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Not getting full acceleration with GTX 660 Ti

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Nov 6, 2013
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CPU
i5 3570K
Graphics
Radeon HD 6850
Mac
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I recently picked up a used EVGA GTX 660 Ti 2 Gb to replace my perfectly functional Radeon. I wanted some CUDA support for adobe editing applications, and was also hoping for a modest gaming upgrade.

The 660 seems like an excellent choice for hackintosh systems due to good native support, but I'm seeing very poor performance in Borderlands: the Pre-Sequel compared to the HD 6850 it's replacing. I have tried the Nvidia web driver with no noticeable improvement.

I'm starting to wonder if there is some kind of compatibility issue with my motherboard. Any advice? The system was pretty dang easy to get setup in the first place with MultiBeast, so I'm pretty green as far as troubleshooting goes... not sure what to look for or try.

EDIT: Sorry, I should mention that I'm running 10.9.5.
 
Last edited:
Bumpity bump.

Here is my org.chameleon.Boot.plist in case that helps at all. I assume most of these were chosen by MultiBeast during the EasyBeast setup. The only two lines I added explicitly to the file myself were the last two for the nVidia web driver... which, now that I'm looking at it, is a duplicate entry. I'll move the nVidia bit up to the earlier Boot Flags section, delete the added lines, and give that a go.

Not sure if I'm providing enough info. Any other piece of info that would be telling? Any tests I can run?

Code:
	<key>EthernetBuiltIn</key>	<string>Yes</string>
	<key>GraphicsEnabler</key>
	<string>No</string>
	<key>IGPEnabler</key>
	<string>Yes</string>
	<key>Kernel</key>
	<string>mach_kernel</string>
	<key>Kernel Flags</key>
	<string></string>
	<key>Legacy Logo</key>
	<string>Yes</string>
	<key>Timeout</key>
	<string>2</string>
        <key>UseKernelCache</key>
        <string>Yes</string>
	<key>Kernel Flags</key>
	<string>nvda_drv=1</string>
 
I corrected the plist file and rebooted, no improvement.

To be a bit more specific about the problem, gameplay is sluggish and definitely lower framerate than before with the HD 6850. The GPU hierarchy chart from Toms Hardware ranks the 660 Ti a few notches above the 6850, which is why a drop in performance seems wrong to me.
 
Righto--last bump to see if anybody has an idea then I'll let the thread die.

Someone mentioned to me elsewhere that perhaps I am getting acceleration and that the 660 Ti just isn't well optimized in OS X compared to the HD6850. That hadn't crossed my mind. Is there anything I can do to check with certainty that I am getting accelerated graphics?

If there's nothing left for me to try or test, I'll throw this card back up for sale.
 
Righto--last bump to see if anybody has an idea then I'll let the thread die.

Someone mentioned to me elsewhere that perhaps I am getting acceleration and that the 660 Ti just isn't well optimized in OS X compared to the HD6850. That hadn't crossed my mind. Is there anything I can do to check with certainty that I am getting accelerated graphics?

If there's nothing left for me to try or test, I'll throw this card back up for sale.

The Radeon 6850 works at PCIE 2.1 spec. The GTX 660Ti needs PCIE 3.0 specification. There are two versions of your motherboard - REV 1 supports PCIE 2.0 & REV 1.3 supports the faster PCIE 3.0 specification.

Would your motherboard be a REV 1.0 version?
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3856#sp
 
The Radeon 6850 works at PCIE 2.1 spec. The GTX 660Ti needs PCIE 3.0 specification. There are two versions of your motherboard - REV 1 supports PCIE 2.0 & REV 1.3 supports the faster PCIE 3.0 specification.

Would your motherboard be a REV 1.0 version?
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3856#sp

My motherboard appears to be REV 1.3. Perhaps there's something in MultiBeast that I should have enabled for PCIE 3.0?
 
My motherboard appears to be REV 1.3. Perhaps there's something in MultiBeast that I should have enabled for PCIE 3.0?

If there are ant settings that would let you change between PCIe 2.0 and PCIe 3.0 then you will find then in the BIOS settings for the bootable graphics options or PCIe slot settings - Auto PCIe 2 or PCIe 3 are often options. Check there first.

You could also change IGPEnabler=Yes to No your Extra/org.chameleon.Boot.Plist
http://www.tonymacx86.com/basics/104463-how-edit-plist.html
 
If there are ant settings that would let you change between PCIe 2.0 and PCIe 3.0 then you will find then in the BIOS settings for the bootable graphics options or PCIe slot settings - Auto PCIe 2 or PCIe 3 are often options. Check there first.

You could also change IGPEnabler=Yes to No your Extra/org.chameleon.Boot.Plist
http://www.tonymacx86.com/basics/104463-how-edit-plist.html

There was a PEG setting in the UEFI menus that let me pick between Auto, Gen 1, Gen 2, and Gen 3. Any idea what those mean? It was set to Auto, so I left it there.

I changed IGPEnabler from Yes to No and rebooted, but I don't see a difference in gameplay. Any way I should go about measuring frame rate (or something else) to get a better comparison? Some kind of benchmark software?

Sorry, kinda new to this. Thanks a bunch for your help!
 
There was a PEG setting in the UEFI menus that let me pick between Auto, Gen 1, Gen 2, and Gen 3. Any idea what those mean? It was set to Auto, so I left it there.

Try manually setting to the Gen 3 option and save as that is the best option for your GPU requirements.

I changed IGPEnabler from Yes to No and rebooted, but I don't see a difference in gameplay. Any way I should go about measuring frame rate (or something else) to get a better comparison? Some kind of benchmark software?

OS X Configuration, Tuning & Utility Tools (second option down):
http://www.tonymacx86.com/basics/
 
I was about to start a similar thread but will jump on this one since it's the same topic.

I've also got a Nvidia 660 TI and am disappointed with the graphics performance in OSX. Using Luxmark in OSX I get around a 580 score. When I boot into windows and run the same luxmark test, I get about 1100. I'm running Yosemite 10.10.1 using the latest nvidia web drivers (343.01.02). OSX performance has actually been around 580 using the native drivers as well as running previous versions (10.9 & 10.8).

I feel that there is something 'missing' that is preventing the graphics card from running at its full potential given that the windows performance is about double.

Here is my setup:
  • Asrock Z77 Pro3 motherboard
  • i5 Inter CPU (Ivy Bridge)
  • EVGA Geforce 660 TI 2048MB graphics card
  • Chameleon bootloader with a Macmin6,1 HW specifier & custom DSDT

From my testing, I see that AGPM is NOT running. However using HWMonitor I see that the graphics card will change voltages, ranging from 324MHz idle to 1.15GHz under load. The motherboard is set to PEG3. Apple reports that the card is running PCI 'lane width' x16. Games run without crashing but I can certainly tell that they aren't running as fast as they do in windows on the same hardware.

I've spent many hours searching this board and others trying to figure out why the 660 TI is running about half as well as it does on Windows and have no answers. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
 
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