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Nvidia GTX 285 - What's going on?

C

colinthejanitor

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 13, 2009
59
0
A couple of months ago we heard about the Nvidia GTX 285 coming to the mac pro which i personally loved the idea of (I have a 1TB drive for mac and a 1TB drive for windows vista 64 for some general gaming).

But it seems word on this illustrious card has fallen silent. Does anyone know what's happened to the card? Has it been released? Will it be released by BFG, EVGA, Apple etc?

Thanks in advance for any info, I've been looking but couldn't find anything.

C4.
 
Apple won't carry it, nor will it be BTO.

What was said when we first heard of it is all that we know. What was said then holds still.

It wasn't even supposed to be released yet. Keep your pants on. ;)
 
Tallest Skil said:
Apple won't carry it, nor will it be BTO.

What was said when we first heard of it is all that we know. What was said then holds still.

It wasn't even supposed to be released yet. Keep your pants on. ;)
Click to expand...

Thanks Tallest.

So Apple won't be carrying it, but the drivers for the card will be in OSX?

If that's the case then what's the situation with warranty going to be like? Interesting stuff but I'm glad I haven't missed the release anyway.

So to sum up... Wait for it :p
 
colinthejanitor said:
Thanks Tallest.

So Apple won't be carrying it, but the drivers for the card will be in OSX?

If that's the case then what's the situation with warranty going to be like? Interesting stuff but I'm glad I haven't missed the release anyway.

So to sum up... Wait for it :p
Click to expand...

Nope. The drivers won't be part of OS X; they'll be on a disk that comes with the card itself.

Meaning, if you ever need to reinstall OS X, you'll have to keep whatever card came with your computer to be able to boot the darn thing.

Warranty will be entirely third-party.
 
Tallest Skil said:
Nope. The drivers won't be part of OS X; they'll be on a disk that comes with the card itself.

Meaning, if you ever need to reinstall OS X, you'll have to keep whatever card came with your computer to be able to boot the darn thing.

Warranty will be entirely third-party.
Click to expand...

that makes more sense to me now, thanks again!
 
.
It will probably be released somewhere between June 3rd and June 11th.
.
 
Some of us reckless folk have pre-ordered from provantage or other world computing. I sort of expect mine to show up by mid June. I see no signs of BTO. The drivers are indeed not in 10.5.7 as standard. If you look at other posts you can see various discussions of drivers for both 10.5.7 and 10.6.
 
I noticed some suppliers said they would have them in stock on June 3rd. So thats less than a week away.
 
grue said:
It's not Apple's problem.
Click to expand...

It is. Windows doesn't suffer similarly given the same hardware.

Apple have contrived to produce a situation where it can be
easier to boot Windows on an Apple Mac than OS X.
 
Tallest Skil said:
It isn't. It's an EFI problem.
Click to expand...

Read up on UGA/GOP and come back to us when you have a clue
what you're talking about.

It's perfectly possible to boot an (U)EFI system without having
installed drivers for the graphics card.

Windows on UEFI 2.1 can do this. OS X on EFI 1.1 cannot. That
is Apple's fault.
 
Infrared said:
Read up on UGA/GOP and come back to us when you have a clue
what you're talking about.

It's perfectly possible to boot an (U)EFI system without having
installed drivers for the graphics card.

....
Click to expand...

I think this is even more muddled. You need to distinguish between (1) booting with a card, (2) loading it into the system at some stage, and (3) driving it properly.

Under OS X (1) is about whether the card has EFI support (2) can be accomplished by a variety of methods including the EFI boot but also there are post-boot injectors that also do the trick. (3) is a matter of having the right drivers to put the graphics on the screen , e.g. via OpenGL, given the hardware on the card. These are all different issues. For example, my Mac Pro has one 8800Gt and one GTX 285 (not the Mac version, which is not quite here yet)..

1. The 8800 boots under EFI, the 285 does not;
2. The 285 is loaded later with an injector;
3. Whether or not my 285 then works properly is a matter of drivers. They are just appearing for 10.5.7 and seem to exist in recent versions of Snow Leopard.

Others may have a different view as to the meaning of "boot", "load" and "driver" but I was only able to get a PC 285 working on my Mac Pro once I had got 1-3 above clear in my own head.
 
10THzMac said:
I think this is even more muddled. You need to distinguish between (1) booting with a card, (2) loading it into the system at some stage, and (3) driving it properly.

Under OS X (1) is about whether the card has EFI support (2) can be accomplished by a variety of methods including the EFI boot but also there are post-boot injectors that also do the trick. (3) is a matter of having the right drivers to put the graphics on the screen , e.g. via OpenGL, given the hardware on the card. These are all different issues. For example, my Mac Pro has one 8800Gt and one GTX 285 (not the Mac version, which is not quite here yet)..

1. The 8800 boots under EFI, the 285 does not;
2. The 285 is loaded later with an injector;
3. Whether or not my 285 then works properly is a matter of drivers. They are just appearing for 10.5.7 and seem to exist in recent versions of Snow Leopard.

Others may have a different view as to the meaning of "boot", "load" and "driver" but I was only able to get a PC 285 working on my Mac Pro once I had got 1-3 above clear in my own head.
Click to expand...

so, you got it working or not ?
 
netkas said:
so, you got it working or not ?
Click to expand...
Not yet under 10.5.7, but I have not tried all your suggestions with your new injector and other permutations. I am going to wait till my Mac version comes as I cannot take my Pro to bits right now!
 
10THzMac said:
I think this is even more muddled. You need to distinguish between (1) booting with a card, (2) loading it into the system at some stage, and (3) driving it properly.
Click to expand...

The practical issue is this: can you boot the operating system
so that it is running in some sort of usable state?

From what I have read you cannot unless the drivers have been
installed first[1]. But you may not be able to install them without
getting the system running as above. Catch 22.

E.g., suppose your graphics card dies and you buy a 285 as a
replacement. So, you can't boot the system with your old card
to install the drivers (it's broken). And, if what has been said is
true, you can't boot it with the new card either.

Assuming you're using OS X that is.

For years on Windows you've been able to bung almost any new
card in a machine and get the OS to boot in VGA mode. Once up
and running you can install drivers to get full functionality. Does
Apple not provide a fallback mechanism similar to VGA?

The UEFI and EFI specifications do not exclude such a possibility.

[1] Please do correct me if I'm wrong about this. And also, I'm
excluding unsupported hacks provided by third parties. It's Apple's
job to make this work.
 
Infrared said:
....

E.g., suppose your graphics card dies and you buy a 285 as a
replacement. So, you can't boot the system with your old card
to install the drivers (it's broken). And, if what has been said is
true, you can't boot it with the new card either.
.....
Click to expand...

My apologies - I did not realize your were talking about this scenario, where it is indeed hard to get going. All my experiments were with Mac Pros where I already had a working 8800GT or ATI card up to do the initial boot, and therefore had a working system in which to then fiddle with the config of a PC 260 or 285.

Without a friendly dealer or another mac to use to talk to a Mac Pro without a card at all I would not have a clue how to solve this one. Maybe we should pose it as a challenge:

You are alone in a room with a Mac Pro with no video card and a PC 285 card. The room has power and internet. You have no friends, no other Macs and no dealer to help you. Get it working.....:confused:
 
you can boot it with mac's gtx285, without installed drivers
boot to single user mode, mount -uw /

copy updated Nvidia kexts for gtx285 to /System/Library/Extensions/

chmod -R 755 , chown -R 0:0 them, reboot and enjoy
 
netkas said:
you can boot it with mac's gtx285, without installed drivers
boot to single user mode, mount -uw /

copy updated Nvidia kexts for gtx285 to /System/Library/Extensions/

chmod -R 755 , chown -R 0:0 them, reboot and enjoy
Click to expand...

OK - point taken. Can we have a more explicit version for mere mortals? I do now understand how to properly set kext permissions but this is only a very recent upgrade in my brain.
 
i'm going to preface this by admitting that I don't know a lot (or anything at all) about the details of how to get a non-apple branded mac version of a video card to work on a Mac.

it seems like the initial install is pretty straightforward, but subsequent changes (such as a new OS) or problems (such as your system crashing and needing re-installation) are a little more complicated with these 3rd party mac version cards.

I'm curious:
1. are the mac versions of the cards simply the same as the PC version except they include the drivers for it to run on the mac or are there also substantial (or subtle) differences in the hardware too?
2. have the people that are running the ATI 3870 run into any problems after doing an OS upgrade/update (ie, from 10.4 to 10.5) or after a clean install (before they are able to install the drivers for the video card)?
 
turtlebud said:
i'm going to preface this by admitting that I don't know a lot (or anything at all) about the details of how to get a non-apple branded mac version of a video card to work on a Mac.

it seems like the initial install is pretty straightforward, but subsequent changes (such as a new OS) or problems (such as your system crashing and needing re-installation) are a little more complicated with these 3rd party mac version cards.

I'm curious:
1. are the mac versions of the cards simply the same as the PC version except they include the drivers for it to run on the mac or are there also substantial (or subtle) differences in the hardware too?
2. have the people that are running the ATI 3870 run into any problems after doing an OS upgrade/update (ie, from 10.4 to 10.5) or after a clean install (before they are able to install the drivers for the video card)?
Click to expand...

1) mac cards simply has two roms - pc vga bios + efi uga/gop module

2) ati users have no problems, if drivers missing in os (they appeared in 10.5.2 first time, for 3870) - they will have no resolution change and no qe/ci, but rest will work fine.
 
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