Getting GeForce GTX 670 to work?

[Clueless Monkey]

Getting GeForce GTX 670 to work? [Solved:Working!]

Upgraded from snow leopard to mountain lion, things worked great.
Switched from GeForce 8800GT to GeForce GTX 670 and I can't get it to boot.

It boots if I remove the card and use the internal graphics solution.

Current setup and gear:

MB: Z68MX-UD2H-B3 with U1d(UEFI BIOS)
CPU: i7-2600K
SSD: Samsung 840 256GB
GPU: GeForce GTX 670 /DVI to 1920x1200 display (adding in another monitor at 2560x1440 later)
USB UniBeast stick w/Mountain Lion

Would really like to get a few suggestions as to where I should begin or what commands I can try at the bootloader and what they do. Would really like to know more so I kinda know where to start looking next time the system starts to act up.

Have been reading and trying different approaches found on the forum:
http://www.tonymacx86.com/mountain-...-i7-2600k-gtx-670-mountain-lion-10-8-2-a.html
http://www.tonymacx86.com/mountain-...de-ga-z68mx-ud2h-b3-i5-2500k-6850-10-8-a.html

But no dice. So, any folks out there with a 670 and wants to share some magic sauce?

If nothing else works I'll just go for a clean install, but would prefer to not wipe the disk.

Any help will be greatly appreciated, think I just have read myself blind to the solution. Frustration Station might be the name for this build soon...

Sparks and curses,
Monkyman

 

[TheTVMan]

I went from a old school nVidia card to a new 6xx series and went from;

PCIRootUID=0
GraphicsEnabler=Yes

to;

PCIRootUID=1
npci=0x3000
GraphicsEnabler=No

Not sure if that really helps but......

Can you boot with -f or -x ?

 

[Clueless Monkey]

Hi!
I'm currently on the mac disk, so I'll give it a go with the different commands, just gotta put in the card(again...)

Back in a couple of minutes...

Cheers,
M

 

[Clueless Monkey]

Aaaand nothing.
With
PCIRootUID=1
npci=0x3000
GraphicsEnabler=No
or with
-v
-f

Makes it do the same: loading in files until the screen loses its signal. Some of the last visible things that go swooshing by is "boot cache control" (caused on purpose by the -f, right?)

Crap, forgot to try safe mode(-x), couple o more minutes, and I'll see.

[Edit]
Nope. Screen signal just drops at some point during boot.

Think I'm gonna try some more tomorrow... If it doesn't work after a while I guess I'll just wipe it and start over and see if that fixes the issues.

Thanks for suggestions though!

Cheers,
Monky

 

[Clueless Monkey]

Progress! (I think...)
Changed system definition to MacPro 5,1 and installed the official nVidia drivers: http://www.nvidia.com/object/macosx-304.00.05f02-driver.html
Now i can boot up in safe mode using the card at least.

Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width:x16
VRAM (Total): 2048 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x1189
Revision ID: 0x00a2
ROM Revision: preset 80.04.5c.00.02

Where do I start looking now?
I'm guessing the plist? At the moment it contains the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>EthernetBuiltIn</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>GenerateCStates</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>GeneratePStates</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>GraphicsEnabler</key>
<string>No</string>
<key>Kernel</key>
<string>mach_kernel</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>darkwake=0</string>
<key>Legacy Logo</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>Timeout</key>
<string>2</string>
<key>UseKernelCache</key>
<string>Yes</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Anything essential missing here?

 

[TheTVMan]

That plist file is where any boot arguments you needed to boot would go once you confirm they work. So for the time being don't put any in there as they may cause more harm than good. I would now go back and use UniBeast USB to boot and try using different flags again;

PCIRootUID=1/0
npci=0x3000
GraphicsEnabler=No
cpus=1
-f

see if any combination works, always use -v as well as debug=0x100 (this should fire up on the screen the crash if any occurs and you can show/tell us) so you can see where the system halts.

Any progress is good progress I think.

 

[Clueless Monkey]

Woooo!
I stumbled across someone mentioning that having the MacPro 5,1 system definition makes a kext check for ECC RAM. Disabled(renamed extention) said kext:
http://www.tonymacx86.com/graphics/...-1-enable-agpm-but-getting-kernal-panics.html

- It booted with NO arguments.
- Both monitors working.

**** yeah! B-)

Now I just need to understand what I've been doing...
Lessons learned are the best ones. Forget it and it is the same uphill every goddamn time.

Lets hope its stable this way.

By the way, I/someone should make a cheat sheet for nice to know commands (kinda like this one, http://files.fosswire.com/2007/08/fwunixrefshot.png), the basics and the most common mistakes? Or a REALLY extensive guide to the options available in Chimera (what they do and why).

I might have missed it even though I've been running around the forum reading a lot of threads. Anyone know?
It would help tremendously when you're sitting and banging your head on the desk...

Thanks a lot for the help TVman ;-)

 

[Clueless Monkey]

After doing some reading and running a few benchmarks, this is what i get:

Geekbench score: 12171 http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/1616628
Processor integer performance 10580
Processor floating point performance 18136
Memory performance 6359
Memory bandwidth performance 8490

Unigine Heaven 3.0
Score: 807
FPS: 32.0
Min FPS: 19.1
Max FPS: 61.1
Render: opengl
Mode: 2560x1440 8xAA fullscreen
Shaders: high
Textures: high
Filter: trilinear
Anisotropy: 16x
Occlusion: enabled
Refraction: enabled
Volumetric: enabled
Tessellation:disabled

Luxmark: 7741 [GPU] 2999 [CPU]
Weird, it says clock is 0 MHz on the GPU, can't read off the value maybe?

BlackMagic:R/W - 480/413

Seems like a healthy Mac to me!

 

[TheTVMan]

woop. good find and glad its finally all working for you. Those seem like some good benches. What test did you run with luxmark? I tried it and I get shocking scores in comparison to yours. I downloaded it, opened it and it just ran automatically?

That pesky AppleTyMCEDriver.kext. That's the kext that I had to delete when I installed my 6xx card. Infact, I don't know how I didn't think to mention that

 

[Clueless Monkey]

woop. good find and glad its finally all working for you. Those seem like some good benches. What test did you run with luxmark? I tried it and I get shocking scores in comparison to yours. I downloaded it, opened it and it just ran automatically?

LuxBall HDR, haven't done the other ones yet.
You have three different scenes available for rendering, the Ball is the simplest of them.
The GPU lies at 9100 rays/s and CPU at 5700 rays/s if that gives you any useful point of reference.
I see you have a 690? Is that to be considered as SLI since its two GPUs, although internal for the card? Does OS X see it as one card or two? Thought OS X didn't support SLI?

That pesky AppleTyMCEDriver.kext. That's the kext that I had to delete when I installed my 6xx card. Infact, I don't know how I didn't think to mention that

The first thing that was missing was the drivers I guess. Don't know why I didn't think of installing those right away, maybe too deep down in the details of everything else. After that I changed the system definition, so the RAM-check would be the next thing to fix...

[Edit]
Went ahead and ran the other scenes:
Room: 589
Sala: 1104

Rays/s varies from 4900 to 9100 depending on the scene.