OSX freeze after installing official nVidia Fermi drivers

[DrJohnnyFever]

Overheating the card shouldn't be an issue, these things are designed to not overheat at full power with full load. If temps get too high, the fan will come up. Even running at my elevated clock speeds the fan just sits at 40% and the temps sit at around 40 - 41c.

If my current mod proves unstable after a few days, my next test is going to be locking the thing at full power.

If I had to guess, there is some sort of issue with Nvidia's driver and when the card is switching between power states or possibly sitting at the lowest power state. Hypothetically graphics performance should not be improved by bumping the cards low level clocks up since it should transition smoothly as needed. The fact that Safari scrolls better etc with the modded BIOS suggests a driver issue there. I'm sure I am not alone with this theory. Does anybody know how the Quadro 4000 cards handle power management? Would be interesting to see if there is a difference.

I have a Geforce 9800 card I can toss in my machine, but since I use Windows a fair bit and paid the money for the GTX 460, I want to use it even if it means screwing around a lot.

 

[jb044]

Don't have windows at hand right now, but perhaps this helps:

quadro4000bios.zip

this is a rom for the Quadro 4000 I got from HP

 

[rtbas]

Overheating the card shouldn't be an issue, these things are designed to not overheat at full power with full load. If temps get too high, the fan will come up. Even running at my elevated clock speeds the fan just sits at 40% and the temps sit at around 40 - 41c.

I definitely agree. I'll sleep soundly at night with this bios mod in place.

Hypothetically graphics performance should not be improved by bumping the cards low level clocks up since it should transition smoothly as needed. The fact that Safari scrolls better etc with the modded BIOS suggests a driver issue there.

I'm not sure that this statement is conclusive. As a guess, the driver probably doesn't bump the power state until it sees a certain amount of load for a certain amount of time; this would keep the device from switching power states with ridiculous frequency. Scrolling in Safari is a sporadic activity which might not be enough to trigger a clock speed bump -- at least with the drivers the way they are now. On the other hand, your point is well taken, since the computer operates on a timescale much faster than any human activity...

At any rate, thanks again DrJohnnyFever; yours is by far the most promising fix

 

[macgaga]

interesting.

So one Question guys. I have two machines which should run Stable. So since there is no Final fix ... which Graphic card you would use instead of Fermi ?

GT240 ? GTS250 ? 9800/8800 ?

or a readeon ?

Radeon has the Problem with every update right ? Or is the 5770 a execption ?


I just would put my GTS450 in the shelve like Tony and use a stable Card... What would you choose ?

 

[karacho]

interesting.

So one Question guys. I have two machines which should run Stable. So since there is no Final fix ... which Graphic card you would use instead of Fermi ?

GT240 ? GTS250 ? 9800/8800 ?

or a readeon ?

Radeon has the Problem with every update right ? Or is the 5770 a execption ?


I just would put my GTS450 in the shelve like Tony and use a stable Card... What would you choose ?

I don't know if an GT430 is an alternative for you...mine works fine without all the issues reported here. But many other users with an GT430 reports this problems also, so i guess it's Vendorspecific because they had EVGA's or other's. Mine is an PNY and as i said it worked fine.

 

[Francis]

So one Question guys. I have two machines which should run Stable. So since there is no Final fix ... which Graphic card you would use instead of Fermi ?

GT240 ? GTS250 ? 9800/8800 ?

I have a GTS250 running at 1920x1200 on a 27", works really fine with nvidia drivers + cuda drivers. I'll change it next week for a GTX275, from a friend who just installed a GTX580 on his windows rig. Should work OOB (famous last words... ).

I use my rig to do DTP and graphic (2D) design, it is stable and fast enough for DTP work.
GTX275 should be faster, hotter and more power hungry. I'm not sure I'll keep it for everyday use as I don't do games. I will post a followup after making the test.

 

[DrJohnnyFever]

I'm not sure that this statement is conclusive. As a guess, the driver probably doesn't bump the power state until it sees a certain amount of load for a certain amount of time; this would keep the device from switching power states with ridiculous frequency. Scrolling in Safari is a sporadic activity which might not be enough to trigger a clock speed bump -- at least with the drivers the way they are now. On the other hand, your point is well taken, since the computer operates on a timescale much faster than any human activity...

At any rate, thanks again DrJohnnyFever; yours is by far the most promising fix

The only reason I say that is from a little bit of testing in Windows following the clock speeds in GPU-Z. If you start doing something more graphically intensive, the clock speeds pump up to a higher power state and sit there for a few seconds after you're done before they come back down. I think Nvidia's goal was to save as much power as possible without being annoying. I just think the mac driver isn't working properly.

Try running the Xbench graphics tests. Before my mod my OpenGL score was 172, after its 220. It shouldn't make that much of a difference if its switching power states properly, at least I would hope so.

 

[macgaga]

I only need the card for Photoshop etc. No gaming. My PC Rig is here on first place

So the mac would be fine with a GT240 or GTS250 as you all say. Still they are faster then the mosts cards apple builts into the imac or macbook right ?

So I go for one of these.

 

[real3x]

Still testing the bios trick, if anyone with the same card want to try, i attached default and modded bios.

Gigabyte GTX460 - GV-N460OC-1GI (rev 1)

Default bios value

Modded bios value

Attachment remove coz KP, still trying with memory always at 1800

 

[Francis]

I only need the card for Photoshop etc. No gaming. My PC Rig is here on first place

So the mac would be fine with a GT240 or GTS250 as you all say. Still they are faster then the mosts cards apple builts into the imac or macbook right ?

So I go for one of these.

GTS250 is fine for AdobeCS. CUDA is really important for AdobeCS5 Photoshop and particularly Premiere using the Mercury rendering engine. If it is your main use, go for a GTX285 or better.