nVidia GT 710 in Skylake System no QE/CI

[kiu77]

I built a new little system containing:
Mainboard: Gigabyte H110M-S2H
CPU: i3 6100 (3.7 GHz)
GPU: MSI nVidia GT 710 (1 GB VRAM, Kepler chip)
RAM: 8 GB DDR4
SSD: Crucial M4 256 GB

under El Capitain 10.11.3 and Clover 3346 (UEFI.

All but graphics is working perfectly.
Because integrated graphics Intel HD 530 is not supported by Apple (nor acceleration, only CESA driver) I bought this cheap nVidia card. First it crashed during booting, but after setting nv_disable=1 and no "inject NVidia" in config.plst I could boot with the HD resolution of 1920x1080 as I intended to do.
Problem now: No acceleration and use of VESA driver as with integrated graphics.
Then installed newest nVidia webdriver and set nvda_drv=1 and restart nothing changed. The nVidia web driver refused to be switched on (after every reboot is set back to OS X drivers) and it could not detect a graphics card in no slot. Still no acceleration. In "About this Mac" I got the graphics string. NVIDIA Chip Model 7MB.
Tried to change SMBIOS to Powermac 3.1 / 6.1 and iMac 13.2 /14.2 / 15.1 which made no difference.

Video is sluggish and partly distorted with Safari. Redraw in Dashboard after click on "+" takes more than 10 s. So I'm sure that the web driver is not active (my main system behaves different) but don't know a solution.

 

[slim.jim]

Are you always booting with nv_disable=1?

 

[kiu77]

Are you always booting with nv_disable=1?

Yes.
I just tried it without but then it crashes (hangs) during boot.

 

[slim.jim]

Yes.
I just tried it without but then it crashes (hangs) during boot.

In order to have QE/CI you will have to boot without it. That flag puts the card into VESA mode which disables all graphics acceleration. That explains why the terminal output showed the web drivers as active but you didn't have acceleration.

 

[kiu77]

In order to have QE/CI you will have to boot without it. That flag puts the card into VESA mode which disables all graphics acceleration.

Okay I understand (and thank you for explaning the meaning of the flag).
But then I'm stuck
Booting without nv_disable=1 results in crashing when OS X drivers are loaded. And I need to boot for beeing able to switch the nVidia webdriver active.

 

[slim.jim]

Okay I understand (and thank you for explaning the meaning of the flag).
But then I'm stuck
Booting without nv_disable=1 results in crashing when OS X drivers are loaded. And I need to boot for beeing able to switch the nVidia webdriver active.

If you have the flag nvda_drv=1 then you can be sure the web drivers are active but we need to figure out the kernel panic you are getting. Boot with the flag -v and see if you can find the culprit of the kernel panic.

 

[kiu77]

If you have the flag nvda_drv=1 then you can be sure the web drivers are active but we need to figure out the kernel panic you are getting. Boot with the flag -v and see if you can find the culprit of the kernel panic.

Did it.
There is nothing to see but the typical pseudo error message with bluetooth before the system hangs.

 

[slim.jim]

Did it.
There is nothing to see but the typical pseudo error message with bluetooth before the system hangs.

I would try some additional boot flags like npci=0x3000 and/or PCIRootUID=1. Also try disabling the IGP in your bios if you haven't already. I would also stick with iMac14,2 instead of MacPro6,1.

 

[kiu77]

I would try some additional boot flags like npci=0x3000 and/or PCIRootUID=1. Also try disabling the IGP in your bios if you haven't already. I would also stick with iMac14,2 instead of MacPro6,1.

Success with npci=0x3000. Thank you slim.jim.
During boot process for the last 40% of the progress bar the screen gets black (mouse is still visible) and then all is okay. Acceleration QE/CI is working but funny: the nVidia web driver control panel shows "OS X Default Graphics Driver" ;-)
About this Mac shows: "NVIDIA Graphic Device 1023 MB"

PS: Integrated graphics is sure switched of in BIOS.

 

[slim.jim]

Acceleration QE/CI is working but funny: the nVidia web driver control panel shows "OS X Default Graphics Driver" ;-)

That is because the boot arg nvda_drv=1 isn't saved in your NVRAM. It is purely cosmetic.