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NVIDIA Releases Alternate Graphics Drivers for macOS Sierra 10.12.6 (378.05.05.25)

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What would you describe as "much better"? Asking because I think the Nvidia drivers seem to be pretty bad, so a switch to AMD could be interesting for the future. In terms of RAM I'm okay with 6GB or even 4Gb since I don't plan on going above 1080p so that's fine, but the poor performance of my current GTX 960 makes me think that the drivers are pretty bad. It's okay for office work and audio editing (my main thing) but sometimes I edit video and the 960 performs poorly, way worse than my 2015 Macbook Pro with the Intel onboard.

@diogocme,

The Nvidia WebDrivers have a poor implementation of Open GL/CL, resulting in sub par performance with apps that use Open CL/GL such as Final Cut Pro. Also all versions of MacOS below 10.14.X use Open CL/GL for the MacOS User Interface (UI). When using Nvidia drivers the MacOS UI can sometimes stutter when scrolling and moving icons, windows .. etc .. its sometimes not so obvious but it results in the UI just not being as fluid as i can be.

Since Apple has always favoured AMD GPU's for it's pro apps, the AMD Open CL/GL drivers are highly optimised to get the best out of the AMD GPU architecture, so while on paper a Nvidia card may look powerful, in reality due to the poorly optimised Nvidia Open CL/GL drivers they result in far worse performance than AMD GPU's.

Note: I'm not talking about CUDA which is Nvidia's propriety compute API ... Some Mac Apps can Use CUDA in place of Open CL/GL such as Adobe's CC suite and a few rendering engines. Generally CUDA will perform better than Open CL/GL as it is optimised purely for the Nvidia Architecture.

The bottom line is this, if your a Windows user that runs a lot of games and occasionally want to use MacOS High Sierra (or below) then Nvidia is probably a better choice. If you use MacOS most of the time and just dip into Windows occasionally then you will get far better performance and compatibility with a AMD GPU (RX 580 or Vega 56/64).

Unfortunately the picture is now a bit muddled as MacOS Mojave and beyond now use Apples new propriety Metal 2 GPU API for rendering and compute functions, other than a few under performing Femi and Kepler Nvidia GPU's that where shipped in some Apple Mac's there are currently no Nvidia drivers that support Metal 2 on Maxwell, Pascal and Tesla architecture.

Nobody knows if or when Nvidia will release updated Mojave drivers, some say that Appel is holding Nvidia back from releasing drivers, others say that Nvidia has not even started writing drivers .. the truth is nobody knows what is going on. The one thing that we know for sure is that if Nvidia are going to release Mojave drivers its going to take a lot of work, they can't simply update the existing drivers ... since MacOS accounts for a very small percentage of Nvidia's overall sales there is speculation that writing and releasing Metal 2 capable drivers is not on Nvidia's priority list.

So if you want OOB DGPU compatibility with Mojave and beyond (with a hackingtosh) AMD is a far better and future proof option.

Or you can choose to wait and see what Nvidia does ... but be prepared for a long wait.

Hope this helps you make a decision on wether to stick with team green (Nvidia) or switch to team red (AMD), for me if I had the money I would ditch my GTX 980 Ti and replace it with a AMD Vega 56 or 64 if you don't need a DGPU that powerful then the RX 580 is a very good option and will perform far better than a GTX 1060 on MacOS.

Cheers
Jay
 
@diogocme
Or you can choose to wait and see what Nvidia does ... but be prepared for a long wait.

Very informative post and pretty well echoes my own thoughts.

It took NVIDIA 7–8 months to release Pascal drivers and that didn't involve as much work as it would for Mojave support. I wouldn't be surprised if they take more than a year this time.
 
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Hi guys, I'm trying to install macos on my notebook (Lenovo Y500), and I have no luck with the video driver. I tried mojave, high sierra, and now I'm on sierra 16g29. My CPU is i5-3230m and nvidia gt 750m in SLI, but I removed the second card. Also there is no intel video. I tried every tutorial, drivers, lilu and whatevergreen kexts, and the loading always stuck on "IOConsoleUsers: gIOScreenLockState 3, ..." thing. As i know Kepler cards should load natively without even driver installation. Can't find any info about this card with Hackintosh, so maybe somebody know some workaround for this
 
Hi guys, I'm trying to install macos on my notebook (Lenovo Y500), and I have no luck with the video driver. I tried mojave, high sierra, and now I'm on sierra 16g29. My CPU is i5-3230m and nvidia gt 750m in SLI, but I removed the second card. Also there is no intel video. I tried every tutorial, drivers, lilu and whatevergreen kexts, and the loading always stuck on "IOConsoleUsers: gIOScreenLockState 3, ..." thing. As i know Kepler cards should load natively without even driver installation. Can't find any info about this card with Hackintosh, so maybe somebody know some workaround for this
The desktop and laptop forums are separate. You need to read the Laptop FAQ and then post in the laptop support forums.
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/laptop-compatibility.106791/
 
Hey,

After many, MANY, tests, I can't get my GTX 1060 to work on Sierra (16G1815) with this last Web Driver update (25f13). (I have two of these 1060s on my disposal)
When booting with nv-disable=0, the system will not "finish" to boot. In verbose mode, I'm having all the usual lines 'till the last, and nothing happening next.

The frustrating part is, my GTX 970 work perfectly fine !
With absolutely the same settings (just have to unplug the 1060, plug the 970, and go)
Even with two GTX 970, I can have 6 independent displays working (professional needs of that many screens...)

Everyone of these 4 GPUs (1060s and 970s) are from MSI, Gaming X version.
I can not manage to install HighSierra either on this config, which is another problem I need to deal with, but can be the solution...

If someone has any idea of a little tip, something I could have missed, or good topic to post on...

Thanks

System : (this is my first hackintosh)
MB : MSI Z97 Gaming 5
CPU : i7 4790k
Webdriver : f13, installed/re-installed many times, with or without the GPU plugged in, with or without the driver "EmuVariableUefi-64"

BIOS setting : PEG as primary
Video connection : HDMI on the 1060
Boot flag : the system can boot with nv_disable=1 ("about this mac" saying : "Nvidia chip 5mb"), but can't boot with nv_disable=0
I do not inject anything Intel / Nvidia or ig-platform-id
Drivers : OsxAptioFix2 + EmuVariable
Kexts : Lilu + Whatevergreen , both up to date
SIP off (0x67)
"NvidiaWeb" activated in CloverConfigurator
Clover up to date
SMBIOS : iMac 14,2
 
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