Help with Incorporating a EVGA GTX 970 in a 4,1 MP

Hello everyone,

I recently acquired a EVGA GTX 970 to put into my 2009 Mac Pro. I've mainly been using my Windows 7 Bootcamp partition rather than my Mac partition, so I haven't really been bothered with getting the card to work on the Mac side.

I got the card to work fine on the windows side by simply downloading drivers. However on the Mac side, it hasn't been so easy. I downloaded some drivers beforehand that I thought were the right ones, but when I tried to boot into OSX all I got was a black screen. At this point, I believe it is not as simple as I thought for getting the card to get along with mac, but I know it's possible. I am asking if anyone could list a step by step guide on how to get this card working the right way on Mountain Lion 1.8.5. (If I recall, it's not as easy as downloading drivers and restarting. I believe I have to enter some commands into Terminal, or change some things. Maybe not? I'm not too sure.)

Any advice is greatly appreciated,
Thank you!

Looking through the link you provided, I can see why Yosemite is required. However, what process do I do before I update? I saw that post #84 showed some steps, but that was after you already had the EFI drivers installed.

I am downloading Yosemite right now, and I will post again once the drivers are installed.

flehman said:

Good luck. The latest version of the nVidia web drivers restored compatibility with 10.10.2 after the 2015-002 Security Update - there was about a 6-day lag time. Then the day after those drivers were released, Apple released Security Update 2015-003 which broke compatibility all over again. Once you get the card working OK, you will have the following choice every time Apple releases a new OS update or security update:

1) Wait until nVidia updates its drivers, then follow the procedure outlined by MacVidCards in another thread. It is either the Security Update 2015-002 thread, the EFI GPU Cards sticky thread, or the 970/980 thread. I cannot keep them all straight anymore. He may also have the procedure posted on his website.

2) Hack the plist file of your updated OS X to match the previous build number, which will fool the nVidia web drivers into working.

Click to expand...

Once I finished the upgrade to Yosemite, I installed all the latest updates that were available from the App Store (Safari update, Remote Desktop Client, and the 2015-003 Security). Next, I downloaded the latest nVidia drivers along with the latest CUDA driver. At first, the web driver wouldn't install because I had the wrong build number. I easily fixed that by finding out how to change the SystemVersion.plist (Changed from 14C1514 to 14C1510 and the web driver installed without errors. Likewise with the CUDA driver.). I gave a good reboot with the web drivers selected, before reinstalling my 970. I then reinstalled the 970 booted it up, and it worked! OSX was recognizing the 970 and the monitor name properly. However, I have three monitors that I want to use. When I plug the other two in, every screen goes black and I don't have a display at all.

EDIT: I unplugged all the monitors but only one. It'll stay black for a bit, then go to the grey boot up screen (without the apple logo) and prompt me with messages saying "Your computer was restarted because of a problem." It seems anytime I try to use more than one monitor at a time, the MP crashes.

EDIT 2: I shutdown the MP, took off the side panel, unplugged the power to the 970 and replugged the power back in. Before starting up again, I connected all three monitors and it seemed to boot up fine. All three monitors are recognized. I must've not plugged in one power cable properly or something.

flehman said:

Unfortunately I do not have any experience with multiple monitors - I just use one big one. I'm sure there are some other folks around here who might have some advice about that topic. At least you got it working with 1 display though!

Click to expand...

The Edit 2 in my last response seemed to do the trick. Must've been my fault with the silly error. Thank you so much for your help with this. I think I have everything up and running.