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Nvidia Web Driver updates for macOS High Sierra (UPDATE Nov 13, 2020)

fantomas

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MetalFishX
MetalFishX
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Big companies don't get into "revenge" or "jealousy", they simply care about selling their products, which means "making money", otherwise they won't be big.

So, if the dinero is in the Apple environment, then that's the target, period. I am sure that Nvidia eventually will support High Sierra.

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cwestpha
cwestpha
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Big companies don't get into "revenge" or "jealousy", they simply care about selling their products, which means "making money", otherwise they won't be big.

So, if the dinero is in the Apple environment, then that's the target, period. I am sure that Nvidia eventually will support High Sierra.

Um, are we talking about the same Apple that has a history of holding sometimes decades-long grudges? I am pretty sure there are two things causing Nvidia to miss out on generation after generation of Apple products. Nvidia doesn't want to support OpenCL (an Apple-developed standard) because it prefers its proprietary CUDA. And Apple doesn't want to work with Nvidia again because the last time they did it involved recalls of huge numbers of laptops. Apple always said it was small, but from what I saw was almost everyone one of my company's, colleagues, and several alumni that had the affected models either got their devices repaired under the program or had it happen a year or two after the program ended. Heck, the one I had I sold it to a friend and 8 months later the screen started having the classic signs of GPU overheating (I then refunded the money because it wasn't in good working order).

 

On OpenCL - Nvidia doesn't care about OpenCL performance for the most part. It has dev tools and SDKs to aid in OpenCL code being executed across their GPUs, but it is clear Nvidia has designed their GPUs, and designed their drivers, for graphics performance first and CUDA second with OpenCL performance being an afterthought. Nvidia was slow to adopt OpenCL and even slow to adopt Vulkan since it has been laser-focused on DX9 to 11.1 + CUDA performance for generations now. This goes completely against Apple's OpenCL and Metal (which is based on AMD's mantle) focus for the last several years. Simply put, Nvidia went one way and Apple plus AMD went another way.

 

History of GPU Defects - Yes Apple has a long history of GPU defects, honestly, I think this is the second reason Apple has been using IGP for almost everything for a while. That and it wanted everything thinner so bye bye extra space for the graphics card and cooling. That is another thing we can all rant on latter but lets get back to GPU defects. What I think is being missed is that Nvidia GPUs were the standard in most Apple products that had dGPUs at the peak of this. As such it became common for people to "avoid" those products when doing bulk buying or when you had friends saying their Nvidia gpu died in their MBP. This might sound strange, but Apple's support liked to play blame the component and downplay the problem. In my college, one of the pieces of tech advice going around in the late early 2010s was to get the integrated ones because if it was "good enough" and that those Nvidia chips died a lot. It's no surprise around this time Apple started switching to AMD on its dGPUs (that also had issues) and started to push IGP to the midrange.

The point of the above is to point out there is context and history between the two that directly fed into AMD is well positioned to partner with Apple (wanting to recover from bad press about GPU recalls). Switching OEMs for its GPU parts and pushing IGP across more of its line was a combination of marketing, new priorities, and wanting to distance itself from the "XXX model with Nvidia Graphics" recalls it had been putting up for on recalls from 2008 on in mobile (its largest sellers). I agree it was an Apple issue, just they waited good and long until they could get an AMD GPU they liked and then they "over speced" the replacement to make their move to AMD look even better in notebooks...

 

Nvidia GT 750m vs AMD Radeon Pro- I assume we are talking about the Mid 2015 MBP... oddly the one I own. The card was only 30% faster than the prior per reviews from the time. The 850m would have been about 25% faster prior then the former. If Apple wanted to take the equivalent in straight OEM cost and performance) Nvidia GPU to the AMD one they chose then it would be the 860m vs the M370X. The Nvidia chip would have averaged 35% to 40% faster than the former generation depending on if you wanted to take only OpenCL benchmark results or also want to include Windows side Direct X results. Even at the time, I noticed they upgraded the GPU diagonally across the product matrix to try and sell that "up to 60% better performance".

 

I know you are trying to say this is all from a money point of view but it is not. These are careful decisions made by Apple over the last 6+ years that have moved it further away from Nvidia regardless of cost. We as consumers are used to seeing retail pricing, something Apple doesn't have to worry about. OEM pricing for AMD vs Nvidia tends to be, at best, all over the place generation to generation. The aligning of Apple's APIs and focus on wanting to spread Metal and OpenCL in the dGPU space simply works better with AMD and that's what is driving it. So performance (OpenGL games, CAD, etc) and pricing (vega vs GTX) win on Nvidia's portfolio simply doesn't matter to it.

Nvidia may support the mac, but if Apple doesn't support Nvidia like we have seen.... the real effect is delayed less timely drivers and a harder time for Nvidia to get the resources from Apple it takes to support us properly. Well in advance NDA information on changes to APIs, the kernel, and windows server come to mind. I hope I am wrong with the above observations effecting the future of the two companies working together to serve us, but Apple has a history with this and OS X has unique challenges GPU manufacturers don't have to deal with in any other space. So that help from Apple is often the difference between good support and just keeping the lights on support.

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MetalFishX
MetalFishX
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Um, are we talking about the same Apple that has a history of holding sometimes decades-long grudges? I am pretty sure there are two things causing Nvidia to miss out on generation after generation of Apple products. Nvidia doesn't want to support OpenCL (an Apple-developed standard) because it prefers its proprietary CUDA. And Apple doesn't want to work with Nvidia again because the last time they did it involved recalls of huge numbers of laptops. Apple always said it was small, but from what I saw was almost everyone one of my company's, colleagues, and several alumni that had the affected models either got their devices repaired under the program or had it happen a year or two after the program ended. Heck, the one I had I sold it to a friend and 8 months later the screen started having the classic signs of GPU overheating (I then refunded the money because it wasn't in good working order).

 

https://developer.nvidia.com/opencl

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Cyberdevs
Cyberdevs
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Um, are we talking about the same Apple that has a history of holding sometimes decades-long grudges? I am pretty sure there are two things causing Nvidia to miss out on generation after generation of Apple products. Nvidia doesn't want to support OpenCL (an Apple-developed standard) because it prefers its proprietary CUDA. And Apple doesn't want to work with Nvidia again because the last time they did it involved recalls of huge numbers of laptops. Apple always said it was small, but from what I saw was almost everyone one of my company's, colleagues, and several alumni that had the affected models either got their devices repaired under the program or had it happen a year or two after the program ended. Heck, the one I had I sold it to a friend and 8 months later the screen started having the classic signs of GPU overheating (I then refunded the money because it wasn't in good working order).

 

Apple has a long history of defected GPUs on their MacBook Pros and iMacs, the thing is that it's not happening on nVidia Chipsets, they have the same issue on several AMD GPUs as well.

 

If I recall correctly it started back in 2007 and with MacBook Pro (with a GeForece 8600M GPU). But there are some iMac models from 2010 and 2011 that have AMD (AMD Radeon HD 6970M).

 

But there are so many iMac models (2012 and 2013) that have GeForce GPUs and they are not affected. (NVIDIA GeForce GT 755M, GeForce GTX 775M, or GeForce GTX 780M)

 

I don't want to argue why Apple switched back to AMD since 2014 but only time will tell if nVidia is going to release the Web Drivers for High Sierra. I'm hoping that they do :) We only have to wait and hope for the best.

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MetalFishX
MetalFishX
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I don't know, It's just that I've heard this in the past, before Sierra I remember to have read everywhere "Nvidia won't support macOS, because this and that", yet Nvidia's been working on both, drivers and CUDA software for macOS (Sierra in this case), and supporting every technology on Mac's, including OpenCL and Metal.
I believe Apple dropped Nvidia because their hardware is more expensive, simple as that. We all see how nice a product looks, how stable an OS is, etc, etc; but for companies this is all about money, all about money. Apple does great things, but they always try to balance quality with "actual" product profit, while securing "future" product profit; you know, new products that they add couple of "megapixels" here, and this there, and blah there, you know what I mean. They stayed with the ancient Nvidia GT 750m for ages for a reason, one is production cost (keep their profit margins), while it was "enough" as they usually say, to do all the basics they wanted to achieve with their software; BUT kind of ended when AMD got better performance while keeping their reasonably costs, it was a great business because for Apple because, Nvidia GT 750m vs AMD Radeon Pro, it was like 50%+ improvement in performance in almost every aspect that involves a GPU today, while keeping almost the same cost of their products, so it's been a great business deal for Apple to stay with AMD. And well, I am also sure that this is not about hardware issues, because I've seen problems in both platforms for ages. Here's a "not too old" example of MacPro's having issues: https://www.macrumors.com/2016/02/06/late-2013-mac-pro-video-issues-repair-program/

So anyways, sorry, I write too much, lol... It's evident that Apple is been growing in general adoption, and now including VR, AR, and AI, will help Apple grow a lot more, and I am sure that Nvidia (company) won't miss that business opportunity... But yeah, we only have to wait and hope for the best. :)

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fantomas
fantomas
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Guys,

 

the common point on which we agree is that there is nothing else to do except waiting - None of what you've just said will move things forward. It is not the first time that Nvidia does not release a beta Web driver (10.12.0 - 10.12. 3 - 10.12.5 - 10.12.6), so nothing catastrophic in itself.

 

We can expect a new Web Driver following macOS High Sierra final release on the next Monday (in 2 days) - Meanwhile, play with tricks you currently have, nothing else to do, I fear.   ;)

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MacDavePro
MacDavePro
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Nvidia doesn't want to support OpenCL (an Apple-developed standard) because it prefers its proprietary CUDA.

 

https://developer.nvidia.com/opencl

 

Yes Apple was the prototype author but they took it to the Khronos Group and a newly formed industry consortium (of which Nvidia was a founding member) before the release of 1.0 in 2008.

Some good news about OpenCL for Nvidia on macOS is that there isn't expected to be a next version - it is being rolled into Vulkan which means to support OpenCL macOS will have to support Vulkan. Metal2 is more or less a competing framework to Vulkan and OpenGL developers have been concerned that Vulkan support would be dropped in favour of Metal2. 

 

Also https://nvidia.wd5.myworkdayjobs.co...ND-OPENCL-SOFTWARE-ENGINEER---MAC_JR1897400-5 .

 

That said, it would appear here as though external GPUs will not have official retail support by Apple before Spring 2018. So the pressure isn't really on Nvidia to release a driver before that date - except from the likes of us who aren't really in a position to complain. Personally I really hope we see a driver update in the next few days but I'm not holding my breath.

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laperuz
laperuz
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I was going to go home and install high sierra on my mac pro but I guess not now. So the only way I could would be to use the original gpu? My 660 won't work?

My gtx660ti has full acceleration on High Sierra with Apple driver. The only thing i have a black screen with iMac 17.1, but it could be fixed with Lilu.kext + NvidiaGraphicsFixup.kext.

 

Oh, and sometimes i have some graphics glitches like this.

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Pcwizkid1994
Pcwizkid1994
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My gtx660ti has full acceleration on High Sierra with Apple driver. The only thing i have a black screen with iMac 17.1, but it could be fixed with Lilu.kext + NvidiaGraphicsFixup.kext.

 

Oh, and sometimes i have some graphics glitches like this.

Thank you for your response. What system are you running that on? And how does it run?

 

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

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Badruzeus
Badruzeus
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Thanks @Asgorath for the update  :) U're the man..!!!

BTW, Nvidia changed the *.kexts location; now they're located on "/Library/Extensions" while on "/System/Library/Extensions" we get only *.bundle, just FYI.

 

 

wgnbmjJ.jpg

 

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Guest ricoc90
Guest ricoc90
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Is it just me or is the driver messed up? I guess on the Nvidia drivers I do not have acceleration, no transparancy and when I move windows around, it really gets messy 

 

 

 

post-1502423-0-87579400-1506476141_thumb.png

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Badruzeus
Badruzeus
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Is it just me or is the driver messed up? I guess on the Nvidia drivers I do not have acceleration, no transparancy and when I move windows around, it really gets messy 

 

 

 

attachicon.gifSchermafbeelding 2017-09-27 om 03.46.43.png

No worry, U're not alone LoL..  :P since GeForce* && NVD* are loaded; just never give up brother.. at least, it also happened on my Fermi GF119 with Legacy. Just enjoy..

 

 

wgBVwd0.png

 

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Guest ricoc90
Guest ricoc90
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Yeah, hopefully it'll be fixed. I don't really need the web drivers anyway... Except having CUDA would be nice tho  :P

 

BTW: 

kextstat | egrep "GeForce|NVDA"
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MetalFishX
MetalFishX
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Hmmm. On my MBP, when I try to install the new driver I get  "The Installer has encountered an issue with your system and the NVIDIA Web Driver may not install properly. Click Continue to proceed or click Cancel to abort the installation process."

And it gets installed, and the video card appears, but it doesn't activate the card... :(

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