eGFX lacks NVIDIA support

[itsamacthing]

Since the official Apple forum blocked me from posting, I will post here. I'm so disgusted that Apple did not provide support for NVIDIA graphics cards. What kind of crap is it that we are forced into buying underpowered second rate AMD cards in our Mac and then when given the possibility to use powerful NVIDIA GPUs, Apple blocks us again... Why does AMD have such sway over Apple? Who is sleeping with who?

The promise of eGFX was to allow Mac users to break out of the limits of Mac Hardware. The kext files/drivers already exist, this is easy for Apple to enable.

Hoping Apple opens the door to NVIDIA cards in their eGFX, until then I won't be getting an eGFX unit for my MacBook Pro, which I had planned to do. It also keeps me looking at a PC where I can run NVIDIA.

Bring the rain!

 

[biker4mac]

I was disappointed as well. The FrankenMac build in my signature was purely out of needing CUDA that Apple no longer offers as an option.

 

[wubsylol]

Apple don't natively support Pascal hardware and the nVidia webdrivers drivers are pretty bad. Nobody is gonna deny that nVidia hardware is blowing AMD away right now, but getting upset that you can't put your $1000 1080Ti in an enclosure and have it perform like a 1060 with buggy drivers is a little unreasonable.

 

[h9826790]

Apple don't natively support Pascal hardware and the nVidia webdrivers drivers are pretty bad. Nobody is gonna deny that nVidia hardware is blowing AMD away right now, but getting upset that you can't put your $1000 1080Ti in an enclosure and have it perform like a 1060 with buggy drivers is a little unreasonable.

No proper eGPU support is true, but the web driver performance isn't that bad actually. I am now running a 1080Ti in my Mac Pro, and the performance is pretty good indeed.

 

[northernmunky]

Apple is only 'officially' supporting AMD because they currently have an agreement to build all current Macs with AMD chips, thats all that means. Apple is currently under no obligation to provide drivers for NVIDIA, that doesn't mean it doesn't work at all!

NVIDIA is releasing drivers themselves which now that eGPU support is enabled will only improve over time since there is now increased motivation to improve them and thus sell more cards, so everyone take a chill pill. I'll be using my Titan Xp with my MacBook Pro shortly, its all good.

 

[KeithJohn]

Hi, I have a Mac Pro 3.1 running High Sierra and running it well with a ATI Radeon HD 5870 1 GB graphics card, however I have a Palit GTX 570 card that I had for a now defunct Mac Pro 2.1, would this card work in my 3.1 and if so does it need any updated drivers given its an old card?

Hope you can help

Keith

*Update* I tried the 570 card in my 3.1 and the video stutters and songs and vids take ages to load in Itunes I have gone back to the 5870, I guess it does need drivers but no luck getting them yet, the ones i download say not compatible.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

Nvidia's web drivers are in perpetual beta. They are native Kepler drivers.

Apple should produce their own portable little eGPU box for their notebooks. A high clocked version of their A series GPU would be a really good performer compared to the AMD GPUs they are using.
[doublepost=1523278434][/doublepost]

No proper eGPU support is true, but the web driver performance isn't that bad actually. I am now running a 1080Ti in my Mac Pro, and the performance is pretty good indeed.
View attachment 757052 View attachment 757053

Yeah but that's the compute cores

The GPU driver itself is bad as you know.

 

[h9826790]

Nvidia's web drivers are in perpetual beta. They are native Kepler drivers.

Apple should produce their own portable little eGPU box for their notebooks. A high clocked version of their A series GPU would be a really good performer compared to the AMD GPUs they are using.
[doublepost=1523278434][/doublepost]

Yeah but that's the compute cores

The GPU driver itself is bad as you know.

API or driver or both?

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

API or driver or both?

Meaning the compute cores of a Pascal card are the same as a Kepler card except there are more of them and running at high clock speed. It's the main GPU that's the issue. The drivers aren't optimized for newer architectures and as you know we have seen this stuck in beta for a long time.

 

[FNH15]

Hi, I have a Mac Pro 3.1 running High Sierra and running it well with a ATI Radeon HD 5870 1 GB graphics card, however I have a Palit GTX 570 card that I had for a now defunct Mac Pro 2.1, would this card work in my 3.1 and if so does it need any updated drivers given its an old card?

Hope you can help

Keith

*Update* I tried the 570 card in my 3.1 and the video stutters and songs and vids take ages to load in Itunes I have gone back to the 5870, I guess it does need drivers but no luck getting them yet, the ones i download say not compatible.

When you installed the card, did you also make sure to download the Nvidia WebDrivers?

 

[h9826790]

Meaning the compute cores of a Pascal card are the same as a Kepler card except there are more of them and running at high clock speed. It's the main GPU that's the issue. The drivers aren't optimized for newer architectures and as you know we have seen this stuck in beta for a long time.

I am a very beginner in this area. But isn't the 1080Ti's CUDA core supposed are the same as the 680's CUDA core, but just faster and more? They are all CUDA core.

 

[mmomega]

Here is a little testing I did earlier.
So far just Geekbench 4 GPU compute testing in High Sierra

Setup:

macOS 10.13.4
Mac Pro 6,1
6Core
32GB RAM
512GB nvme
D500's
1080Ti Founders Edition in an Akitio Node, Apple Thunderbolt3 to Thunderbolt2 Adapter, Apple Thunderbolt 2 cable
latest release nVidia web drivers + latest release cuda driver

 

[giffut]

First of all: Stop down your agressive tone. It has no business nor power here.

I wouldn´t say AMD graphic cards are inferior per se, but they don´t support CUDA and many video rendering software very well; which is a huge community.

You are absolutely right, that this decision regarding NVIDIA graphiccards and don´t forget disabling eGPU support for Thunderbolt 1/2 devices starting with OSX 10.13.4. It is again a very much intended software based hardware obsolence decision by Apple.

eGPU support is clearly needed for augmented and virtual reality, video rendering and scientific CUDA support, because current Apple hardware and software doesn´t support it very well.

eGPU worked via creative software hacking starting with Thunderbolt 1 devices (anyMacbook Pro from 2011 upwards). Even on thunderbolt 1 based devices enabling eGPU made a huge difference and very practical and greatly enhanced even gaming experiences on older hardware while using limited PCI express speeds via the thunderbolt interface. This is still a concern to date, as thunderbolt 3 is not fast enough for full support of 8x/16x PCI express interfaces.

The point for eGPU support in the community is general usage of any graphic card abiding the PCI express standard. For Apple, it is - again - limiting user choice for the sake of profits in selling new hardware, while the old one isn´t really old to begin with.

You can clearly see Apples laziness regarding this in not providing an external enclosure themselves.

There is only one thing we can do, I guess: Stop buying new mac hardware as a principle and either use second hand units or proceed to built a hackintosh system, which is many times more useful than original Apple hardware. It used to be the other way round. Apple will only learn, when their mostly hardware based profits shrink significantly.

 

[nekton1]

PurgeWrangler is a shell script to enable TB1 and TB2 Macs running 10.13.4 and 10.13.5 beta 1 with eGPU. It is available as a link at eGPU.io.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

I am a very beginner in this area. But isn't the 1080Ti's CUDA core supposed are the same as the 680's CUDA core, but just faster and more? They are all CUDA core.

Yes, they are the same compute cores just faster and more. It's the GPU architecture that changes. Forwards compatibility is easy with the Nvidia's UDA (they just add the Dev IDs to initialize the card) but optimization and support for Maxwell and Pascal features is in beta.

 

[mmomega]

you need the applegraphicscontrol kext from 10.13.3

PurgeWrangler is a shell script to enable TB1 and TB2 Macs running 10.13.4 and 10.13.5 beta 1 with eGPU. It is available as a link at eGPU.io.

From my experience, once you go to 10.13.4 the AppleGraphicsControl kext is what continues to break nVidia eGPU's.
If you can get the file from 10.13.3 (either from a different computer or pull from Time Machine) then it will work.

So if you're on 10.13.3, do web drivers first, disable SIP second, purge wrangler, reboot, things should work.
On 10.13.4, do all of the above plus add in the applegraphicscontrol.kext from 10.13.3, repair permissions, reboot and you should be golden.

For the time being, hold on to that kext with the next incremental update (10.13.5 higher or 10.14) to possibly keep an Nvidia egpu running. Which will be unknown if that will fix the problem once the next update is released.