Evga GT 240 512mb card running slow?

[Cherry101]

Hey all,

So, got my system up and running well. Well, seems well enough to me. Here are the specs:

i5 - 760
GA-P55A-UD3 rev.2
8gb RAM (G.Skill 12800)
osx 10.6.5
Evga GT 240 512mb card

Anyway, did a Cinebench 11.5 run and only managed 12.91 fps on openGL.... is that right? Thought it seemed slow... I don't do any gaming really, and just some minor FCP and After Effects work, but still kinda makes me wonder if everything's kosher. The card is recognized in "About this Mac" and I've got 2 monitors going at their full 1650x1200 (or whatever) resolution.... just that darn 12.91 fps bugs me.... any thoughts?

I tried removing the apple graphics management kext from the extensions folder as recommended in a previous thread, but no change at all...

ANyway, throwing this one out there.

Thanks

 

[bilby91]

Same card and it runs really slow, the dock makes lag when magnification is on also widgets.

 

[jayco437]

Same issue with a 1GB eVGA card. Compiled nvclock on my system and ran some checks. It appears there are 2 different performance levels built into the card, likely to help with power saving.

Running at MacPro5,1 (in my com.Apple.boot.plist file) my NovaBench graphics score is 47 (no adjustments noted on the score run last month). Switching to MacPro 3,1 bumps my graphics score is 273 (adjusted to Windows--before the automatic NovaBench adjustment it's 545).

Nvclock shows on the 5,1 system that the performance level is locked in at level 0, half clock speed. At 3,1 it appears to run at full clock speed. There are some kexts you can try moving around but I can't recall exactly which files (AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext or something like that), but I do recall editing the files and not being able to get the power management in the GPU working correctly on 5,1--it always worked at level 0.

I haven't tested, but my fps is probably similar on both sets (3,1 and 5,1)--dismal. Short story--get another card if graphics are important--GTS 250 doesn't seem to be well supported if you need high-end performance.

I do recall a thread, possibly on another forum, that suggested using 5,1 but running some type of active desktop screensaver in the background. The screensaver keeps the GPU running at full speed with only a minimal hit to performance (possibly worth the tradeoff depending on how powerful your system is).

My next step is to buy one of the cards listed on the Apple store for the Mac Pro--probably the ATI 5770 or 5870--in hopes the drivers will just work without having to screw with them.

Good luck, let me know if you find anything else out or figure out how to get this thing working.

Note: I do have graphicsenabler set in my plist, but also have an EFI injection string in there too. At one point I also tried to edit the DSDT but didn't have much luck getting the card to work any better. Wish I would have done some more research before I bought it because it's my only regret in my system.