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Various Problems with Nvidia Titan (Maxwell) or 780.

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Jul 2, 2011
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Gigabyte Designare EXII
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9900 XE
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Vega 64
Mac
  1. MacBook Pro
  2. Mac mini
  3. Mac Pro
Mobile Phone
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Dear all, I've been fighting two issues under Sierra for a couple of weeks and I can't seem to find a proper solution, maybe some enlightened mind here might help me.

First of all here are my specs:

Mobo: Supermicro X9DAi
CPUs: 2 x Xeon 2650 (Sandy)
RAM: 32Gb
GPU: Titan or 780 on slot 1
Sierra: 10.12.3
SMBIOS: MacPro 6,1
Monitors: dual monitors (Display Port + DVI)

Problem 1: The GPU is recognised by the native driver, using the SSDT fix I can boot and get acceleration without having to touch the AppleGraphicsDevicePolicy.kext. Performance still is pretty bad, running Cinebench gives me a poor 47.10 fps... Same behaviour with both cards.

Problem 2: I installed the web drivers hoping those could help me, after installing them, activating them under clover with the new method I boot into a black screen. I though that maybe AppleGraphicsDevicePolicy.kext was playing tricks somehow so I edited that file like I used to do before the SSDT trick. Still when I reboot I keep getting a black screen...

For info, I have another partition running El Capitan and there web drivers seem to be working, but I'm getting same poor fps as if I where using native drivers.

Anyone has a clue of why I'm getting these low results and why web drivers are giving me black screens ?

Thank you!
 
Problem 1: The GPU is recognised by the native driver, using the SSDT fix I can boot and get acceleration without having to touch the AppleGraphicsDevicePolicy.kext. Performance still is pretty bad, running Cinebench gives me a poor 47.10 fps... Same behaviour with both cards.
Perfectly normal, as Cinebench is heavily CPU bound. Your CPU's have a very low single thread performance, so this is bottlenecking your GPU's here. Not relevant in "real" GPU benchmarks though.

Problem 2: I installed the web drivers hoping those could help me, after installing them, activating them under clover with the new method I boot into a black screen. I though that maybe AppleGraphicsDevicePolicy.kext was playing tricks somehow so I edited that file like I used to do before the SSDT trick. Still when I reboot I keep getting a black screen...
Maxwell doesn't run on Apple's drivers, so I guess you're talking about a Kepler Titan, not a Maxwell TitanX...?

I'd suggest to try using a different SMBIOS, iMac14,2 is usually the most robust one.
 
You are right, Kepler... I misstyped there.

When you say that SMBIOS iMac14,2 is more robust... could you please elaborate ? Since using it would mean I need to fiddle with the x79platform.kext to get the PM profile added to the right kext, etc... it's a lot of hurdle, just to be sure if it is worth the trouble ;)

So the black screen could be cause by this SMBIOS thing you think ?

Regarding single threaded performance I didn't knew this could affect the scores that much... I runned Cinebench on Windows 10 and I get 60fps. Is there any other test out there for mac to check if GPU is running properly ?

Thank you.
 
Most recent SMBIOS profiles (including MP6,1) are made with AMD GPUs in mind, so the Nvidia WebDrivers are forced to unload at boot time. Patching AGDP should usually fix this, but for most systems it's easier to just use iMac14,2, as it provides native PM on all recent consumer platforms and supports all GPUs.

In your case I'd suggest to make a 2nd Clover install onto an USB drive to verify that changing the SMBIOS actually helps. This way you won't mess up your current Clover setup. That said, the WebDrivers aren't necessary for your GPUs anyway, so you could also keep using your previous solution.

As GPU benchmark I'd recommend to use Unigine Heaven or Valley. Cranking the settings up (e.g. Extreme HD preset) will put most load on the GPU, minimizing CPU bottlenecks.
In case you're interested in GPGPU applications, you could also use LuxMark (OpenCL) or OctaneBench (CUDA) for measuring your GPU performance.
 
I see... will make some tests tomorrow if I have time on this rig.

I tested Otoy bench and with the Titan it yelded a 90+ score, and Uniengine Heaven gave me in ultra settings between 48-70 fps. which I suppose correspond to this card, so everything seems to be running ok.

In the past AGPM had to be tweaked, is this still the case ?

Thank you for all this information ;)
 
I see... will make some tests tomorrow if I have time on this rig.

I tested Otoy bench and with the Titan it yelded a 90+ score, and Uniengine Heaven gave me in ultra settings between 48-70 fps. which I suppose correspond to this card, so everything seems to be running ok.

In the past AGPM had to be tweaked, is this still the case ?

Thank you for all this information ;)
Do you use iMac 17,2? I've heard of black screen issues and I'm pretty sure it has to with the fact that that REAL mac has to do some specific things with the graphics card for the 5k display that normal graphics cards don't do, so you usually have to edit the AppleGraphicsDevicePolicy.kext... but iMac 14,2 works best.
 
Nah, not using iMac profile yet... just using MacPro 6,1. But if drivers are useless then I will stick for the time being with the current config, it's running smoothly at the moment.

If new drivers get published supporting the new Pascal cards then I could consider it, otherwise next workstation will be Linux/Windows... too much hassle on the GPUs at the moment on the Hackintosh scene and our work depends too much on good GPU performance.
 
Nah, not using iMac profile yet... just using MacPro 6,1. But if drivers are useless then I will stick for the time being with the current config, it's running smoothly at the moment.

If new drivers get published supporting the new Pascal cards then I could consider it, otherwise next workstation will be Linux/Windows... too much hassle on the GPUs at the moment on the Hackintosh scene and our work depends too much on good GPU performance.
I heard that that profile has problems.
 
Nah, not using iMac profile yet... just using MacPro 6,1. But if drivers are useless then I will stick for the time being with the current config, it's running smoothly at the moment.

If new drivers get published supporting the new Pascal cards then I could consider it, otherwise next workstation will be Linux/Windows... too much hassle on the GPUs at the moment on the Hackintosh scene and our work depends too much on good GPU performance.

I'm running a titan x on Sierra, and while it didn't take much for the drivers to work, system report is still saying 0 GB Vram. Could you post your configlist, so I can cross reference your setup with mine?
 
I'm running a titan x on Sierra, and while it didn't take much for the drivers to work, system report is still saying 0 GB Vram. Could you post your configlist, so I can cross reference your setup with mine?
You have inject/Nvidia/true. It should be false.
 
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