GTX 680 Mac Edition weird behavior?

[rk25123]

Hello,

I've recently installed a GTX 680 Mac Edition in my 2009 Mac Pro, substituting my old HD 4870.

First thing I noticed is that when I press the power button the computer stays dead silent for 5 seconds before chiming, whereas with my old GPU I could hear all the fans spinning like crazy. Is that normal?

The strangest thing though is that when I had just installed it all OS animations where extremely jerky, like they were running at 3 fps. I tried rebooting a couple of times, checking if everything was properly connected, installing latest NVIDIA web drivers, resetting PRAM, but nothing changed. Then I tried running a benchmark (Geeks3D GpuTest) and after that all of a sudden everything started running smoothly. Anyone has any idea of how is that possible?

Running the FurMark benchmark I got 47 fps, whereas another user with the exact same settings (1920x1200 windowed, antialiasing off) and drivers got 56 fps. Is that because he had a more powerful CPU? What results are you guys getting?

Thanks for the help!

 

[rk25123]

There's not even one kind good soul in possession of a GTX 680 Mac Edition that can help me?

 

[rk25123]

Another thing: when energy saver puts my monitors to sleep, only the LED Cinema Display turns off, my second monitor (Samsung connected via HDMI) stays on displaying the last screen, whereas with the old graphics card it would turn black and display a "no signal" warning. Is this normal for this card?

 

[ActionableMango]

There's not even one kind good soul in possession of a GTX 680 Mac Edition that can help me?

Fan speed - Many, many people having this problem across all types of video cards, including official Apple cards. There is no known solution to fix it. A workaround is to either startup in Windows and reboot to OS X, or run a program that stresses the video card. See this thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1566964/

Was slow, now it's smooth - Okay, great. It's smooth now.

Furmark - How could we know what's causing the difference in framerate? It could be any of a million things. Slower memory, slightly different boards, different CPUs, running a bunch of crap in the background, different drivers, different versions of Furmark...

Sleep - My two monitors both go black on sleep.

 

[rk25123]

Fan speed - Many, many people having this problem across all types of video cards, including official Apple cards. There is no known solution to fix it. A workaround is to either startup in Windows and reboot to OS X, or run a program that stresses the video card. See this thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1566964/

Was slow, now it's smooth - Okay, great. It's smooth now.

Furmark - How could we know what's causing the difference in framerate? It could be any of a million things. Slower memory, slightly different boards, different CPUs, running a bunch of crap in the background, different drivers, different versions of Furmark...

Sleep - My two monitors both go black on sleep.

Thank you very much for your response!

Fan speed - Good to know (well, bad actually)! It isn't really a problem for now, on the contrary, the system is quieter, which is good, but since I was used to hear a jet turbine before the chime and now I hear nothing I was wondering if it was normal... Did all that noise come from the HD 4870?!

Was slow, now it's smooth - Eh eh, yes, great, but since I suppose that that behavior isn't normal (shouldn't it work properly right away?!), I was concerned I had a faulty card, hence the question.

Furmark - You're right, I didn't explain myself properly. The fact is that I'm completely new at benchmarks, the sole reason I started running them is to check if I have a lemon, because of the weird behavior my card had when I first installed it. Not knowing how a GPU benchmark works and how much of the result is influenced by other factors such as CPU, RAM, etc., and since the systems are practically identical except for the CPU (exact same benchmark, settings, GPU, drivers, etc.), I was wondering if it's normal to have such a discrepancy in fps (19%). That's also why I asked what results the other users got.

Sleep - Is one of them connected via HDMI? I'll try to connect mine to the DVI port with an adapter to see if anything changes.

 

[ActionableMango]

Sleep - Is one of them connected via HDMI? I'll try to connect mine to the DVI port with an adapter to see if anything changes.

Display port and DVI.

 

[Mac Moof]

Hi there,

Well i have installed a GTX 680 Mac Edition today and yes the startup noise (or lack of it) is that sam eon my machine. The ATI 4870 used to run flat out for a couple of seconds before calming down, but the GTX seems to slowly speed up. So it is much quieter.

I noticed my 2009 Mac has been seemingly doing very little for a while once the power button is pushed. It then springs to life and carries on as normal a few seconds later. Maybe its just a Mac OS Update thing?

As for the other issues, if the graphics issues has resolved themselves then i would not worry too much. Maybe the Mac was trying to catch up on some things after the installation and therefore the whole system was slow, causing the icons to appear jerky??

 

[rk25123]

Hi there,

Well i have installed a GTX 680 Mac Edition today and yes the startup noise (or lack of it) is that sam eon my machine. The ATI 4870 used to run flat out for a couple of seconds before calming down, but the GTX seems to slowly speed up. So it is much quieter.

I noticed my 2009 Mac has been seemingly doing very little for a while once the power button is pushed. It then springs to life and carries on as normal a few seconds later. Maybe its just a Mac OS Update thing?

As for the other issues, if the graphics issues has resolved themselves then i would not worry too much. Maybe the Mac was trying to catch up on some things after the installation and therefore the whole system was slow, causing the icons to appear jerky??

Thank you very much for your response!
I think you're right, the only thing that makes sense is some sort of software problem and since now everything runs properly and the benchmark results seem consistent, I think I can stop worrying!