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GTX285 and the "2 Gig Bug"

M

MacVidCards

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Original poster
Nov 17, 2008
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1,057
Hollywood, CA
I finally got COD4 and was eager to benchmark some cards with it in OSX.

Tried out a 4870 with it and then tossed the GTX285 FTW 2Gig card and COD4 popped up with a message about changing settings.

To my surprise it would only run on my 30" at 3 or 4 grainy low resolutions. Then I tried Halo, Doom3, etc.

Doom3 crashes on boot.

Halo come up with a warning that it needs at least 32Meg of VRAM to run.

Part of using the injector has been that the reported VRAM was incorrect. Using a tip rom Netkas I was able to mod a line in it to get the 2048 to show up.

OpenGl View always gets this number right without promtping. But in both OpenGl View and System Profiler, the number shows up as a negative number. Which is especially odd, as the numbers are coming from different places.

Which means that somehow the OS is reporting "2048" as a negative number, no matter where it comes from, when used in the field related to VRAM.

So while I can bench the card in OpenGl View, I can't in other 3D apps as they sem to believe that there is NO VRAM.

I am certain that this is merely some bug related to the fact that up until now there haven't been cards with 2 Gigs of RAM. The most "officially supported" RAM on a card so far is the QUadro with 1.5 Gigs.

To be clear...the System Profiler shows it's value because of a Hex value for "2048" has been entered. The Opengl View vale of "-2048" is a number it got from the card/OS.

I thought that somehow I had buggered up the install, so I tried ona separate 10.5.7 disk. Reinstalled the F16 package and Netkas injectors. Same behavior.

Anyone know what needs to be fixed here?
 

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Argh, that stinks. But good info to have nonetheless, as on a related note people will no doubt try to use a Mac edition 285 ROM on better cards like an SSC or a 2GB version.

I've done a lot of BYO PC for gaming and overclocking over the years and never run into something like that, even under Linux. That is truly bizarre. It probably isn't an issue with the package as supposedly the injector pulls the video ram size straight from the card. And like you said, I don't think an official card under OS X has ever had more than 1.5GB, so it could just be an issue with OS X and not the injector.

It's one of the few cards that has 2GB allocated to a single GPU.
 
The Rominator said:
I finally got COD4 and was eager to benchmark some cards with it in OSX.

Tried out a 4870 with it and then tossed the GTX285 FTW 2Gig card and COD4 popped up with a message about changing settings.

To my surprise it would only run on my 30" at 3 or 4 grainy low resolutions. Then I tried Halo, Doom3, etc.

Doom3 crashes on boot.

Halo come up with a warning that it needs at least 32Meg of VRAM to run.

Part of using the injector has been that the reported VRAM was incorrect. Using a tip rom Netkas I was able to mod a line in it to get the 2048 to show up.

OpenGl View always gets this number right without promtping. But in both OpenGl View and System Profiler, the number shows up as a negative number. Which is especially odd, as the numbers are coming from different places.

Which means that somehow the OS is reporting "2048" as a negative number, no matter where it comes from, when used in the field related to VRAM.

So while I can bench the card in OpenGl View, I can't in other 3D apps as they sem to believe that there is NO VRAM.

I am certain that this is merely some bug related to the fact that up until now there haven't been cards with 2 Gigs of RAM. The most "officially supported" RAM on a card so far is the QUadro with 1.5 Gigs.

To be clear...the System Profiler shows it's value because of a Hex value for "2048" has been entered. The Opengl View vale of "-2048" is a number it got from the card/OS.

I thought that somehow I had buggered up the install, so I tried ona separate 10.5.7 disk. Reinstalled the F16 package and Netkas injectors. Same behavior.

Anyone know what needs to be fixed here?
Click to expand...

sys profiler value is cosmetic and can be fixed by setting for example 1.9GB

but open gl value cant be fixed that easy, ogl application gets vram size from ogl library, then ogl application think its signed 32-bit integer and here problems come. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_(computer_science) )
 
Your link is missing it's final ")" but I got there.

So it seems that the number should be "unsigned"

What I don't get is why this has manifested itself only here.

Is there a way to use your injector to "inject" this value properly?
 
No fix in 10.5.8 or 421a

Using Netkas injector and same issues in either.

Oddly, in 421a it reads in Sys Prof as having

"VRAM (Total): 4294965248 MB"

But same issue with running 3D apps.

Gonna try CUDA.

Can do testing in SL now if anyone has questions.
 
The Rominator said:
Gonna try CUDA.
Click to expand...
Maybe I said this before but under 10.5.7. CUDA recognizes and uses the 2G OK. I wonder if it just asks the card directly and bypasses all the Apple stuff.

I have not managed to get CUDA working under Snow Leopard and Nvidia said there was a problem with 2.3+SL, despite their 2.3 download link saying which version to use with SL. If you get 2.3 up in SL do tell how.
 
Was playing with an old RAM disk program and noticed the same issue. Despite the 17Gigs in my system, it sees but 2, and those are of negative variety. (421a) (only seeing 2 is likely due to age of this program...)

What is best way to bring to attention of the Apple OS writing crowd?
 

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The Rominator said:
Still alive and well in 10.6.2
Click to expand...
I just reran some stuff on both my 1G Mac 285 and injected PC 285. OpenGL Extensions viewer indeed reports -2048M under 10.6.2 for the 2G card, but both CUDA and OpenCL are still recognizing the memory properly, so this problem is a function of how the card is queried. Maybe CUDA/OCL bypass the problematic software?

Something else odd is happening under 10.6.2. My Mac 285 seems to run at the full 1.48Ghz under Cuda, and powers up much more quickly under the OpenGL EV tests. BUT, it seems to have shut down on me twice now, which never happened before. Might be a problem somewhere else (and my 'Pro is a bit heavily loaded) but I wonder if the power management has now gone to the opposite extreme and the thing is overheating and shutting itself down. Can a card do this to prevent itself "melting"? Anyone else with a 285 in a 10.6.2. Mac seen a graphics shutdown? The Mac restarts fine after an hour or so....
 
I'm assuming this only affect the non-Mac cards? I don't play Mac games, so I don't know. Just curious.
 
alphaod said:
I'm assuming this only affect the non-Mac cards? I don't play Mac games, so I don't know. Just curious.
Click to expand...
Only non-Mac cards are available in 2G form off the shelf - I cannot recall now how far Rominator and others got with flashing 2G cards?
 
2 gig bug

last post seems to have been in November of '09. Now March of '10. Anyone come across a solution to the 2 gig bug?
 
Look 5 posts up.

Since we are still in 10.6.2, little reason to expect the OS to have magically repaired itself.

Once 10.6.3 is out, will be time to check again.

Someone else will need to do this, as I finally got rid of my GTX285 2 Gig card as it was rather useless.
 
doronk said:
10.6.3 is imminent. I'll check once I've updated and post results here...
Click to expand...
That was my plan with an earlier 10.6.3 seed - but it broke my CUDA setup and I did not even get to checking 2G issue. Had to go to 10.6 afresh and re-update to 10.6.2. I will try again when it is released properly.
 
Still exists in 10.6.3

Unfortunately, my EVGA GTX 285 2GB still shows incorrect VRAM in System Profiler (mine shows 4294965248 MB !) in 10.6.3 :(
 
I forgot to come back on this but agree 10.6.3 did not fix. Anyone tried 10.6.4 first release?
 
10.6.4 ----still here !!!!

Arrrrr !!!!!

With all the stuff they broke for the 4xxx series ATI cards, I was still hopeful that someone at Apple had gotten around to fixing this.

Just tried another GTX285 2 Gig out via injector. Still shows whatever amount you want via ATY_Init in Sys Profiler, but to OpenGl Ext viewer, it has -2048.

So, several apps won't open. Bioshock refused but Steam / HL2 worked. Doom 3 crapped out, but Cinebench OpenGl test works fine.

The command line NvClock app seees the amount of RAM as 2048, so at some level it is correctly numbered. (unless this is parsed from BIOS instead of "read" from a register)

In any case, Apple will have to fix this sooner rather than later, most likely when they have a 2 Gig card getting ready for intro.

Currently up to 1536 is fine, I think Netkas said that was as far as that number field can go.

Does anyone have a quick link to the "write Apple for support" thing? I'll report it and see what they say.

There is probably a way to write a Mac GTX285 ROM that would work on 2Gig cards. But as long as the inability to display the quantity of RAM on the card is a problem, there is very little reason to bother.
 
So while Apple's own Operating System is completely flummoxed by a GPU of 2 Gigabytes and then incapacitates numerous 3D apps as a result of it's inability to count past 1536, there is one App that knows exactly how much VRAM there is.

Apple 0
Adobe 1

Can you say "Embarassing" !!! ???
 

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2 Gig Bug still alive and well in update

A bird flew by and dropped that darn graphics update in my Window. Doesn't seem to be anything revolutionary in it.

And the 2 Gig Bug seems alive and well. BTW, I reported it to APple, no response of course.

The drag of this is what I just saw at Newegg. The GPU manufacturers have quit putting their best effort in the 1 Gig versions of 5870. They have moved the quality heatsinks to the 2 Gig versions. They have even begun paring down the outputs on "V2" 5870s to go with the cheapy fans. (While card quality has gone DOWN, prices have stayed HIGH, dream state for GPU builders)

To sum up, the 5870s that are likely to flash well and work in Macs now have Mickey Mouse cooling systems that blast hot air all over the inside of your machine, instead of moving heat to outside of case. The 5870s that still have the higher quality cooling systems are mostly the 2 Gig versions that will be quite buggy until Apple learns to count past 1536.
 
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