Downloadable Graphics Drivers From NVIDIA for OS X

[flipster]

Okay so I spend a lot of time of the steam forums. On there, someone posted that if you have the supported cards listed, you can download graphics card drivers straight from nvidia.com for OS X. I was weary at first, but I downloaded them anyway.

I have a 2008 iMac with the 8800 GS card (8800M GTS) and before I updated the drivers, I was getting 40 fps on L4D2 with medium settings. Now, I get 40 fps with max settings on L4D2 on OS X. So that's a pretty big increase.


My question is, why haven't these drivers been announced for download if they give a big increase in performance?

LINK: http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro-macosx-256.01.00f03v7-driver.html

Graphics Cards Supported:

GeForce 300M series:
GT 330M, GT 320M

GeForce 200 series:
GTX 285 for MAC

GeForce 100 series:
GT 120

GeForce 9M series:
9400M

GeForce 8 series:
8800 GT

GeForce 8M series:
8800M GTS, 8800M GS

Quadro series:
4000 for Mac

Quadro FX series:
FX 4800 for MAC, FX 5600

 

[RedReplicant]

Did you try enabling vsync to get rid of the tearing?

 

[50548]

Okay so I spend a lot of time of the steam forums. On there, someone posted that if you have the supported cards listed, you can download graphics card drivers straight from nvidia.com for OS X. I was weary at first, but I downloaded them anyway.

I have a 2008 iMac with the 8800 GS card (8800M GTS) and before I updated the drivers, I was getting 40 fps on L4D2 with medium settings. Now, I get 40 fps with max settings on L4D2 on OS X. So that's a pretty big increase.

I did however, notice some little things. While playing CS:S, there is a little screen tearing, and some other odd little things. Overall though, it gave me a huge performance increase.

My question is, why haven't these drivers been announced for download if they give a big increase in performance?

LINK: http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro-macosx-256.01.00f03v7-driver.html

Graphics Cards Supported:

GeForce 300M series:
GT 330M, GT 320M

GeForce 200 series:
GTX 285 for MAC

GeForce 100 series:
GT 120

GeForce 9M series:
9400M

GeForce 8 series:
8800 GT

GeForce 8M series:
8800M GTS, 8800M GS

Quadro series:
4000 for Mac

Quadro FX series:
FX 4800 for MAC, FX 5600

Can anyone vouch for that? Installing drivers directly from NVIDIA instead of the recommended ones through Apple?

 

[FSMBP]

Wow, I never knew you could get drivers for 1st party hardware on OS X (well, I mean, I didn't know companies besides Apple offered them).

I personally would just stick with what Apple gives you because a future update (from Software Update) may cause your Mac to act funky.

But, if it's giving you a big increase - then, I guess enjoy it!

 

[flipster]

Did you try enabling vsync to get rid of the tearing?

It's gone now, my ping was spiking, that was the problem.

So far, the drivers have significantly increased performance, nothing weird has happened. And I know VSYNC gets rid of the screen tearing, I had it on while it was screen tearing, which led me to realize that it was from the ping spiking up and down.




I mean, the drivers clearly state which graphics card is supported, and there from nvidia.com... it's not like it's an unreliable source lol. If anything happens, just roll back to your original drivers... I'm sure theres a way

 

[50548]

It's gone now, my ping was spiking, that was the problem.

So far, the drivers have significantly increased performance, nothing weird has happened. And I know VSYNC gets rid of the screen tearing, I had it on while it was screen tearing, which led me to realize that it was from the ping spiking up and down.




I mean, the drivers clearly state which graphics card is supported, and there from nvidia.com... it's not like it's an unreliable source lol. If anything happens, just roll back to your original drivers... I'm sure theres a way

Anyone else tested this?

 

[The-Pro]

i just downloaded it on my 2010 15" i7 (GT 330M) and when the installer screen pops up it says that system is not supported!!
weird, they clearly say 330 is supported

 

[Icy1007]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8H7 Safari/6533.18.5)

i just downloaded it on my 2010 15" i7 (GT 330M) and when the installer screen pops up it says that system is not supported!!
weird, they clearly say 330 is supported

I think you have to use a terminal command to install them. It says on the thread on the Steam forums.

 

[The-Pro]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8H7 Safari/6533.18.5)



I think you have to use a terminal command to install them. It says on the thread on the Steam forums.

Why would they release it and then not tell anybody how to install it??

@ the OP: HOW DID YOU INSTALL IT??
cheers

 

[voyagerd]

I'm using those drivers for my GTX 480s. The performance in games isn't as good as in Windows, but everything else works great.

 

[flipster]

Why would they release it and then not tell anybody how to install it??

@ the OP: HOW DID YOU INSTALL IT??
cheers

1) make sure you are running Mac OS X 10.6.5 or later.

2) download the driver from nvidia


3) double-click the downloaded dmg file.

4) right-click the "NVIDIA Retail Mac Driver ******.mpkg" and choose "Show Package Contents".

open Contents/Package and you will see three pkg files.

install the three pkg files separately (the order doesn't matter).

after successfully installed the three pkg files, reboot your mac.

5) everything should be fine after you reboot.

There is a way to back up your old ones, but I didnt

 

[The-Pro]

thanks, ill try it.
if something dosnt work, could i restore from time machine that still has the old drivers?

 

[The-Pro]

HUGE SUCCESS

so I installed them and everything works good.
a week ago when i played the cider port of Modern Warfare 2 (it is the second Cider wrapper, the update) i had to turn down the graphics to low and to 1280x800 resolution in order to get smooth gameplay. its always been like that, which is why i literally never played it. This is on my 2010 15" i7 with GT 330M.
Now, after upgrading the drivers, i turned the graphics to extra, and its totally smooth aswell i kept the same res. then i changed res to 1680x1050 and the graphics to high, still smooth

the difference drivers can make

 

[mat25]

Anyone try this with the 9400M with any improvements?

 

[lehite]

This is very interesting to me. To those who have done this, and have had it going for a while, are there any issues? I have a 9400m macbook pro and would love to get a little better performance out of it.

Also, anyone know how to revert to the previous driver if there are issues?

Thanks in advance!

 

[topkitten]

latest working driver for

Hi,

I have a 8800 GS (8800M GTS) iMac with 3.06 GHz, Snow Leopard, and am trying to update the graphics driver for Windows Vista X64 (running Bootcamp 3.0, Bootcamp Nvidia graphics driver v. 188-something -- I think it was).

I haven't managed to update the driver from Nvidia downloads. Any chance you have Bootcamp going in yours, and could you or someone tell me what latest Nvidia driver version you've had success with updating your driver?

 

[WalkerPF]

I used the process detailed in this thread and when I rebooted it got stuck on the "spinning cursor" thing. I think it's because I'm running OS X Lion- When you said 10.6.5 or later, I thought you were including Lion. How can I fix this? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[shardey]

I used the process detailed in this thread and when I rebooted it got stuck on the "spinning cursor" thing. I think it's because I'm running OS X Lion- When you said 10.6.5 or later, I thought you were including Lion. How can I fix this? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

He did say that, although this thread was made prior to Lion.

I installed this on my iMac 09 with the gt 130 (not supported) with success. I recently installed a SSD and a fresh copy of snow leopard and used smalluxGPU to stress my GPU (new thermal paste installed) and noticed very poor performance. If you know the scores on the benchmark GPU with OpenCL pixel filtering, it went from 60/27/9 (millions of samples/s) to 169/61/40.

I couldn't figure out any other reasoning for this, until I stumbled across this thread. This is amazing!!

 

[monkeymonkey35]

Warning

!!!Warning to anyone trying this with a 2010 Macbook pro and Mountain Lion (10.8)!!!

I installed these drivers and my computer would not boot. I had to restore it from my USB backup.

My computer: 2010 15" MBP, i7, 8GB Ram, Geforce GT 330M. Running OSX 10.8

If anyone knows of a legitimate fix, please message me.

 

[Neejoh]

1) make sure you are running Mac OS X 10.6.5 or later.

2) download the driver from nvidia


3) double-click the downloaded dmg file.

4) right-click the "NVIDIA Retail Mac Driver ******.mpkg" and choose "Show Package Contents".

open Contents/Package and you will see three pkg files.

install the three pkg files separately (the order doesn't matter).

after successfully installed the three pkg files, reboot your mac.

5) everything should be fine after you reboot.

There is a way to back up your old ones, but I didnt

Just wanted to confirm that this just now fixed my early 2008 24" iMac (GeForce 8800 GS, Lion 10.7.5) kernel panic problem (booted only in safe mode). Very pleased with this, so thanks!

 

[Xythantiops]

Not helping mid 2009 MBP w. GeForce 9400M

So I will say that my interest in updating drivers is different from most in the thread who seem to be needing better gaming performance. I recently purchased a Dell U2913WM ultra-wide monitor which looks fantastic except that it lags when playing back HD videos and downloading files (?).

I installed the cudadriver and the package contents from the NVIDIA Quadro Retail Mac Driver 256.02.25f01 though I noticed 5 separate installers, the three driver installers and two packages called pre-install and post-install which I ran in the intended order.

Fortunately I didn't have any black screens, I am running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 but I haven't noticed any performance enhancement. I wish it was like on a PC where there is a more advanced application for monitoring graphics or even knowing what version of drivers you have installed, on get info from my MBP I have Revision ID: 0x00b1

Does anyone have any ideas of what I might try next? I was thinking about upgrading to Mavericks 10.9 seeing as how some had said there were performance enhancements on a system level but naturally I am weary here for other reasons.

 

[Chiboiborn]

Updated Drivers for NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT and other Geforce

Here is the link for the update drivers, you would think if someone has them they would do you the favor and upload them. but so here you go!

http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/73627#

 

[Chiboiborn]

For GeForce 8800 GT http://www.nvidia.com/content/Drive...udadriver-6.0.51-macos.dmg&lang=us&type=Other

 

[mrkapqa]

I would also like to download and install driver for gt 120/130, but they seem only starting with 256. eg Snow Leopard, is there no Driver for Leopard 10.5.7+?