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OS X Support for Nvidia 1060?

S

sutty100

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 13, 2014
19
1
I upgraded the CPU's in my 2010 Mac Pro tower last weekend and flush with success I got carried away and decided to buy a new graphics card. Being largely a Windows user until recently and having read online Nvidia now released drivers for OS X I purchased a Nvidia 1060 without doing my research on OS X compatibility...yeah I'm a fool :(

I have the latest web drivers and 10.11 installed but no luck nothing is displayed, the cards fans spin up for a few seconds then come to a complete stop.

Does anybody know of any support for this card in the pipeline does 10.12 offer any support, or am I stuffed?
 
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No OS X drivers for the Pascal 10xx series of cards yet. Hold on to it - they'll show up soon. I don't have the link handy, but Nvidia has job postings for Mac-centric GPU positions, including Metal, openCL, and drivers.
 
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Flint Ironstag said:
No OS X drivers for the Pascal 10xx series of cards yet. Hold on to it - they'll show up soon. I don't have the link handy, but Nvidia has job postings for Mac-centric GPU positions, including Metal, openCL, and drivers.
Click to expand...

The job posting is ancient (over a year) and just stays online because whenever they get someone they don't continue their contract.
 
sutty100 said:
I upgraded the CPU's in my 2010 Mac Pro tower last weekend and flush with success I got carried away and decided to buy a new graphics card. Being largely a Windows user until recently and having read online Nvidia now released drivers for OS X I purchased a Nvidia 1060 without doing my research on OS X compatibility...yeah I'm a fool :(

I have the latest web drivers and 10.11 installed but no luck nothing is displayed, the cards fans spin up for a few seconds then come to a complete stop.

Does anybody know of any support for this card in the pipeline does 10.12 offer any support, or am I stuffed?
Click to expand...
I did the same thing (didn't do the research) as you when the GTX 750 was fairly new! Foolish, I admit!!! But I held on to the card, and the drivers eventually came. I'm anxious to pick up a GTX 1060 also, so I am impatiently waiting. (I wouldn't mind a GTX 1050 if it uses only PCI power...)
 
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Nvidia would provide drivers, and update their drivers if they would be able to sell new GPUs. Once they do not produce GPUs for any given platform, they will not update them. They cannot simply add Pascal as a version of Kepler or Maxwell to their drivers, because it has different scheduling(for the first time since Fermi it has Hardware Scheduling, compared to static, CPU scheduling with Kepler and Maxwell). It is quite different approach in drivers, and Apple does not allow Nvidia hardware on their platform so no point in updating them for OS X. It would require redesigning of the drivers, quite a lot.

If Nvidia is not able to sell hardware to OS X people - there is no point in development of the drivers. Maxwell GPUs are out of production. You can connect the dots right now.

Im sorry to say but it appears that if Apple will not introduce Nvidia on their platform again, there will be no more new aftermarket Nvidia GPUs on any Apple computers.
 
koyoot said:
Nvidia would provide drivers, and update their drivers if they would be able to sell new GPUs. Once they do not produce GPUs for any given platform, they will not update them. They cannot simply add Pascal as a version of Kepler or Maxwell to their drivers, because it has different scheduling(for the first time since Fermi it has Hardware Scheduling, compared to static, CPU scheduling with Kepler and Maxwell). It is quite different approach in drivers, and Apple does not allow Nvidia hardware on their platform so no point in updating them for OS X. It would require redesigning of the drivers, quite a lot.

If Nvidia is not able to sell hardware to OS X people - there is no point in development of the drivers. Maxwell GPUs are out of production. You can connect the dots right now.

Im sorry to say but it appears that if Apple will not introduce Nvidia on their platform again, there will be no more new aftermarket Nvidia GPUs on any Apple computers.
Click to expand...
Are these tea leaves, or actual insider info? If tea leaves, then the optimistic "tea leaves" reading is that Nvidia still wants Apple's business and they will continue to develop "beta" drivers for their latest products as proof to Apple that Nvidia is ready and able to provide GPUs for future Apple products. I am optimistic, so I prefer my reading, but your reading may be correct.
 
This is not tea leaves, but logic and analysis of the GPU architecture, and its affects on hardware and software design.

In theory, because of hardware scheduling it would be extremely easy for Nvidia to put drivers for Metal, because Metal is designed for this in mind(HSA 2.0 capabilities, not functional yet, but capabilities). I think it is more because Apple does not allow Nvidia to be on their platform, than anything else(Kepler and Maxwell static scheduling is easy to do - its CPU job, so there is no problem). Thats why I think until Apple will not allow Nvidia again on their platform, we will not see new GPUs and new drivers with new deviceID's from Nvidia here.

But again, this is only my logic and understanding of the situation.
 
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koyoot said:
Nvidia would provide drivers, and update their drivers if they would be able to sell new GPUs. Once they do not produce GPUs for any given platform, they will not update them. They cannot simply add Pascal as a version of Kepler or Maxwell to their drivers, because it has different scheduling(for the first time since Fermi it has Hardware Scheduling, compared to static, CPU scheduling with Kepler and Maxwell). It is quite different approach in drivers, and Apple does not allow Nvidia hardware on their platform so no point in updating them for OS X. It would require redesigning of the drivers, quite a lot.

If Nvidia is not able to sell hardware to OS X people - there is no point in development of the drivers. Maxwell GPUs are out of production. You can connect the dots right now.

Im sorry to say but it appears that if Apple will not introduce Nvidia on their platform again, there will be no more new aftermarket Nvidia GPUs on any Apple computers.
Click to expand...
I don't think it's accurate to say Apple does not allow Nvidia hardware on their platform. eGPU is about to have official support in Sierra, and the enclosure manufacturers are ramping up. Apple may not currently ship a box with Nvidia GPUs, they would be foolish to cripple their use via eGPU.

Also, didn't realize that job post was a year old. Still stands though, no Mac was shipping with Nvidia GPUs back then either.
 
Flint Ironstag said:
I don't think it's accurate to say Apple does not allow Nvidia hardware on their platform. eGPU is about to have official support in Sierra, and the enclosure manufacturers are ramping up. Apple may not currently ship a box with Nvidia GPUs, they would be foolish to cripple their use via eGPU.

Also, didn't realize that job post was a year old. Still stands though, no Mac was shipping with Nvidia GPUs back then either.
Click to expand...
Yes, eGPU. But what brand will it be easy to use with? Kepler couldn't be phased out from Nvidia drivers, because it was the architecture that was used in Apple computers. Maxwell was just evolved version of it. But in OS X there was no sign of Maxwell. There was no problem with drivers because essentially it was very similar architecture but much improved.
Pascal on the other hand is exactly the same architecture as is Maxwell. The problem is the Hardware Scheduling. Which changes everything.

eGPU does not have anything to do here. If you will not have drivers, you will not be able to use Pascal GPUs with eGPU anyway.
 
koyoot said:
I think until Apple will not allow Nvidia again on their platform, we will not see new GPUs and new drivers with new deviceID's from Nvidia here.
Click to expand...

Apple has been Nvidia exclusive twice before. They've been AMD exclusive twice as well (including right now). Some history.

The point is that Apple switches back and forth. I don't see why this time AMD exclusivity is some sort of permanent scenario.
 
Because Nvidia wanted to patent troll Apple. Because of that, Apple has shown Nvidia door out.
 
Apple was pretty damn mad at Nvidia back in 2009 too. Nvidia made faulty hardware and lied about it. The result put a black eye on Apple, made their products look bad, affected customers, and started a massive recall campaign that lasted through Dec 2012.

To me that is way more serious than a BS patent dispute, which occur between tech companies as a matter of routine anyway.
 
The thing is that Nvidia trolling was just that. Trolling. They were not able to get Samsung to court, because whole patent dispute failed initial investigation(pre-court). All of the patent disputes from Nvidia were baseless, yet Nvidia tried to sue companies. All of the patent disputes from them have failed.

Why Apple bothered? Because Nvidia wanted money, regardless...

And believe me, I am not writing this just to crap out Nvidia.
 
Well yes. To me it seems that "patent trolling that went nowhere fast" really pales in comparison to wrecking the whole MacBook line. The MacBook issue included bad press, reliability problems, pissed off customers, and a very expensive multi-year recall that involved logic board replacements, all due to Nvidia's poor manufacturing. And to top it off, Nvidia tried to cover it up, and it took investigation to catch them lying about it.

You're basically saying "never again", which Apple has said before and turned around on for what was, in my opinion, a much worse problem.

I'm saying "never say never". If it makes business sense for Apple to switch again some day, they will.

I guess we'll see in the next few years.
 
No. Patent trolling was much worse for Nvidia. Apple has basically slammed the door after it for foreseeable future. Apple did not have made quite a lot in the background with IBM, AMD, Samsung, GloFo in terms of Fabs, deals, technology, etc in past few years to stop investing time and effort by going Nvidia. And all of that "politics" have happened AFTER Nvidia was pushed out from Apple hardware.
 
NVidia came out with 10-series drivers for Linux from essentially day one, despite that being a quite small market. I run that on a GTX-1070, and it works quite well. But no-one knows if or when anything will come out for the Mac, and it isn't looking good. The cMP is likely a tiny percent of a tiny market, and it feels somewhat unlikely that they will put in the effort for it.

At the moment, there are some signs that support for AMD's RX-480 series cards may be on the horizon, but don't rush out and buy one yet.

Otherwise, for the cMP, people are pretty much stuck with some significantly older cards. I use a 280x.
 
Ph.D. said:
NVidia came out with 10-series drivers for Linux from essentially day one, despite that being a quite small market.
Click to expand...
Small market? Really? The AI and ML markets are almost all CUDA, and almost all Linux.

The supercomputer clusters with thousands to tens of thousands of CUDA cards aren't running Windows or Apple OSX.

I find it obvious that Nvidia would have Linux drivers on day one - just this week I did a lab inventory, and have about 60 Titan-X (Maxwell) and various GTX 980 and 980ti cards. All CUDA, all Ubuntu Server 14.04.
 
AidenShaw said:
Small market? Really? .
Click to expand...

So what would you estimate the market for cMPs running Mac-OS to be, specifically for 10-series cards only? What's the potential profit for that particular market? What would it cost to produce, maintain and support drivers for that market, with the caveat that they won't likely have Apple's help?
 
Ph.D. said:
So what would you estimate the market for cMPs running Mac-OS to be, specifically for 10-series cards only? What's the potential profit for that particular market? What would it cost to produce, maintain and support drivers for that market, with the caveat that they won't likely have Apple's help?
Click to expand...
The market is irrelevant.

The profit for Nvidia is to stay relevant, show Apple that its customers want Nvidia products, and it's ready to support systems with the latest GPUs now.

There was no "profit" for Apple to keep OSX on Intel running in the back room during the dark PowerPC days - but when Moto flamed out (almost literally with the hellishly hot G5) Apple had a backup strategy.

Nvidia won't get back into the Apple lineup unless they're ready to jump in at a moment's notice. Although some here say that Nvidia offended Apple with some patent claims, public corporations don't behave like spoiled schoolchildren. If Nvidia has a better value proposition than ATI - the red team will be tossed aside.

There are lots of Samsung components inside Apples, in spite of the dust-ups in the courtrooms.

If having web drivers for Pascal sells a few cards, so much the better.
 
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AidenShaw said:
Nvidia won't get back into the Apple lineup unless they're ready to jump in at a moment's notice. Although some here say that Nvidia offended Apple with some patent claims, public corporations don't behave like spoiled schoolchildren. If Nvidia has a better value proposition than ATI - the red team will be tossed aside.
Click to expand...
The only corporation acting like spoiled child was Nvidia, here. They have started this with their lawsuit threat, against Apple. Apple laughed at them and pushed them out.

Who knows if it is not for the better of whole industry?

But you know, you are free to be entitled to your opinion.
 
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