NVIDIA Releases Alternate Graphics Drivers for macOS High Sierra 10.13.0 (378.10.10.10.15)

[pastrychef]

Confirming that Hacks do stress parts more than they are usually, and it's pretty across the board. HFS results in more data wear than NTFS. I have RMA'd a 3930k due to TSC errrors after running without PM for a year or so. That's the part of the CPU VoodooTSCSync (which hasn't been updated since Snow Leopard) takes care of and it was refusing to boot anything.

I have also RMA'd boards that I tested DSDTs on. There is a very real, but very slim possibility that a misconfigured DSDT can damage a motherboard. You are of course feeding very basic instructions to electrical circuits and there will be a few in a billion that can create harmful power states if not set up properly.

It's mostly safe because all the dangerous stuff is relegated to kexts and the like. Devs will make sure the dangerous combination of boxes cant be ticked etc etc.

That makes sense. It's just more reason to get power management working right and to stick with hardware that's as close to real Macs as possible to avoid having to make such low level mods.

 

[jspalding]

Some help for anyone having issues with the new Nvidia Web Drivers in High Sierra.

1. Make sure you have some sort of backup.
2. Ensure you have the latest version of Clover installed (you should have done this before installing High Sierra)
3. If you have a separate machine - enable screen sharing/remote login in case High Sierra does boot up but with a display problem (e.g. black screen).
4. Ensure you have either a bootable USB with the High Sierra installer available or a working recover partition selectable in the Clover boot menu. This will aid in troubleshooting.
5. Check your EFI partition (subdirectories in "/EFI/CLOVER/kexts/") as well as "/Library/Extensions" and "/System/Library/Extensions" for any kext files that need updating. Ideally you should be doing this before you upgrade to High Sierra
   1. At the very least ensure you have the latest FakeSMC.kext available. Remove any duplicates/copies in the locations above and install the latest version (using KextWizard or similar) in "/System/Library/Extensions" as well copying it to "/EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other"
   2. Temporarily remove any other kext files you rely on (e.g. Lilu.kext, Shiki.kext, NVWebDriverLibValFix.kext, FakeSMC_CPUSensors.kext, FakeSMC_GPUSensors.kext, FakeSMC_LPCSensors.kext, etc, etc). This will make troubleshooting and isolating any issues easier.
6. Reboot your system (still without the Nvidia Web Drivers installed) and check that you can successfully start High Sierra. You should expect to have no graphics acceleration at this point and a reduced resolution.
7. Reboot again - however this time select "Options" in the Clover Boot Menu and enable SIP by deselecting the "Allow unsigned kext" option. Note that the "NVRAM access" and other options should remain checked to allow a successful boot (this assumes you started off with a "CsrActiveConfig" value of "0x67" in your clover config.plist). As pointed out in other posts enabling SIP is a new requirement in High Sierra to install the Nvidia Web Drivers without errors.
8. Once High Sierra has successfully rebooted - install the Nvidia Web Drivers - either using the Nvidia Driver Manager or alternatively by directly downloading the package from the link provided in the first post of this forum.
9. The installation should proceed successfully without any error messages being shown. Don't reboot when prompted.
10. If you are using a iMac 14,2 SMBios definition you need not do anything else. If you are using a iMac 15 or iMac 17 SMBios definition - you will need the latest Lilu.kext, and NVWebDriverLibValFix installed in "/EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other".
11. Reboot. If all goes well High Sierra should now work with full graphics acceleration as well as high resolutions.
12. Add your old kext files back to the EFI partition and "/System/Library/Extensions" one at a time - and reboot each time. It is rather laborious but it will help identifying any specific kext causing issues.
13. Disable screen sharing/remote login if you had it enabled above.

If things go wrong:

1. Check the boot and preboot logs available in "/EFI/CLOVER/misc" on the EFI partition.
2. If you cannot access the EFI partition or file system mount your EFI/file system partition after booting either the USB or recovery partition and using Terminal and diskutil to mount the partition as required.
3. If you get a "black screen", first check if you can connect via screen sharing (if you have a separate computer and assuming you have it disabled) before doing a hardware reset.
4. If all else fails remove all non-essential 3rd party kext files from "/EFI/CLOVER/kexts/" - at a minimum only FakeSMC.kext is required.
5. If you did install the Nvidia web drives and you ignored any errors - you can delete and revert to the "standard" graphics drivers by:
   1. Deleting all "NVDA*Web*.kext" and "GeForce*Web*.kext" files in "/System/Library/Extensions"
   2. Deleting all "GeForce*Web*.kext" files in /Library/Extensions

Thanks. These files are extremely useful, and here are the actual fixes for me:

1. The ignored "nvda_drv=1" boot flag. (SURPRISE!) Without it there will be "NVDAStartupWeb: Official" in verbose logs and graphics is doomed. Just setting NvidiaWeb=true in config.plist IS NOT enough to get it loading ("NVDAStartupWeb: Web"). I don't know why but it just works for me. and I've tested with this single difference to confirm this conclusion.
2. Proper EmuVariableUefi-64.efi. Maybe I have a broken EFI folder before...

And the OsxAptioFix2Drv-free2000.efi is indeed useful on my MSI B250M Mortar mobo. All other 3 equivalent EFI drivers refuse to boot with SIP enabled (though no need to enable it here).

And for those who still can not get their cards to work, pay attention to the "NVDAStartupWeb: xxxx" line in verbose boot log. If it's "Official", the web driver is not loading at all, and action is required to load the driver so it becomes "Web".

I just wanted to add physically, in the hardware, make sure your first GPU (atleast one of them) is plugged into the PCIEX16 because if it's plugged into an x8 or an x4 then it will not run correctly and you'll get the black screen! X16 is generally the one closest to the CPU! You may need an extender depending on how bulky your GPU/CPU Cooler is/are. That's what I ended up doing. Just sharing some knowledge that took me weeks to find to help out the next guy or gal.

 

[Buster69man]

@tonymacx86
Hi Tony, when i am using the generic Nvidia driver (from the clover boot menu) my system see my GTX950(check image)
but as soon i install the web driver, my screen gose black 1/2 way into loading
any idea how to fix that, i tried so many that did not work, i installed the NvidiaGraphicsFixup.kext...that got my system to stop 1/2 way (as now) but i was not able to boot up until i disable it with -wegoff
loged in remove the NvidiaGraphicsFixup.kext and now i can boot up again with the genaric nvidia driver

any idea?
thanks in a
advance

 

[BreBo]

i installed the NvidiaGraphicsFixup.kext...that got my system to stop 1/2 way (as now) but i was not able to boot up until i disable it with -wegoff
loged in remove the NvidiaGraphicsFixup.kext and now i can boot up again with the genaric nvidia driver

NvidiaGraphicsFixup is superseded by WhateverGreen.
Using them together is not supported and will lead to undefined behaviour.
Make sure you use the latest versions of Lilu and WhateverGreen.

 

[adamdargan]

Note: If you have the black screen and can't get into your HS system, then boot into the Recovery system. Then, from the top menu: Utility > Terminal. In the Terminal, remove the Nvidia drivers with the following Terminal commands:

cd /Volumes/yourHSdiskname/System/Library/Extensions/
rm -R GeF*.*
cd /Volumes/yourHSdiskname/Library/Extensions/
rm -R GeF*.* NVDA*.*
cd /Volumes/yourHSdiskname/
sudo touch ./Library/Extensions/ ./System/Library/Extensions/

Reboot. For some reason, the above breaks audio. So, if you can get along without it while trying the below procedure, I'll tell you how to regain audio below.

Hi I am having some issues with this part. I think I may have screwed something up because, after I rebooted I can't see my macOS boot drive in Clover. I can only see "boot fileVault" (does nothing), "boot macOS install Prebooter from preboot" (also does nothing), and "boot recovery from recovery".

So I totally mess something up?

 

[sebtech]

Hi,

I've just successfully made a fresh install of macOS High Sierra but I got some troubles to get my GPU work correctly.
As long as I've not installed web drivers, everything seems to be fine. But After installing Nvidia web drivers and enable it into clover, my system start to act strangly.

The problem is on startup, when web drivers are enable (I can see NVDAStartupWeb : Web on logs) macOS take 10 min to start and when I finally see the desktop, it seems to be unstable. The strangest things is I can't see the GPU's anymore into the "about this mac" pop up or into the system report, in the PCI list. Looks like when I enable web drivers the system is so slow and can't see my graphics cards.

Anyone got an idea ? I already tried different tricks with clover but without success.

Configuration :

- Asus Sabertooth X99 (up to date and patched)
- i7 6950X
- 2x GTX 1080
- 64 GB RAM
- NVMe 970 (APFS)

Thanks.