High Sierra and The Nvidia Web Driver

[Spacedust]

Does it mean Metal 2 is now fully supported?

[mucunucu]

y put pc 1050 ti on my mac pro 4,1  but y get 2,5 gt link speed if put the 7950 amd unflashed get 5gt.....how to put the envidia to 5 gt link speed??

[eVasilis]

System Report does not accurately report the speed of nvidia cards. CudaZ does and so do some other benchmark utilities like opencl_oceanwave

[h9826790]

Does it mean Metal 2 is now fully supported?

I think so. Do you know any good way to test it?

[mucunucu]

y do pram y reinstal the 0s but the same on syspref have 2.5 gt speed on the atached photo result cuda-z and oceanwawe......is 2.5 or 5gt??


https://imgur.com/a/2LEQr

[Asgorath]

y do pram y reinstal the 0s but the same on syspref have 2.5 gt speed on the atached photo result cuda-z and oceanwawe......is 2.5 or 5gt??


https://imgur.com/a/2LEQr

MacPro4,1 is limited to PCIe Gen 1 with the NVIDIA web driver, it only enables Gen 2 on MacPro5,1 systems(*).  The only solution for MacPro4,1 is to get your card flashed with an EFI from MacVidCards.

(*) My understanding is that enabling this involves some hackery on the driver's side of things, and NVIDIA only seems willing to do that on the MacPro5,1.

[mucunucu]

but macvidcard y dont see gtx1050 to flash only for 1070 to 1080??

[eVasilis]

Would it help if he flashed his mac to 5.1?

[owbp]

MacPro4,1 is limited to PCIe Gen 2 with the NVIDIA web driver, it only enables Gen 3 on MacPro5,1 systems(*).

MP4,1 and 5,1 are the same machines with different firmwares. Other computer companies to the same but are changing only revision number, not the whole identifier (HP Z800 rev1 and rev2 - different CPU support - familiar?).

Having said that, they use same chipset in both machines, X58 for single and 5520 for dual Xeon configuration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Pro#Specifications
and support only Gen 2 PCI-e interface. Don't know where did you get gen 3?

y do pram y reinstal the 0s but the same on syspref have 2.5 gt speed on the atached photo result cuda-z and oceanwawe......is 2.5 or 5gt??


https://imgur.com/a/2LEQr

CUDA-Z is reporting correct bandwith, so i wouldn't worry too much.
http://www.macvidcards.com/blog/why-does-my-link-speed-say-25-in-the-system-profiler-shouldnt-it-be-50

[Asgorath]

Would it help if he flashed his mac to 5.1?

Yes.

[Asgorath]

MP4,1 and 5,1 are the same machines with different firmwares. Other computer companies to the same but are changing only revision number, not the whole identifier (HP Z800 rev1 and rev2 - different CPU support - familiar?).

Having said that, they use same chipset in both machines, X58 for single and 5520 for dual Xeon configuration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Pro#Specifications
and support only Gen 2 PCI-e interface. Don't know where did you get gen 3?

Sorry, I meant Gen1/Gen2.  I think the NVIDIA driver basically looks to see if it's a MacPro5,1 and then does something to the system to force Gen2 to be enabled.  For whatever reason, they do not do this on MacPro4,1 systems.  I edited my post to clarify this, sorry for the confusion.

[mucunucu]

y flashed my mac pro to 5,1 sucefuly before y install the 0s again drivers etc but look at photo

https://ibb.co/kXVpQ6

[h9826790]

y do pram y reinstal the 0s but the same on syspref have 2.5 gt speed on the atached photo result cuda-z and oceanwawe......is 2.5 or 5gt??


https://imgur.com/a/2LEQr

If 5GT/s in CUDA-Z, then everything is fine.

Oceanwave is not that accurate. The negotiation speed seems dynamically adjusted. So, Oceanwave sometimes report 2.5GT/s, sometimes report 5GT/s.

And system report is quite cosmetic. It often can't properly display the info about the users upgraded items. Apple didn't expect us to do that.

[SMIKX]

A bit off topic but . . today I disabled beam sync with Quartz debug.

I hadn't realised how much of a hit AA has on FPS !

With my HIS HD 7950 installed Ocean Wave shows 539.5 fps with AA "OFF" ..

 . . it shows 61.7 fps with AA "ON" !

Still the link speed looks pretty good.

[jeanlain]

Does it mean Metal 2 is now fully supported?

I think so. Do you know any good way to test it?

The GPU family 1 V3 report in your screenshot indicates Metal 2 is supported.
The only app I know that requires Metal 2 is DiRT Rally. I'd be curious to know how the recent nVidia cards perform on this game. It's a bit slower on macOS than Windows (16% slower) on my radeon 580, without AA (AA hurts performance a lot on the Mac). I believe the difference will be greater on nVidia, as Metal drivers are not very good.