10.8.5 on 5,1 with GTX 680 for Mac

[bsbeamer]

Just an FYI for anyone who is considering upgrading OS X at the moment. I'm running a MacPro5,1 and had a GTX 680 for Mac installed. Cloned system drive to a backup and then updated to OS X 10.8.5. All is running fine with the machine after the update.

As expected, the NVIDIA Driver manager is not compatible with the OS X version and defaults back to the OS X default driver through the manager preferences. Would expect/hope to see an updated driver posted in 2-3 weeks.

If I can easily tell which version of the drivers Apple is using in 10.8.5, please let me know and I'll report that information.

Adobe software has had no issues with this update at the moment.

 

[jasonvp]

If I can easily tell which version of the drivers Apple is using in 10.8.5, please let me know and I'll report that information.

Do you have the nVidia CUDA libraries and panel installed? If so, open up the panel. It'll tell you what the driver's version is.

 

[flowrider]

Nvidia Driver is shown in Cuda Panel in System Preferences.

Lou

 

[Theison]

I can't find a 10.8.5 driver for my GTX 285... Think i better find some way to get back to 10.8.4... especially because i will get a GTX 780 this week. Im running a Mac Pro 4.1. Don't you think i should get 10.8.4 ..And how?

 

[bsbeamer]

CUDA panel in OS X 10.8.5 reports:
CUDA Driver Version 5.5.25
GPU Driver Version: 8.16.74 310.40.00.10f02

NVIDIA Driver Manager panel reports:
NVIDIA Web Driver 313.01.02f01 (not compatible)

As I was reporting this information, just checked (again) and a new NVIDIA Web Driver became available: 313.01.03f01. This was not available this AM. Will install shortly and report if there are any issues.

 

[bsbeamer]

Have found the link to the newest driver version - 313.01.03f01, but the release page is not available:
http://us.download.nvidia.com/Mac/Quadro_Certified/313.01.03f01/WebDriver-313.01.03f01.pkg

-------------------------

ORIGINAL MESSAGE:
Can't find the link for a full installer for 313.01.03f01, but was able to update from 313.01.02f01 using the driver manager panel.

Link to previous version, 313.01.02f01:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/macosx-313.01.02f01-driver.html

 

[bsbeamer]

Nvidia Driver is shown in Cuda Panel in System Preferences.

Lou

At one time, someone reported that despite what this is labeled as, the version that Apple is using/including in the OS X updates may not actually be that driver. I am not sure if this is the case or not, and was not sure if anyone had another method of investigating.

 

[flowrider]

^^^^The Cuda Panel shows the actual Nvidia driver in use, either the Apple supplied one or the Nvidia supplied Web Driver.

Lou

 

[flowrider]

At one time, someone reported that despite what this is labeled as, the version that Apple is using/including in the OS X updates may not actually be that driver. I am not sure if this is the case or not, and was not sure if anyone had another method of investigating.

Just installed in the Nvidia Web Driver. See the difference in the screen shots of the Cuda System Preferences Panel?

First one is Apple's OS Driver
Second One is Nvidia's Web Driver

BTW, Don't use the link above. I tried to install from that, and had to erase and clone my StartUp disk from a BackUp

I got an on screen message from Nvidia saying a new driver was available, did I want to install it? I installed from there.

Lou

 

[Asgorath]

Just installed in the Nvidia Web Driver. See the difference in the screen shots of the Cuda System Preferences Panel?

First one is Apple's OS Driver
Second One is Nvidia's Web Driver

BTW, Don't use the link above. I tried to install from that, and had to erase and clone my StartUp disk from a BackUp

I got an on screen message from Nvidia saying a new driver was available, did I want to install it? I installed from there.

Lou

Yeah, web page for the 10.8.5 driver is live now:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/macosx-313.01.03f01-driver.html

Looks like everything got rolled out last night.

 

[flowrider]

Well, the Nvidia web driver has cost me a number of hours of waisted time. Both the Nvidia Link driver, and the update window that appears and then with a click installs the driver installed a corrupt driver in my system.

I had to erase and restore my boot drive three times before I could get it through my thick skull that this driver was corrupting my boot process and to leave it the heck alone. Nothing this bad has ever happened to my system before, and I have been a Macintosh user since 1986.

Lou

 

[IceMacMac]

Lou, bsbeamer

sorry for the headache...but thanks for the warning. I'm going to sit with 10.8.4 for a few weeks while this settles down.

 

[Tibbar]

I also had a very negative experience with the latest Nvidia driver for 10.8.5 (but with a GTX 470). After many random kernel panics, I uninstalled the web driver. Upon restart, BAM! My SSD lost its boot partition.

 

[flowrider]

Well, the Nvidia web driver has cost me a number of hours of waisted time. Both the Nvidia Link driver, and the update window that appears and then with a click installs the driver installed a corrupt driver in my system.

I had to erase and restore my boot drive three times before I could get it through my thick skull that this driver was corrupting my boot process and to leave it the heck alone. Nothing this bad has ever happened to my system before, and I have been a Macintosh user since 1986.

Lou

Well, It wasn't the Nvidia Driver after all After reinitializing my SSD Boot Drive a number of times, the problems reappeared with the Apple supplied drivers. So, a couple of hours later I traced it down to an issue with Temperature Monitor and a failing HDD that was overheating. Once I removed the Application and the bad HDD. I then checked the integrity of the SSD and it checked out well. I then reinstalled the new Nvidia Driver at midnight last night, and all has been well since I'm not sure if I should install Temperature Monitor again

Lou

 

[bsbeamer]

Well, It wasn't the Nvidia Driver after all After reinitializing my SSD Boot Drive a number of times, the problems reappeared with the Apple supplied drivers. So, a couple of hours later I traced it down to an issue with Temperature Monitor and a failing HDD that was overheating. Once I removed the Application and the bad HDD. I then checked the integrity of the SSD and it checked out well. I then reinstalled the new Nvidia Driver at midnight last night, and all has been well since I'm not sure if I should install Temperature Monitor again

Lou

Interesting you mention this. In the past I've had similar style issues after installing an Nvidia driver or driver update on client's machines who have had non-EFI Nvidia GTX cards installed. Those machines were almost always using "workarounds" like BootChamp, which I have personally had a terrible experience with in terms of crashing an SSD boot drive numerous times.

I would hesitate to install any of those style add-ons, unless they are 100% critical to your workflow.

My machine with the Nvidia driver update installed through the Nvidia control panel has been working perfectly fine under 10.8.5 so far. Have not tried the direct link, but have not had any direct issues related to those downloads in the past, provided they were the stable driver release. Since the 313.01.03f01 driver was available through the control panel, the direct link installer is likely stable as well.

 

[flowrider]

^^^^My GTX570 is a Mac modified (MacVidCards) with an EFI. My boot drive is a Samsung mounted to an Apricorn Solo x2 PCIe card. Everything has been working as it should, no issues. I was using Temperature Monitor because I have replaced my stock CPUs with W5590s and wanted to keep track of the CPU Temps. I have not reinstalled Temperature Monitor, and I don't believe I will.

My final install was also through the control panel and not the physical download.

Note: MacVidCards also had issues with his installs here:

http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,7077.0.html

Lou

 

[bsbeamer]

Just a head's up to all - the 10.8.5 supplemental update breaks the NVIDIA driver manager, again. The latest 313.01.03f01 is NOT compatible after installing the latest OSX update - learned this after it was accidentally installed on a machine I was working on...

There was a new CUDA update, however - now on 5.5.28, and nothing that appears to have been impacted from this update.

Will wait a week or so before I decide to resort back to a clone on this machine or not. Maybe an updated driver will become available by then?

 

[pastrychef]

Is there any particular reason why you prefer the web drivers over the ones that are included with Mac OS X?

It seems like Nvidia is always a few days behind with updates after a new revision of OS X is released.

 

[flowrider]

^^^^I believe many of us here use Nvidia's web drivers. They're usually a bit faster than the ones supplied by Apple in the OS release. If Nvidia cares enough about Mac users and continues to write separate drivers and post them, I will continue to use them.

OTOH, the software from AMD (ATI) is nonexistent, one of the many reasons I switched from Radeon to GTX.

Lou

 

[bsbeamer]

Is there any particular reason why you prefer the web drivers over the ones that are included with Mac OS X?

It seems like Nvidia is always a few days behind with updates after a new revision of OS X is released.

I personally have found that the Nvidia web released drivers are much more responsive when using GTX cards with Adobe products. Yes, the "stock" OSX driver works, but it's not as efficient as the newest releases.

May seem trivial to some people, but in After Effects with the Nvidia web drivers I find that the "auto resolution" responsiveness improves significantly on several machines I've worked on, all with varying configurations. With the OSX drivers, I find setting this limit manually is the only way to get the machine to the same responsiveness. Basically it means seeing a better quality preview render of the effects you're working on. This is especially true when doing any timeline scrubbing for effect previews and modification.

It may not make a measurable difference in an overall final render or benchmarking test, but for actual working and workflow, I do find a difference.

 

[N19h7m4r3]

I found that the Web drivers constantly gave my Graphics Kernel crashes when using FCP X, and iMovie.

I try them each time a new version is out, and each them I get the same result.
Smooth sailing with the OS X drivers though. Maybe with 10.9 things will be better.

 

[Asgorath]

Just a head's up to all - the 10.8.5 supplemental update breaks the NVIDIA driver manager, again. The latest 313.01.03f01 is NOT compatible after installing the latest OSX update - learned this after it was accidentally installed on a machine I was working on...

Just to clear up a bit of confusion here, based on the wording of your message.

The NVIDIA driver manager is not broken, it is doing its job perfectly well. The NVIDIA web driver is tied to a specific version of the Apple OpenGL framework, i.e. a specific version of the OS (in this case 10.8.5 12F37). If Apple updates the OS and rolls out a supplemental update (to 12F45 or whatever it is) there is no guarantee that the original NVIDIA web driver will continue to work with the new version of the OpenGL framework. Thus, the NVIDIA driver manager reverts back to the stock Apple drivers and lets you know that has disabled the web driver until an update is released.

It's basically the same thing that happens when you update from 10.8.4 to 10.8.5 -- the old web driver won't work with the new version of the OS, so it gets disabled until an update to match the new OS is released. I'd expect a new driver to be released any day now, based on NVIDIA's history of web driver releases.

 

[MacVidCards]

Would be an awesome opportunity for them to fix OpenCl on the GK110 cards !!! Fingers crossed !

 

[bsbeamer]

Just to clear up a bit of confusion here, based on the wording of your message.

The NVIDIA driver manager is not broken, it is doing its job perfectly well. The NVIDIA web driver is tied to a specific version of the Apple OpenGL framework, i.e. a specific version of the OS (in this case 10.8.5 12F37). If Apple updates the OS and rolls out a supplemental update (to 12F45 or whatever it is) there is no guarantee that the original NVIDIA web driver will continue to work with the new version of the OpenGL framework. Thus, the NVIDIA driver manager reverts back to the stock Apple drivers and lets you know that has disabled the web driver until an update is released.

It's basically the same thing that happens when you update from 10.8.4 to 10.8.5 -- the old web driver won't work with the new version of the OS, so it gets disabled until an update to match the new OS is released. I'd expect a new driver to be released any day now, based on NVIDIA's history of web driver releases.

Sorry about the wording - didn't mean to cause any confusion. Just wanted to alert anyone who was installing the update that the Nvidia web driver wasn't working at that time...

The updated driver was installed (successfully) on the machine this evening and is now running 313.01.03f02 and is up to date. Installed through the driver manager. Not sure if it is available for download directly yet, but I've been installing through the driver manager for several versions now without a problem.

Latest CUDA is still 5.5.28 in case anyone wanted to know.

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I found that the Web drivers constantly gave my Graphics Kernel crashes when using FCP X, and iMovie.

I try them each time a new version is out, and each them I get the same result.
Smooth sailing with the OS X drivers though. Maybe with 10.9 things will be better.

I'm curious what the "base" driver will be for 10.9 and how it will perform with the GTX 680 for Mac. I'd expect continued Nvidia support/updates, but there's always that "what if" thought in the back of my mind...

 

[Asgorath]

Sorry about the wording - didn't mean to cause any confusion. Just wanted to alert anyone who was installing the update that the Nvidia web driver wasn't working at that time...

No worries, this appears to be a common misconception. Now that the NVIDIA web driver doesn't clobber the stock Apple driver (i.e. gets installed in addition to the Apple driver), it basically has to disable itself if there is a mismatch with the OS version. It seems as if the wording of the dialog box that pops up when this mismatch is detected freaks people out or something.