at this point, as well. The R11.5 benchmark is also way out of date, since the real Cinema 4D app is up to R13 now I think.
 
MacVidCards said:
Here is a thought.

I have a customer who was having serious issues with CUDA on his 570.

I was unable to recreate his problem on my 5,1.

He just sent me this email:

"Hello I finally found out why I couldn't use cuda it was because by default osx 10.7.4 runs 32bit kernel on mac pros 3.1 and adobe suite needs 64bit to run cuda"
Click to expand...

well.. i don't seem to have issues with CUDA. after adding the 570 to the supported card list in after effects i did some raytracing tests and the rendering went down from 5 hours to 6 minutes ;) so that works just fine... and compares well with similar machines.

i only seem to have open gl performance issues..
animations in os x are stuttering (used to be fluid with my 8800 gt), game performance isn't' much better than with the 8800gt...
and since photoshop isn't using CUDA but OpenGL (as far as i've read) - there aren't many improvements on that front either..

so if my MacPro 3.1 somehow is the bottleneck for that card, i guess there's nothing i can do.. though i have trouble believing that...

anyone with a MacPro 3.1 and a GTX 570 out there for comparison?
 
i read that mac os x (the open cl framework) does not enable cards with memory above 2 Gb..
could that be a reason for slow core animations etc... does os x make use of open cl of all of it's animations?

my card has 2560 MB of ram..
 
MacVidCards said:
OpenCl has to be turned "on" via instructions in the main thread on these cards.
Click to expand...

can i do that? what's the real benefit of having it turned on?
i know os x supports it.. but does it actually use it? could it be the reason for the slow core animation etc..?
could it be that it's os x's restriction of cards with more than 2000 Mb of ram?

i just wan normal performance..
right now, all the card does it deliver on the cuda side.. which i don't need...

even people with non flashed pc cards don't seem to have my problems...
 
"it feels slower" is hard to diagnose.

If you could quantify this it would be a big help.

Run some OpenGl tests, or find some way to show the issue.

Put the 8800GT back in and run the same tests. Uningine, GlView are good places to start.

There are DOZENS of people with these cards now, as no one else is complaining about perceived (but non quantified) slow downs, I can only guess that you are the only one to experience this.

Did you install some oddball app to enable something? It is just very hard to help until I know what the actual problem is.
 
hi.. posted my unigine results further up.. they're around 980 points - for the exact settings please refer to my prior post.

glview - compatibility:
1.1 - 377
1.2 - 378
1.3 - 383
1.4 - 427
1.5 - 429
2.0 - 425
2.1 - 448

core:
3.1 - 217
3.2 - 211
3.3 - failed
4.0 - failed
4.1 - failed

all tests done windowed 1280x800, no other boxes checked.. (cube test)

concerning the "feeling slower".. means.. about 5 fps when going fullscreen on quicktime videos, non fluid motion when changing between desktops etc... used to be fine with the 8800...

does that help?
thanks
g.
 
to be scientific you need to compare 2 things and only change the one variable

so best to run 3 tests with 570, then run same 3 tests with 8800GT

and another idea would be to use a screen recording app to record these 5fps animations on both GTX570 and 8800GT

if you are right, there should be obvious difference that is easily noticeable

BTW, I do not think your experience is representative of others

This feedback was just left in last few days, all regarding GTX570 cards:

"My MacPro 4.1 is faster than ever, My preview in AE now is more than 10x faster"

"Work as expected... Thanks"

"Great card for Mac. Thanks."

"Great seller, works really well in MacPro 5,1"

"After spending a few days with my cards, I'm in love. Awesome seller! Thanks!"

"Shipped quickly, Accurate Description, great product, even added adaptor free!"

No other mentions of this issue you are experiencing.

Did you by chance bugger up one of the OpenCl or CUDA fixes? Or did you try installing some drivers or fixes you read about somewhere?

And BTW, you need to run GLView test in full screen mode. (checkbox)

Do you have an unmolested install oon another drive that you could try? You did install the Nvidia drivers from their site first thing, yes?
 
didn't mean to point fingers here and i hope i made it clear that i'm a consumer and don't understand much of the code behind it all.. just trying to make it work..

i went for mountain lion today and after upgreading i could get openCL to work using the changes netkas suggested in the openCL framework.

now LuxMark recognizes the card and i get a result of 1167 points - with seems good.

i also get good results with OpenGL now.. about 5x the frame rate.. and the Iron Fist Box test get's desplayed correctly (which it didn't before. parts of the head were missing.. could see eyeballs etc..)

also core animations are smoother now.. not as good as with the 8800.. but close..

unigine results are as follows:
Heaven Benchmark v3.0 Basic

FPS: 26.7
Scores: 671
Min FPS: 12.0
Max FPS: 59.1

Hardware

Binary: MacOS 64bit GCC 4.2.1 Release Mar 7 2012
Operating system: Darwin 12.0.0 x86_64
CPU model: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5462 @ 2.80GHz
CPU flags: 2792MHz MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 SSE41 HTT
GPU model: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 2560Mb

Settings

Render: opengl
Mode: 2560x1440 4xAA fullscreen
Shaders: high
Textures: high
Filter: trilinear
Anisotropy: 4x
Occlusion: enabled
Refraction: enabled
Volumetric: enabled
Tessellation: disabled


Game performance ist still quite bad.. diabolo 3 still doesn't run at max settings at my native resolution (2560 x 1440) - even has major break-ins at 1080p with some settings turned down (shadow quality, no anti-aliasing)

civIV is as bad as always.. but i guess that's the game..

things are getting better here ;)
thanks for your answers
cheers
g.
 
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