Running out of patience (10.8 + Z68X-UD3H-B3 F10 / i7 2600K).

[LosChristianos]

Hi

My second Hack, nearly three years of daily use as a freelance web and graphic designer, front end dev.

I've a continuing issue with graphics and system lock ups, I've tried three separate 5770 cards and as of yesterday I'm now using an MSI GTX 650.

STILL suffering from:

• Single 1px heigh artifacts
• Chrome failing to render pages followed by artifacts.
• With the the 5770 cards the entire system locking up and displaying GPU errors in Console.
• Random KPs
• When the system would hang completely, maybe 50% of the time a reboot would result in either my SSD boot drive or Time Machine drive being borked with an invalid node structure.

I'm running a DSDT setup at present.

WHEN it all goes wrong again I'm switching to a kext only setup to trouble shoot further.

Is there any benefit in upgrading the BIOS to F12? It's the last resort through fear of bricking the board.

Updating to 10.8.3 had achieved nothing.

Help

 

[ccline]

Hi

My second Hack, nearly three years of daily use as a freelance web and graphic designer, front end dev.

I've a continuing issue with graphics and system lock ups, I've tried three separate 5770 cards and as of yesterday I'm now using an MSI GTX 650.

STILL suffering from:

• Single 1px heigh artifacts
• Chrome failing to render pages followed by artifacts.
• With the the 5770 cards the entire system locking up and displaying GPU errors in Console.
• Random KPs
• When the system would hang completely, maybe 50% of the time a reboot would result in either my SSD boot drive or Time Machine drive being borked with an invalid node structure.

I'm running a DSDT setup at present.

WHEN it all goes wrong again I'm switching to a kext only setup to trouble shoot further.

Is there any benefit in upgrading the BIOS to F12? It's the last resort through fear of bricking the board.

Updating to 10.8.3 had achieved nothing.

Help

I would first start with the Bios and make sure it supports the IvoryBridge i7 you have. You may need to update to F12 and load optimal defaults, disable vd-t, make sure drive type is AHCI, and use GraphicsEnabler=No. You are describing a Video card problem. Have you tried using the drivers from Nividia?

I have a build using the Z68M-ED55 and a 650 as well. I'm replying to you on it.

 

[TheConnactic]

Hi!

"Ivory Bridge"? Wouldn't it be an Ivy Bridge? And the answer would be no: it's a Sandy Bridge CPU running in a z68 motherboard, which usually is a receipt for a successful build. Perhaps Updating the BIOS help, but i wouldn't overlooking the possibility of some wrong BIOS setup. By the way, Have you been suffering this for three long years? Amazing!

Which i would do complies with the steps below:

1) back up your system: preferentially clone it with CCC;
2) Reinstall Mountain Lion from scratch, using any method of your choice (if you have a UEFI board, you could try Clover, but it's easier to use a regular Chameleon flavor bootloader);
3) When everything's up and running like it should, and only then, retrive your data from the previously made backup, using Migration Assistant for it.

Good luck!

 

[TheConnactic]

P.S.: You have lots of cards, that's cool: if you have sufficient PCI-e lanes, you could use two 5770s, each one powering a different monitor (thus giving you the ability of running two GPU renderers at the same time, each one on a different monitor, without performance loss), even using the onboard HD3000 integrated to your CPU for a third monitor (cool, huh?). Conversely, you could use both the Intel HD3000 and the nVidia card (since most proprietary GPU renderers love CUDA).

The above configurations, which you only deal with after getting a smooth one-card setup, requires heavy DSDT edits, and i recommend Insanelymac and the wordpress blog of Rampage for further help with this. But, stress, it's a later step: first get your basic setup running.

All the best!

 

[Kris404]

I would suggest upgrading to UEFI. I pretty much have a flawless setup.

 

[LosChristianos]

Thanks for the replies gents, appreciate it.

Had to chuckle at Ivory bridge myself.

I've not been suffering with this for all that time, bad explanation from me.

First Hack was flawless more or less, started with an E6300 then onto a Q9550.

This setup was built early last year, flawless on 10.7, not so much on 10.8.

Does upgrading to the UEFI bios still create problems with speed stepping?

Thanks again.

 

[ccline]

Hi!

"Ivory Bridge"? Wouldn't it be an Ivy Bridge? And the answer would be no: it's a Sandy Bridge CPU running in a z68 motherboard, which usually is a receipt for a successful build. Perhaps Updating the BIOS help, but i wouldn't overlooking the possibility of some wrong BIOS setup. By the way, Have you been suffering this for three long years? Amazing!

Which i would do complies with the steps below:

1) back up your system: preferentially clone it with CCC;
2) Reinstall Mountain Lion from scratch, using any method of your choice (if you have a UEFI board, you could try Clover, but it's easier to use a regular Chameleon flavor bootloader);
3) When everything's up and running like it should, and only then, retrive your data from the previously made backup, using Migration Assistant for it.

Good luck!

It is called autocorrect that I simply over-looked but I'm glad you found it amusing.

 

[LosChristianos]

After some messing around getting a drive to be recognised in Q Flash (ended up partitioning an external USB drive with a 1GB partition, FAT32), I'm now running the F12 release of the BIOS.

Updating to UEFI looks terrifying, but, I've found a guide on here with the exact same M/Board and CPU so if all else fails I'll give that a whirl.

Thanks again.

 

[Kris404]

Thanks for the replies gents, appreciate it.

Does upgrading to the UEFI bios still create problems with speed stepping?

No, it doesn't, as long as you have an SSDT (from MultiBeast).

Using UEFI, you will not need a DSDT (unless you need HDMI-Audio of course) and will be the most 'vanilla' you can get.

 

[LosChristianos]

Awesome, thanks for clarifying that.

Did you use this guide or this approach by any chance?

http://www.tonymacx86.com/mountain-...success-guide-gigabyte-z68x-ud3h-b3-eufi.html