Help! Just installed GTX 680 Mac Edition, sluggish system animations!

Hello! Help please!

I just installed the GTX 680 Mac edition in my 2009 Mac Pro and it seems to perform worse than my old ATI HD 4870!
Performance in Photoshop seems worse, and all system animations are very sluggish, even bringing up the dock.

Another thing, when I turn on the system it stays silent for like 5 seconds then it chimes and boots, while before I could hear the fans spinning for 2-3 seconds before the chime.

What's going on?!

Thanks for the help!

jav6454 said:

Did you just plug it in or did you follow the proper steps to be able to use that GPU?

Click to expand...

What do you mean? I installed it following the instructions that came with it! My system was already updated (10.8.4) so I just swapped the cards! Did I do something wrong? I used the power cables of my old GPU, could that be a problem?

Thanks for the help!

jav6454 said:

Mac Pros are not the same as PCs, you don't do the same steps in respects to GPUs.

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More information that will be useful concerning GPUs on Mac Pros and which ones they support and how: Click Me

Click to expand...

Yes, but that's a Mac Edition, it should be plug and play!

jasonvp said:

You've got some amazingly helpful folks participating in this thread so far. Let's see if we can't figure out what's going on.

• Which slot is the card in?
• Did you provide power to both 6-pin plugs on the card? Or did you only connect one of them?
• nVidia has a 10.8.4-specific web driver you can download if you want. It's here. Install it and see if it helps. Once installed, it'll let you easily switch back and forth between it and the stock Apple driver.

I suspect this is going to be a process of elimination, so start with those few bullets. It's entirely possible that you got a lemon; there seems to be a few of those going around as of late.

Click to expand...

The card is in slot 1 and it's powered with both 6-pin plugs.
I installed the driver you suggested but it didn't help. Even opening the download stack on the dock is incredibly sluggish. Everything jerks.
I'm afraid you're right, definitely looks like a lemon!

Thank you very much for your (and everyone else's) help!

Asgorath said:

Check your system log for any messages from NVIDIA or NVDA.

Check to see if you are getting acceleration. A tell-tale sign is if you normally have a translucent menu bar but it's solid grey, but safer would be to get an application like the "OpenGL Extensions Viewer" from the Mac App Store and confirm that the NVIDIA driver is running.

Click to expand...

Hi, I downloaded the application, here's the report:


Renderer: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 OpenGL Engine
Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Memory: 2048 MB
Version: 3.2 NVIDIA-8.14.11 313.01.02f01
Device: MacPro5,1
Shading language version: 1.50


Max texture size: 16384 x 16384
Max vertex texture image units: 16
Max texture image units: 16
Max geometry texture units: 16
Max anisotropic filtering value: 16
Max viewport size: 16384 x 16384
Max Viewports: 16
Max Clip Distances: 8
Max samples: 8


Extensions: 19

GL_APPLE_client_storage
GL_APPLE_container_object_shareable
GL_APPLE_object_purgeable
GL_APPLE_rgb_422
GL_APPLE_row_bytes
GL_APPLE_texture_range
GL_ARB_explicit_attrib_location
GL_ARB_instanced_arrays
GL_ARB_occlusion_query2
GL_ARB_separate_shader_objects
GL_ARB_shader_bit_encoding
GL_ARB_texture_swizzle
GL_ARB_timer_query
GL_ATI_texture_mirror_once
GL_EXT_depth_bounds_test
GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc
GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic
GL_EXT_texture_mirror_clamp
GL_EXT_texture_sRGB_decode

Core features
v3.0 (100 % - 23/23)
v3.1 (100 % - 8/8)
v3.2 (100 % - 10/10)
v3.3 (50 % - 5/10)
v4.0 (0 % - 0/14)
v4.1 (14 % - 1/7)
v4.2 (0 % - 0/12)
v4.3 (0 % - 0/1)

OpenGL driver version check (Current: 3.2 NVIDIA-8.14.11 313.01.02f01, Latest known: 3.2 NVIDIA-8.14.11 313.01.02f01):
Latest version of display drivers found
According the database, you are running the latest display drivers for your video card.

Few texture units found
This may slow down some applications using fragment programs or extensive texture mapping.

Extension verification: 


jasonvp said:

Argh! Hopefully whomever you bought it from is quick on the replacement. Good luck!

Click to expand...

WTF?!?!? All of a sudden everything runs smoothly! How is that possible?!