GT240 Performance

[Francis]

I am building a new system for a friend and I am disappointed by graphic performance.

Build :
H55M-USB3 (bios F8) + Core i5-760 - 2x4 GB Corsair XMS Ram (1333 MHz)
OCZ 80GB Vertex2 (system) + Samsung 1TB (datas)
Graphic card is a Gainward GT240 - 512 MB GDDR5 ram.

Original retail OSX DVD (10.6.3) install with iboot, combo update to 10.6.6, Tonymac NVIDIA upgrade package, NVidia CUDA package and Multibeast 3.3.0

I tried 2 times to flash F11 (latest) bios but after several boot without problems the mobo crashed and revert to original bios (F8) from second bios. I'll let it at that if it is more stable.

I got cinebench (OpenGL) score between 13,55 and 13,69. Never less or more.

Currently running as Macpro 5,1 with AppleGraphicPowerManagement edited.
I originally tried as MacPro 3,1.
I tried with GraphicsEnabler=Yes in com.apple.Boot.plist, with NVEnabler instead, I also tried without any Enabler but with a custom edited DSDT : same results.

I am currently running with latest bios from a Gigabyte GT240 loaded with UseNvidiaROM=Yes and VBIOS in com.apple.Boot.plist, same results.

I had read from forum messages that with GT240 you could get cinebench scores around 20-22.

Am I dreaming, the 13,5/13,7 score is the maximum I could get with a GT240?

Any idea would be appreciated...

 

[SLml2]

hi!
I have the exact same performance with a Gigabyte Gt 240 512 DDR5. I have tried everything you mentioned in your post. The only difference is that i use a 4.1 mac pro smbios.
From a little research i did, i came to the conclusion that those who get higher scores, as 22 - 25fps are using GT 240 cards with DDR3 ram. I know this sounds weird, but maybe the bottleneck in performance is our DDR5 graphics ram which for some reason doesn't get recognized properly by os x. So to make a long story short, GT 240 DDR3 appear faster than those with DDR5 in snow leopard.
If anyone has better info, please shed some light

 

[Francis]

hi!
I have the exact same performance with a Gigabyte Gt 240 512 DDR5.
...
So to make a long story short, GT 240 DDR3 appear faster than those with DDR5 in snow leopard.
If anyone has better info, please shed some light

Exactly: cards with GDDR5 that should be faster are in fact slower.
It is for that reason that I tried loading different bios from other manufacturers (Gigabyte... ), hoping that their firmware will be better written than the Gainward one, as they published several releases for different memory chips, for instance.
No luck.

Other manufacturers (PNY, EVGA, ASUS, XFX) do not publish bios files in their "support" sites/forums, only drivers.

I have 3 rigs in house, respectively with an Asus DK/GTS250 (DDR3), a Gigabyte GTX275 (DDR3 also) and a web-surf rig with a silent 8500GT.

The 240GT is really crappy, even with DDR5. Any idea to make it run as it should?