The (disastrous) state of Nvidia GPUs for CustoMacs

[GideonBlack]

I've been wondering why Nvidia GPUs continue to be the only recommended GPUs on Tonymacx86, despite the fact that the forum is riddled with people having issues since High Sierra and the slew of problems that have arisen since Nvidia's latest wave of web drivers, particularly on Skylake and later platforms. Most of these users (including myself) are having to downgrade to older drivers simply to be able to user their builds, which is clearly not a sustainable solution. It's only a matter of time before these older drivers stop working.

New builders who opt for current-gen hardware have no idea what's waiting for them when they install the latest "official" drivers from Nvidia. Meanwhile, many users who were having issues with the latest drivers have reported flawless performance by switching to midrange AMD cards like the RX 570 and 580. In the least, shouldn't hardware that is natively supported by the OS get priority on the recommendation list?

 

[Stork]

The AMD RX 5xx cards are not yet fully supported, natively, in High Sierra 10.13.3. That will come in 10.13.4/5 according to Mac Pro users at the MacRumors Mac Pro forum section. The only RX 580 supported OOB in 10.13.3 is the Sapphire RX 580 Pulse 8GB graphics card which Apple uses in its eGPU peripheral available only to developers. I have this card, which works OOB in MyHero II build.

The other AMD 4xx/5xx cards have to have FrameBuffer mods, etc., to work in macOS.

So, it's a toss up (Nvidia vs. AMD) right now. BTW, my GTX 750 Ti and 950 work fine with the latest Nvidia drivers. It's the GTX 10x0 cards that are having the problems with SkyLake and newer processor based build. Thus, we're in a "hurry up and wait" state waiting for Nvidia to repair the problem in their drivers. Mac Pro users also have this Nvidia lag and wake-up from sleep problems. (The latter is confined to the GTX 1060s.)

Reference:
https://forums.macrumors.com/forums/mac-pro.1/

 

[GideonBlack]

The AMD RX 5xx cards are not yet fully supported, natively, in High Sierra 10.13.3. That will come in 10.13.4/5 according to Mac Pro users at the MacRumors Mac Pro forum section. The only RX 580 supported OOB in 10.13.3 is the Sapphire RX 580 Pulse 8GB graphics card which Apple uses in its eGPU peripheral available only to developers. I have this card, which works OOB in MyHero II build.

The other AMD 4xx/5xx cards have to have FrameBuffer mods, etc., to work in macOS.

So, it's a toss up (Nvidia vs. AMD) right now. BTW, my GTX 750 Ti and 950 work fine with the latest Nvidia drivers. It's the GTX 10x0 cards that are having the problems with SkyLake and newer processor based build. Thus, we're in a "hurry up and wait" state waiting for Nvidia to repair the problem in their drivers. Mac Pro users also have this Nvidia lag and wake-up from sleep problems. (The latter is confined to the GTX 1060s.)

Reference:
https://forums.macrumors.com/forums/mac-pro.1/

Thanks! That was quite informative.

I was under the impression that Lilu and Whatevergreen kexts are the only requirements for RX 5xx cards to work — at least that's what a good number of posts have reported, though I can't verify their accuracy. At this point, I might bite the bullet and order the Sapphire RX 580 Pulse 8GB. It's a shame that prices on these cards have more than doubled.

 

[Stork]

Thanks! That was quite informative.

I was under the impression that Lilu and Whatevergreen kexts are the only requirements for RX 5xx cards to work — at least that's what a good number of posts have reported, though I can't verify their accuracy. At this point, I might bite the bullet and order the Sapphire RX 580 Pulse 8GB. It's a shame that prices on these cards have more than doubled.

I don't use the above two kexts. I use the config.plist mod from MultiBeast:

Customize > Graphics Configuration > AMD Graphics Fixup​

which uses the Devices/Graphics/RadeonDeInit=Yes flag to /Volumes/EFI/EFI/CLOVER/config.plist. (See Page 7 in the MultiBeast Features document.) This requires a current version of Clover which you can find in the Downloads pull down menu at the top (right) of this web page.

With respect to the cost of the 580 graphics cards...I agree with your assessment of the current prices. The damn crypto miners have driven the price of these cards through the roof. The RX 560 prices are more in line with the MSRP, but you'll have to wait for 10.13.4's release for them to work.

 

[pastrychef]

When it comes to Nvidia and macOS, I hope for the best but expect the worst.

When I read the following article and scrolled to the bottom and didn't see a single Nvidia card, it made me even more pessimistic.
State of External GPU in macOS - High Sierra 10.13.4 Update - eGPU.io

I have been monitoring the availability and prices of some AMD cards a bit. Availability seems to have improved and prices seem to be creeping lower. I am just waiting for the prices to drop a bit more before I make the leap.

 

[GideonBlack]

When it comes to Nvidia and macOS, I hope for the best but expect the worst.

When I read the following article and scrolled to the bottom and didn't see a single Nvidia card, it made me even more pessimistic.
State of External GPU in macOS - High Sierra 10.13.4 Update - eGPU.io

I have been monitoring the availability and prices of some AMD cards a bit. Availability seems to have improved and prices seem to be creeping lower. I am just waiting for the prices to drop a bit more before I make the leap.

I'm at the same place. It's also disheartening that, to my knowledge, Nvidia hasn't really acknowledged the issues with their latest drivers, so it's hard to know if/when these problems will be addressed. As for AMD prices, it's quite ridiculous to have to replace a GTX 1070 with an RX 580 for roughly the same cost. The next best thing would obviously be Vega, but those come with their fair share of problems based on what I've been reading.

There are times when I really envy Windows users.