So I'm on my second 980 Ti Kingpin from EVGA in my Mac Pro 5,1 2010... First one worked well for several weeks, but then at some point would go to sleep and never wake up. After that, after a hard reboot, pram reset, smc reset, what have you, it would never boot back up again. Now here's the part I feel is unique to me so far, as I haven't read anyone else having this particular issue. I use a couple programs on my iPhone to remotely log into my mac pro to change the nvidia drivers back to web drivers whenever I need to update things, etc. Anyway... after the sleep coma... anytime I have that 980 ti installed... I can *see* my mac pro on my local network, but I can never log in. Once I take out the 980ti and replace it with my old Radeon 5870, it works fine, and I can log in. If I have *no* gpu installed at all, I can log in, but the second that 980ti is back in the slot... I can only see the mac pro, I can never log in, and... needless to say at first I thought it was the card and evga was kind enough to replace it with another, but a few days in on the new card, and... same thing... goes to sleep, won't wake up, card never lets my mac pro boot again and I can't remotely log in as long as that card is in the slot wtf?!... it has it's own evga 750 bq power supple solely to power the card so I doubt it's a power supply issue. I've disabled SIP, I've done clean installs of both sierra and now high sierra, and that didn't help at all. What could possibly be preventing (in my estimation) the mac from loading up the nvidia drivers suddenly? Can anyone help? I'm going crazy and I've spent the last several months messing with this. Also everyone else seems to get their nvidia cards working in 2010's and even some 2009's but somehow I'm that one guy that can't get the same parts to work in the same setting. Help!
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980 Ti Kingping & Mac Pro 2010
- Thread starter SimonFex
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it's a kingpin so it actually takes 2 8's and a 6, but like I said I have an evga 750w external power supply dedicated solely to powering that card, and... it booted and worked fine for several days until it went to sleep for an extended period of time, and then nothing... also I can't explain why at that point, having the nvidia card installed prevents any attempt at remote login (via VNC and TeamViewer on my iPhone) - like, it's not even a matter of no boot screen or whatever at that point... *what* would a gpu card have to do with my computer being visible on my local network but not being able to connect? That's so weird to the point that I have to believe that's maybe the key to it all somehow 
Which is why I implore the smarter folks here, as I'd hate to have to return it yet again (assuming I can, don't want to have to ultimately swallow the cost).
Which is why I implore the smarter folks here, as I'd hate to have to return it yet again (assuming I can, don't want to have to ultimately swallow the cost).I did, but nvidia updated their driver again, presumably to address the supplemental os update. Anyway, it's kind of moot because this has been happening since Sierra 10.2.6.
Anyway last night I plugged my 980ti into the bottom pci slot, and my radeon hd5780 in the slot above it, and for a minute, it booted up, and I was able to switch my dvi cable from the 5870 to the 980ti, and... it worked! About My Mac showed the 980ti being recognized, all was good. Then I bumped the case accidentally and the 980ti got slightly unseated from its slot, and... now I can't get it to come back. I *do* know now, however, why I couldn't log in with the 980ti installed. The 5870 lets me see the gray apple boot screen now, but the progress bar gets halfway and that's it, it won't go past that. So for *some* insane reason, I'm thinking the nvidia drivers never get loaded up? Even though the 5870 is handling the display chores in this current config? Does this mean anything to anyone? And yes again, did VRAM and SMC resets aplenty, and always the same... which drives me bananas because the first, and only the first time I had both cards in there, it loaded up *and* I could switch the dvi to the 980ti without issue, argh!
I'm thinking ultimately if I can't get it working, then maybe have MacVidCards flash it would solve the problem? Thoughts?
Would a crash report help the next time I have to force reboot and get the resulting kernel panic notification?