9 ms·

Any idea why this is limited to AMD GPUs?

striking 9y ago
macOS doesn't currently have Nvidia drivers from this generation (from what I remember). It supports a handful of mobile cards and no more, which is the extent to which Nvidia has been implemented in Apple computers as of late. Meanwhile, the past few generations of graphics gear in Apple computers has been a pretty wide range of AMD stuff. Vega, Polaris, FirePro have all been represented in the last 5 or so years. All they had to do was modify the driver to be able to read from the TB3 PCIe device rather than just an internal one.
- pzduniak 9y ago
  ... but Nvidia has their own drivers for even the most recent graphics cards that work perfectly fine. Writing this from a OSX setup with a GTX1080.
  - lostlogin 9y ago
    I take it this is a hackintosh? Are you able to use it ok without signing into any iCloud services, or have you found a way around that?
    - rhinoceraptor 9y ago
      AFAIK you were already able to use external GPUs via 3rd party thunderbolt enclosures, it just wasn't officially supported.
    - kristofferR 9y ago
      iCloud works perfectly fine on Hackintoshes.
      - lostlogin 9y ago
        I logged into one on Sierra. Every iCloud service I use got locked down over the next 20 minutes and it wasn’t fun getting them back. Turns out I’m rather locked into the Apple ecosystem. Somehow Apple detect hardware configuration and check it on login. The mess it left wasn’t pretty.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - mirthflat83 9y ago
    Perfectly? The latest drivers lag like crazy
    - jakemauer 9y ago
      This is unfortunately a known issue, at least in the community if not by nVidia. The current workaround is to patch an earlier known-good driver version to work on whatever release of High Sierra you're on. I'm currently running 387.10.10.10.25.106 on 10.13.3 without lag. https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/nvidia-update https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/nvidia-update
      - mirthflat83 9y ago
        Interesting that some people have no lags. I have also used that script, but stutters are still present.
    - SloopJon 9y ago
      The drivers were great for a GTX 650Ti in 10.8 and 10.9. They worked fine for games like Borderlands 2 and Arkham Asylum. The drivers are terrible for a GTX 1060 in 10.12. After running for a while, even basic desktop operations bog down to the point of being unusable. I haven't tried 10.13 yet.
    - pzduniak 9y ago
      I might be still using Sierra after hearing about all the issues with High Sierra. I don't want to spend a few days configuring my Hackintosh again!
- joshmn 9y ago
  I can confirm that Sierra and Capitan do have Nvidia drivers for Pascal series.
  - watmough 9y ago
    Are you sure? I have a gtx 970 working on the maxwell drivers on el cap but no luck on pascal.
navidfarhadi 9y ago
Apple hasn't released a product with an NVIDIA GPU for years. Also, driver support for NVIDIA GPUs on MacOS is not very good compared to AMD GPU driver support on MacOS.
- giobox 9y ago
  Nvidia driver support is fine, generally speaking. It's just Apple choose not to bundle drivers OOTB in the OS, but it's a trivial install from Nvidia's website. You can drop a brand new 1080ti into an old Mac Pro today and it will work great. Hackintosh users have also taken advantage of this for ages.
  - maksimum 9y ago
    In fact Nvidia cards are the only ones that are recommended for hackintoshes for OOB compatibility [1]. IME on Mac OS 10.12 getting a Nvidia GTX 1060 to behave properly has been much easier than a AMD RX 480. [1] https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/march/2018/#Graphics_Cards https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/march/2018/#Graphics_....
    - lewapkon 9y ago
      That's definitely not true since at least summer last year (release date of WhateverGreen [1]). The drivers for Nvidia cards are currently pretty bad and are only getting worse (they used to work acceptably ok on Sierra). For example, Pascal based Nvidia GPUs on High Sierra often get something like 50% performance compared to Windows and they also cause the system to stutter. There are also many other problems with using them. For instance, you cannot update the system (even small updates) until Nvidia releases new drivers which sometimes takes few days. While with AMD, the drivers for RX460/470/480/560/570/580/Vega are already built-in and you only need to correctly inject them. You just need to use one kext (kind of a driver in Mac) called WhateverGreen (to be fully correct you also need Lilu, but you almost always have it anyway on your Hackintosh). It works without issues and is generally preferred among Hackintosh community. Another thing is that tonymacx builds are generally bad if you want a stable and easy to build Hackintosh (at least as easy as it can get). They are being sponsored and their choice of hardware is strongly biased. [1] https://github.com/vit9696/WhateverGreen https://github.com/vit9696/WhateverGreen
pjmlp 9y ago
Because AMD GPUs are the only discrete GPUs Apple supports on current models?
throwaway84742 9y ago
Because years ago NVIDIA screwed up the thermal solution in their laptop chips so they’d get so hot they’d unsolder themselves inside MacBook Pros, and then gave someone important at Apple the middle finger instead of helping to deal with the issue. Ever since then Apple does not use NVIDIA GPUs.
- mapmap 9y ago
  I would love to hear more details about this.
  - throwaway84742 9y ago
    This was pretty well publicized circa 2008 when the events took place.
    - bhj 9y ago
      2012 and 2013 15" Macbook Pros used NVidia. I think Apple likes to alternate every generation or two, if only to keep their options open.
      - throwaway84742 9y ago
        Or maybe 2012. It’s been a while.
      - Fnoord 9y ago
        2010 MBP does, for sure. I need to disable that one, and use the Intel GPU instead. Using the Nvidia GPU causes random reboots.
  - giobox 9y ago
    The fiasco was widely called "Bad Bumps" due to the issue being related to the solder used for the bumps on the underside of their chips. It was a huge deal affecting major computer vendors like Apple, Dell, HP etc at the time, with failure rates on laptops with these chips being ridiculously high. I've also long wondered if this played a part in whatever reason Apple have for avoiding Nvidia GPUs for so long. > https://semiaccurate.com/2010/07/11/why-nvidias-chips-are-defective/ https://semiaccurate.com/2010/07/11/why-nvidias-chips-are-de... > http://www.tomshardware.com/news/NVIDIA-GPU-Chipset-Graphics,6512.html http://www.tomshardware.com/news/NVIDIA-GPU-Chipset-Graphics... Not usually a huge fan of theinquirer's tabloid style, but they did a pretty good job reporting on the issue back then. > https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1047022/apple-notebooks-defective-nvidia-chips https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1047022/apple-note...

macOS doesn't currently have Nvidia drivers from this generation (from what I remember). It supports a handful of mobile cards and no more, which is the extent to which Nvidia has been implemented in Apple computers as of late. Meanwhile, the past few generations of graphics gear in Apple computers has been a pretty wide range of AMD stuff. Vega, Polaris, FirePro have all been represented in the last 5 or so years. All they had to do was modify the driver to be able to read from the TB3 PCIe device rather than just an internal one.

pzduniak 9y ago
... but Nvidia has their own drivers for even the most recent graphics cards that work perfectly fine. Writing this from a OSX setup with a GTX1080.
- lostlogin 9y ago
  I take it this is a hackintosh? Are you able to use it ok without signing into any iCloud services, or have you found a way around that?
  - rhinoceraptor 9y ago
    AFAIK you were already able to use external GPUs via 3rd party thunderbolt enclosures, it just wasn't officially supported.
  - kristofferR 9y ago
    iCloud works perfectly fine on Hackintoshes.
    - lostlogin 9y ago
      I logged into one on Sierra. Every iCloud service I use got locked down over the next 20 minutes and it wasn’t fun getting them back. Turns out I’m rather locked into the Apple ecosystem. Somehow Apple detect hardware configuration and check it on login. The mess it left wasn’t pretty.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- mirthflat83 9y ago
  Perfectly? The latest drivers lag like crazy
  - jakemauer 9y ago
    This is unfortunately a known issue, at least in the community if not by nVidia. The current workaround is to patch an earlier known-good driver version to work on whatever release of High Sierra you're on. I'm currently running 387.10.10.10.25.106 on 10.13.3 without lag. https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/nvidia-update https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/nvidia-update
    - mirthflat83 9y ago
      Interesting that some people have no lags. I have also used that script, but stutters are still present.
  - SloopJon 9y ago
    The drivers were great for a GTX 650Ti in 10.8 and 10.9. They worked fine for games like Borderlands 2 and Arkham Asylum. The drivers are terrible for a GTX 1060 in 10.12. After running for a while, even basic desktop operations bog down to the point of being unusable. I haven't tried 10.13 yet.
  - pzduniak 9y ago
    I might be still using Sierra after hearing about all the issues with High Sierra. I don't want to spend a few days configuring my Hackintosh again!
joshmn 9y ago
I can confirm that Sierra and Capitan do have Nvidia drivers for Pascal series.
- watmough 9y ago
  Are you sure? I have a gtx 970 working on the maxwell drivers on el cap but no luck on pascal.

navidfarhadi 9y ago

Apple hasn't released a product with an NVIDIA GPU for years. Also, driver support for NVIDIA GPUs on MacOS is not very good compared to AMD GPU driver support on MacOS.

giobox 9y ago
Nvidia driver support is fine, generally speaking. It's just Apple choose not to bundle drivers OOTB in the OS, but it's a trivial install from Nvidia's website. You can drop a brand new 1080ti into an old Mac Pro today and it will work great. Hackintosh users have also taken advantage of this for ages.
- maksimum 9y ago
  In fact Nvidia cards are the only ones that are recommended for hackintoshes for OOB compatibility [1]. IME on Mac OS 10.12 getting a Nvidia GTX 1060 to behave properly has been much easier than a AMD RX 480. [1] https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/march/2018/#Graphics_Cards https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/march/2018/#Graphics_....
  - lewapkon 9y ago
    That's definitely not true since at least summer last year (release date of WhateverGreen [1]). The drivers for Nvidia cards are currently pretty bad and are only getting worse (they used to work acceptably ok on Sierra). For example, Pascal based Nvidia GPUs on High Sierra often get something like 50% performance compared to Windows and they also cause the system to stutter. There are also many other problems with using them. For instance, you cannot update the system (even small updates) until Nvidia releases new drivers which sometimes takes few days. While with AMD, the drivers for RX460/470/480/560/570/580/Vega are already built-in and you only need to correctly inject them. You just need to use one kext (kind of a driver in Mac) called WhateverGreen (to be fully correct you also need Lilu, but you almost always have it anyway on your Hackintosh). It works without issues and is generally preferred among Hackintosh community. Another thing is that tonymacx builds are generally bad if you want a stable and easy to build Hackintosh (at least as easy as it can get). They are being sponsored and their choice of hardware is strongly biased. [1] https://github.com/vit9696/WhateverGreen https://github.com/vit9696/WhateverGreen

pjmlp 9y ago

Because AMD GPUs are the only discrete GPUs Apple supports on current models?

throwaway84742 9y ago

Because years ago NVIDIA screwed up the thermal solution in their laptop chips so they’d get so hot they’d unsolder themselves inside MacBook Pros, and then gave someone important at Apple the middle finger instead of helping to deal with the issue. Ever since then Apple does not use NVIDIA GPUs.

mapmap 9y ago
I would love to hear more details about this.
- throwaway84742 9y ago
  This was pretty well publicized circa 2008 when the events took place.
  - bhj 9y ago
    2012 and 2013 15" Macbook Pros used NVidia. I think Apple likes to alternate every generation or two, if only to keep their options open.
    - throwaway84742 9y ago
      Or maybe 2012. It’s been a while.
    - Fnoord 9y ago
      2010 MBP does, for sure. I need to disable that one, and use the Intel GPU instead. Using the Nvidia GPU causes random reboots.
- giobox 9y ago
  The fiasco was widely called "Bad Bumps" due to the issue being related to the solder used for the bumps on the underside of their chips. It was a huge deal affecting major computer vendors like Apple, Dell, HP etc at the time, with failure rates on laptops with these chips being ridiculously high. I've also long wondered if this played a part in whatever reason Apple have for avoiding Nvidia GPUs for so long. > https://semiaccurate.com/2010/07/11/why-nvidias-chips-are-defective/ https://semiaccurate.com/2010/07/11/why-nvidias-chips-are-de... > http://www.tomshardware.com/news/NVIDIA-GPU-Chipset-Graphics,6512.html http://www.tomshardware.com/news/NVIDIA-GPU-Chipset-Graphics... Not usually a huge fan of theinquirer's tabloid style, but they did a pretty good job reporting on the issue back then. > https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1047022/apple-notebooks-defective-nvidia-chips https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1047022/apple-note...