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Nvidia Web Drivers versus Apple Nvidia Drivers

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InsertCatchyNic

macrumors member
Original poster
May 16, 2009
34
2
So, for the first time in a few years I am running a pc graphics card, flashed to show the boot screen, on my mac. Now I remember back in the day you would need to wait for Nvidia to release a new set of drivers before updating to a new point release of OS X.

Is that still the case these days? The reason I ask is my Nvidia driver menu app allows you to select whether you are using the Apple drivers or the Nvidia drivers.

Do you guys upgrade to the new point release first or wait for Nvidia to release a new set of drivers, update to the new point release, and then install the new nvidia web drivers?
 
Zorn

Zorn

macrumors 65816
Feb 14, 2006
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flowrider said:
Nvidia as of late has been doing a pretty good job of updating the web drivers within 48 hours of an OS's point release. They updated for 10.10.1 this morning, less than 24 hours after Apple released it's update:

http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/80070/en-us

I have always updated Apple's point release first, then when it was released updated the Web Driver.

Lou
Click to expand...

When the most recent beta of 10.10.1 got released, I installed it first before the nVidia driver and I was stuck at a black screen with no video. I had to buy a natively supported cheap GPU to get back into my system and enable the nVidia driver.
 
flowrider

flowrider

macrumors 604
Nov 23, 2012
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^^^^Yes, that's an issue with Maxwell based cards. I have a GTX 780 with the GX110a chip, so that issue doesn't affect me.

Lou
 
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InsertCatchyNic

macrumors member
Original poster
May 16, 2009
34
2
Excellent and thanks for the input.

I do have an old GT120 that I bought a couple of years ago in case I ever developed a problem with an installed video card.
 
Zorn

Zorn

macrumors 65816
Feb 14, 2006
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InsertCatchyNic said:
Excellent and thanks for the input.

I do have an old GT120 that I bought a couple of years ago in case I ever developed a problem with an installed video card.
Click to expand...

Yeah hang on to it. I sold my stock GPU thinking I'd never use it again and wound up having to pick up a GT210 just in case the system boots to black screen. Sucks there's no better way to fix it than having to swap out hardware back and forth.
 
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InsertCatchyNic

macrumors member
Original poster
May 16, 2009
34
2
In my case I was recovering from a hard drive failure and booting to the Diskwarrior CD caused my 5870 to kernel panic. What a pain in the butt that was to figure out. Basically kept the 5870 installed, installed the GT120 and booted to the 120.

It is always a good idea to have an old, working video card in your troubleshooting arsenal. At this point i just leave the GT120 plugged into the mac.
 
N

nigelbb

macrumors 65816
Dec 22, 2012
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Does anyone have a feeling for the advantages of the Nvidia drivers versus the stock drivers? I presume there is one or else why would Nvidia bother. I have a GTX570 which is a fine card but some while ago the Nvidia drivers stopped working with dual monitors whereas the stock drivers are fine. I haven't encountered any problems but if there were big advantages to the web drivers I would be motivated to upgrade to a supported card like the GTX680.
 
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InsertCatchyNic

macrumors member
Original poster
May 16, 2009
34
2
From what I recall, because I am too lazy to look it up, the Nvidia drivers enable PCIe 2.0. The stock Apple drivers only enable PCIe 1.0, but it has been a couple of years since I used a pc card in my mac.

Not sure if Yosemite enables 2.0 or not or if there are any other differences.
 
B

brentsg

macrumors 68040
Oct 15, 2008
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nigelbb said:
Does anyone have a feeling for the advantages of the Nvidia drivers versus the stock drivers? I presume there is one or else why would Nvidia bother. I have a GTX570 which is a fine card but some while ago the Nvidia drivers stopped working with dual monitors whereas the stock drivers are fine. I haven't encountered any problems but if there were big advantages to the web drivers I would be motivated to upgrade to a supported card like the GTX680.
Click to expand...

NV web drivers are more frequent and will contain enhancements and bug fixes.
 
flowrider

flowrider

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Nov 23, 2012
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^^^^Actually the frequency of Apple and Nvidia Web Driver releases are about the same. The Web Driver advantages are they are always a later Driver version that should be a bit faster than Apple's earlier generation driver. And, of course, Nvidia supplies the CUDA Driver, Apple doesn't.

Lou
 
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A

Asgorath

macrumors 68000
Mar 30, 2012
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flowrider said:
^^^^Actually the frequency of Apple and Nvidia Web Driver releases are about the same. The Web Driver advantages are they are always a later Driver version that should be a bit faster than Apple's earlier generation driver. And, of course, Nvidia supplies the CUDA Driver, Apple doesn't.

Lou
Click to expand...

Frequency of release != frequency of actual updates in the driver, though. There's been a steady pace of one (or more) web drivers per Apple OS version, but the NVIDIA driver has extra stuff like Maxwell support and so on.
 
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apphotography

macrumors regular
Nov 19, 2014
134
0
Are there any photography applications or Photoshop plugin that take advantage of CUDA? What about CUDA vs Open CL performance, which is better?
 
flowrider

flowrider

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Nov 23, 2012
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Asgorath said:
Frequency of release != frequency of actual updates in the driver, though. There's been a steady pace of one (or more) web drivers per Apple OS version, but the NVIDIA driver has extra stuff like Maxwell support and so on.
Click to expand...

You're right, I forget about Maxwell Support:eek:

Lou
 
Gav Mack

Gav Mack

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Jun 15, 2008
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With a GTX 680 I have only ever bothered with cuda, I could see negligible difference and I imagine the code base is pretty optimised already for my Kepler card and I like having baked in support for my cards in an OS. For those with newer non Mac edition cards like the 780 onwards its a given..

Perhaps it might be also to do with the fact that away from Macintosh with custom pc rigs in particular I have always took new signed drivers from Nvidia with a cautionary outlook due to blue screen hell particularly when SLI came out. More nightmares with their custom resolution underscan/overscan adjustments, a swear box would have sure got some money in that box 4-6 years back.
 
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InsertCatchyNic

macrumors member
Original poster
May 16, 2009
34
2
Back in my pc days, I would pretty much always go with the Nvidia reference drivers and never had the blue screen issues running SLI. I still have some of those SLI paired video cards from back in the day. Now it wasn't always roses, but i don't ever recall an issue with them.

But thats just one man's experience.

I kind of miss my wild west custom pc building days and have even toyed around with building a hackintossh, but having a family doesn't really allow me the hours of free time it would take to build the hackintosh or putting together a custom pc box.
 
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rjtiedeman

macrumors 6502
Nov 29, 2010
337
66
Stamford, CT
CUDA broken again @#@#@#

I just updated the NVIDA web driver on my MacPro 5,1 (3.33) 6 core and the CUDA DRIVERS ARE BUSTED AGAIN. The CUDA 6.5.33 lasted 2 days. I have to say why don't we all take a break. Yosemite has been a work in progress since it came out. It's not just my NVIADA 680 GPU my old external hard drives need firmware updates and the USB-SATA PCIE board is acting up. It's like a slow leak in a tire.

Just complaining, If you want the new stuff you have pay with PAIN.

Bob
 
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