nvidia GTX 285 Drivers work with GTS 250?

Project 2501 · Jul 12, 2010

I was on the nvidia web site downloading the latest Win7 drivers for the GTS 250 when I noticed that they had updated the Mac drivers for the GTX 285.

Would the driver update work with the GTS 250 it is also in the Geforce 200 series, or is this driver only for the Mac edition of the GTX 285?

spalek83 · Jul 13, 2010

the drivers are universal, and I am using them right now with the gts 250. you just need to modify the installer to get it past the specific graphics card check, as they wrote it for it to only allow to be installed on 2 cards.

you can get a modified installer here

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index. ... &p=1500676

and if you update to 10.6.4, you might wanna do graphics via dsdt as apposed to graphics enabler, I had to or else I get shitty tf2(opengl) performace

Project 2501 · Jul 13, 2010

Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately, I'm still not competent enough edit my own DSDT, so I've been relying tonymac86.com's DSDT library of pre-made DSDTs for my motherboard. With luck, I'll find a good primer (so far I haven't found one) out there to get started.

Not really a big issue, because so far I've been using Windows for games and Mac for mostly everything else.

dmhs · Jul 14, 2010

spalek83 said:
the drivers are universal, and I am using them right now with the gts 250. you just need to modify the installer to get it past the specific graphics card check, as they wrote it for it to only allow to be installed on 2 cards.

you can get a modified installer here

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index. ... &p=1500676

and if you update to 10.6.4, you might wanna do graphics via dsdt as apposed to graphics enabler, I had to or else I get shitty tf2(opengl) performace

I'm using a very similar setup - 10.6.4, p55m-ud4, i7 860, gts 250 1gb - and even using these new drivers still get terrible opengl performance in cinebench and games. I've tried with nvenabler.kext, graphicsenabler and EFI injection but not dsdt. Is it really the magic bullet here?

Project 2501 · Jul 14, 2010

Sorry to interrupt this thread with a dumb question... BUT in my research into this I've found several ways to get graphics working (kexts, dsdt, chameleon, and EFI strings), but the one that confuses me is using EFI strings.

I know how to use an EFI string, but every tutorial I've seen always has an EFI string already prepared for download. I rely on others for kexts and graphics enabler, and I would have to do the editing myself with dsdt utilties, but where do I get the EFI strings?

Is there a utility out there that generates them? Is there a repository of EFI strings? Are EFI strings made available to developers from the manufacturers?

Project 2501 · Jul 15, 2010

I'm using a very similar setup - 10.6.4, p55m-ud4, i7 860, gts 250 1gb - and even using these new drivers still get terrible opengl performance in cinebench and games. I've tried with nvenabler.kext, graphicsenabler and EFI injection but not dsdt. Is it really the magic bullet here?

Well, I decided to take the plunge and edited my DSDT (using tonymac86's instructions on the blog) to include the GTS 250. I'm using an ancient copy of xbench 1.3, so I don't know how valid my numbers are:

1. Using the DSDT edit instead of Graphics Enabler gave me +7% fps on the Open GL test.
2. OSX 10.6.3 gave me +50% fps compared with 10.6.4?!

Can this be right? 10.6.3 gives 1.5x better OpenGL performance than 10.6.4?

Maybe Cinebench would be a better test? Never had hardware that was good enough to play recent games, so I never kept up with benchmarking utilities.

EDIT: I just downloaded and ran Cinebench. My results - 8.04 fps using Graphics Enabler and 20.86 fps using DSDT, 2.5x better performance (I haven't downloaded the updated drivers yet). If anybody knows why there's such a big gap, clue me in. *However, Win7 weighs in at 35.15 fps... sigh.

dmhs · Jul 16, 2010

Project 2501 said:
I'm using a very similar setup - 10.6.4, p55m-ud4, i7 860, gts 250 1gb - and even using these new drivers still get terrible opengl performance in cinebench and games. I've tried with nvenabler.kext, graphicsenabler and EFI injection but not dsdt. Is it really the magic bullet here?

Click to expand...

Well, I decided to take the plunge and edited my DSDT (using tonymac86's instructions on the blog) to include the GTS 250. I'm using an ancient copy of xbench 1.3, so I don't know how valid my numbers are:

1. Using the DSDT edit instead of Graphics Enabler gave me +7% fps on the Open GL test.
2. OSX 10.6.3 gave me +50% fps compared with 10.6.4?!

Can this be right? 10.6.3 gives 1.5x better OpenGL performance than 10.6.4?

Maybe Cinebench would be a better test? Never had hardware that was good enough to play recent games, so I never kept up with benchmarking utilities.

EDIT: I just downloaded and ran Cinebench. My results - 8.04 fps using Graphics Enabler and 20.86 fps using DSDT, 2.5x better performance (I haven't downloaded the updated drivers yet). If anybody knows why there's such a big gap, clue me in. *However, Win7 weighs in at 35.15 fps... sigh.

That 10.6.3->10.6.4 difference sounds similar to my setup.

On 10.6.3 with DSDT or EFI strings for graphics I get ~25-27 fps on cinebench
On 10.6.4 with EFI I get ~8 fps
On 10.6.4 with DSDT I get ~21 fps
On Windows 7 x64 I get ~35 fps

The last two are with or without the updated nvidia drivers.

As a followup to my previous post graphics via DSDT vs EFI does seem to significantly improve performance but not up to the level of 10.6.3 and still a far cry from Windows 7 graphics performance.

GA-P55M-UD4 F10 | i7 860 | nVidia GTS 250 1gb | 4gb ddr3 1333

Shiggitay · Jul 17, 2010

I have not been able to get my GTS 250 working fully, at least it's not showing up as it should under SysProfiler. I installed those linked drivers, and it still comes up as:

Chipset Model: Unknown nVidia card
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
Slot: PCI
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 1024 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x0615
Revision ID: 0x00a2
ROM Revision: nVidia GeForce 9400 GT OpenGL Engine

My MoBo is under my nick on the left. Does anyone have a DSDT that'll make this work? I suck at DSDT editing.

Project 2501 · Jul 17, 2010

I have not been able to get my GTS 250 working fully, at least it's not showing up as it should under SysProfiler.

What shows up in my system profiler (for the card) is the same except for the "Unknown nVidia Card" and mine shows that I have a 512mb card. I'm not sure if having it show up as an "unknown chipset model" is important or just cosmetic.

Somebody else might be able to help if you mention what features are not working for you.

Shiggitay · Jul 17, 2010

Project 2501 said:
I have not been able to get my GTS 250 working fully, at least it's not showing up as it should under SysProfiler.

Click to expand...

What shows up in my system profiler (for the card) is the same except for the "Unknown nVidia Card" and mine shows that I have a 512mb card. I'm not sure if having it show up as an "unknown chipset model" is important or just cosmetic.

Somebody else might be able to help if you mention what features are not working for you.

Well, all seems to work, but I want OS X to see it properly. Nitpicky? Yes. But I want OS X to see the hardware as well as possible.

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